WITH FIFE & DRUM - MUSIC, MEMORIES AND CUSTOMS OF AN IRISH TRADITION
by Gary Hastings
Reverend Gary Hastings is one of several well-known Irish men of the cloth who take their traditional music seriously. An excellent flute player himself, he was recently featured on the CD "Slan le Loch Eirne" with Father Seamus Quinn playing fiddle and piano. Although not a fifer nor a drummer, as he explains in his introduction, Hastings has chosen as his subject here the musical tradition of the Lambeg drum, primarily associated with the Orange Order in Northern Ireland. Although Hastings doesn't shy away from the political associations this entails, he concentrates on the more purely musical aspects of the tradition, the instruments and performance practice. The text is followed by a tunebook of 70 fife tunes, and complemented with a 17-track CD containing recordings of performances and of conversations with practitioners.
Paperback, 115pp, photos, music, CD.
Rating: *** 1/2
Price: $35.95
