If you haven�t read the first part of this story, you might want to start here.

After departing Ireland for Scotland, I met up with a bunch of college friends in

Edinburgh. Before the wedding, we spent our time taking in local music in a different way � karaoke in a bar with a bunch of drunken Scotsmen (the groom-to-be and his friends) whose accents became increasingly incomprehensible with every drink. Except for the accents of our cohorts, this place could have been anywhere.

There was very little evidence of traditional music as part of everyday life, and certainly not on the scale we found in Ireland. But at the wedding, there was plenty, but of quite a different type.

My friend DJ is American, but she married a Scot whom she met at a summer stock company where we both worked for a couple of summers after college. D, her husband, grew up in a rambling old (even by Scottish standards) stone farmhouse overlooking the Firth of Forth, a fascinating view that would be spectacular if it weren�t for all the oil derricks parked in the middle of it. DJ is a romantic personality, an art major with a penchant for Victorian travelogues and Errol Flynn swashbucklers. Although she had grown up on a close family farm in a small Catholic parish and always imagined she�d get married in her home church, the allure of a traditional Scottish wedding was one she could not resist. The wedding itself took place in Rosslyn Chapel, a 15th century chapel rumored to house the Holy Grail in one of its pillars. As there was either no organ or no organist, I played movements from a Telemann sonata for unaccompanied violin interspersed throughout the service and another college friend sang. In the stone building we could have been an orchestra and a grand opera chorus. It was an extremely forgiving acoustic, to say the least.

The wedding was a sight to see. DJ made her own dress, almost all of the female wedding guests wore hats and gloves and I was the only one in the wedding party wearing pants (albeit fancy silk ones) � the groom and groomsmen were all in kilts. The complained about the itchiness, the kneesocks and the difficulty of sitting down modestly like schoolgirls. It was particularly amusing when I got up to dance at the reception and found myself in trousers and my partner in a skirt.

But I am seriously digressing. There were two particularly salient features of the reception. The first was the drinking. Before and after every course, everyone trouped from the dining room to the bar for sherry (for the ladies) and whisky (for the men and me. I�m not usually so doggedly gender-bending, but I was not going to pass up an opportunity for good single-malt on somebody else�s bar tab). The other was the music. The band was a pretty typical wedding combo: electric keyboards, guitar, drums and singing (there may have been a bass or bass guitar, but I seem to recall it as a trio). And about half of the music was typical wedding fare (think The Wedding Singer in kilts without the Boy George lookalike). The rest of the music consisted of traditional music and of wedding guests getting up and singing with the band with lyrics of their own composition written for the occasion. These songs came from all genres and with few exceptions performed incredibly badly, due to a general lack of talent and the large quantity of alcohol consumed before the singing began. The traditional music was interspersed in sets between rock standards and they were the only songs that really pulled everyone on the dance floor. My kilted dancing partners explained that everyone had to study traditional music and dance in school and that these dances are always performed at weddings, but not in too many other places. I was reminded of endless years of stomping through the Virginia Reel in elementary school gym classes, except that I haven�t had much call for it since.

There was one musical moment from the wedding that I will never forget, and it is apparently a part of most Scottish weddings. It was the last event of the evening and marked the end of the reception. The bride and groom came to the center of the room and the two sets of parents held hands and made a circle around them. The rest of the wedding guests made a big circle around them and the band struck up �Auld Lang Syne� � probably the best-known Scottish tune there ever was. We all did a simple circle dance, alternately walking forward and back and circling around while singing several verses of the song. The image was one of a new couple being protected first by their parents and then by the rest of their friends and family � and I found myself quite moved by it, although I�m not generally tearful at weddings.

�I thought she was talking about authenticity or why Scottish music sounds different from Irish music,� you�re probably saying about now. Well, that actually is what I�m talking about. There are some things about the Irish and Scottish traditions in everyday practice that are the same: traditional music reminds you of your roots and permits a common ground for social interaction � every Irish musicians knows at least some of the same basic tunes, a core repertoire; every Scottish wedding guest knows the wedding dances. In both of these cases I was on the outside of the tradition, but the sheer weight of the tradition, the fixedness of it, allowed me to come in and participate as a guest without threatening the structure or feeling that I had to pretend to be Irish or Scottish. Inclusiveness is part of the nature of these traditions.

The differences between the Irish and Scottish examples include rigidity/flexibility of the interpretation of what is �authentic traditional� and the way �traditional� music fits into every day life. In Ireland, traditional music is everywhere. It is virtually impossible to leave the house without hearing it somewhere. It is as much a part of the atmosphere as the smell of smoking peat on the flatlands outside Galway City, the tumbledown stone cottages abandoned during the potato famine and being reclaimed by the lush vegetation, or the pounding surf along the west coast. In Scotland, traditional music is largely reserved for special occasions like weddings when it is particularly important to think of family, roots, history. In Ireland, there is an official organization that issues documents outlining (albeit not always conclusively) what is and what isn�t Irish traditional music. Repertoire and instrumentation are policed in this manner. In Scotland, performing traditional music on electric guitar and keyboards is still called traditional music � in Ireland this would not be the case.

As a result � and this is obviously my own opinion, based solely on my own observations � I think Irish music seems to foster a notion of virtuosity and accomplishment of technique that I have not witnessed in Scottish music. The CCE also runs a variety of competitions and festivals where Irish musicians compete to be top fiddler, dancer, etc. This is relatively easily to do where the criteria are so well defined and codified, as they are in Irish music.

One example I can think of came from one of my Irish fiddle teachers in Chicago when she was judging an Irish dancing competition some years ago. In Irish dancing, for those who managed to avoid Riverdance, it is not only important but imperative to keep a straight back and keep the arms to the sides. Points are taken off at competition for any variations, however slight, in this stance. My teacher said there was one young boy taking the dancing competitions by storm. It was down to the finals and he got up to take his turn. His dance started well � he had perfect position. But halfway through, he tripped and fell. At this point it became obvious that something was wrong: his feet never stopped dancing, but he could not stand up. He spun around and around on the floor trying to finish. He was not injured. It turned out that his mother had sewn the sleeves of his jacket to the body, so he could not accidentally move his arms. He was disqualified.

But while Irish music fosters technical prowess, Scottish music�s more flexible idea of tradition seems to foster more�I hesitate to say creativity, for I think there�s a creativity to technique too. In my conversation with the Smithsonian rep who sold me the CD that started this two-part entry, he used the word �funkiness.� I can think of some musicians who would quail at the term in this usage, but it is apt in some ways. Scottish tunes are a little more unpredictable, the instrumentations quirkier and while some compositions end up sounding off-balance, sometimes the result is fresh and exhilarating.

In fairness, this kind of thing happens in Irish music too, but it is not called or considered traditional. I�m thinking here of bands like the Pogues or Black 47. Even Clannad (Enya�s older siblings), which sounds quite traditional on their earlier albums is still not thought of as such.

I think that�s about all the summing up I�d like to do, other than to offer some listening recommendations in case anyone else wants to give this stuff a try. In the Irish camp, I�d suggest doing some comparative listening to three fiddle-players: Liz Carroll, Martin Hayes and Kevin Burke. I�m actually fairly new to the Scottish side, but I�d suggest the Smithsonian disk I mentioned last time and perhaps Silly Wizard�s album Kiss the Tears Away.

We will resume our regularly scheduled programming on Monday.

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