From Shore to Shore Transcript
- [James] The South Bronx was such an Irish neighborhood that until I was seven or eight years old, I actually thought everybody in America was Irish.
- [Paddy] We used to get together usually in the home to play, compare notes, learn from the older men. All the young whippersnappers would sit around and listen and were very respectful to the old timers.
- [Maureen] There was always music around in the house growing up. My dad was always playing at house parties. I remember waking up on Saturday mornings and just hearing the music. Irish music is my identity. I feel that that's what I am.
- I had listened to Irish music on the radio many times. In fact I used to dance to--my parents used to tell me I used to jump around to Irish music. My interest was sparked by two fiddle players. my parents used to visit when I was about six years old. I think seeing it being played for the first time live made a great impression. I started learning to play the fiddle because I loved it and when I first heard it. I was enthusiastic, wanted to learn the fiddle in the worst way.
- Shortly after I started playing, Dave Combs would always be talking about this great fiddle player, Andy McGann. So I went to a feis, and I think the feis was at Hunter College. And I heard Andy McGann for the first time. And here I was about 10 years old, and I was just so impressed by his fiddle playing that the only thing I could think about was I wanna sound just like that. I wanna be just that good, and that was the impetus to practice.
- [Narrator] In the days before automobiles, radio and television, the rural Irish made their own entertainment. Dance music was learned by younger players from their elders through listening and imitation. Crossroads dances took place, and fiddlers joined flutists, pipers and other musicians and played jigs, reels, waltzes and polkas for the dancers. In some rural communities, it seemed as though most everybody could play a bit of a tune or dance a few steps. The small village of Killavil in County Sligo was a virtual breeding ground for fine musicians.
- I think that most of the fiddlers came from Killavil mostly, especially the fiddle players. Like, you know, Phil O'Beirne, Lad O'Beirne, Michael Coleman, James Coleman, and a lot more--John William Hunt and Dick Brannon. It was a whole lot of them. See, the O'Beirne's lived close by. Phil O'Beirne was livin'. I used to go over. I remember there was a tune I learned from him called "The Millstone." He called it "The Millstone." Like, it's a-- Well, I didn't know how to bow that. This part, he said. And then he just told me to--he didn't actually show me, but he said, "You have to kinda move it up and down." That's more like it And that's what come out of it-- That's all about that.
- We danced a lot in Ireland. There was always house parties, and we get up and do the four-hand reel. There would be two fellas and two girls, or four girls, or whatever. Oh we were always dancing in Ireland. On a Sunday evening everybody knew that there was always music at Coleman's crossroads, so they would come from Gorteen, Bunnanadden, Tobercurry and all the different townlands, and they're just boys and girls who'd ride bicycle and just stop there. And the next thing you know, there'd be music right out at the crossroads.
- I was pretty good when I was very young. I often brought home two and three new tunes now from listening to the old fiddlers. They might not come to me for a day or two. Some of them I'd bring home that night. And I remember, when I get home I wouldn't go into the house and take the fiddle out because I'd wake them up. I used to go into a barn and sit down on a bag of hay or oats or something in the barn and play this tune because I knew if I played it, I wouldn't forget it. Leitrim, Lankford and Sligo, were poor counties-- Small farms, large families. So they had to emigrate. I remember when people coming to America, It was the same as if they was burying them. They were going to die, they were leaving forever, they were gone because 50, 60, 70 years ago, when Irish people came over here, they would come for good. Never saw mom and dad again and those partings were very emotional. Lord! Oh my God! I remember three sisters of mine who came out here when I was only just about five or six. I remember it so well, the terrible agony and loneliness in my father and mother and everybody. They might never come back. In those days, you didn't come back. It took you weeks to get here. Of course, New York was the first stop. It's hard to almost imagine because most of the people came from the rural areas in Ireland and from the poorer parts of the cities and towns. They must've thought that this place was a kind of heaven on Earth. Some Irish came over here, and they did have relatives who were pretty well established, maybe an uncle or an aunt or somebody like that. But everybody didn't have that good luck. An awful lot of them came here and just worked their way up. They worked in all kinds of civil service jobs, Police, fire department, you name it. When the women came over to this country, the only jobs available to them were domestic. They could be housekeepers, cooks and waitresses, various things like that. The Irish who played music brought the gift with them. Course the Irish opened up dance halls here and all that, because the people that liked to hear music and dance and all this, it played a very great part here in their social life. What they found here was what they thought was something great, you see?
