Taking a Craic at the Irish

By Karen Higgins Thurber

March 15, 2008 09:00 pm

— To the Irish, music and dance has been as much a part of life as breathing, long before Michael Flatley became “Lord of the Dance.”
Friends and families gather shoulder to shoulder in tiny cottages and pubs in Ireland for the craic (krak), meaning fun in Irish.
Growing up in my home was no different, although my family had been immigrants, so we have fun, or joke that we craic up, in America.
My father’s family was from Ireland and England, immigrating to Universal, Ind. in Vermillion County during the early 1900s. European families came to work the coal mines, so with little money and few cars, they were somewhat isolated in the tiny town of miners. Their varied European nationalities provided a sense of sameness in a vast new country. Naturally, they held on to their cultures.
My father, Charles Higgins, played fiddle at a dance hall in Universal during the 1930s, called “Half and Half,” where he met my mother, Dorothy.
Joe Soltis of Universal once said, “When your father played music, the windows rattled.”
After World War II, my father felt fortunate to find a job at Delco Remy in Anderson, where I was born.
Our craic, or fun, was music.
We often had a full house of musicians, called music sessions, or we would play at the home of another Irish family, the O’Briens, in Fairmount.
When the Irish say a music session will end early, they mean early sunrise the following morning. Musicians form strong bonds, so time stands still. They stop for food and tall tales, then it’s back to playing jigs, reels, slip jigs, and hornpipes from over 1,000 traditional dance tunes.
Someone always dances.
Another sings Sean-Nós (shan-noh-s), meaning old style. Sean-Nós songs are generally solo without musical accompaniment, telling stories of relationships, often comedic, or lamenting historical events.
One tells the tale of a man who thought he’d married a 19-year-old. By the end, his bride pulls off her wig, takes out her false teeth and an eye, revealing she’s…90 years old.
Every Irish child learns to play an instrument. At age four, I was given my first accordion and squeaked through adolescence like Steve Urkel in the television sitcom, Family Matters. Only I didn’t wear glasses or suspenders, and Steve Urkel didn’t play Irish reels.
My father played fiddle, tin whistle, banjo, and accordion, all among the instruments at traditional Irish music sessions. I would have preferred any one of the other three. After years of listening to me practice, my parents probably would have preferred they’d given me knitting needles to make Irish sweaters.
Actually, I was a drummer at heart. Pencils made radically good drumsticks. My mother’s table made a radically good drum — however, she felt differently. I told her she was stifling my creativity. She told me she was stifling my allowance. So, it would be years before I would play a real drum.
During the 1950s, when every other child was told they’d grow up to be president, I was told I’d grow up to play accordion on The Lawrence Welk Show. Never mind that they played waltzes. If my father hadn’t been Irish, I figure I would have run the country, by now.
My daughter, Ann Thurber, decided to do things a bit differently; she took Irish step dancing, rather than instrumental lessons. All is well when Irish dancers begin in soft shoes, reminiscent of ballet slippers. Steps are soft. And quiet.
But as Ann advanced to the next level, I received payback for the squeaky accordion and desk drumming my parents had lived through. Dancers advance to hard shoes with fiberglass heels and toes, pounding out dances that chew up eardrums, but engage you with rhythmic precision.
Aside from its performance base, Irish dance is a competitive sport, so dancers often pound two hours a day. Families have the choice of traveling to competitions nearly every weekend to edge toward the World Irish Dancing Championships.
If you’ve watched the Irish shows, Riverdance or Lord of the Dance, you may have noticed that arms are stiff to the sides, toes turned out, and legs crossed knee over knee, setting it apart from other dance forms.
Originally, Irish dance was more freestyle with arm movement.
A rigid social decorum in the late 1800s rendered flailing arms unladylike and ungentlemanly. Irish dance masters emphasized fancier footwork with rigid arms and bodies.
During our Irish travels, I marveled at a musician playing a drum I’d never seen, called bodhrán (baw-ron), which translates to deafening. Played unskillfully, it is.
The instrument is a handheld frame drum played with a stick called a tipper. Bodhráns have only made their way into traditional tunes since the 1960s.
My inner drummer was begging for a real drum. In 1997, I ordered a bodhrán from a well-known maker, but hadn’t seen one close.
I was in for a shock when it arrived. The odor reeked of dead carcass. That’s because it was — a cured goatskin playing surface. I hid it until the odor had mellowed. Weeks later, I began to learn rhythmic bodhrán patterns, furloughing the accordion so I could finally play the heartbeat of Irish music.
Ann continues to dance and I drum with Irish bands and at music sessions traveling in the United States, Ireland, England, and Canada—craic-ing up with the Irish anytime we can.