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What
is a Ceili?
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What is a Ceili?
Simply put, it is a get-together. People come to a house or a hall to
enjoy each other's company and share their talents. The host usually
provides food and drink and may hire some entertainment, but a lot of
the fun is self-generated. You sing or tell jokes or stories for your
friends, and you participate in sing-alongs or the musical
conversations known as "Sessions" by which traditional tunes and songs
are passed on.
What if I'm nervous about
performing in public?
You are going to be in front of a friendly audience, and don't worry
about being perfect. The goal of a Ceili is participation, so feel free
to bring your lyrics. The enjoyment of learning a new song (or tune, or
story, or joke, or dance) is reward beyond the possible adulation of
new fans. |
I don't know any Irish songs
(or
tunes, or stories, or jokes, or dances)
Where do I find them?
The
Internet is here to help you.
Try this site for song lyrics http://www.mudcat.org/
and download the Digital Tradition program or go to the Digital
tradition page which will give you lyrics and tunes in midi or printed
form.
You could try searching for these popular pub sing along favorites:
"The Wild Rover", "Brennan on the Moor", "Goodbye Muirsheen Durkin" and
" I'll Tell Me Ma ". These songs are ones which we will likely use for
our community singing, so if you learn them you'll feel like you know
what you are doing when we all start singing. If you don't want to do
all this research, dont worry- we will give everyone song sheets to
help them sing along
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Irish
Session Tunes
When Irish traditional musicians get
together like Jazz players there are a number of standards which they
like to play and improvise upon.
Here is a link to a great selection of those tunes:
http://www.tomkeays.com/music/wiki/irish
I don't know any Stories
Where do I find them?
There
is a great tradition of story telling in Ireland. Some of it is akin to
Stand-up comedy in that it is humorous in its intent. Magical
adventures and tall-tales are also part of the tradition.
There are a number of stories available at storytelling sites such as
this one. If you decide to tell a story, try it out a few times to make
it your own.
For stories which lend themselves to improvisation, check out this story telling site
The
Early Classic tales are available free in Lady Gregory's "Gods and
Fighting Men" |
What kind of
food will there be?
This
is a buffet, with lots of sandwiches Irish style (
i.e. expect butter not mayo either side of the meat, cheese,
salad or banana) and a big pot of Irish Stew.
We make a variety of home-baked soda breads for you to sample and the
star of the cake display is a three-layer creamcake with strawberries.
We will also try to change your mind about fruit-cake with a
traditional favorite, the boiled fruit cake. It's baked in the oven,
but the fruit, sugar, butter and other ingredients are boiled together
to blend the flavors and plump the fruit before the flour and eggs are
added.
The Irish biscuit selection will feature imported favorites such as
lemon-ginger creams, chocolate digestives, shortcake and Jaffa Cakes.
Tea will be available all day long with blends like Namosa
from Belfast through to Barry's from Cork served with milk and sugar if
you like it that way.
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