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IRISH MUSIC FROM CLEVELAND

Richard Carlin

Richard Carlin is a writer and musician who produced about ten albums for Folkways Records in the mid-1970s. He is the author of several books, including The Big Book of Country Music and, with his brother, Bob Carlin, Southern Exposure: The Story of Southern Music in Words and Pictures. He recorded three albums of Irish traditional music from Cleveland, all released by Folkways in the late 1970s.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the first "folklorists" discovered the beauty of traditional music and song, the almost universal feeling was that these were the last in a long line of folk musicians whose work could be recorded. (At the time, songs were preserved for future generations using pencil and paper; later, advances in technology in the early twentieth century made audio recordings possible.) It was believed that the traditional music of the land would soon be heard no more, and so collectors tirelessly traveled through remote parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland in search of this music. At this time, little attention was given to dance music, which was still so commonplace that is was hardly classified as "ancient" or "folk" at all.

With each generation of folklorist and folk performers, new songs have been collected and entirely new areas of traditional performance have been "discovered" for the first time. And yet the feeling persists that folk music is dying, that few—if any—of the younger generation are interested in perpetuating a traditional art based on a culture that is becoming outmoded due to an increasingly industrialized and depersonalized society.

Collectors are just beginning to recognize the continuing tradition of folk music and folk culture within the large ethnic communities that exist in the inner cities of America as well as in select pockets in the countryside. The Irish, German, Slavs, Jews, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and countless others who came to the United States in search of employment opportunities, especially in the industrial sector, have found that their folk cultures have taken on an even greater meaning in their lives. Industrial society has not doomed folk culture to oblivion; if anything, it has intensified it.

The reasons for this are complex and deserve greater study. My own feelings are that folk music is an integral part of the popular culture of any given community. Music serves a social function, both in the formal dance situation and the less formal family gathering. It literally brings people together in recognition of a common heritage.

THE IRISH IN CLEVELAND

Large groups of Irish immigrants began coming to the United States as the result of the infamous Irish potato famine of the mid-nineteenth century. It was only the last in a series of insults to the old way of agricultural life; indeed, there was little prospect for economic improvement in the homeland, and America beckoned strongly with its many jobs, abundant land, and the chance to escape a rigid, class-bound society. However, the Irish who came to America were greeted by a strong anti-immigrant backlash, the so-called "Know-Nothing" movement. While immigrants were at first welcomed to perform the backbreaking labor of laying railroad tracks, blasting coal mines, and digging canals—and to serve as surrogate soldiers in the Civil War for those able to pay their way out of the conflict—soon advertisements with the famous tagline of "No Irish Need Apply" began appearing in the newspapers.

Greeted by this hostility, it is not surprising that the Irish—like many other immigrant groups before and after them—banded together in small communities within the larger urban centers. It was also true that their housing choices were limited by a kind of de facto segregation; they would most likely begin living with relatives or friends, who, in turn, would know of other apartments or homes nearby that were available to those newly arrived from Ireland. And, limited by economics, they could hardly afford to buy homes in the better parts of town.

In Cleveland, the Irish mostly settled on the west side of town in a neighborhood

known as Lakewood. During the nineteenth century, they were the second-largest immigrant group in the city, outnumbered only by the Germans, who generally enjoyed better jobs and more social prestige. By the mid-twentieth century, Eastern Europeans had become the dominant immigrant group in the city. However, the Irish remained a strong subculture, with their own bars and social clubs, an annual feis (a celebration of Irish food, culture, and dance), and private schools and churches that were for all intents and purposes strictly Irish.

However, the community is virtually invisible to outsiders, even others who live in Cleveland. There is very little promotion of Irish events beyond the community itself, whose residents are content to provide their own entertainment; others in the city, unaware or uninterested in the diversity of cultures within its boundaries, simply do not participate.

Cleveland, like many rustbelt cities, went through a particularly grim period during the economic recession of the mid-1970s and early 1980s. Early in the 1970s, the infamous Cuyahoga River fire—when the heavily polluted river that runs through the city caught on fire and burned for several days—seemed symbolic of Cleveland's economic malaise and spiritual exhaustion. Although the Irish were never among the city's most prosperous citizens, they were hurt even more by the flight of jobs; the many auto plants and steel mills that used to employ thousands of workers first cut back their payrolls and then shut down completely. Consequently, the once-active port, railroad yards, and truck depots where thousands of items were loaded and unloaded every day also slowed down.

When Cleveland made a comeback in the later 1980s and 1990s—thanks to clever public-relations efforts, the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the general health of the economy throughout the country—the Irish community prospered, too, but not that much. It seems that, in good times or bad, the community perseveres, sometimes a little more vibrant, sometimes

a little more subdued. Although some Irish have become wealthy enough to move out of the city, most remain behind in a kind of economic limbo—not well off enough to leave, but not poor enough to slip further down the economic ladder into the slums.

