C90 Columns
SLAVE TO THE MACHINE: "Plug and Play"
MTV has no problem talking about 'unplugged' music sessions, but for many Irish traditional musicians the notion of being 'unplugged'--or even 'plugged'--makes little or no sense. Take the 80-odd photographs in the superb Blooming Meadows book about Irish traditional musicians, and it's a universe apart from MTV. These photographs are both staged and spontaneous, indoors and out in a crowded village street. But you won't see a plug or a screwdriver, or any leads from amp to instrument; electromechanical pick-ups are nowhere to be seen. The only mike on show is symbolic--an ornate old one in the book's portrait of Maighréad Ní Dhómhnaill.
Traditional music has a delicate relationship with electrification. The music is usually unadorned, but it doesn't just live in a totally 'pure', technology-free cocoon any more. New technologies have had profound effects on the musicians and the ways their tunes have travelled and evolved--from the hissing 78s to today's digital CDs. The folklore commission's tape recorders and the BBC and RTÉ radio broadcasts have played a major part in shaping that evolution, and no doubt the webpages and webcasts of tomorrow will do too.
De Dannan's Frankie Gavin once explained how the studio's red light used to dictate recording techniques fifty years ago, in the times of that other great fiddle player James Morrison. As soon as they saw the red flash, the musicians would skid up to the traffic light, pull on their brakes and bring the jig or reel to an abrupt halt. Gavin argues that this wasn't necessarily a bad thing: the very fact that Morrison had just one stab at the tune meant the recordings would be fresh and loose, whereas weeks of multitracking in a 24-track studio often stifles this beautiful spontaneity.
Meanwhile back in MTV land, 'unplugged' is a handy marketing concept for the TV channel and record companies. But it's a wishy-washy, imprecise term. It's not simply the opposite of being 'plugged' or 'plugged in', and doesn't really mean the absence of being 'powered' or 'networked' or technology-driven. It means no obvious electric guitar solos--though the line-up of instruments can include an electric bass. It means mostly acoustic instruments, yet the same acoustic guitars are often cranked up to get the unmistakably grungey textures of electric amplification (think, for example of Kurt Cobain's sub-feedback guitars in Nirvana Unplugged). And check out the mike-stands: the vocals aren't exactly unplugged either.
The session is obviously miked and wired up and squeezed down a satellite feed. MTV Unplugged isn't about a world before/without electricity. But it does pretend to be stripped down and back to basics, back to roots, to some pseudo-pre-electric Eden before the snaking guitar leads came along. It aspires towards an authentic, untainted, 'real-time', 'real' performance. Towards, well, the uncluttered and organic context of a traditional music session in the corner of a pub or kitchen. Something, in other words, that MTV will never really understand...
Mick Cunningham
