#patrick bonner

(My notes on Beaver Island fiddler Patrick Bonner and a copy of Flett & Flett’s book Traditional Dance in Scotland)

I’m finding one of the great privileges of this residency is the time and space to work on solo material and research. It’s a tremendous luxury to be supported in such a way that makes this kind of long-term exploration process possible among my many discursive artistic interests. This week I had the opportunity to delve into one such project, the music of fiddler Patrick Bonner from Beaver Island in my home state of Michigan. 

I’ve been familiar with Bonner’s music since 2008 when I first encountered his work on Laurie Kay Sommers’ book and accompanying CD Beaver Island House Party. On the disc appear several selections by Bonner, recorded by Alan Lomax and Ivan Walton in 1938 when Lomax was commissioned by the US Library of Congress to collect recordings of traditional musicians in Michigan. 

Originally inhabited by the Anishinaabe (Ojibwa, Odawa, and Potawatomi) people, white settlers from Ireland, France, and Scotland began arriving on Beaver Island in the early 1800s. Born to two members of this first wave of settlers from Donegal, Sophie and Captain “Black” Bonner, Patrick was born in 1882 and learned to play from the first generation of Irish fiddlers on Beaver Island. His music represents a mix of influences from Ireland, Canada, and America. Biographer Glen Hendrix has written extensively about Bonner and compiled his tunes in the book An Island of Fiddlers: Fiddle Tunes of Patrick Bonner, Beaver Island, Michigan. Hendrix writes: 

“Bonner performed a blend of Irish and Michigan styles. He includes some decorations characteristic of fiddling in County Donegal and simpler rhythms of Michigan’s dance fiddlers. Bonner’s tunes reflect this mixed origin. Many of his tunes were brought from Donegal by Irish settlers of the Island. He learned other tunes in lumber camps, on schooners that sailed the Great Lakes or from radio and recordings. Some of the tunes were composed by Island fiddlers, and Bonner probably composed some himself. Bonner played his music for dances and house parties for many years, and kept playing after newer styles became more popular.” (1)

According to Hendrix, Bonner played for dances for over sixty years, beginning at age 14. (1) I was especially intrigued by Bonner’s long career as a dance fiddler and wanted to learn more about his relationship to dance. Reading through his interview with Ivan Walton, it seems dance was integral not only to Bonner’s employment as a dance fiddler but also to his first exposure to fiddle music:

"First fiddler I ever heard was Johnny Owen and of course I was only about four or five years old and they wouldn’t let me go over [to the dance]. By god, I sat up and stood at the door listening to them tunes, and I knew every one of them that he played. As long as they let me up out of bed. I could learn the tunes so quick in them days. Course I didn’t learn to play the violin then, I learned the tunes. I would know the tunes."

(Patrick Bonner at the King Strang Hotel, Beaver Island in the 1950s)

Bonner’s words reminded me that as late as the mid-20th century, fiddle music and dance were the primary means of socialization in many communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Also, Bonner’s process of listening to fiddle music in the presence of dance as a means of learning repertoire really fascinated me. How did the presence of moving bodies influence the way he heard these tunes? As I dove headlong into his music this week I decided that I wanted to encounter Patrick Bonner through the process of learning his tunes myself. I put myself in his position of learning the tunes through dance, listening and physicalizing each track. I found each piece captivating. Each was its own universe of sounds, timbres, and tempos. Some like “Up and Down the Broom” were scratchy and bracingly, ear-pricklingly bright. Others, like “Black Tar on a Stick” are sweeter, rich, dark, and mellow. “Callahan’s Reel” pulsed regularly while others, like Bonner’s version of “Rousy Maggie” were rhythmic rollercoasters of tempos. 

As I listened to these tunes, i was also reading sections of Joan & Tom Flett’s book Traditional Dancing in Scotland. I was struck by a passage from Frank Rhodes’ Appendix to Flett & Flett’s 1964 text. Rhodes describes step dance as percussive footwork phrases “joined together as the dancer pleased in order to match as far as possible the notes of the music. (2) Later, he describes how dancers endeavour to "follow the tune quite closely.” (2) 

This idea of percussive dancers garnering inspiration from the melody of the tune exists in Irish traditional music and dance as well. Breandán Breathnach, states in his 1977 volume, Folk Music & Dances of Ireland that, “the good dancer danced, as it were, underneath himself, trapping each note of the music on the floor.” I confess that the first time I read this passage I thought it was a misprint (with ”trapping” printed instead of “tapping”) until I looked at the original manuscript and found indeed, that Breathnach was using the word trapping: to catch or hold for a while. (3) This idea is also present in the living practice of percussive dancers in Ireland. My sean-nós teacher Seosamh “Joe Stones” Ó Neachtain said to me once, “you should be able to dance the tune without the music, even if there’s no music, you should be able to hear the tune.” (personal interview 2010)

However, as I danced to the recordings of Patrick Bonner this week, I was reminded that a tune is not only a constellation of notes, but is animated by the gestures of the person playing it. To quote dancer Samantha Jones:

“a tune is not its notation, better described as the ‘setting,’ but is its interpretation by the performers. With a dancer involved, the dancer is interpreting the musicians’ version of the tune, because she is listening to the live musicians...” (4) 