♪ There's a pretty spot in Ireland ♪
♪ I always claim for my land, ♪
♪ Where the prairies and the blarney ♪
♪ Will never, never die. ♪
♪ It's the land of the shillelagh. ♪
♪ Me heart goes back there daily ♪
♪ To the girl I left behind me ♪
♪ When we kissed and said goodbye. ♪
- [Narrator] During these years, the entertainment industry courted the new Irish audience in America. Elements of Irish traditional culture soon emerged in stage shows, popular songs and film. In general, traditional culture didn't survive the transition from Ireland to America, but Irish folk music proved surprisingly resilient. Vaudeville acts, dance halls and theaters all opened their doors to the recently arrived Irish musicians, dancers and singers. With this, New York City ushered in the so-called golden age of Irish music. Irish entrepreneurs such as Patrick Fitzpatrick built Celtic Hall on West 54th Street. Celtic Hall immediately became a mecca for Irish traditional music and dance. Recognizing the commercial potential of this renaissance of interest, record companies began producing hundreds of 78 recordings. Columbia, Victor, Decca and smaller labels all sought out and recorded the music of some of the era's best players. Perhaps no other Irish traditional musician has affected the course of the music as much as Michael Coleman. Born in Killavil, in County Sligo in 1891, Coleman's home was a center for music and the young Coleman quickly mastered the fiddle. He immigrated to New York in 1914 and found work with the Keith Theater Circuit. After touring throughout the states for several years, he recorded over 80 records for Columbia, Decca and smaller ethnic labels. These discs found their way back to an eager audience in Ireland. Played on wind-up Victrolas, Coleman's music popularized the regional style from County Sligo. His music would influence players for generations to come.
- Lad was absolutely a child when he met my uncle, Michael Coleman, and of course when he first met him, Uncle Mike didn't know who Lad was, but eventually he got around to know who he was. They were the years of Depression, and I guess there wasn't much work, so all these boys would get together and have a music session, and they enjoyed, were happy, you know, with the music. But I thought Lad was just the greatest thing I ever heard. We were married on Halloween, 1942. Seven weeks later he was called in the service, and he was gone for three years and two months. When he came back, then that's when we all had a great time. Music, more music, house full of musicians every night in the week.
- I grew up, forever I remembered my father with a violin in his hand and--but I just took it for granted. You know, I figured everybody kinda did the same thing. There was music in everybody's house. And my home was like that when I grew up. There was all musicians-- Lad O'Beirne and James Morrison and Paddy Killoran-- but it was absolutely beautiful. I remember I'd go out in the morning, and I'd hear all the neighbors talk, did you hear that music again last night? and I'd be kind of embarrassed, you know, because they'd all be 'till three o'clock in the morning or whatever, you know, with their session. Yeah, my father was a beautiful dancer. Besides playing violin, he danced and played together. I know, I have picture of him dancing and playing in Chicago on the stage. And he traveled a lot, maybe 1928, 1929, we went to Philadelphia, my mother and my father and myself. And they had a beautiful, beautiful, you know, big concert for him. Oh I was so proud! The stage was gorgeous, I always remember, and they had this beautiful, big, red velvet seat for my father to sit on. And my father never liked to sit. He always stood when he played. He never sat. And he sat to be polite at the beginning, but then he stood but everybody was tearing themselves apart lookin' at him, you know. and I'm saying, "That's my father."
- Well, my parents knew Michael Coleman. My father actually knew Michael Coleman at the time and tried to get Michael to teach me in the beginning. I was going to grammar school at the time and coming home for lunch at 12 o'clock noon, and Michael probably would be there. He'd play a couple of tunes for me and ask me which one I wanted, and he'd write out the tune. I'd go back to school and come back home at three o'clock, and he'd have the tune written out for me. See, and then we'd sit down and play that, and it just became a session after that. I was so involved with the Irish music and the Irish dancing throughout the years, I suppose I felt I was more Irish than American. I was more at home at an Irish party than I would be at an American party.
- [Narrator] New York's golden age of Irish music ended by the second World War, when immigration slowed down. Traditional music took a backseat to more mainstream displays of ethnicity.
