A rich musical heritage

West Michigan is truly blessed to have an abundance of talented people who love to keep the folk arts and roots music alive. There is a vibrant music scene here in the area, and it’s fun to see the many jam sessions and music events that take place in and around the greater Grand Rapids area. I had the chance to sit in on a regular weekly jam session featuring Irish/Celtic music a week or so ago, and it was a real treat to see these people enjoying their heritage and their art form. It was also interesting to see the roots of bluegrass alive and well in this style of music. It’s easy to see how this music is a close cousin to bluegrass.

Fiddles, guitar, and banjos…oh my!

Those of us in the bluegrass world can sometimes forget the roots of our art form. This music that Bill Monroe helped to found stretches way back in time, all the way back to the Scotch Isles, Ireland, and Brittain…among other places. When we describe America as a melting pot, we of course refer to the immigrants who came to this country from these far away lands, settling in the Adirondacks, Appalachia, big towns and small.

Attend one of these jam session and you’ll be instantly reminded of bluegrass’s Scotch/Irish connection. It’s kind of a comforting, familiar feeling to attend an event that you intellectually know will be different than a bluegrass jam session…but that has you turning your head every other song, trying to figure out why what you are hearing is somehow so familiar. That familiarity is multi-faceted…one of the facets being the use of so many of the same instruments between the two genres.

Ricky Skaggs speaks of having made a trip to Ireland in recent history, getting the chance while there to play music in the pubs with the indigenous people. He speaks of being pleasantly surprised that people from both sides of the ocean are really playing the same music but with different names. The chord structures, the melodies, the make-up of the music…all very similar and stretching back in time to embrace those “ancient tones” that Bill Monroe spoke of.

The same…yet different…

Even though I’ve been speaking of many similarities between the genres, there are enough differences between that and bluegrass that you know you aren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.

I was struck by the use of minor chords/7th chords, and other decorative/meaningful/artisitic scales and uses of chords. One such song that I heard played this night was Soldier’s Joy. This is a traditional fiddle tune that most of us in the bluegrass world know well, but at this jam session, that tune was played with a relative minor chord in the B part of the song. This was not a huge difference…yet it created a stark contrast to what I’m used to with Soldier’s Joy. (In bluegrass, we play the song with all major chords.)

Different too was the fact that at this jam session, every song was played ensemble. In bluegrass, there is a clear and defined lead instrument on any given instrumental tune, with the lead to the song being passed around the group. The supporting musicians all vamp/accompany the lead instrument, taking a lead when it’s their turn. If this jam session was indicative of the Irish/Celtic tradition in general, then we find that in this genre, all instruments that can play a lead to the song play at the same time. This was very different than what I’m used to in bluegrass. Different yet kind of fun to hear. At the very least it was a nice change of pace and something interesting to catch me off guard.

Click me! Click me!

Another really fun thing about this kind of music, or at least this particular jam session, is that the tempo of the song often can pick up along the way, with two or more speed increases at given points in the song…usually more! Some of the songs I listened to this night started at a pretty good clip and ended fairly humming after 2, 3, or 4 increases in speed. What a dream come true for a banjo player!

Care to take a listen to one of the songs? I brought along my hand-dandy Tascam DR-1 digital recorder and caught a song on it that I am intimately familiar with.  Take a listen to this track and notice the similarities…and the differences. Click the song title to listen: Blackberry Blossom.

Support the local arts scene

So many of the faces at this jam were familiar to me, and it’s nice to see the Irish/Celtic set embracing and supporting the W.M.B.M.A. I can say that I’ve seen over half of the faces of the musicians in the jam at our events. I appreciate the blending of both worlds, and I encourage you to check out this jam session to see what it’s about for yourself. They meet every Sunday night at McFadden’s in downtown Grand Rapids. The address is 58 Ionia in Grand Rapids. Come on down, they’d love to see you. And one week you might even see me dancing a jig to a hot fiddle number. (Admin note: I heard the collective shudder of the entire readership of this blog all at once as you read that last line, so on second thought, never mind…I won’t torture you with my dancing.)

Show Bluegrass Paul some comment love

You’ll get used to this section in time: it’s the section where I beg…err, entice…you to leave comments to this blog post. Have you been to this jam? Do you like the Irish/Celtic stuff? Hate it? Have any experiences or knowledge to contribute on this topic? You can leave comments about all of this and more in the comments section below, after you log in and create a username and password.

Don’t forget that you can subscribe to comments. If you do this, then each time you leave a comment, you’ll receive an email whenever someone else also leaves a comment on the same blog post. This allows you to “be in on the conversation”.

Thanks folks. Until next time, take good care, and as I always say: pick ‘em if ya got ‘em!

Bluegrass Paul
Social Media Director
The West Michigan Bluegrass Music Association

Tagged as: Acoustic, Irish/Celtic, Jam session, Miscellaneous, Roots music, Tons 'O fun