Ordinary Day

Re: what other kinds of music I regularly listen to... I'm aware of Métis but haven't listened to it much, some tunes from that tradition have been known to show up in the local sessions I've attended sometimes though.

I do have a scattering of various Maritime artists and groups in my collection, yeah. Newfoundland and Quebec mostly dominate my collection, but really, I'm open to listening to anything in the general Atlantic Canada area. :)

And Acadian music has a bit of a presence in my collection, too. Not much, I think I have maybe one Acadian group represented, but they're there!

About lyrics... I love digging into translating things on my own where I can, yeah. Not only because I'm a bit of a language nerd, but also just because it helps me actually understand the song better, and appreciate it on more levels than just "this sounds really cool".

So that's let me come to learn about some of the darker and deeper themes covered by some of the artists and groups in my collection, and pick up small bits of history sometimes too. And heh, yes, Celtic-flavored music is all about taking those darker and deeper themes and putting them to really catchy music!

Great Big Sea used to make regular jokes about that, in fact. ;D Particularly with their crowd-pleaser "Excursion Around the Bay", which I have very fond memories of singing along with at their concerts. But that extremely catchy ditty is, after all, about a guy's wife drowning and dying!

I am less versed than I'd like about the musical traditions specifically more local to me, but that's mostly because I'm pretty hyper focused on Quebec trad and related genres. But when I can, I go to local folk music festivals and I'm always looking for interesting new artists.

So from that I can at least recommend a young fiddler named Jocelyn Pettit, I've seen her perform a few times at local festivals and I have a couple of her albums. :)

Playing the fiddle is going less well than I'd like at the immediate moment, but mostly because right now I'm unemployed and can't spare the money to pay my teacher. So lessons will resume once I have a job again. My teacher's periodically giving me free teaching time when she can spare it, but I try not to take advantage of that because that is her income, and I want her to priortize her paying students.

So hopefully I'll be able to return to that once I get a job again.