- [Announcer] The sun shines on Fifth Avenue, New York as a million and a quarter watch the Irish have their day. Sure and it's St. Patty's Day, as anyone can see, and if it's a fight or a parade, the old 69th is always there. Where their flag passes, goes the banner of valor and courage. A son of the old sod himself, Mayor O'Dwyer stands in the brisk wind as thousands of Erin's loyal sons and daughters mark one of the greatest St. Patrick's Day celebrations in years. Sure, they're ALL there. Even the gasurs, some of them awake and some, well, it's a pretty long day and who, you ask, will have the last word but the Irish cops.
- [Narrator] With little opportunity for performance, Irish musicians played mostly at private house parties and occasional sessions. Some also played at the feis, an annual Irish cultural festival sponsored by the United Irish Counties Association. Beginning in the early 1930's, the feis devoted an entire day to Irish music, song and dance competitions. It gave hundreds of young contestants a chance to showcase what they had learned from their families and friends and in Irish music schools.
- We were engaged to play for the dancers at these various feises. Plus the Yetic League also held ceilies every Saturday night. There was a music club going on at the time, once a month at the time. Those were about the only occasions where tradition music was played. It was mostly session music. It says here, the Irish Music and Social Club of Greater New York, March 23rd, 1947. Right away, the first one I spot is myself. I was about 18 at the time, I'd say.
- Well this woman here, she was from City Island, I forget her name.
- Is that who she, yeah.
- Herself and her husband, they always used to come to Katlin and Lad and all that. I can really go ahead. That's Quinn and there's Lad and--
- I have very wonderful recollections of being taken along by my mother and father on those Sunday afternoons. My father would sit up on the stage, and I would quite frequently sit up on the stage beside him. And I really wasn't much more than three or four years old at the time. Well the sessions of music in our home in the South Bronx were generally impromptu sessions which were put together without a great deal of advance planning, and they were generally on a Saturday night, and there might be 10 or 12 or 15 musicians there. While the sessions generally were lengthy, there were occasions actually when they went on all night into dawn. I remember on a couple of occasions, my mother would actually shoo all the musicians off to church in the morning, they would all leave and go to mass and she would make a big breakfast and they would all come back and then begin to play again. I can actually say that I loved those sessions and frankly thought that everybody had that amount of music available to them in their home. In fact, the South Bronx was such an Irish neighborhood that until I was seven or eight years old, I actually thought everybody in America was Irish.
- [Narrator] The years just after World War II saw a large wave of immigration to the states. Attracted by the post war economic climate, thousands of Irish made their way to New York City. Including a number of excellent musicians.
- I was playin' in a cabaret one time on Washington Avenue in Brooklyn. A man came up and asked me to play some tune and I did and we got talkin' and he says to me, "How you doin' in America?" I says, "Well, not so good," I says, "I don't have a steady job." And he told me to meet him down on the corner of 72nd Street and New York Avenue in Manhattan, Monday morning at 7:30. I went down and met that man, and he was a big man with Eastman Kodak. And I got started work and got paid for that day, and I worked there for 27 years. Course I played my fiddle on the side. We used to get together, you know, Lad O'Beirne and Andy McGann and I and Jerry Wallace and later on Felix Dolan came into the scene, and we used to get together in the homes for sessions in the Bronx. And that's where I used to live when I first came. And we used to go into the Shannon and meet there and maybe then go up to our house, which is only right upstairs, a few flights up there on 38th Street and Cyprus Avenue in the Bronx, which was 100% Irish in those days. So we'd have a session there Sunday evening until maybe seven or eight o'clock. Sometimes it went longer than that. You could have music every night in the week in Lad O'Beirne's. We did most of the week. I learned quite a bit from Lad. But there was plenty of music, and neighbors loved it. In the summertime, they'd be all sittin' with the windows open and listen to us. Those days there was no air condition, so it was only fans in the windows. The fans used to usually blow out exhaust, and it brought out everything including the music.
- We were playing some very good music at the time, I thought. I thought it should be preserved somehow for posterity. I thought a recording would be a great idea. We were mostly playing together anyway in sessions or maybe at one of the ceili's. So we decided to band together, to get the whole group together, and make a recording. Members of the band, New York Ceili Band, were Felix Dolan on the piano, Jerry Wallace on the piccolo, Larry Radegan, playing the fiddle, Michael Dorney, Michael Dorney, Perry Riddles, Paddy O'Brien, famous accordion player from Tipperary, and myself and James Lad O'Beirne was originally in the band. Well, we had a very good band there. We went to Ireland, and we went to the Fleadh Ceoil in Boyle, County Roscommon, in 1960, and we did very well. We took the overseas championship, and we took first in the piccolo, and first in the trio. And we come back with bag full of trophies, all right. But there wasn't that much, there wasn't any work really worth anything for ceili bands in the city in New York. Individuals and duets and all that stuff, you know what I mean. But not for a ceili band. You wouldn't be able to pay them. All you'd have is the pleasure of playing.
