On Wednesday the group finally all got together. One of the fellows' flight was delayed a full day, so instead of arriving on Tuesday he arrived on Wednesday morning. Wednesday morning also saw a departure. I woke up early and went to walk around Dublin on my own; I like to walk through a city by myself before having it colored by a tour guide. I stopped in St. Stephen's Green to check the map and take a break, I saw St. Patrick's Cathedral and the Literary Grottoes, and most of the rest of the city as well, including some nice residential areas. At 11 we all met up by City Hall to start our free walking tour. Our guide, Dave, was very energetic ("when he talks it looks like he is doing capoiera" - it really did). He was also very political. Very very political. And he was not afraid to show it. As he started the tour by Dublin Castle, I went to take out my camera to snap a photo and... it was gone. I figured it must have fallen out of my bag when I stopped at St. Stephen's Green. i ran back, but it was not there. Oh well.
We continued on the tour with Dave, learning lots about Irish history and politics and about the city itself. We had a liquid lunch, a nice microbrewed Irish Red, which was quite good. Afterwards we walked through parts of the city not covered by the tour and ended at the Guinness Storehouse, where we met the girls from the previous day. the tour there was self-guided, well-organized, and interesting enough, though it felt more like walking through a museum than a brewery tour. The Guinness at the 360 bar at the top was excellent though, and the full circle view of Dublin was magnificent (the weather has been amazing so far).
When we arrived in Kilkenny, a small quaint town, was off the hook (at 10:00pm) with young people all dressed out and going out to the pubs and clubs, and as we shlepped down our hostel with our huge bags we got many an invite to join the party. Two of us, after dropping off our bags, decided to take up the invitation, and we went out looking for some happenings. What we found was better than we could have expected. Instead of going into one of the big loud clubs along the main drag, we peeked our head into a small, quaint looking pub, and lo and behold, there was a group of musicians playing a trad session. We sat, had a few pints (Smithwicks, and more on it later), and basked in the music. And then, as if it couldn't get any better, one of the players started a sean nos! Look it up. It is something I was dying to hear here, and I was successful.
Oh, and i forgot to mention that our roommates at the hostels were, in a small town in Ireland, Israeli. Amazing.
We went to bed at 1:30, preparing for a day full of castles and breweries and more pubs and music (cheoil).
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Sean-nós singing is a highly-ornamented style of solo, unaccompanied singing defined by Tomas O'Canainn as:
ReplyDelete...a rather complex way of singing in Gaelic, confined mainly to some areas in the west and south of the country. It is unaccompanied and has a highly ornamented melodic line....Not all areas have the same type of ornamentation--one finds a very florid line in Connacht, contrasting with a somewhat less decorated one in the south, and, by comparison, a stark simplicity in the northern songs...[1]
Ó'Canainn also asserts that, '...no aspect of Irish music can be fully understood without a deep appreciation of sean-nós singing. It is the key which opens every lock'.[2]
Sean-nós songs can be relatively simple, though many are long, extremely stylized and melodically complex. A good performance classically involves substantial ornament and rhythmic variations from verse to verse.[citation needed]
Did you get drunk or "tipsy"?
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