Embracing Irish Culture

When you spend such a large part of your life moving to new places by yourself, you inevitably get pretty good at meeting people and getting involved with things. If you don’t, you’ll go crazy. In Dublin, I’ve had to be even better about it, because I didn’t move here for a specific job where I would meet people and have an automatic in. Luckily, my current roommates are awesome, and in addition to our spur of the moment ukulele jam sessions, we also go to a weekly music session at a local pub.

A local duo of brothers, Ye Vagabonds, plays every Monday, with a rotating lineup of friends who join in the session. Last week there were fiddles, guitars, a mandolin, a bouzouki, an upright bass, a bodhrán, and uilleann pipes. And of course, everyone taking turns singing. One of the interesting things is that most of the musicians seem to be in their 20’s or early 30’s. It’s the classic Irish pub session scene, but everyone’s a few decades younger than you’d typically imagine. They play mainly traditional Irish music, but if the guy with the steel guitar is there, you know there’ll be more blues and Americana that night.

I’ve also been getting my Irish dance on with a set dancing group that meets weekly from 7:30-10 at a local college. The first half an hour is devoted to sean nós dancing, (the precursor to what we usually comes to mind when we think of Irish dance: Riverdance) the traditional accompaniment to live Irish music (this is a decent video). It differs from modern Irish dance in that it’s individual, typically improvised, low to the ground (none of the high kicking of Riverdance), and allows freedom of movement for the arms and legs, with none of the stiffness that we typically think of when we think of Irish dancing (here’s the classic Riverdance).

The next two hours are for set dancing, sort of Irish square dancing, danced in groups of eight. I couldn’t even begin to describe a complete dance, but there’s lots of whirling and twirling. It’s taught by an older Irish man who takes the incompetence of the attendees in good stride. Generally the same group of people come from week to week, mostly middle-aged Irish ladies, some with husbands in tow. And, as you hear all the time here, it’s good craic (“craic” being Irish for “fun,” although it can also mean gossip or news, if you hear it used in “What’s the craic?”).

The first time I went I had no idea what to expect, and I was completely baffled by most of the directions, because Pat, the director, uses words and phrases that only make sense to someone familiar with them (“dance the house”). I managed to stumble through, and I picked up the latter sets better than the first one (each dance has 4-6 sets, different dances within the larger dance). My second week, however, I was a pro. I understood how the dance worked, and I was able to remember more of it than anyone else in the group. Seeing this, all of the ladies requested that I call out the steps, and they nicknamed me “Patricia,” because I was the Pat (our teacher) of the group. One older lady even turned to me and said something unintelligible at one point, to which my partner leaned down and said, “She just called you ‘teacher’ in Irish.” I’ve been accepted!

But as much fun as set dancing is, I like the brief sean nós introduction better, so I found a sean nós class nearby. It’s taught weekly at The Cobblestone, which is one of the most famous and musical of the pubs in Dublin. It has live music every night and plays host to small but world-class musical events (but it’s also entirely likely that the musicians playing casually in the front of the house will be equally well-known as well) and also offer weekly group instruction for playing Irish tunes in a back-room session called The Balaclavas (the idea being you’re too nervous to play in front of people yet, so you wear a balaclava… it took me a while to get it). Anyway, The Cobblestone is phenomenal, and many people have recommended it to me since I’ve been here, so it’s amazing to be going there to dance.

Bring on the music and dance! Sláinte