Musings Page - Pete Cooper

Musings

Non-Geographic Fiddle Communities

This article first appeared in 2003 in FiddleOn magazine as ‘Cooper’s Fiddle Corner - 11’ ’ To subscribe to that excellent publication (three issues per year), mail a cheque (£12.00 for two years) to Fiddle On, 4 Lee Close, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 2XZ. Phone 01865 374624, or email jed@fiddleon.co.uk

Looked at from the point-of-view of musical styles, the traditional fiddle scene in England today is an unlikely patchwork of sub-cultures. There are of course the various strands of English, Irish and Scottish music, the ‘home’ traditions of these islands, closely related through three centuries of chequered co-existence. The Rest of the World is also well represented here, though, as anyone who goes to fiddle weekends or summer schools knows, with developed networks of fiddlers playing in every style from Cajun, to Klezmer, to Swedish, to Bluegrass, to Old Time, to French, to, well, you name it! Confusing as this may be to a newcomer to traditional music, or indeed an oldtimer, the fact is that cut-price air travel, digital recording and the internet have, over the past twenty years, created a new phenomenon: extended networks of players, or non-geographic fiddle communities - ‘non-geographic’ in the same sense as ‘0800’ phone numbers - which have sprung up like mushrooms overnight in a field.

Swedish fiddle-player Mats Berglund, for instance, was in London in March, teaching some beautiful tunes from a neck of the woods called Finnskog on the Norwegian-Swedish border. Two dozen Scandiphile fiddlers from all around the country crowded into an upstairs room in the King and Queen pub for his workshop, organised by London fiddler Tania Simon. All Mats’ tunes were in the key of D, in what the Swedes call ‘A-bass’ tuning, with the fourth string tuned up to A, as in some old-style Shetland, and Appalachian, fiddling. Swedish polskas, which are notated in 3/4 time, often have their second beat lengthened at the expense of a shortened first, and playing this uneven rhythm has been described as like walking along the pavement with one foot in the gutter, or like rolling eggs. The particular regional pols tunes that Mats taught have shortened third beats instead. On first listening, they sound as fiendishly obscure as Finnskog’s troll-populated, nordic voodoo culture of past centuries, but - ah, the magic of a good workshop - they feel great to play once you get used to the groove.

Much more straightforward and familiar-sounding to the non-Scandinavian ear are Norwegian and Swedish gammeldans tunes, the schottische, waltz, mazurka and polka. The basic rhythms of these nineteenth-century dances are much the same across Europe, though the tunes are always inflected with regional style. A reinlender from Mats Berglund would not sound out of place in a pub session with Liz Doherty in Donegal, where the very similar german (from ‘german schottische’) is still played. In fact the two fiddlers Ola Bäckstrom and Carina Normansson in that excellent Anglo-Swedish band, Swåp, recorded The Peacock’s Feather, an Irish tune knowingly played Swedish-style, on Ola’s 1994 solo CD.

Scandinavian fiddling is just one example of the proliferation of fiddle sub-cultures in England, a recent phenomenon that contradicts our sense of traditional music as rooted in a particular place. Certainly a ‘folk’ fiddler in the past, even a century ago, would play the repertoire, and in the style, of a local tradition, and it was precisely that limitation, it has been eloquently argued, that gave the older fiddle tunes much of their character and beauty. While migration and exile have often been factors in the history of folk music, and the boundaries of playing style fluid over time, the changes of the past twenty years are of a different order, because they present the individual fiddler with a wide choice of musical directions. You can still say, ‘My mother’s from Clare, and I like Irish music,’ or, ‘I live in the Cotswolds, so I’ll play Morris tunes.’ The point is that, unlike a ‘folk’ musician of the past, you are consciously selecting from a menu of possibilities. Another person is just as likely to say, ‘I grew up listening to my father playing Bluegrass,’ or, ‘I heard this amazing Romanian Gypsy band on the Jools Holland show,’ or, ‘These old 3/2 hornpipes in Jamie Knowles’s books are fantastic.’

American Old Time and Cajun music are other fiddle sub-cultures that have developed in Britain, often with the formation of stringbands for dance groups. I was astonished by how many good players were jamming at last year’s A1 Festival, in contrast to the 1970s when mountain-style fiddle players here could have been counted on the fingers of one hand. Old-style European Klezmer music, to give one more example, enjoys growing popularity in England, both within and beyond ethnic Jewish communities, inspired in part by some great visiting artists from New York and elsewhere. In short, traditions from right across Europe as well as the Atlantic currently flourish in England’s green and pleasant land.

Irish music and dance have of course long been embedded in the Irish communities in London, Manchester, Liverpool and other cities, their popularity reaching out into the wider population since the 1970s. Scottish fiddling likewise has a long history in England, with tunes like the Devil Among The Tailors among the best-loved items in the English village band repertoire of the early 1800s. English fiddle music itself, which is experiencing a vigorous revival, with the emergence of some highly gifted players and the publication of old fiddlers’ manuscripts, is yet another vital piece of the jigsaw. It may appear a strange irony that English folk music is merely one competitor in a crowded multicultural field, but, whatever your opinion of the matter, that is the fact.

A problem for young and aspiring fiddlers with no very obvious allegiance to any particular local, or family, tradition, is how to settle on just one style and become a decent player. The question is even more pressing for an older person, for obvious reasons. Let’s make no bones about it, even assuming basic, transferable violin-playing skills, it still takes about five to seven years of serious listening, practice and music-making before a novice can gain anything like fluency in the new language of any one traditional fiddle style. My own advice would be, yes, to play the field and check out different fiddle styles until you find the kind of music that, for whatever reason, feels right for you. But at that point get stuck in and learn to play it as well as you possibly can. If at a later stage your interests change, OK, fine. There are definite parallels between learning a fiddle style and learning to speak a second language. In both cases, fluency in a first language, or fiddle style, equips you with important transferable skills and knowledge that make learning the second language both easier and, frankly, more meaningful.

For some musicians of the highest order a single inherited, or adopted, tradition can become a vehicle for a lifetime’s playing and artistic expression. On the other hand you may be the kind of musician who seeks to embrace the buzzy postmodern condition and try to learn everything. This may be a great attraction for the experimentalist or the work-hungry professional fiddler, but for most players the results of flitting from English to Cajun to Baroque to Donegal to Jazz to Shetland fiddle workshops every other weekend can be disappointing. You may have picked up a tune here and an ornament or bowing technique there. The question is, are you in a position to enjoy a satisfying musical exchange with a group of other players with whom you share a common repertoire and style? The sense of belonging, whether your community is physically local or non-geographic, is still at the core of this music.