- [Narrator] By the late 50's, Irish traditional music was being eclipsed by more popular styles of music. For the most part, new Irish immigrants were more interested in big band dance music and later show band music that became the rage in the 60's. Both house bands and visiting groups from England and Ireland played in the major Irish American dance halls throughout New York. The evening's entertainment was punctuated by two 15-minute sets of ceili dance music played on the accordion, drums and piano, while the featured band took a break.
- In the 1960's the immigrants came to this country, and they left their home behind as a memory, but they held on to that memory through house sessions and house parties and gatherings. Playing music and telling stories for their own enjoyment. My parents used to have house parties when I was small, when myself and John, my brother were small, for birthdays and people would come over and play music. They also had sessions, later on my father had sessions, and I listened to the music. I loved the music. I used to dance with my father all the time. We used to make up these little steps. I must have been very good at it because I used to cop on immediately. I started dancing when I was about four. We went to a house party, and there was three girls there dancing the jig, and immediately I just took to it. And I started copying them, and I used to do it around the house. And my father used to come home for lunch, and he'd bring out the accordion, and we'd sing and I'd start dancing. In fact I never stopped, I never stopped, as soon as he started playing, that was it. He decided to take me then for lessons when I was five, and I started with Kathleen Murray. And then she stopped teaching so I went into Manhattan to Ceril McNiff. We saw them on the Ed Sullivan Show, and my father, I remember he said, "That's where Bowie's going for lessons." I was Bowie. People went to the feis to really enjoy themselves. It was a day out. You wore your Sunday coat and your Sunday hat, and you had a very simple Irish dance costume, and you were just so excited waiting on line. You might have to wait on line an hour before you get up on the stage. And you were so excited about doing that one little step. I felt wonderful when I was out there dancing, even when, since I was very small, because it was something I just loved to do. And it was great to have to go up the stairs and get onto the stage and do it on a whole stage in front of so many people. I just loved it. I just love to dance. You know, you had McGann playing and Patty Reynolds and different musicians. And the rhythm was fantastic. It was natural. You just, picked your music. At most feises, you didn't even pick the music. You just danced to what was being played, and then they were natural. You know, the music just swung back and forth, like your heart going like this. And you felt that, and you were in sync with that. If you could really dance, that's what you were in sync with. Young people who learned music or had the music in their home, they learned from their father or their mother who played the music, but there was a real necessity for a music teacher, because a lot of young people wanted to learn the music, and they didn't have access to it. Some of them because they lived in the suburbs. Others because there just wasn't a teacher available. That's where this idea that my father had of formalizing a school, a place where you could go to learn traditional Irish music became important. Well, he passed away in 1971 suddenly, and that's when I started teaching myself. So I used to sit down in the basement and just play for hours. I was so determined to succeed and to keep one step ahead of everybody else, which of course they didn't know. And I was having a grand old time with them, and they were having a grand old time with me, and they were all becoming good musicians. Because it's a type of thing, if it's in you, it's gonna come out anyhow, if you're exposed to it. I mean, you're playing Irish music, and you're doing Irish dancing. Why are you doing it? There has to be some connection to Ireland.
- [Man] Okay, great, thanks very much.
- In 1960, I took my first trip to Ireland with my father and my brother. We left on a propellor airplane. It seemed to me like it took forever, and we went into Shannon Airport and I just remember there being nothing there, only this big stone desk. We drove then, down to Roscommon. The roads were all still gravel, and there was still plenty of thatch cottages. I think we were the only car on the road. We went to see my grandparents, and my father had the moving camera the whole time. And we lived by oil lamp. It was really going back to the past. Well my grandfather, really at the time--I suppose he was in his 60's--and he was like a 20-year-old man, and he still ran the whole farm. They had a real beautiful piece of land there. And making the hay, you know, you went into the fields, and you cut the hay, and then you raked the hay up, and you put them into little bundles, and then you made a bigger haystack, and then you made a giant haystack in the finish. We went to a lot of relatives' houses and house party at every house. He played the accordion, and there was different people that played, and I danced, and we all sang. When I look back on it now, it is the greatest memory that I have. The Fleadh Cheoil in New York is the qualifying competition for the All Ireland competitions in Ireland. The kids that compete in the Fleadh Cheoil, they're interested in the idea that if they qualify some way through a band or an instrumental, then they get to make that terrific trip back to Ireland. To play music, to meet other musicians, and to have a great time--that's the prize.
