Hi everyone, my name is Rich Walter. I am one of the curators here at the Musical Instrument Museum.
We're just here because we were anxious to share some
more information from our galleries. We're up here in the Europe gallery
right now in front of our Ireland exhibit which has recently been updated
and improved. We are really excited about that as well.
Irish music, all the music of the world is so fascinating, but one of the things I love about
Irish traditional music is it's emblematic obviously of Ireland but it's
been embraced all over the world and it's really turned into a worldwide
phenomenon and so lots of people recognize it, lots of people play it and
I just want to share a couple highlights from our exhibit because we've had some
recent acquisitions we're really pleased for those. One of the most probably
important instruments in Irish music is the fiddle, or the violin, and not long
ago we were really very pleased to find this example from a luthier,
an instrument maker from Dublin named Thomas Perry. This is from the 1760s
he was one of Ireland's greatest violin makers and so it's one thing to have
just, you know, a violin is important to share as far as an important instrument
in Irish music but it's really special to have an Irish made violin of such
quality and historical depth. That's been an exciting addition.
The story of violin playing and its importance.
Ireland has sent immigrants to the United States it's such an important
story and fiddlers like James Morrison and Michael Coleman emigrated to the
States where then they made recordings of their Sligo-style fiddling
and then those recordings went back over the ocean and influenced a whole new
generation of Irish musicians still there. So there's this whole cycle of
people moving around the world, taking their music with them, making recordings,
sharing it back and some of these really significant fiddlers are a big
part of that engine of what really drove a renewed interest
in 1920s with some of this great traditional music. Another instrument
that we're really, really excited about. This is a set of uilleann pipes
by a maker named Denis Crowley. Denis and his brother Tadhg are among
the most important 20th century makers of uilleann pipes.
Uilleann is Gaelic for "elbow". So basically when you think of a Scottish Highland bagpipe
with those tall, majestic pipes behind the player and
you're inflating the bag with your breath, these are inflated with your elbow.
There's a bellows that you would hold under your right arm and that
inflates this bag that you would hold under your left arm and then you have
this set of drone pipes called regulators and those also have keys on
them and so each of those drone pipes have keys that allow a player to play
notes and even chords in some cases. Then the melody, the primary melody is
played on this called the chanter. So you've got all these different components.
A really distinctive playing style and a fascinating instrument in the
way it's used and made and we're very pleased to have this great example from
Denis Crowley from 1950 and this one is all original. All the original parts
are as they would have come from the maker which is pretty unusual because
all of these parts can also be disassembled. The chanters can be
replaced and so on and so forth so to have an original set of Crowley pipes
is just a fantastic addition to our Ireland exhibit here and if you want an
example of high level playing look up Séamus Ennis who was a historically
important player earlier in the 20th century or today a man named
Paddy Keenan who's really one of the world's greatest pipers
today playing this instrument. Very complicated and really an amazing sound.
The last one I want to call attention to.
This is another recent acquisition. This is a tenor banjo from Emerald Banjos who are
a contemporary maker. The story of the banjo in Ireland is sort of interesting
as well. There were folks like Mike Flanagan, the Flanagan Brothers, early on
who used it when it wasn't so popular or so integral and then Barney McKenna of
The Dubliners helped popularize it with that wonderful group and it's since
that time really become a mainstay in Irish traditional music. It is tuned,
these four strings are tuned an octave below a violin so it's G, D, A and E like
a violin but an octave lower and so you can play melodies with the similar kind
of characteristic ornamentation and it's really turned into a staple in Irish music.
This particular one in addition to being a beautiful
custom-built instrument happens to have been the
personal instrument of a man named Noel Bermingham. He is a great West Clare player today and
not only is this a beautiful instrument, it was the personal
instrument of a great player and he has a recent album called "When the Tide is Out"
and so you can come to MIM and see that instrument but frankly you can hear
that instrument on his album when the tide is out because that was his player.
So it's really, really neat. You know the whole exhibit here for Ireland, we have a
fiddle from the mid 18th century, a flute from the 19th century, these
uilleann pipes from the 20th century and a banjo here from the 21st century. So we have
centuries of instruments represented and much more certainly to see when
you're able to come back and check it out in person but in the meantime we're
wishing you well from MIM and wanted to share a few highlights from our Ireland exhibit. Thanks.