Last Night's Fun: A Book about Irish Traditional Music

Author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Playing the Fiddle (Complete Idiot's Guide to) "We are on Ballyweird on the outskirts of Portfush, County Antrim, and it's the morning after the night before. Or rather, it is sometime after noon..." This is how Ciaran Carson begins his literary journey through the world of Irish traditional music-- old recordings, pubs, late-night sessions, drinking, cigarettes and "The Fry" of the next morning; traditional ballads, American country music and tall tales. He does a good job of evoking the mood of traditional music, and the musicians' interest in the small details of the culture. Each chapter stands on its own, so you don't have to read this book straight through.

A skilled and formidable poet and chronicler of his native Belfast, Carson here blends his power over words into an evocation of how Irish music makes the impact it does. Seemingly an impossible task to attain on the page, but his decades as a musician allow him to capture the spirit behind the music. As they say, it's not how you read the notes, but how you hear them. His chapter headings refer to various titles of Irish songs, and I enjoyed his rendering of differing reasons (or lack of) for how various tunes get attached to specific names. A much better book than "Round Ireland with a Tin Whistle" by David Wilson for its ability to convey the feel of how music changes with every playing, and how fluid the communication between players can be in a seisuin. Any book Carson writes deserves a read, whether his version of Dante's Inferno, his prose-poem-fiction of late, his explorations of his city's past, or his crafted if learned verse. He opens up a bit more here than in some of his earlier works, and the glimpses into the world he lives in between nights playing makes for intriguing scenes.

Carson takes the reader on a journey deep into the very heart of Irish Music - the musician at his most timelessness. Don't pick this up expecting a scholarly approach to Irish music. This is an amazing insight into the music and the soul of the music as performed by an Irish musician. Carson even shows the little quirks of daily living that help to give birth to such a personable music. I love Irish music, but am a jazz pianist by musical trade. I highly recommend this to any and all musicians who are searching for their soul in music, especially those in jazz. It is a very moving and thought provoking work.

Belfast writer, fluter, raconteur and unreliable witness takes us into the subterranean world of craic agus chaos as he attempts to surf the web of the perfect session experience. Part nostalgic interrogtation of his own relationship with traditional music, part exploration of the Ulster breakfast: this book is a close as it gets to the cameraderie and catharsis of an all night music bash. A work of astute fiction that might never be true but is always believable.At the end we are left wondering was this one large joke or simply a witty Northern oxymoron? A book to be revisited when the frost keeps us away from session, pub or our inner fiddler.Excellent is too narrow a word to describe the sweep of the narrative.Sean Laffey Irish Music Magazine Dublin

I've been a Celtic music fan for many years, long before it began to turn up on the New Age charts. While I don't mean to knock that genre (which has given some splendid traditional musicians -- e.g., the O'Domhnaills of Nightnoise and Alasdair Fraser of Skyedance -- the wider listenership they deserve), traditional Celtic music is an altogether grittier, funkier breed.Ciaran Carson brings a poet's sensibility to the performer's-eye perspective of Irish music, from last night's fun to the next morning's rude awakening. Irish music isn't simply the tunes themselves; it's the old-timers who performed them, the instruments they played, the pints of Guinness, the choking smoke in the bar and the pouring rain outside, and Carson conveys the whole experience admirably. It's almost as good as being there.