LEADING MUSICIANS

Within the Cleveland Irish enclave, certain well-recognized "master musicians" have come to stand out as the most popular providers of entertainment at community functions. These musicians are not "professionals" in the sense that we recognize certain classical musicians (or even folk and popular performers) as professional entertainers. They all hold "regular" jobs and play music on weekends and evenings. Yet in another sense of the word, they are professional; they provide music for most of the important community functions. Music is an important part of their lives, perhaps more important than their day or night jobs.

While there are always a few musicians who achieve unusually high levels of skill—the most obvious example being fiddler Michael Coleman, who lived in the Queens Irish community in New York in the 1920s and 1930s and made dozens of legendary recordings—most are not virtuosos. A master musician will be recognized for many traits beyond sheer musical talent; good humor, clever presentation, and sheer nerve and determination all play a role in whether a musician emerges as someone the community recognizes as a master. There were some people on the music scene in Cleveland who had no musical talent at all; they served merely as promoters, lingering on the edges of the musical world, wishing to participate but knowing that they lacked the skills. Others were venerated for their past accomplishments; in his later years, fiddler Tom Scott was no longer able to play with the same capabilities he had possessed as a youth, but he was recognized for having been a great musician, one who knew the earlier generation of players and carried forward their techniques.

In Cleveland, the best opportunity to work regularly as a performer was at the local dance schools. Although only a few young people showed interest in becoming musicians, almost all were expected to study Irish dance. Dance has becoming an intensely competitive and important part of Irish youth; dance contests are held regularly, and attending dance school is expected as a means of maintaining ties to Irish culture. While recorded music could be played, it was far preferable to have live musicians who could interact with the dancers.

In the schools, a group of random melody instruments (such as flute, fiddle, or accordion), usually accompanied by piano, is enough to keep the young dancer's feet moving. The job is rather monotonous; there is much repetition of the same tunes or even phrases over and over while students master the steps. In competition, the model for accompaniment remains the ceidlih band—a 1950s- and 1960s-era innovation featuring a similar lineup of melody instruments accompanied by piano, sometimes guitar and electric bass, drums. The military-style drumbeat is one of the most prominent features of the ceidlih band.

Another opportunity for music making comes at the session, or informal meeting of musicians to swap and enjoy tunes. This often occurs in a neighborhood bar or the basement of a neighborhood home. The sessions can run for hours, sometimes into the early morning. The home sessions that I attended were among the most relaxed and enjoyable ways of making music. Musicians would sit in a circle, and the emphasis was on sharing tunes; only rarely did one person play a solo. Instead, someone would start a tune and everyone else would join in. If you did not know the tune, you'd do your best to follow it; sometimes, if you were lucky, a more knowledgeable musician would play a phrase for you, on the sly as it were, so you could pick up some of the more difficult passages.

At the home sessions, there is always an emphasis on socializing as well as music making. After a few hours of tune swapping, the musicians put their instruments aside. The entire family in the house—who had gone about their own business during the music making part of the evening—assembles for tea, cakes, scones, and sandwiches. Jokes are exchanged, repeated, and retold; often over the course of an evening a single joke would be told five or six times, with someone saying, "What was that story about the sailor?" leading the teller to repeat the same joke all over again.

One of the stars of these sessions was fiddler Tom McCaffrey. A native of Mohill in County Leitrim, Tom learned to fiddle and sing from his father, a master fiddler and, as Tom says, "the pet of the family." Tom recalls that his father would often be absent from home for upwards of a week to play at weddings and local functions. Tom's father taught fiddle by what his son called the "alphabetic method"; students didn't read music but rather learned tunes by ear. Although he didn't elaborate further, this method probably involved using the letters of the alphabet (ABCDEFG) as stand-ins for the musical notes. Tom began to learn the fiddle from his father when he was eleven or twelve. After he learned to play, he was always in demand at weddings and dances. Not a flashy fiddler, Tom used short bow strokes to give his playing a jaunty, footmoving feeling.

Besides his talents as a fiddler, Tom was a master storyteller and singer. With a warm personality and a keen talent for entertaining, he always stood out on the bandstand or in the session thanks to his wealth of jokes, songs, and stories. His repertoire was mostly based on music-hall and comedic songs of the turn of the century. Sometimes, he would recall only a fragment of the many verses of these comic songs. For example, the popular music-hall song "Phil the Fluter's Ball"—the tale of a classic evening of Irish dance and joviality—was reduced to just its chorus by Tom, who would sing the words along with the tune as he played it.

Tom also loved "recitations," the short, rhymed sayings that encapsulated typical music-hall humor. One of his favorites was "My Father Said":

My father said I should not go,
To see the sexy burlesque show.
When I asked him why, he said to me,
"You'll see t'ings there you shouldn't see."

