It is a long established way of preserving (and enhancing) traditional tunes and songs, the informal setting allows less experienced musicians to participate and develop their skills. All of the great Irish folk groups are filled with people who will have started out playing in sessions, and most of them will continue to play in them when they get the chance.
In the late nineties myself and a group of family and friends spent the new year in Westport (County Mayo), a grand wee town and home of the famous Matt Molloy's pub. He is a well known folk flute player and was in The Bothy Band before going on to play with The Chieftains, if at home it is not unusual to find him playing in a session.
We were not lucky enough to witness that, but on the Sunday night we did catch a fine session from some talented musicians, one of the highlights of the trip.
This clip gives you a flavour of what you might be lucky enough to stumble across in an Irish pub, note the careful ingestion of stout by some of the musicians while taking time outs.
3 comments:
I wish we had that sense of community here. I imagine we did before suburban sprawl kicked in.
Over the summer I kept having thoughts about how nice it would be to have a business that made money by day and could be opened up to musicians to just sit and jam and/or write. That would be so cool.
I really do just love the opportunity to sit and watch/listen to music (my dad's the same way).
rt, Reckon that it might still be found in rural parts of the South, think that bluegrass has a tradition of sessions/jams.
Yeah, it does. When I was in Nashville, there was at least one place that had it on Sunday nights for free.
The South seems to have a better grasp of tradition than the Northeast. At least from what I can see.
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