Bodhrans

 

I'm reusing this photo as it does contain a bodhran (that is the large tambourine-like drum in the hands of the young boy on the left of the photo). I want to say a few things about bodhrans, and as I am the young boy playing it, I cannot be as rude as some people would be.

By the way, it's pronounced like it's 'bower-aun' the way I hear it, and it is connected to the word for ' deaf ' or 'dull sound'. No comment on that. 

Now to the casual listener to Irish music, or Irish bands, or Riverdance, who knows, the bodhran is as integral to the music as the fiddle or accordion or God knows, even the noble flute. But this has not always been the case, and there are various reasons that the relationship between the instrument (for I will grant it such title) and the musical tradition and the players of the music has been sometimes strained. I will give reasons.

For a start, when I started playing Irish music in the early seventies, bodhrans were pretty rare. You might see one in a pub session, but equally might not. I don't think they were common in any Irish bands (it was still the time of ceili bands and drum kits) and you could not just walk into a shop and buy one. Many of the ones out in Ireland, and certainly the one that Pascal Dwyer played in our local pub in Leeds occasionally, had been made by the players themselves. Even in the later 70s, they were rare. 

But when some of the big Irish music groups of the 70s and 80s (Bothy Band, De Danaan, Planxty etc) made the bodhran a staple of their sound, it took off and people started thinking "That looks cool, That looks easy, I could play that". This is one of the key problems for the instrument. It looks easy, and it is easy to get a sound out of it, but it is much much more difficult to play it well. Playing it well means actually knowing the tunes that you are playing along to, so that you know which way they will move and what kind of accompaniment works best for them. In fact the best bodhran players often play a melody instrument too so have a very good knowledge of how the tunes work. 

So even though most musicians don't object to a really good bodhran player in their session (though some still do), nearly all musicians object to a bad one. The music is very rhythmic anyway, so doesn't need support from percussion in the way that Rock does. A bad bodhran player will actually spoil the rhythm rather than improve it, so their presence subtracts from the music rather than adding to it.

There has also been a bit of an explosion in the market for the instrument (cheap to make, easy to sell) and by now there are probably more bodhrans and players than there are sessions in the world. This can lead to the mistake of thinking that it is OK to have more than one bodhran playing in the session. It is not. If the bodhran is following the rhythm established by the person who started a particular tune (as they should be) then a second or third bodhran will just muddy the sound and make it less accurate. 

The final problem with bodhrans is that some players have got it into their heads that they are instrumentalists and will start to do all funny tappy little things that have nothing to do with the rhythm of the tune they are accompanying. This just spoils it, because it draws attention to the instrument in a way that doesn't match its role of providing a full and almost invisible support rhythm for the melody players. This is very much a modern problem and comes from a clash between ambition and purpose, where purpose has lost out. I think the extra little variations sound so good that they deserve a special audience of their own, at home, in the kitchen, rather than being brought out in a session. 

And because the problems of the instrument come from things other than the instrument itself,  I will leave you with a link that should take you to a good player (he comes in at about 1:15). 

A good bodhran player