This brought to mind the masterful work of interdisciplinary percussive dance artist Sandy Silva. By using aural imitation of the phrasing and ornamentation of traditional music, Sandy re-enters the realm of the music-making process as a dancer by deconstructing traditional 8- or 16- bar percussive step dance choreography and reassembling the footwork rudiments mirroring the melodic shape of the tune. Also, crucially, Sandy’s work engages not only the tune but also the musician’s performance of that tune. For example, in the clip below, she doesn’t perform an arbitrary, generalized version of “The Congress Reel” but rather Kevin Burke’s particular version of “The Congress Reel” as played in the moment of their collaboration. Through her deep listening and knowledge, not only of traditional repertoire, but also the stylistic nuances of her musical collaborators, Sandy converses through her movement with the melodic flow of the tune. She states: “to know where the accents are in the tunes, to know the melody, to be able to replicate the melody and then converse with the melody makes you a deeper part of it than if you don’t know it…it puts you in deeper connection with the music and the musicians themselves.” (personal interview 2011) In Sandy’s performances, this creates a riveting sense of onstage rapport between musician and dancer as embodied sound makers. 

(Sandy Silva performs The Queen of May and The Congress Reel with her band Open House featuring Kevin Burke, Mark Graham, and Paul Kotapish live at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington)

But how to have a conversation across time? Patrick Bonner passed in 1973. How could I build a musical rapport with an artist no longer living? Contemporary Irish dancer Colin Dunne’s bold and breathtaking work with the music of Irish fiddler Tommie Potts’ explores these ideas eloquently. In Colin’s words, the project, entitled Concert, centres around the question: “How can we bring this music and the presence of Potts into the space so we can get as close to it [and to him] as possible?” In addition to hearing his fiddling - and at one point, even his voice as Colin banters with the deceased fiddler through excerpted audio playback of Potts’ interviews - a remarkable relationship is formed across time between fiddler and dancer primarily through Colin’s own sounds and gestures. Colin articulates and highlights the intricacies of Potts’ playing. An ever-curious tour guide, Colin charters the audience a course through the twists and turns, irregularities, and idiosyncrasies of Potts’ music using his body as the meeting ground. He’s never pedantic though, he let’s us learn and draw our own conclusions by watching+listening, allowing us to observe the encounter between the fiddler’s ghost and the living dancer. “We hear and see the music through my engagement with it, through my meeting with his music,” Colin astutely states. At times he matches Potts note-for-note percussively, an Herculean feat given Potts’ penchant for acceleration, rubato and agogic time. At other points Colin uses the swing of a leg or twist of the hips to illustrate the strokes of the Mr. Potts’ bow. The impact is mesmerizing. And while Colin’s familiarity with the music (garnered doubtlessly through assiduous effort) is evident, the show also manages to be a two-way conversation.

(Trailer for Colin Dunne’s project Concert, engaging the music of Tommie Potts)

Thinking about the Fletts, about Sandy, about Seosamh, and about Colin enlivened my own engagement with Patrick Bonner’s fiddling this week at the University of Edinburgh’s St. Leonard’s Land studios. I began by sketching out the form of each of the tunes. Some of the pieces followed a 32 bar AABB format while others, like “Rousy Maggie,” veered off the beaten track. In this piece, Bonner sometimes plays ABB, repeating only the second section of the tune, followed by AB, playing each part once, and continuing to play A plus a half, an A then BB and another A and a half before stopping. This unconventional form proved a challenge as I worked to unchain my ears from the typical AABB pattern of most fiddle tunes.

In “Callahan’s Reel,” a rhythmically dense off-beat A section gives way to a B section beginning with a triplet. Here I wanted to draw inspiration from the Fletts, from Breathnach, from Sandy, Seosamh, and Colin by mirroring this rhythmic pattern in my own footwork. A side sweeping pullback allowed me to continue to articulate the B part’s persistent sixteenth notes following the initial triplet while preparing to sweep back across the opposing direction with another triplet. In this tune, I also found a slight change of orientation (you can also read my recent post on the queer joy of re-orientation!) helped to make legible the transitions in the sections. Aiming my shoulders at a 45 degree angle (facing the corners of the room) rather than perpendicular to the room (facing the “front”), allowed me to enact an affectual shift delineating the A and B sections. I’ve found this kind of shift to be especially useful especially when trying to make legible musical phrases for folks whose ears might not be familiar with the nuances of fiddle music. 

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A post shared by Nic Gareiss (@nicgareisslfi) on Jan 15, 2019 at 3:20am PST

(Dancing to Patrick Bonner’s 1938 recording of Callahan’s Reel this week at the University of Edinburgh’s St. Leonard’s Land studios)

The more I listen to Bonner’s music, the more I realize I am only scratching the surface of his nuance. I’ll definitely be working with his tunes further. And stay tuned for a new project connecting his unique Michigan style of Irish-American fiddling to the island of Arranmore, Donegal where many of the white settlers from Beaver Island were from! 

First Footing is a collaboration between dancer and dance researcher Nic Gareiss, the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland, University of Edinburgh Moray House School of Education, and the School of Scottish Studies with support from Creative Scotland. For engagement opportunities check out the First Footing website.

(1) Glen Hendrix. Patrick Bonner: History and Interviews. Online. http://www.michiganfiddle.com/michigan-main/patrick-bonner-history-and-interviews

(2) Joan and Tom Flett. 1964. Traditional Dancing in Scotland.

(3) Breandán Breathnach. 1977. Folk Music & Dances of Ireland.