But being young, I disobeyed,
and off I went, quite unafraid.
I sure saw t'ings I shouldn't see,
I saw my dad sitting next to me!

Before his retirement in the mid-1980s, Tom worked as a groundskeeper at a local high school in the Irish community of Lakewood. A bachelor, he tooled around town in his Chrysler Cordoba, a mid-level luxury car of which he was inordinately proud. When not working his day job, Tom often played in a semiprofessional dance band called the Emeralds. Their style was the classic 1950s—1960s-era ceidlih band, complete with the loud, regular, military-style drumbeat that wiped out many of the subtleties of rhythm usually found in Irish music.

However, in more informal settings he preferred to play duets with his close friend, Tom Byre, a very talented flute player. Byrne was born in Gevagh, County Sligo, Ireland. When he was seven, he bought a tin whistle at a local fair for three pennies. Soon after, he had learned some of the popular marches, jigs, and reels from Sligo; he particularly remembers learning the "Swallow's Tail" and "Miss McCleod's" reels early in his playing. Soon after buying the whistle, Tom was given an Irish wooden flute—with open holes—by an older player. He patched it up and has been playing ever since at dances and parties but also at home for his own amusement. Tom immigrated to Canada in 1948 and then went to Cleveland, where he bought a small, single-family home in the Irish Lakewood neighborhood. Short, stocky, and muscular, Byrne did hard physical labor unloading trucks downtown. He had eleven children, mostly daughters, who tended to his every need, bringing him cigarettes, drinks, and sandwiches whenever he called for them.

Tom's flute playing is marked by a wealth of ornamentation, particularly rolls (a cluster of notes played in a rapid fashion to ornament a key note in the musical phrase). He also uses his breath to accent notes and give variety to the tunes. He will introduce many variations into his playing and keenly listens to and interacts with the other musicians, echoing little phrases or responding to something that he hears.

The duo of "Tom and Tom" (as they were affectionately known) met in Cleveland in 1956 or 1957. Although Byrne was probably the superior musician, he was greatly inspired by McCaffrey; indeed, he played differently when in a large group or with another fiddler (even a technically better one). The excitement of their duets lay in the total sympathy between the two musicians and the slight variations that each is able to perform without destroying the unity of the melody line.

Most of Tom Byrne's children showed little interest in his music. They would join in the food and talk but not the music making that occurred every week in the basement of their home. They listened avidly to contemporary popular music, proudly showing their Fleetwood Mac and Kiss records to me. While many had taken dancing classes, particularly the girls, they did not seem to recognize the greatly talented musician who lived among them.

However, there were a handful of teenagers who were beginning to be interested

in the older musical styles. Thanks to the Irish music renaissance that occurred in the mid-1970s as new groups like the Bothy Band and De Danaan made recordings and popularized the genre, it no longer seemed so dated or uninteresting. Even the older musicians were affected by it; Tom Byrne listened to Matt Molloy's solo records and learned tunes off them, so that the younger generation was influencing the older (just as the older, originally, had taught the young, closing a unique circle).

While the new young performers were not as expert as the old, they showed a remarkable sympathy for the traditional musical style. This is particularly remarkable when you consider that these young musicians are second- or third-generation Irish in this country and hear the music only within the confines of a small community within a larger city.

Among the younger musicians, most were both players and dancers. Flute player Jimmy Noonan was mentored by Tom Byrne, who worked closely with him to show him the "tricks" of ornamentation and style. Noonan competed nationwide as a dancer and won many awards and trophies as a teenager. He took up the flute after several years of dancing and soon was confident enough to start his own school for fledgling musicians.

While the number of young people interested in traditional music seemed small, this may not have been that unusual. We have the impression that, a 100 or more years ago, the Irish hills were alive with music making—and perhaps they were. But it was probably always the rare person who took up music and kept at it throughout their entire life. Even musicians like Tom McCaffrey went for several years (if not decades) without touching their instruments. They were preoccupied with work, raising families, or simply fell out of touch with other musicians. And of all those who played music, only a small handful would achieve any level of talent; an even smaller subset would be recognized as masters.

The survival of this music despite all of these odds is a marvelous thing; and if the past is any guide, its continued viability into the next centuries seems a strong possibility.

DOCUMENTARY RECORDINGS

You can hear the music of Tom and Tom and their peers on the three Folkways albums that I recorded from 1977 to 1981 in Cleveland. The first volume (FS 3517) spotlights Tom and Tom as master musicians; the second (FS 3521) shows their work within the broader community and includes others who played with them; and the final volume (FS 3523) shows the next generation of musicians interacting with these older masters.

All the recordings were made either in Cleveland basements or in other informal situations; no attempt was made to "rehearse" for the recordings. The overall effect is like eavesdropping on an afternoon of informal music making. The point is not to preserve perfect performances but hopefully to capture the community's music as it was made. All three records are available on special order cassette/CD from the Smithsonian/Folkways archive.