Contrary to Seamus Ennis’ much-quoted admonition that the best way to play the bodhrán was with a penknife, this percussion instrument is a much-admired and prominent feature in many Irish traditional music ensembles.
For an instrument that occupies such a secure position in the tradition, it might come as a surprise to discover through Fintan Vallely’s latest book, Beating Time, its history is a recent one.
The bodhrán only made its way into the heart of traditional music from the 1960s onwards when Seán Ó Riada played it with Ceoltóirí Chualann, and so it is a feature of what some refer to as the ‘revival’ period of traditional music from the 1950s onwards. Since then, this hand-held frame drum has been a percussive force to be reckoned with, championed by Peadar Mercier in The Chieftains and later Christy Moore, among many others.
Vallely’s scholarly treatment of what many see as a humble instrument is a revelation, tracing the origins of the instrument back to an agricultural winnowing tool, used for separating the wheat from the chaff during harvest time.
Alongside its relative youth as a traditional instrument (unlike melody instruments such as the fiddle and pipes, whose storylines can be traced back to the 17th and 18th centuries), Vallely highlights, by way of introduction, that the bodhrán is a form of tambourine, but that the word bodhrán itself was originally used to indicate an agricultural tool. Only later did it become associated with music-making.
Intriguingly Vallely mines the word’s etymology and discovers that ‘bodhrán’ was originally used to refer to someone who was deaf and bodhar can be used to mean dull or hollow-sounding. All rich insights into the relationship between the instrument, its sound and its linguistic and social provenance.
This is a deep excavation of the history of a much-neglected instrument, and Vallely’s forensic research stretches from an exploration of the human urge to drum to a philosophical meditation on the bodhrán’s past, present and possible future.
The book is vastly enriched by the photographs of Jacques Piraprez Nutan, a Belgian-Irish photographer with a long history of insightfully capturing traditional music in its many guises. A welcome reminder too that our traditional music has never been fixed in aspic.