- Well, my dad came to me one day and asked me if I wanted to play the accordion and I said, "No way, Dad. No, I don't wanna do that." He says, "Come on, please." He said, "There's a girl down the street named Maureen Glenn who is just taking over at teaching music school, Irish traditional music school." So he said, "Why don't you take up the tin whistle or something, just try it for a while." I loved the tunes. I loved trying to learn the tunes. It was accomplishment, I think. I felt good about myself. Once I got it tuned down and I learned how to play it and said to myself, "That doesn't sound half bad, It's startin' to make some sense." But when I was in high school, it was very difficult because that was not the cool thing to do. So I basically hid it. I was ashamed because it wasn't cool, You should be dating, and you should be doing this, and going out, and I didn't have any interest in boys at the time. It was just music, music, music. So I finally came to a point within myself where I said, "It's okay, you know. You love what you're doing. Don't hide it anymore." When I took lessons from Maureen Glen, she would have an awful lot of people over the house for sessions and that kind of thing, and Johnny Cronin was there, and it was just great. Learning tunes, right, left and center, and there was always somebody over and Johnny would get on the phone, "Maureen Doherty, come on down to the house. There's somebody over and play a few tunes." And it was just, I met an awful lot of musicians through them, and it was just great. It was probably the best part of my life. Hell! There was always music around in the house, growing up. My dad was always playing at house parties, and my uncle would come over and play the fiddle. And it was just amazing, because I remember waking up on Saturday mornings and just hearing the music. So it's always been there, and I think even before I started to take lessons, I knew the tunes. You heard them over and over and over again.
- My father and mother played, and they used to play at the--they used to rehearse dancing, I think. And people used to pay a couple of pennies to get in. And they used to have dancin' and my father and mother used to play a lot. I started to pick up the melodean when I was about five and a half, I guess. And place where I was born, people had to be kept home and to do work and do things. Everybody around the whole place was very poor, you know? I learned the stone cuttin' trade when I was at school. That's makin' headstones and crosses. So that much got my earning anyhow. Then I went away when I was very young. I went to England. I went to Glasgow. Then come out to this country and I think this country's the best country in the world. I come out in four day, I made an application for the telephone and the gas, and I got called for the two of them, the same day. And I had another job got for the same day, the warehouse work. And that's where I went, to the warehouse because it was more money than telephone or gas. So I worked 25 years in the full storage. It was only this last few years since I retired, the tunes come back to me, the old ones, anyway. They're not common at all. That's a whole lot of them lost entirely. And there were one tune that didn't even get it 'till last year, come back to me. And I played it everywhere. I think I played it everywhere I went anyway 'cause I thought that--you know when you get a new tune like that, even if it IS old, you're so delighted with it that you keep on playing that one for a long time. That's a jig. The hell is the name of this? It's "Take The Bull By The Horns." That's the name of it.
- Shortly after I started playing, my father gave Martin Wynne a call (somebody who he had known back in his days when he was living in the South Bronx in the early 1950's) and Martin Wynne is, most people know, is a renowned Sligo fiddle player who had sort of been in seclusion for a while, but back in, I think it was 1972, we got in touch with Martin, and the environment then became every Friday night, Irish music with Dave Collins on the button accordion, Martin Wynne on the fiddle and me just sitting there listening. So it was good. It was a real saturation of Irish music in those days. I'm kind of labeled as a conservative when it comes to traditional Irish music and how it should be played. My thinking is more along the lines of the older musicians, and I think that has a great deal to do with who taught me, what my influences were and just, and again, getting back to that saturation. So much has to do with just sitting and listening to Martin Wynne talk about his days in Sligo, the caliber of music that existed at his time in Ireland. I think the people who play the pure form of traditional Irish music, they do it for enjoyment, there's no monetary incentive to play Irish music. It's just pure love of the music. Very nice, Martin, what's the name of that? Do you have a name?
- No, I don't know any names.
