I started playing the bodhrán in November 2016 because I saw Brian Ferguson’s classes listed in the Galway Advertiser when I was using it to lay the fire in our ground floor flat in Salthill.
I’m not Irish. We’d been in Galway 8 months, and all I knew about trad music was that the players know how to start and stop at the same time. I thought this was a local birthright until I saw Mike Chang play the fiddle. Mike isn’t Irish either, yet there he was at the Crane, crushing the starts and the stops. Maybe I could give it a try.
Brian is a brilliant teacher, and incidentally introduced our all-female class to the tune Fanny Power. (Jokes were made.)
By the time family commitments took us to the UK just over a year later I was hooked, and started playing at the Hibernia Centre in Bristol. I changed my sticking grip to something I saw on YouTube and discovered I was now playing “single ended.” Then I was told to Google Robbie Walsh.
Holy crap. Robbie Walsh.
My friend Dorothy suggested I contact him, clearly a mad idea. My 5-year-old wants to go to the moon but he’s not messaging Neil Armstrong on Facebook. Still, that’s how I came to be rearranging work flights and family vacation to fit in two days at Bula Buzz, the summer school Robbie runs with Colm Phelan, in 2018. That winter I attended the Hwyl Fawr UK bodhran festival in North Wales, then Craiceann the following summer, then Hwyl Fawr again.
Pictured from left: me, Filomena Ianni, Mig Bee, and Anne Evans laughing during Colm Phelan’s class at Hwyl Fawr, December 2019 (Photo: Jeremy Rowntree)
The spirit of Fanny Power lived on at these workshops, where I got to play music and make jokes with women from all over the world. But I couldn’t help noticing that with rare exceptions, we were only ever taught by men.
When I’m not playing the bodhrán or reading Usborne books about space, you’ll usually find me advising researchers and non-profits on free expression and the internet. The technology, media, and human rights sectors have each struggled to level the playing field for non-white, non-male entrants, but these days it’s at least plausible to schedule all-female panels.
So what would an all-female lineup of bodhrán experts look like?
Honestly, I’m not sure. I got one class with Siobhan O’Donnell at Craiceann 2019, but she was away half the week for her day job. And I could name barely a handful of others.
What’s up with that?
I’m starting this newsletter to find out. My goal is to interview one serious female player per month in 2020. By the end of the year I’ll know at least 12.
Subscribe, and you will too. Apparently, there are even more out there, so this time next year I might decide to keep going. But for now, let’s make 2020 the year of Fanny Power.
Madeline
Please tell your friends!