Lilting by the Avenue: Irish Music of, by, and for the People in Baltimore

In 2023, throughout my second season working with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, I decided that felt equal elements impractical and inevitable: I adopted a lead, discovered a short-term lease, and moved from the Chicago suburbs to Baltimore, Maryland, sharing a rowhouse with somebody I had met precisely as soon as at a celebration. I didn’t know then that the transfer would place me in the course of one of essentially the most vibrant, multi-genre folks communities on the East Coast.

That Baltimore neighborhood was Hampden.

Historically a mill village clustered round textile factories alongside the Jones Falls, it turned residence to waves of working-class migrants all through the 20 th century. From the Great Depression by the Fifties, many households arrived from Appalachia looking for industrial work, bringing with them ballads, fiddle tunes, and church music that folded into the neighborhood’s soundscape.

Among them was Hazel Dickens, a singer, songwriter, and eventual Folkways Records artist and National Heritage Fellow who spent a part of her youth in Hampden earlier than turning into a defining voice in bluegrass and protest folks music. Today, that legacy of migrant musical traditions continues in Hampden, the place old-time, Irish conventional, and different folks scenes have mingled and cross-pollinated in attention-grabbing methods.

It is in no way an odd incidence to listen to a fiddle and banjo blaring an old-time tune on somebody’s entrance porch, or punk rock drums coming from the storage of the home flying a Descendants flag. My roommate was an avid fiddler, pianist, and guitarist, and I rapidly fell into that rhythm. I performed guitar and mandolin, and after dinner we’d settle onto the porch and commerce tunes.

Some nights, a person would go by with a banjo slung throughout his again, strolling with quiet objective. My roommate would yell a greeting, and he would wave again from a distance. Fifteen minutes later, a sound would rise from the following block over: fiddle and tenor banjo in full voice, slicing by the air and both competing with or answering our personal porch session nearly word for word.

That man was Richard Hearn, a stellar multi-instrumentalist and a central drive in Baltimore’s Irish conventional music neighborhood.

After many encounters with him at events and periods, I not too long ago took the alternative to interview him in regards to the upcoming Baltimore Irish Trad Fest, April 9 to 12, one of many Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s collaborating occasions in our Culture of, by, and for the People initiative. Hearn serves as govt director of the pageant and leads the Baltimore Irish Music School, the group behind it.

“This idea, this concept of culture of, by, and for the people, is really central to the whole theme of the Trad Fest and to Irish traditional music in general,” Hearn started.

He expanded on that concept by tracing Irish conventional music again to its immigrant roots. When waves of Irish immigrants arrived within the United States within the mid-nineteenth century, significantly throughout and after the Great Famine, he defined, they settled in cities like New York and carried their music, dance, and customs with them. It was working-class communities, specifically, who sustained the traditions by enjoying collectively of their new neighborhoods a lot as that they had finished at residence.

What makes the music highly effective, he prompt, is that “unbroken chain of tradition” stretching from Ireland into American cities, handed down vernacularly for generations. In that means, Irish conventional music didn’t stay solely an Irish inheritance. By transferring throughout the Atlantic, it turned not simply Irish however, he stated, “quintessentially an American tradition as well.”

When I requested in regards to the significance of a pageant like this in Baltimore, Hearn pointed to a single title: Billy McComiskey.

McComiskey, he defined, had grown up in Brooklyn, immersed within the music of Irish immigrants who had discovered immediately from masters in Ireland. He studied with the good East Galway accordion participant Seán McGlynn and with Patty O’Brien, inheriting what Hearn described as that very same “unbroken chain of tradition.” When McComiskey moved to Baltimore, he didn’t simply carry out, he taught. He handed down “that exact same style, those exact same settings,” connecting a new technology of Baltimore musicians to a lineage stretching again generations.

That, Hearn stated, is absolutely what the Baltimore Irish Trad Fest is about. It showcases music made “here in Baltimore, by Baltimoreans, for Baltimoreans,” whereas remaining rooted in a convention far older and wider than the town itself. The pageant invitations “proven tradition bearers” from throughout the nation and round the world to carry out, to show, and to take part in an trade of concepts.

Hearn emphasised that bringing the pageant to Baltimore is important as a result of the metropolis is “one of the centers of Irish traditional music in the U.S.” The native model, he defined, traces again to the East Galway and Sligo-influenced sound that flourished in New York, significantly within the Fifties and ’60s. In Baltimore, that sound has been “kind of frozen in amber,” whereas additionally growing its personal distinct pace, groove, and repertoire.

The metropolis is understood internationally for its world-class Irish conventional musicians, making it a pure residence for a significant pageant. Hosting Trad Fest permits Baltimore to “hold court,” welcoming musicians and guests from throughout the nation and world wide. For Hearn, the pageant is each an honor for the metropolis and a mirrored image of its stature throughout the international Irish music neighborhood.

An vital characteristic of this pageant, which differs from a typical music pageant lineup, is that it highlights greater than thirty particular person musicians quite than bands. In Irish conventional music, the main target is on gamers who share a standard musical language, grounded in a shared repertoire and elegance that enables them to carry out collectively in ever-changing configurations. Although there might be live shows by grasp musicians, the tradition of this style stems extra from communal music making than efficiency.

This construction creates a way of synergy. Audience members should not simply spectators however individuals, with ample alternatives to hitch periods, attend workshops, participate within the céilí (an Irish social dance). At this pageant, you might be invited not solely to pay attention, however to study, play, and actively take part.

As I rapidly discovered once I arrived within the neighborhood, Hampden is a beacon of folks music, and, fittingly, this yr’s pageant unfolds proper alongside West thirty sixth Street, the neighborhood’s major road identified colloquially as “The Avenue.” Events are centered inside straightforward strolling distance of each other, with venues together with St. Luke’s Church, The Bluebird, Frazier’s on the Avenue, and ACCE School, all simply steps aside alongside the colourful hall.

In Hampden, I got here to grasp one thing elementary about vernacular music traditions: they don’t seem to be staged into existence. They emerge in an infrastructure and disciplined neighborhood that requires involvement, persistence, and soul. Irish music right here isn’t a program; it’s a apply. For the younger musicians of the Baltimore Irish Music School, the weekend affords direct entry to grasp artists and the prospect to study and sit throughout the custom. For audiences, it affords one thing simply as compelling: the chance to listen to distinctive music and to witness how a native tradition sustains itself by participation, mentorship, and trade.

In Hampden, that custom nonetheless travels the outdated means: one tune at a time, handed from participant to participant throughout a neighborhood.

Connor Marks is the executive technical assistant on the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. He can be a musician who research and performs regional Italian musica popolare in addition to different conventional genres.