MUSIC
Traditional Irish is in session
Story and photography by Peter Koch
“A good seisiún can leave you walking on air, send you home happy and keep your mind filled with music for a whole week.”
—Charlie Lennon, Irish fiddler, pianist, and composer
 |
|
One of the more interesting features of Irish music is its intense focus on melody; here rhythm instruments provide variation to back the melody. So while there might be several fiddles, pipes, whistles, and mandolins going at once, there’s usually only one guitar, piano, or bodhrán keeping rhythm in each song.
|
“By the way, folks,” bartender Bill Fenzel yells out to the musicians and patrons gathered in the dimly lit barroom of Allentown’s Nietzsche’s, “don’t tell your friends where you were on Saturday afternoon. Otherwise, next week you might not have a seat!” While the tone of Fenzel’s voice is jovial, the man is deadly serious. As far as he’s concerned, and many would agree with him, this weekly meeting of traditional musicians hidden away in an outwardly unassuming public house is one of Buffalo’s best-kept secrets, and he’d prefer it stay that way.
 |
Such a gathering of Irish traditional musicians is called a session, or seisiún in Gaelic, and it’s an informal gathering rather than a performance. That’s why the revolving cast of musicians sits in a circle, facing one another. According to Barry Foy, author of the bible on Irish sessions, Field Guide to the Irish Music Session, they are “for the purpose of celebrating [the musicians’] common interest in the music by playing it together in a relaxed, informal setting.” They are concerned, in other words, with making the music they love as clear and bright as possible, and if it happens to please the ears of an appreciative audience, well, it’s all the better. Most songs are played communally, though soloists occasionally show off their skills or strike up a lonely air in the quiet pauses between lively reels, jigs, and hornpipes.
The second part of Foy’s definition of a session is “… an elaborate excuse for getting out of the house and spending an evening with friends over a few pints of beer.” The two purposes, playing music and drinking beer, at times seem to carry equal weight at Nietzsche’s, where—with a nod to the Irish tradition of feeding and housing traveling musicians—players drink for free, and spectators pay only $2.75 for a pint of Guinness.
But clearly it’s the music that’s drawn everyone in here. The bar is packed, the tables are full, and the musicians are banging out tunes on all manner of instruments. Between them they’ve got a guitar, a tin whistle, two fiddles, a bodhrán (Irish drum) or two, a banjo, a piano accordion, and a button accordion, Uilleann pipes (“National pipes of Ireland,” someone tells me, “made so you can drink a beer while playing”), an autoharp, a concertina, a harmonica, an octave mandolin, a piano, a harp, and, of course, a few capable voices. One of the more interesting features of Irish music is its intense focus on melody; here rhythm instruments provide variation to back the melody. So while there might be several fiddles, pipes, whistles, and mandolins going at once, there’s usually only one guitar, piano, or bodhrán keeping rhythm in each song. The host for each session gives it a rough structure, and the other players tend to take subtle cues from him.
It’s no surprise that Irish sessions would be popular in close-knit, family-oriented Buffalo, where more people claim Irish ancestry than German, Polish, or even Italian. In fact, there are several different sessions locally that occur on a regular basis, each with its own flavor and moving at its own pace. Over at Ulrich’s Tavern on Ellicott Street, Tim Daley hosts what is primarily an Irish singing session every Monday night. It’s a smaller, quieter group of dedicated regulars than at Nietzsche’s. Rather than coming and going, most of the five to ten participants stay for the whole two or three hours, singing songs, reciting poems, and bouncing stories off one another. It’s a very democratic group, and sitting with them takes you back to that time in your childhood when you knew that you could sing as long as you had a song and a voice. Daley, a bear of a man, anchors the group and starts each session by spinning one of his far-fetched yarns in a thick Irish brogue, a pipe held in his hand. From there, each person seated around the table gets his chance in turn. The group is open to spectators, but if you happen to stumble in during a sesson, don’t be surprised if you’re asked to participate.
Unlike Ulrich’s, stepping into Nietzsche’s mid-session feels akin to entering a relative’s house through her back kitchen door and finding yourself smack in the center of a loud, happy family sing-a-long. Maybe it’s the musicians’ shared familiarity, maybe it’s the warmth of alcohol that radiates from everyone’s cheeks, but it has that same kind of in-your-face but welcoming feel. Fenzel says that even families occasionally come in to hear the music.
“It takes time for things to evolve,” Fenzel says, referring to the nearly four years the session has lived at Nietzsche’s since it was brought here by members of Irish band Trefoyle. He should know; he came out of retirement specifically to work the bar on Saturday afternoons, to make sure it was open early and the Guinness was flowing. “But now it’s the best day of the week, it really is.” After a pause, Fenzel repeats his old refrain about keeping secrets. “This is just right,” he says with a wink, “I wouldn’t want to work any harder than this.”
Nietzsche’s (248 Allen St., Buffalo)—
every Saturday, 4–7 p.m.
Ulrich’s Tavern (674 Ellicott St., Buffalo)—
every Monday, 8–11 p.m.
Glen Park Tavern (5507 Main St., Williamsville)—
2nd Sunday of the month, 2–5 p.m.
Buffalo Irish Center (245 Abbott Rd., Buffalo)—
3rd Sunday of the month, 6–9 p.m.
Peter Koch is a freelance writer living in Buffalo.
Back to the Table of Contents
Back to Top