Fiddle Studio: Problematic Tunes Names (Magpie's Nest)

Listen and subscribe to the Fiddle Studio Podcast on Apple Music, Spotify, or Buzzsprout.

Here are my Fiddle Studio books and my website Fiddle Studio where you can find my courses and mailing list and sign up for my Top 10 Fiddle Tunes!

Welcome to the Fiddle Studio Podcast featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddling. I'm Meg Wobus Speller and today I'll be bringing you a setting of the tune Magpie's Nest from a session at the Art House Bar in Baltimore, Maryland. Hello everyone, I hope you are well. Today we're going to be talking about problematic tune names. Ah, a fun subject, yikes. I did a podcast on fiddle tunes that come out of the minstrel tradition. I think it was episode 11.

I'm actually really proud of that podcast. I've been teaching about minstrel music to middle schoolers the year before so I really had to think about the best way to help them understand it and felt like I brought that to the podcast. It is definitely not one of my more popular episodes. People see their name and are maybe not interested in hearing about that. I liked it, I recommend it and maybe this will be in that vein, but we're going to talk about it. So, problematic tune names.

My husband, Charley, is a linguist and language changes over time. So there's a lot of words and with fiddle tunes it can be racial slurs or ethnic slurs or just stuff that feels kind of offensive. Sometimes with some language you don't realize that a word that you've used for many years is no longer part of, I guess, what I would call like considerate speech.

So this happened to me. A few years ago I first heard someone speak about music of enslaved people. I had to go and look that up because I wasn't using the terminology enslaved, but I read about why it's preferred to speak that way. You know, just clarifying that if you say enslaved person, it clarifies that slavery was a condition forced on people by other people, whereas the word slave acts like it's just somebody's identity. I'm not an expert, but that explanation made sense to me. So I changed how I talk about it. That's not really about fiddle at all, but I want to make clear I'm okay with the evolution of language.

There are words that I have changed over time and there are fiddle tunes where I'm uncomfortable saying the name of the tune or using them. I'm not going to name a bunch of tunes with ethnic slurs and the names because, like I just said, I try to be considerate in my speech and you know I'm not going to go out of my way to make people uncomfortable in defense of considerate speech.

I guess I worked with this pianist and he was telling me about, you know, a discussion about pronouns with a friend of his and who's complaining a little bit about pronouns. I know this is something people do and he was like man. I just told the guy like look, it's nothing out of our pocket, like doesn't cost us a cent just to call someone what they want to be called. So we're not to do it and really doesn't take, doesn't take a lot. So I agreed with him on that. It's kind of my position to the words considered offensive, even if it didn't used to be at, I don't use it.

The tune at the beginning of this podcast, the opening music, and then there's like a little bit of the B part at the end. That that's a tune like this. Actually it's from my album, my Contranella album. I'm playing the fiddle and my dad is playing the piano. We recorded it many years ago and my hands were so strong back then I can't believe some of the tempos I could take on that album. The I think we did bank it like 122 or 124 beats per minute that I learned from the Jean Carignon album only could have done that after, after finishing conservatory. I definitely can't play those those tunes like that now.

But back to the, to the tune that that I used for the podcast. It's a French, Canadian reel and I used it for the podcast because I really love it and I love the way that that my dad and I played it on the Contranella album and the reel is named after the Inuit people, or native people of Alaska. I didn't grow up calling it Inuit reel, I used a different word that's now considered offensive, luckily, for that tune already had an alternate name Reel du turnpike, and so we just call it Reel du Turnpike.

Now I post this question on Facebook why not? They already think I'm a nut. A bunch of fiddlers who I really respect were like, yeah, we just make up a new name. I mean, hey, why not? All names are made up, all tunes are made up, all names are made up. Everything's really made up if you think about it. I had these philosophical discussions with my children. You know they're interesting things.

Some people brought up you know, not everybody knows the names of tunes and a tune might come up in a jam and you know, maybe you know that that's a tune with an offensive name, but you don't have to necessarily stop and and make a big deal out of it, but you might not choose to perform that tune or put it on a recording where you're going to be using the name. So some folks made that distinction. I really liked something that Steven Rapp posted. When I posed this question in the Facebook Fiddlers Association group he said I'm going to just quote him.

"As an old-time musician I try to be sensitive and aware that I might make mistakes. That need to be acknowledged. Sometimes in a set or jam we might discuss negative origins. I think we need to be cautious not to jump down anyone's throat if they call out a tune that we feel has negative connotations."

I just like that. He kind of covered all of the different ways of looking at it there. Our tune for today has a name that is not controversial.

It's a reel, as my last tune I pulled from a session at the Art House Irish Reel called Magpie's Nest. I'm told you can find it in one of the O'Neill's collections and that it was a favorite tune of Patty O'Brien's, which makes sense because I think it was one of the box players who let it. Oh, maybe it's on his album with Seamus Connolly, the Banks of Shannon. I love to look that up. I have the O'Neill's reference. It's tune 1365 in the 1850 O'Neill's Music of Ireland. So yeah, just look that up, 1365. Magpie's, they're birds. Charley has a magpie as part of his tattoo. Charley has a tattoo, it has a magpie on it. They're cute, man. They were all over when we visited Ireland Very chatty, I guess.

There are superstitions in Ireland and there's like an old nursery rhyme One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven a secret, never to be told. It's funny, I never knew that language about magpies. My mom used to sing me an old Jean Richie song and she wrote that concept into a song that she sang to her children about bluebirds, you know, and my mom would sing it to me when I was a little girl One you'll have sorrow, two you'll have joy, three get a present, four get a boy, five receive silver, six receive gold, seven's a secret, that's never been told. We'll see if I include audio of me singing. But magpies something to think about.

Hey, next week we're going to be hearing from Trisha Spencer, who plays twin fiddles with her husband, Howard Rains. They are awesome and Trisha had a ton of really interesting stuff to say in our interview, so I'm excited to share that with you. If you're missing old time tunes and stories, that will definitely help you out and I'll be pulling some old time tunes to share with you all in April. Yeah, you can reach me at MeganBeller at fiddlestudiocom. Have a lovely day. I'm going to play this tune for you now you ready For listening. You can find the music for today's tune at fiddlestudiocom, along with my books, courses and membership for learning to fiddle. I'll be back next week with another tune for you. Have a wonderful day.