Now I've posted this before, some of you may remember it. The concert goes on for a good ways after, and it's all worth your time, as is what came before. But it's this part to which I want now, as in years before, to draw your attenion.
Our friend Plato would have had good things to say about this, I do not doubt. Men who can play like that are on the spectrum with gods, as discussed not long ago.
That is a banjolin, as it has four strings. The similar banjo-mandolin has eight. I used to have one of the latter, but they are hard to make sound like anything but a toy. I used it for two songs for show, then got it into the background fast. Both are fingered like a violin or mandolin.
The man can play it, whatever it's properly called. Watch him finger the thing, sometimes above and sometimes below. If he isn't quite a god, he's not badly placed among the Irish ones.
I notice that the very next set begins with a long bit about how the local Bishop condemned them as bearded, drunken rascals. That song is one that my old friend Alex Cameron, dead these last several years, used to sing from memory. God keep him, whether as a minor god or a sinful man. He was something else: the best storyteller I ever met, and a builder of community.
That is a banjolin, as it has four strings. The similar banjo-mandolin has eight. I used to have one of the latter, but they are hard to make sound like anything but a toy. I used it for two songs for show, then got it into the background fast. Both are fingered like a violin or mandolin.
ReplyDeleteThe man can play it, whatever it's properly called. Watch him finger the thing, sometimes above and sometimes below. If he isn't quite a god, he's not badly placed among the Irish ones.
ReplyDeleteI notice that the very next set begins with a long bit about how the local Bishop condemned them as bearded, drunken rascals. That song is one that my old friend Alex Cameron, dead these last several years, used to sing from memory. God keep him, whether as a minor god or a sinful man. He was something else: the best storyteller I ever met, and a builder of community.