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 Many MSU students do not get the opportunity during their college careers to explore other parts of the world and experience the culture of other countries. But last fall, five MSU students and musicians from the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music got the chance of a lifetime. They visited Northern Ireland, where they not only learned about Irish customs, culture and traditions, they got to share some of their own.
Adam Ison, Daniel Fredrick, Sarah Wood, and Kyle Burnett, along with music archivist and MSU traditional music instructor Jessie Wells, and H.K Silvey, a musician and expert on Appalachian culture from Southwest Missouri, traveled to Ballymena, Northern Ireland through Sister Cities International (SCI).
SCI is a nonprofit citizen diplomacy network created to enhance relationships between the United States and international communities.
Morehead is sister cities with Ballymena as well as Yangshou County, China.
The SCI was interested in students playing music through the KCTM because of its emphasis on bluegrass and traditional music, Burnett said.
During the trip, the students played mountain traditional bluegrass music for residents of Ballymena, including students at several elementary schools, the town's mayor, and town councils, and in a $30 million theatre known as The Braid.
“Many of them had never heard the music done like this before,” Ison said. “They’re first instinct was to clap along.”
Burnett said Appalachian traditional music is a descendant of Ozark traditional music, a style of music that originated in Northern Ireland.
“They got to see how their music changed since it was passed from Ireland, as well as how it expanded as it went west,” Burnett said.
This style of music is passed along aurally, Ison said.
“It means it’s not taught by sheet music,” Ison said. “It’s kind of like farming techniques. It’s just something you pick up on over time.”
The students also got to hear a great deal of Northern Ireland’s traditional music performed by people their own age.
“They were constantly playing acoustic Celtic jams,” Burnett said. “Their style of music is incredibly difficult. It was hard for me to pick up on.”
During the trip, the students saw a wide variety of landmarks, such as Belfast, where the Titanic was constructed, and Bushmill’s Distillery, the oldest distillery known to man, and Giant’s Causeway, a rock formation on the northern coast.
“Around here, a historic landmark is a site of a Civil War battle,” Ison said. “There, the history is so much deeper.”
Recent terrorist attacks on the country, however, gave the students an up close and personal look at a side of Northern Ireland that wasn’t in the travel guide.
“It is a recovering country,” Burnett said. “You didn’t speak of any kind of religion there.”
Despite the tragedies Northern Ireland has gone through, the students noticed a great deal of hospitality.
“People there weren’t much different than they are here at home,” Ison said. “People would invite us to their houses and make us dinner.”
Burnett said, “The culture of Northern Ireland in many ways was very Americanized. It was kind of like we never left (home).”
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