The Battering Ram Set
Long Island and New York City are strikingly rich with world-class traditional musicians. Even many of the musicians around here who don’t play for a living easily could. There’s a kind of osmotic pressure organic to the environment. Being surrounded by top-quality musicians is in itself developmental.
The opportunities to listen in person to the local population of superlative musicians - whether they’re permanent residents, or passing through - are multiplied and augmented exponentially by online media, such as Facebook and YouTube, not to mention the seemingly endless array of websites hosted by individuals and organizations practicing, developing, and promoting traditional music. As a person who’s neck-deep in the learning process, I’m deeply grateful to learn here.
I played three jigs for the soundtrack to the video linked below: The Battering Ram, Banish Misfortune, and The Blarney Pilgrim. I learned all three tunes because at one point or another I heard them played here, and played well, within arm’s reach.
I shot the video footage in the northern section of Long Island’s Massapequa Preserve. The preserve is a suburban treasure. You can park your car on a residential street just about anywhere on the preserve’s border, and within 50 paces, you can feel like you’re in the wild. There’s a lake in the north end of the preserve, and on the day I was there, an armada of Canada geese floated on the lake’s surface. Gulls swooped like fighter jets overhead, diving here and there to the water to grab bites to eat. A small stream connects to the lake, and a well-maintained trail runs alongside the stream. You can walk there, at your leisure, thinking, or not thinking at all.
