File: macdonaldward06-oh-ceilidhs_M.mp3
Speakers:
WM – Ward MacDonald
KP – Curator Ken Perlman
WM: Back around that same time there was those two ceilidhs [at Monticello and Orwell] and the ceilidhs that they were holding at the BIS [Benevolent Irish Society] which were really concerts: concert form. And they had a lot of popularity. The crowds were good and people loved them. And I think the general public caught on that ceilidhs were popular. So all of a sudden in a short number of years dozens, literally dozens of ceilidhs showed up. So it seemed like everybody who ran any kind of a church hall, or community hall, or old school house, wanted to have a ceilidh as a fundraiser for their hall. But it wasn't necessarily a group of people that knew anything about music that wanted to run it. It was people that were looking after the halls that wanted to run a ceilidh. So whether they got good music or not so good music it was kind of a toss-up. And it only makes sense that if you're going to have thirty ceilidhs in the run of a week, you're going to be stretching the number of available musicians, too. It was a big tourist thing, and they all seemed to take the same form. They'd have a fiddler, and they'd have a singer, and then the singer would go on again, then they'd have the fiddler play, and there might be a dancer, and someone would host it and ask the crowd where they were from, and you'd do a 50/50, and have egg sandwiches at lunch.
KP: A 50/50 is a raffle, right where the house keeps half and they give away half?
WM: Yeah, exactly. And they all seemed to take the same form, and they didn't necessarily – Not all of them had much character. And as a result that's not really sustainable: you open up the paper and there's thirty ceilidhs. For a while that's going to work, because Islanders and tourists are going to go around and want to try them all because they're afraid they're missing something good. But after a few years of that the ones that are good still get the crowds and the ones that are aren't, may not. The numbers of ceilidhs are starting to shrink back a little bit again. Maybe that's good. Maybe you're more likely to hear good music if it's not spread so thinly.