Aimée Farrell Courtney saw girls playing the bodhrán at school when she was growing up in Dublin. “It looked powerful. It sounded powerful,” she told me in a recent video call. “So I asked for one from Santa.”
Aimée Farrell Courtney (Le Van Thai)
“From working with sound and music throughout my life, I have seen the positive impact for those engaging or interacting with it,” she said. “Its transformative nature can quickly become addictive, to the point it becomes a fundamental part of your daily experience. My mission is to enable others to connect and allow a space for transformation, however big or small it may be. I am fortunate to call this "work", as working with people and assisting them on this journey is a pleasure and an absolute honour.” More of our conversation is below.
You can support Aimée on her website, Facebook and Patreon page. She also has a dedicated Facebook space, Trad Drummers, for anyone who has taken her classes or workshops.
Fanny Power is an occasional newsletter about women bodhrán players. Check out past issues in the archive, and if you’re reading for the first time, please sign up!
Aimée Farrell Courtney on bodhrán, Dáire Bracken on fiddle and Tom Doorley on flute for Accenture Ireland’s International Women’s Day celebration in the Convention Centre, Dublin, 2015 (via Accenture Ireland)
Aimée Farrell Courtney
Aimée’s logo (Le Van Thai)
On starting out
I learnt in primary school with a bodhrán tutor called Roisín Nolan. I went to a Gaelscoil where we spoke Irish, and it was just a thing that everyone did, learn an instrument after school. My first introduction to the bodhrán was completely female. I didn’t know that it was a very male dominated field, it just looked very natural for a woman to play. None of my family played Irish traditional music but my father was a DJ so we had every style of music in the house.
The social aspect of music is huge and once your friends are playing you want to continue. I was about 15 when I was asked to join a music group, Na Mothúcháin. It’s a difficult age for music, I know from teaching – if people drop out, they sometimes don’t go back to it. But we won a national competition called Siansa run by Gael Linn which was a big deal amongst young people on the Traditional scene. We entered the following year and won again.
It showed us what working with music was like and the reward – it wasn’t winning, it was the performing. Every week we were practicing and coming up with new arrangements and working with tutors and directors. That was when I realised, I could actually do this.
I competed at the world bodhrán championship where there were three people adjudicating (all bodhrán players), which felt legit. But I hated the Fleadh, someone was adjudicating that didn’t play the bodhrán and that really bugged me. It was a time when the more modern style of playing was coming to the fore, it looks very technical and impressive. The more traditional style doesn’t translate well in competition, depending on who is adjudicating of course. With my students, I encourage them to share their music and sound and not to treat their musical narrative as solely competitive.
Aimée, third from left, with other members of Na Mothúcháin, winning the Siansa competition (image courtesy of Aimée Farrell Courtney)
On style
People would describe my style as musical. I try to be sympathetic to the music and support those I'm accompanying musically. I look for subtleties in the music that I can work with, while also paying attention to the contour of the melody and the tonal aspects of the music.
I started off with a huge 18-inch traditional style drum because that’s what my teacher had. I had three in total from Aidan McRory in Dublin. I won a Christian [Hedwitschak] drum at the raffle at Craiceann in 2006 and I haven’t played another maker since, I love the timbral subtleties and tonal capabilities. We’re in the process of making a signature [drum] but I want to be sure that whatever I have with my name on it truly represents what I feel is great about the instrument. I’ve had people tell me what would really suit my playing…that’s really interesting that other people are deciding what your sound is!
I got something from [all] the teachers that I had, but it didn’t necessarily shape my playing. My first teacher was a great foundation, [but] we didn’t learn a whole lot about the music, it was just, “Here’s a rhythm for a jig.” When I was listening to the music, I asked myself, “Could I play that rhythm with the music? Does it fit?...Must be a jig.”
Eventually I went to Craiceann and was suddenly exposed to different styles. I saw what you could do, but not always how to bring it into my own playing. I changed my grip to enable single ended triplets, but it took me about a year after that to figure everything out for myself.
I studied music [in college] and had Tommy Hayes and Noel Eccles, the original percussionist with Riverdance, as tutors. I got a lot of musicality from them, especially while studying for my Masters in Performance. But it’s hard to say one teacher really brought me to the next level, I would just close the door and spend hours playing and connecting. Taking from other people was just robbing, and I wanted to figure out what I wanted to say.
On teaching
A lot of the teaching I experienced at workshops was not very student centred, but teacher centred. I really noted what was working and what wasn’t. I studied pedagogy as part of my training, so I’m focused on students and making sure there are results at the end of the day. I’ve been teaching 19 years; it is my goal to raise the standard of Bodhrán Education and Irish Traditional Music Education in general.
I always make sure my students are working to discover and develop their own style as opposed to taking rhythms from different teachers. If you go to the Fleadh or a session you can hear a person's teacher through the playing rather than hearing their own sound. I hate that, it’s not authentic.
I change notation often. I really work on what would suit the student and what they will remember, it’s like learning a new language. If the student has to worry and spend time on the notation it slows down the rate of progression. I actually did a workshop on notation last month looking at all various types of notation and looked at pros and cons, everyone found arrows too confusing to look at. I would use Ds [down stroke] and Us [up stroke] and T for a tap, as well as regular rhythm notation.
I work a lot with composers, and they would use an adaptation of regular notation anyway, it’s not standardised. So, I just make sure students understand what I’m doing and feel comfortable.
On playing while female
At Craiceann I’ve been holding a female-only class because our anatomy is different, and it affects the tonal qualities of the drum. How we manoeuvre the bodhrán is going to be slightly different.
In terms of approach, female players are often more subtle or have the tendency to be more reflective. Male players can have a physical approach, playing big and bringing a lot of movement and force into the drum, but I’m teaching that you don’t need to move your arm, you can get great articulation with your thumb. Also, a lot of players you see moving in adventurous ways are going to have [physical] problems in a few years if they don’t have already! We’re so recent in terms of the development of the bodhrán. We went from traditional to modern with deep rims but it’s a very unnatural position to be in. Do we know what the impact of those holds and positions will be long-term?
In terms of style, we need to look at the individual rather than gender and we need to keep that innovation going. At the moment, players are playing all the same, the individual aspects that could come to the fore aren’t really there yet because we’re looking at bodhrán playing as a whole and saying, “This is what we should all be doing.”
That has been a male-dominated development. If you look at workshops, there are many women participating, but they aren’t perhaps as confident, they don’t put themselves forward. In a male environment there is always competing, even amongst friends.
There is a constant lack of respect [as a female player.] It happens all the time from people that you’d never expect. There’s a huge movement at the moment in Irish traditional music in regards this topic, but it’s something that I’ve grown up with. I used to accept it as the norm, they’re the comments and you laugh it off. But in recent years I’ve become a lot stronger, and I don’t tolerate it. If I hear inappropriate or negative comments or actions [from someone], I don’t work with them anymore. That’s my way of standing my ground. There may be a loss of work because it means people aren’t going to hire you, it’s the price that you pay when you stand up for yourself.
It’s not so much an issue until you’re at a certain level in the industry. It’s not something you can prepare for. It’s about having an awareness that your appearance, the way you dress or your gender, should not come into the mix – the way you play is the way you play and that should be enough.
On touring
I’m a professional musician, I was touring up until the pandemic. Apart from performing, I lecture in music at third level and am a trained sound therapist. I’ve been with Cara for two years and before that I was touring with Danú. I’ve recorded a few things in lockdown myself, but I’m not a sound engineer!
I’ve experienced different touring scenarios, one is you go out for a few weeks, but anything you’ve built up at home you have to give to other people, so it’s hard to maintain unless you have people that you really trust. The other scenario with Cara is that I would go for the weekend and come home every Monday or Tuesday. You’re getting up at 3am, you have flights, trains, the tour bus – you could be up for 24 hours. To do that three or four weekends a month adds up, you don’t realise how tired you are.
If you're asked to sign a contract for four or five years – for a woman that’s a big deal. You might say you have security, but it’s a lot to set against family life.