Mig was first exposed to Irish music in Birmingham in the seventies. “There were a lot of African Caribbean and Irish people—people from around the world who had come [to the UK] in the fifties and sixties,” she told me in my living room the other week. Remember when house guests were a thing?
“Where I lived was a very mixed community,” she said. “We lived cheek by jowl. I guess my earliest memories would have been of hearing the music and maybe it lay dormant till I heard the bodhrán.”
Mig asked to use her first name when we spoke, and many readers will be familiar enough with it. I’ve never done a bodhrán workshop she wasn’t already signed up for, and she’s more plugged in to the online community than many professionals.
Whether you know her or not, check out her legendary son Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, who sings and performs traditional British folk on the melodeon and anglo concertina. Yes, he teaches online—get in touch on his website. His band, Granny’s Attic, are also online and on Facebook. Like the other musicians in our lives, they could use a little love right now, so spring for an album if you can, and help spread the word by forwarding this newsletter to a friend!
So…how’s everybody doing? This is the third time I’m writing this monthly newsletter, and let’s just say a lot has changed since my interviews with Siobhán and Amy.
Like many of us, Mig is now stuck at home. She’s still my go-to for bodhrán resources, but now they’re for distance playing—like free platforms for teaching music online, or apps for jamming remotely, like Jammr and Jamkazam.
Have you used them? How was it? What else is inspiring you to keep playing—or what would get you started again? She and I would love to know. Reply to this email, or leave a public comment.
I’ll be back next month with another interview, so don’t forget to subscribe! Hang in there till then, everyone.
Madeline
Cohen performs at Towersey Festival, August 2018 (via Neil Wetherell)
Mig
On musical benefactors
I was born in Suffolk, and there wasn’t a great Irish community there. My parents came here in the sixties from Barbados. There were a fair few Irish and Scottish indentured servants in bits of the Caribbean. In the traditional music from Barbados there were Tuk bands, which are similar to Irish marching bands.
One of my sons isn’t musical, but my son Cohen was playing around with lots of styles of music and different instruments. His first instrument was violin, he played a lot of classical stuff. Then he picked up the electric guitar. He wanted to be a rock lord, but he realised he wasn’t really cut out for it.
He found traditional music from the British Isles through trial and error and seems to have stuck with it. I hadn’t played any percussion for about ten years, and his musical antics and passion inspired me to pick up drums again.
My dad used to play a little bit of guitar. My mum had a real passion for listening to music. My siblings all love music, so it was a constant in our house, with lots of genres to choose from. My grandfather—who I didn’t meet—made violins, by hand. Quite often you don’t know who your musical benefactors are, you know?
On many drums
I don’t like to talk about how many drums I own! Probably a Djembe was the first drum that I’d ever really played. I was just fascinated with rhythm and liking the idea of hands contacting with skin, and that something so simple in its construction could play such complex rhythms and allow people to make music together very quickly.
I do a little bit of West African drumming. I meddle with the Krin, which is a West African log drum. You play it with sticks and get three very distinctive tones. I also meddle with Brazilian drums, I play in the Surdo section which is responsible for the bass patterns. The literal translation of Surdo is “to deafen,” which is similar to the meaning of the word bodhrán.
I don’t actually know the first time I picked up a Bodhrán. My earliest memory is of meeting a Bodhrán maker at a festival in around 2013. It was a festival with drums from around the world, so I dabbled with pretty much anything. I remember having a go and really enjoying it, having a drum that was so close to my body. I’ve been fascinated ever since.
(Photo: Julia Dudley/Whistling River Photography)
On finding what fits
Even after six years of learning I am still finding my style. It’s very much a combination of single-ended and double-ended but I lean a bit more towards single-ended playing. And in terms of tempo, it’s got to be slow, as I wasn’t built for speed!
I was lucky enough to make a Bodhrán of my own. I spent a week in Wales with Dragon Drums and I got to choose the skin and steam bend the frame and put it all together. The whole process was really about getting out of my head and using my hands for something, as I don’t have many practical skills, let’s be honest! I do own others, but that’s my favourite, obviously, because I made it. I actually made another one last year at Bula Buzz with Rob Forkner—it was kind of a team effort.
