See our "Travel" Page
to enroll in The Healys Irish Program's new
"Travel Group"
to enroll in The Healys Irish Program's new
"Travel Group"
From “Irish High Roads”
It was in the house long before it was an instrument. A wooden hoop with a goatskin stretched over it, hanging on a nail in the outhouse. It carried turf in from the stack. It held the grain while the chaff blew off it. Once a year the men who went out after the wren on St Stephen's Day took it down and beat it up the road.
Serious musicians did not want it near them. Well into the twentieth century the bodhran was regarded in a good deal of the tradition as a noise rather than a voice, and a session player who could not hold a tune could always be handed one to keep him occupied. The old joke about the difference between a bodhran and a trampoline is that you take your boots off before jumping on a trampoline. Even now the running gag survives in every session in the country, told mostly by people who cannot play one.
Then the technique changed, and the instrument changed with it. Players began working the far side of the skin with the flat of the hand to bend the pitch while the tipper did the rhythm, so the drum could actually follow a tune instead of flattening it. A maker in County Derry started fitting an internal tuning ring so the skin could be tightened against damp weather. A turf tray that hung on a nail in a shed can now be ordered from a workshop in Ireland and shipped to a session in Tokyo.
It was in the house long before it was an instrument. A wooden hoop with a goatskin stretched over it, hanging on a nail in the outhouse. It carried turf in from the stack. It held the grain while the chaff blew off it. Once a year the men who went out after the wren on St Stephen's Day took it down and beat it up the road.
Serious musicians did not want it near them. Well into the twentieth century the bodhran was regarded in a good deal of the tradition as a noise rather than a voice, and a session player who could not hold a tune could always be handed one to keep him occupied. The old joke about the difference between a bodhran and a trampoline is that you take your boots off before jumping on a trampoline. Even now the running gag survives in every session in the country, told mostly by people who cannot play one.
Then the technique changed, and the instrument changed with it. Players began working the far side of the skin with the flat of the hand to bend the pitch while the tipper did the rhythm, so the drum could actually follow a tune instead of flattening it. A maker in County Derry started fitting an internal tuning ring so the skin could be tightened against damp weather. A turf tray that hung on a nail in a shed can now be ordered from a workshop in Ireland and shipped to a session in Tokyo.
|
97.7 FM
|
Passion"If you feel like singing, do sing an Irish song."
Leo Maguire 
|
