Irish/Celtic Week at Augusta

I just returned from my 23rd year of attending Irish/Celtic Week at the Augusta Heritage Arts Center of Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, WV. It is a week long immersion in Irish music classes with master musicians, combined with absolutely amazing evening sessions. There used to be Irish step dancing taught there but in recent years the association that overseas the competitive dancing has forbidden instructors who judge competitions from teaching classes for some reason, so those classes have had to stop being offered, which is a shame because it always brought in huge numbers of prospective young dancers and their families.  I hope that something can change to allow dancing to return again, because it was always an integral part of the whole week. There used to be a class offered in Gaelic language as well, but that hasn't happened in quite a few years, either. Unfortunately, Irish/Celtic week has suffered some downsizing in recent years and this year there were fewer than 100 of us there as opposed to the nearly 500 that used to come. The advantage of this, though, is smaller and more intimate sessions at night, no lines in the cafeteria, and an almost guarantee that I will get a private dorm room and not have to suffer the indignities of a surly roommate. In years past, I always ended up with someone who wanted to go to bed at around 9 p.m.and who wanted total darkness, so they would always pull the blinds shut and I would stumble in around 2 a.m. into a pitch black room where I could not turn on a light for fear of waking my roommate and I would stumble around and bang into things in the dark trying to undress, find my nightshirt and crawl into bed cursing. Invariably they'd team me up with the absolute lightest sleeper they could possibly find who would snap awake at the sound of my alarm clock and become angry at me for having one in the first place. After years of that nonsense, I began just wanting my own room. It costs way extra to have a private room but with so few people staying in the dorms anymore, I can almost guarantee that I can get a private room. All of us on my floor this year had rooms to ourselves, and there were only three of us on my part of the hallway on the floor of the dorm in which I was staying, each of us with our own rooms. That was very gratifying, quite honestly. Far easier for me to be on my own than to have to deal with an early bird who can't stand how slow I am to wake up in the mornings!

I had the very great privilege to study ballads under Jimmy Crowley, a not very well known (and who should be!) singer from Cork, Ireland. He was charming and full of encyclopedic knowledge about songs, their meanings, their background, the Gaelic language, song history and more. We learned tons of songs I'd never heard before and only one that I knew bits of, a song in Gaelic called "Nil Na La" that I heard on a recording by the Irish band "Solas". We were a class of all women, two of whom had no exposure to folk music before so they were absolutely unfamiliar with anything that was going on. But it was fun watching a whole new world open up to them and to watch them react to everything they were learning was a great deal of fun for the other three of us who have been coming to Augusta Irish Week for many long years and who have solid backgrounds in Irish music.I have to admit that I was quite nervous this year because I have been taking the same class with the same instructor since the late 1990s and I felt like I was being thrown out of my comfort zone, but I had a fantastic time, made new friends and learned far more than I expected. We also had a new coordinator of Irish Week this year, which also made me nervous, because whenever new guard takes over, they throw the baby out with the bath water and tend to want to put their own stamp on the week, not always to good results, but our new coordinator, Dan Neely, seems like a genial and energetic fellow who, despite a steep learning curve, did a fine job this year and seems eager to improve on things for next year. He even took the time to sit down with me and spend some serious time talking and that's truly commendable. I really like him a lot and look forward to his coming back next year with new ideas and new energy. So, my hats off to Dan for taking a very difficult job and doing it well. I know that next year can only be better than this year and I hope that attendance is better and that Irish Week continues bigger, better and stronger than ever. For those who want to know more, please visit their web page, Augusta Heritage Arts Center Irish/Celtic Week to see what you just missed. They also have weeks devoted to Cajun/Creole music, Blues, Swing, Dance, Old Time, Bluegrass, Vocal styles and more. It's worth a week of your time to spend in the spectacular blue green mountains of West Virginia learning from master musicians, and they also offer traditional craft classes for those of you non-musically inclined folks. So come on down, and I hope to see some of you at next year's Irish/Celtic Week at the Augusta Heritage Arts Center of Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia!