In her hometown of Dorchester, Texas (population: 105), you might find Cara Wildman driving a tractor on the family ranch. She trained in classical percussion, but since she started playing bodhrán in 2012 she’s become the first American ever to medal in the senior All-Ireland Fleadh, and has her own signature Metloef drum.
“When you take yourself seriously and say “Hey, I have something to offer and you should hire me,” people pay attention,” she told me in a pre-lockdown conversation this year. The rest of the interview is below.
(Rebecca Egger, Cast Iron Photography)
Drums and classes with Cara are available via her website. You can also follow her on Facebook and Instagram, Soundcloud and YouTube—and check out the band she plays with, Three Pints and a Glass.
Since lockdown, Cara has kept playing—here she is with Anna Colliton. If you missed it, last month’s interview with Anna is available here, along with other past editions of Fanny Power.
Fanny Power will take a break next month, but be back later in the year, so keep spreading the word!
Cara with Margaret Emily Graham (fiddle) and Joseph Carmichael (guitar). Michael Logan/Eagle Productions via Cara Wildman Music.
Cara Wildman
Cara marching halftime at a high school football game. (Terry Wildman)
On starting out
There’s a big fiddle tradition here in Texas, so I heard a lot of folk music growing up--Texas and Western swing, bluegrass, and some Irish music here and there. My mom was born in Texas but her grandparents (my great-grandparents) were born in Co. Clare and Co. Galway—they met on the boat as they were immigrating to New Zealand during the troubles and decided they were going to get married when they arrived. Their daughter (my grandmother) was born in New Zealand and was in the New Zealand navy when she met my grandfather in the U.S. army during World War Two. They got married and moved to Texas.
I played percussion in high school, then studied music education in college, more orchestral and marching percussion, which is huge here in Texas. I loved the classical side of things, but I missed the folk music that I grew up with, and developed a deeper interest in Irish music. I decided I’d like to learn how to play, and not just be an observer any more. Bodhrán seemed like the natural choice since I already played percussion.
I picked up my first bodhrán at the O’Flaherty Irish Music Retreat where Máirtín de Cógáin was my first teacher. I didn’t know any bodhrán teachers in Texas at the time, so I was using YouTube as my main resource, but there’s a lot of bad videos out there and it’s hard to tell at the beginning what’s good and what isn’t. You end up thinking, “I wish I hadn’t got into that habit.” What I was seeing was the curved wrist with the super heavy stick, and the tonal hand at the bottom of the drum—I was in pain the whole time I was playing.
I went back to O’Flaherty the next year and had Myron Bretholtz as my teacher. He and Máirtín gave me the great instruction that I wasn’t getting from YouTube—they also introduced me to the concept of picking what you like and leaving the rest, and there not being a right or wrong way to play. “You can keep your wrist straight, you can put your tonal hand at the top”—that was completely shocking to me! In all my percussion training, you were expected to play exactly what’s on the page and don’t stray from that, and there is a right way and a wrong way to do everything. So besides being a new instrument, the whole ideology of traditional music was surprising to me.
On branching out
I was teaching percussion full time in a high school in North Texas, and thought that’s what I would be doing forever. Then there were state funding cuts for education, and I ended up losing my job. I’d always wanted to study abroad, and I found out they had this master’s degree in Irish Traditional Music Performance at the University of Limerick. I thought, “That sounds great, I’m just going to move to Europe for a year!” If I’d known at that time how much I didn’t know, I would never have even considered auditioning for such a prestigious course, so in that case, ignorance was bliss!
I auditioned by Skype and they told me I wasn’t ready and to try again in six months. Looking back, this should not have been surprising at all—I still had so much to learn. But I really wanted to be accepted, so I tried again. I didn’t hear anything for a long time—I just assumed I didn’t get a spot. My mom and sister and I visited my cousins in Ireland that summer, and the day I got back to Texas I had an email offering me a place. But I’d already accepted a job in the fall, and deferring entry is understandably not an option for performance students. So I auditioned for a third time and was accepted. I’m so glad I ended up going the year I did, because my classmates that year were the best, and I wouldn’t have met them if I’d gone at a different time.
On getting noticed
I did the masterclass at Craiceann twice. There were maybe seven or eight people each time, and only three of us were women. Then I competed in the All-Ireland [Fleadh] last year and came third. I was told I was the first American ever to medal in senior bodhrán. I’ve gone through all the records and as far as I can find, it’s true!
A lot of the opportunities I’ve had teaching and playing came about because I wasn’t afraid for people to tell me no. I think it’s because I’ve put myself out there. I would love to win the All-Ireland. I do not think that a competition is the be-all and end-all, but I am competitive and I love a challenge. I would love to be the first American to win! And I would love to be doing music 100% full time, where that is my total income.
On building bridges
It’s a very cool experience any time I get to combine my classical and Irish music worlds—I don’t feel like they come together very often. Both can offer so much perspective to the other, not just on music, but on life.
University percussion programs often don’t have the time or resources to include world percussion in their curriculum, and I’ve really enjoyed bringing traditional music to students in a more formalized setting; to add some traditional aspects to what they are already getting classically. It’s always a huge thrill to go in and have students say, “Can you help connect me with the local Irish music community here?” They’re always shocked that everyone is so friendly and helpful—it’s a much more relaxed vibe than the classical world, in my experience.
On her drum line
I play a Metloef drum, one of Rob Forkner’s. There’s this big convention in Indianapolis, the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC), with clinics for every kind of percussion you can think of--percussion ensemble, orchestral, marching band, and world music. I’d dreamed of presenting a clinic there since high school, and in 2018 I presented an hour-long bodhrán clinic, it was really fun and a dream come true.
I asked Rob for a banner, because the organisers ask for a list of your sponsors to display at the clinics, and he said, “What if we just make you a line of drums?” It was amazing.
So now I have my own line that he makes for me, a 13-inch. We’re both based in Texas—he’s in Austin—so we went with pecan wood since it’s the Texas state tree, and skin from a deer in the Texas hill country. I really like a low, bassy sound, but I wanted something with more attack and clarity, and this has a great sound across the whole range of the drum. It doesn’t feel like work to play on either the low end or the high end. You can buy them through my website.
On playing while female
I remember one teacher trying so politely to tell me that my jacket was muffling the drum. He was being so delicate, and I was like, “What is he getting at?” It was only later that I realized he meant my boob was in the way, I nearly died laughing. If he had just said it, it would have been much less awkward!
Discrimination—for me at least—has mostly been in the band world, people saying things like, “I didn’t know girls could play percussion.” I don’t remember ever getting a comment like that playing bodhrán in Ireland.
I feel like the discrimination I’ve had, at least to this point, has been because of the instrument itself. You walk into a session with a bodhrán case and people are like, “Oh no, is she going to be terrible?”
Going into a session of people you don’t know is intimidating enough already. Add the fact that people maybe don’t like your instrument…it’s scary to think I have to prove myself before I’ll be welcome. Starting out I think some of that was my own confidence, because I hadn’t been playing very long. But you’re always going to face those kinds of comments from people who don’t get it, and there’s been a lot of great people at sessions who have gone out of their way to make me feel welcome and happy. You just have to keep on going and keep on drumming and ignore the haters.
Earlier this year, I was at a Women Professionals meeting at a percussion convention. These women were saying—from a classical music perspective—"When am I just going to be a musician, when are they going to stop referring to me as the female percussionist?”
But that sat wrong with me. In high school marching band, I was the only girl in the percussion section. You’re expected to wear the uniform and you’re just one of the boys. For me, I’ve had much more freedom to be myself in the traditional music side of things. I don’t want to just have the music and ignore the fact that I’m female, because that’s part of who I am as a person. Not that music is gendered, but what does it mean to combine all aspects of who I am, including being a woman, into how I play? I’m still trying to figure that out.