We arrived in Tralee at 10:48am. Tralee is the biggest town in North Kerry. From my short observations of the other towns was had driven through, Tralee felt more urban than any other town I had seen. However, my first view of Siamsa Tíre made me feel like I had gone back in time. The theatre had stone towers and was encircled by a stone wall. The whole facility was beautifully situated with a dramatic view of the Slieve Mish Mountains behind it.
We were warmly welcomed by the artistic director of Siamsa Tíre, Jonathan Kelliher. There was a performance currently happening when we arrived (you could hear a woman singing, accompanied by piano), so we quietly moved to a room behind stage (a dance studio lit by skylights) to watch an introductory …show more content…
I went with the instrumentalist group, carrying my violin. We pilled into a cozy room that looked like it could have been children’s art room or classroom. Our teacher was the well known fiddler from North Kerry, Nicholas (Nickie) McAuliffe. He brought with him some collections of regional traditional fiddle pieces. He taught us a hornpipe called, “Barber’s Pole” from the collection, The Lads Like Beer. He also taught us a Galop [Gallop] by John Murphy, as well as an East Kerry version of a slip jig called “Ride the Mile.” He would play the pieces through, tell us a bit about the piece’s story or history, then teach it to us phrase by phrase. This style of learning music was challenging for me because I am a classically trained violinist, but I was able to catch on to the melody of the first two pieces Nickie McAuliffe taught us. The third was played at a quick tempo, so I was not able to pick up on all of the notes. In this particular workshop I tried to embody the “ethnographer as performer” approach as Jos Koning further explains in his article, “The Fieldworker as Performer: Fieldwork Objectives and Social Roles in County Clare, Ireland” (Koning
We were warmly welcomed by the artistic director of Siamsa Tíre, Jonathan Kelliher. There was a performance currently happening when we arrived (you could hear a woman singing, accompanied by piano), so we quietly moved to a room behind stage (a dance studio lit by skylights) to watch an introductory …show more content…
I went with the instrumentalist group, carrying my violin. We pilled into a cozy room that looked like it could have been children’s art room or classroom. Our teacher was the well known fiddler from North Kerry, Nicholas (Nickie) McAuliffe. He brought with him some collections of regional traditional fiddle pieces. He taught us a hornpipe called, “Barber’s Pole” from the collection, The Lads Like Beer. He also taught us a Galop [Gallop] by John Murphy, as well as an East Kerry version of a slip jig called “Ride the Mile.” He would play the pieces through, tell us a bit about the piece’s story or history, then teach it to us phrase by phrase. This style of learning music was challenging for me because I am a classically trained violinist, but I was able to catch on to the melody of the first two pieces Nickie McAuliffe taught us. The third was played at a quick tempo, so I was not able to pick up on all of the notes. In this particular workshop I tried to embody the “ethnographer as performer” approach as Jos Koning further explains in his article, “The Fieldworker as Performer: Fieldwork Objectives and Social Roles in County Clare, Ireland” (Koning