I have probably had a hundred thousand million tippers. At the moment I’m loving a weighted polycarbonate tipper. I go through phases, if you ask me in six weeks it will be something completely different.
Tippers tend to be made by men, for men. My hands are probably smaller than the average male hands and I tend to favour something a bit slimmer.
On motivation
Music is a big part of my life, but I do it purely for enjoyment and connection. I am nowhere near competent enough to be considered a musician. I would have to be far more dedicated and practice a lot more than I currently have the time to do. Plus, a lot of my friends are professional or semi-professional musicians, and they always seem to be broke…
I have to use conscious effort to schedule practice and make it part of my mantra of work, rest and play. I certainly notice if I haven’t been playing with others, or if I haven’t made space for making music. I feel quite flat really, if I don’t.
I do regular workshops, festivals and short courses. I’m lucky to live in a city where I can dip in and out. I can do Brazilian percussion on a Monday and African percussion on a Saturday. I can take my bodhrán along and attempt to transpose the rhythms, I’ve started doing in that in the last year. I’m met with curiosity sometimes! But they’re people that I know, they just let me get on with it.
I try to bring that back into traditional sessions a little. I’m not of the tradition, so learning some of the tunes and having to listen is a big part. Some of them I find less accessible to my ear and I sit them out, but sometimes I can bring an extra bit of spice to something that we’re playing, as long as it works within the structure of the tune I’m happy to do that. I’ve never been in a session where that’s been frowned upon.
On playing while Black
You don’t see many Black people at Irish traditional sessions, certainly not any Black women, not at all. But then, there aren’t any Black people at some of the other things that I do. So I always think, is it the case that there just needs to be one person? If one person comes, will other people come as well?
I used to do Japanese drumming. For a long time there were no other Black people there, so I felt a bit self-conscious and stopped going for a while, even though I really enjoyed it. Then I went back last year and there were three other Black people. That was quite heart-warming, really.
Then at Craiceann last year, there were a couple of Japanese guys, a couple of Brazilian players and a mixed heritage guy.
To encourage women or people of colour to come and play, they have to have an interest in the first place. But once people are through the door, there are ways of making them welcome but also encouraging them to return—and to bring a friend.
On playing while female
When I first started I was lucky enough to have a female teacher, KT Jordan, who plays in a family band in Birmingham [O’Fibb’s]. She showed me different ways of holding the drum and using the bulges that I have—including the ones that have got bigger over the past six years or so!
I’ve managed to learn a lot from hanging around on the Bodhrán forums online, but there really are a few knuckle-dragging men out there. You can get embroiled in all sorts of nonsense. I don’t know how you even begin to stop that, but if you can get past it there are plenty of nuggets of wisdom to pick up, and I have made some lifelong friends too.
It’s that whole chest-beating thing. In most percussive traditions it’s all about men, women aren’t particularly taken seriously. I’ve just been fortunate enough to spend a bit of time in Ghana. I took my Bodhrán and that was lovely. All of the drumming teachers were men, and the women did basket weaving and dancing. I’m not interested in basket weaving and dancing! I just want to play big drums. I asked why there are no women drummers, and the response literally was that women prefer to dance. Is it that they prefer to dance, or is it just the expectation?
If you watch the Brazilian carnivals, there are blokes playing Surdo, and women will have tits, teeth and tassels—maybe a tambourine. I haven’t seen many women Surdo players, apart from an all-female bateria in Bahia—they blew me away. In the Santería tradition in Cuba women aren’t allowed to touch Batá drums.
I would be interested to find out about traditions where women connect with drums. I flicked through When the Women are Drummers, but it didn’t particularly speak to me. Strangely enough, when we go to Craiceann and Bula Buzz, or Dragon Drum workshops in Wales, women attendees tend to outnumber men. Women teachers have been notable by their absence. Hopefully this will change as a new crop of women drummers take their rightful place on the drum throne.
Mig
Wow. How very close to my experience. I grew up with my father, uncle and male cousin all members of a Scottish pipe band. When I said I love their music and wanted to join to play drum like my father I was greeted with “ No it’s a mans band”. That was back when I was 16. Only started Bodhran when I was 50. 10 years on and I’m loving it and joining in with a local band at gigs!
Loved reading this article on Mig. Woo Hoo!!!