I happily cast votes for some of my favorite reads, including Bernie Goldbach’s Irish Eyes, The Dossing Times, Slugger O’Toole, and An tImeall, to name a few. Winners will be announced on March 11th. It was a bit ironic to see the opening of these awards just after having read this piece in the Honolulu Advertiser entitled Prize matters in a society infatuated with awards. Which reminds me that the Grammy Awards will be on tomorrow evening. You can follow the developments in the Grammy Awards section of Nahenahe.net.
I guess I’m supposed to feel guilty.
I did an experiment on my Nahenahe.net podcast today, and did the podcast entirely in Hawaiian, without doing any prior announcement. I thought it would be an interesting experiment, and was curious what regular listeners would have to say. I got a few nice emails regarding it, however, one listener was not happy. Here is the subject of the email and text: “Since I do not speak Hawaiian, I will not be able to listen to your podcast anymore or buy Hawaiian performers CDs. Have a great day.” I was tempted off to fire back an equally sarcastic response, but…
Celtic Music News Podcast.
In addition to IrishMusicPodcast, I’ve been enjoying the Celtic Music News Podcast. It has some edgier music on it, and the latest program, #34, was particularly excellent.
Poor state of Irish music.
A letter to the editor of the Irish Independent (subscription required) laments the sorry state of Irish music, and a “widely-held ‘it’s Irish so it must be good’ mindset.” Ouch! And this writer says that they should make gardai learn Irish, a point of contention in many areas. Finally, a writer supports the idea that promotion of Irish is a duty of the State.
Planxty 2004 DVD.
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my copy of Planxty’s DVD, recorded live in 2004 at Vicar Street. The production and sound are great, and musicianship amazing. While I have an affiliate account at Amazon.com, I will eschew pointing to them and instead point you to Dara Records site. Nearly every other site I found had it for much more than the $20 (plus $2 shipping) I got from Dara.
Irish music is cool in Clare.
“Wayne Webster wandered along the only street in the tiny village of Feakle in western Ireland, clutching his fiddle and looking for a place to play. It was after midnight and the catchy rhythms of traditional music spilled out of the town’s four pubs, but there was barely elbow room anywhere, let alone space for another fiddle.” Sounds like I’m missing a great summer for Irish music in Co. Clare.
Home Sweet Home.
I got back to Hilo last night after four days on Maui, a week in England. That doesn’t include the 30 hours of travel and layovers each way between Maui and Sheffield, which featured a total of five planes and five trains. The International Council For Traditional Music conference was incredible. My presentation well, but I had a Homer moment and forgot to turn on my iPod/iTalk combination prior to the start of my presentation, so no audio. Actually there was a bit of a distraction as one presenter before me insisted on using her own computer, forcing me to…
Cheerio! (Pt. 1)
Wow, what a trip so far. I went online about 7PM on Monday to check the status of my 11PM United Airlines Maui-to-San Francisco flight, and found that it was going to be delayed four hours. The kind United customer service agent I talked to on the phone sensed that there might be further delays, which would cause me to miss my connecting flight to London. He got me one of the last seats on a Maui-to-LA flight, which left a half hour sooner, and got me on a connecting flight to S.F from there. Both of those went smoothly,…
Who’s your great-great-great-great granddaddy?
[ From the NY Times, subscription required ] I found a copy of this article sitting in the waiting area of my daughter’s piano teacher. It talks about the works of Carl Czerny, a student and later assistant to Beethoven. What was interesting was to see the musical family tree drawn along the side of the article. Apparently Mālia’s piano teacher comes from the same line as the author of this article. Here is the lineage: Ludwig Van Beethoven \/ Carl Czerny \/ Theodor Leschetizky \/ Arthur Schnabell \/ \/ Leonard Shure Sundling \/ \/ Glenn Jacobson \/ Malia Donaghy…
Irish Music Podcast #1 is online.
Unfortuntely I’m at home on dialup, and the podcast is 31 meg, so I’ll have to wait until I get into the office tomorrow.