- Both my parents really encouraged me to play Irish music, and I loved it immediately. I started to practice on my own. I wasn't told anymore that I had to play like, you know, an hour a day and that kind of thing. I just loved it, I loved the music immediately, and I just loved my teacher, Martin Mulvihill. He really made it fun. He made it a really good time to play, and he started a school in New York, and he taught in Philadelphia and Washington at different points. He taught hundreds of kids. I'd say nearly everybody playing in New York now had some kind of thing to do with Martin, either directly or indirectly. The first band I had with Martin was the Erin O'Kelly Band and that was when we were, gosh, we were only 10, 11 years old and we were known to Ireland, and it was kinda fun. Then I was in the Tara Ceili Band after that for about five or six years, and that was great. It kinda kept the interest going as well, because you were playing with kids of your own age, and it was fun, you know? I started taking lessons with Martin when I was eight, and I continued for maybe 'bout five or six years. He taught me probably the most important things about the Irish music, like play it with swing, you know, and start right away with the fundamentals.
♪ And it's no nay never ♪
- [Narrator] The early 1960's saw the beginnings of a folk music revival, both in Ireland and in the United States. The stage was thus set for a similar revival of Irish folk music. Enter four singing Irish men-- the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem-- whose infectious harmonies and driving rhythms propelled Irish song into international prominence.
♪ No, nay, never no more ♪
♪ Will I play ♪
♪ The wild rover ♪
♪ No, never no more. ♪
Irish dance music wasn't long in following, and informal music sessions throughout Ireland and in cities in America took shape. Much of the interest in these sessions was generated by the rising prominence of several Irish traditional bands who gained international acclaim in the early 1970's. With their arrangements of traditional songs and driving tune medleys, bands like The Boys of The Lough, The Bothy Band and Planxty attracted new audiences everywhere.
- I'd say the Irish bands that really influenced me were The Bothy Band definitely, Planxty and Moving Hearts. I think being American probably, I grew up with a lot of different influences in music. Lot of rock bands, you know. The last maybe four or five years, I started listening to blues, little bit of jazz and even more recently, bluegrass and old time music. In blues fiddle, like, I find, you know, with the slides up and downward slides and the different like, flats and stuff like that, it kinda works into the music nicely, I find. And bluegrass, of course, like chords and old time stuff, a lot of that. Again, sort of works in, so I think that all kinda comes into my playing whether sometimes I might not realize it or whatever, but just from listening to the music, I think it sort of comes in there, creeps in.
- I think the statement that we're making about the music is that it can be interesting, it can be new and old at the same time, and that you can include different types of music, incorporate it into the Irish music, and still maintain the essence of the tradition.
- I'd like to see more musicians who would just carry on the traditional Irish music and not tamper with it. There's a lot of room for creativity in Irish music within the structure of Irish music. I think that's the challenge. You hear Andy McGann, for instance, American born, who plays, they say, in the Sligo style. He was influenced a great deal by Michael Coleman, yet he is an individual, he's a unique player, he is creative and does so within the structure of Irish music. He does so without diluting Irish traditional music.
- I do think that what John and I are doing are sort of part of the tradition, because after all a tradition is kind of carrying down and you know. It's of course an oral kind of tradition as well. You're hearing the tunes but you're always gonna be influenced, especially music, by things that's going on at the time. It's great right now because not even are players just playing tunes in new and exciting ways, but I think there's this great resurgence of like the set dancing and the old, like, ceili dances. And then of course, when you get like a set dance or a bunch of people up and just watching the movements to the dance, it's pretty fun. Llike ceili's could be really, a good time.
- [Woman] Okay, this is the last one, top clog. Five. Tock. Nice, more please, ring the bell. Good fun.
- [Eileen] All the tunes are dance music anyway. So to hear somebody interpret the tune through a dance is pretty exciting to watch and to hear.
- I like the stuff an awful lot, just-- I don't know, it reminds me of a lot of things too. You play a certain tune. You know, you think of the person you learned it of, or a certain situation that you played it in, or something like that. It's a part of your life. Really, it's like your childhood. For most people it's not a money making proposition, but it doesn't really matter. That's not your primary aim for doing it. It's just something you enjoy doing. And it's a great way to meet people and, you know, keep in touch with the people you like-- you like period. You know, it's just that the people you meet playing are, you know, some of the nicest people that you could have as friends.
- [Eileen] It's such great music. It's survived, like, for so many hundreds of years, and it's so rich and deep that I definitely know it's gonna go on, you know?
