Hello,
I’m just back from the 2010 Fleadh Cheoil in Cavan, an annual all-Ireland celebration of Irish music and culture which runs comprehensive music, dance, and singing competitions. As someone who can’t play a note and only recently bought my first ever Irish traditional music CD, I’m pleased to say that I absolutely loved the festival. With more than 10,000 performers over seven days (it’s the largest traditional music festival in the world), the town was bustling with music from every doorway. It was wonderful to see youngsters playing with great skill and obvious enjoyment on everything from spoons to bodhrans to concertinas and piano accordions. Amazingly many of them played more than one instrument.
Even if you had little interest in Irish music the Fleadh provided diversion, most of which was free. We visited the Pride sculpture and art exhibition in the former railway station (now offices of the Anglo Celt newspaper), enjoyed two of the seven specially written short-plays around the town by Philip Doherty, watched the excellent light-show “Casting Light” projected onto a Georgian building in the town centre, and ate our way through the Craft and Food market. My son even joined in on the action in the re-creation of a typical 1954 parlour/farmstead at the old flour mill. The local writers’ group, LitLab, had even produced a series of haikus in honour of the event, on beer mats! The free concerts in the evenings rounded out the days for us.
But what about nyah (pronounced n-yah with a long yah)? As far as I can tell, it’s local trad-music slang for the opening sound on either the uillean pipes (think bag-pipes, but more melodic, in my opinion) or before a rollicking chorus of any well-known traditional song. Basically singing a nyah means you’re about to go mad with the music. And having the nyah? I think it means you live the music. Not a bad way to exist, I think.
If you’d like an example of a man with the nyah – check out this short video of Seamus Fay, Cavan singer, lilting – which is traditional singing with improvised lyrics. It reminds me a little of scat in jazz-singing. It’s definitely a form of fooling with words, and music.
Until next week, happy writing, reading and wordfooling,
Grace
Wordfoolery 