Do these fast-reel youngsters actually get regular gigs i.e. every Friday and Saturday or does "more gigs than me" mean they play at the occasional festival?
If you want to play fast reels in sessions, fair enough, but if you want regular work, you are going to have to play dance music at the speed the dancers want, and if you play session speed for a dance, you won't get booked back - simple as that.
If you can't beat em, join em, get into that session and encourage (i.e. make) the youngsters to play jigs, polkas, hornpipes (no airs in sessions, please, life is too short).
I for one, still enjoy playing in sessions with youngsters because I can keep up with than (at 55), can still learn tunes on the hoof, and have forgotten more tunes than they know.
When I can't do that, its time to stop gigging.

There are many bands and many venues out there which provide regular entertainment without dancing in mind.

Well worth a revival. Start on page 1.

I find it difficult listening to Gaelic tunes that are simply butchered by musicians who neither know the songs or the dances that go together. It is clear once you speak with the musicians that all they are interested in, is technique and not the music or where it fits in to the ruitheam of Gaelic language and song. Some of which has been around for centuries and passed down as the original composers intended and this done with great pride.

Please oh please stop hacking our music and culture to bits and start playing to your own rubbishy styles.

Some may say they are learning traditional tunes all I can hear are non Gaelic sounds which weaken the little we have left.
Leave what is there and start creating your own train speed music if that is what you want and have as much technique as you want.

Very generous of you to allow that final little concession :-)

Does that mean then that no instruments should be used that weren't in existence at the inception of the song or tune?
Bloody hell i'll better get the viol out.
seriously though, away and chain up some swings.

Yes interested.....I agree with you.
They neither love nor understand the tradition.....But maybe that is something that we will have to live with.......they can never destroy it either, it is all there and will outlive any on this forum, or any of their descendants.

Why is much of Gaelic music now so Angliscised and Anglo-centric in ruitheam and speed. Are most of the muscians simply unaware, lack good hearing and listening skill, or just dis-interested in their own Gaelic traditions.

Trying to please everyone in this sphere will lead to blandness of the first order, which I feel at times is now upon us.
Little or nothing new within the Gaelic tradition of music that is other than Angliscised versions of what has gone before. Very sad and not worth very much.

Maybe someone here can show that it is different, one can only hope.

As i understand it only Gaels are capable of listening or playing music. I suggest total extemination of all scots without the knowledge of the mother tongue that way noone will ever be able to offend you again!!!!!!!

Interested, I would disagree with you. Variety creates the opposite of blandness. We still have fantastic Gaelic artists. For example, the albums by Margaret stewart and Allan MacDonald respect the tradition and are fabulous recordings.

Mouth music was quite often a display of speed and tremendous skill. People didn't have to dance to it either. Lots of gaels loved it. Over and out, Dr Trad McGee.

Ok Akhenaton:
"They neither love nor understand the tradition"

Perhaps you would like to explain, I ask for the hundredth time, what the tradition is and how it will be passed on. Especially if we are to have it preserved in aspic like Interested seems to imply and you apparently agree with them.

Interested. What do you mean by "the songs or the dances that go together"?

Balzac,
" As i understand it only Gaels are capable of listening or playing music. I suggest total extemination of all scots without the knowledge of the mother tongue that way noone will ever be able to offend you again!!!!!!! "

Are you just trying to start a fight now? I'll admit that interested's post comes off as a rant, but there is a serious point behind it, and it is not some notion of racial-linguistic supremacy.

Many of the Gaelic tunes are songs and the rhythm of the music is dictated by the words of the song, and many of the musicians playing them today have no concept of that rhythm. I have seen and heard musicians without Gaelic who have been skilled enough in music to assimilate the correct rhythms, but these are few and far between, and unfortunately many have been exposed to too many incorrect renditions to recognise the proper one.

And certainly, interested is not suggesting banning them from playing altogether, but rather suggesting that they would do a better job of playing Scots tunes than Gaelic ones, as the rhythms of Scots are more familiar and accessible to them.

Before I started learning Gaelic, I was getting turned off bagpipers because they were sounding ever clumsier, their tunes sort of staggering and stumbling aimlessly. Having learnt a bit of Gaelic and a few Gaelic songs, I now see that this was caused simply because the majority of pipers have no rhythmical frame of reference for the music they play.

Now I *know* things change, and I *know* that no song we sing today was sung the same even 100 years ago, but natural change is gradual and comes from within, and the sort of change we're looking at now is rapid and is coming from outside.

Again, I'm not saying that "outsiders" shouldn't be allowed to learn a language, tunes or whatever (otherwise I wouldn't be learning the Gaelic!), but it's important to remember that "everything Scottish" doesn't necessarily belong to "everyone Scottish". When you visit someone else's house, you are a guest and you treat them with respect -- you do not walk out with their sofa. As musicians, language learners or whatever, you are a guest in someone else's culture and it pays to remember it!

One of the reasons for this change has been the disappearance of the House ceilidh where the tunes and songs were handed down accompanied with the history of the composers and the reason for it being there in the first place.
Today we have the concert which does not allow anyone to be anything other than a person who looks on. Indeed, this move has had serious and damaging effects on the whole of the Gaelic traditions.

Suddenly it has all become part of a college course and with it we see sameness.

"but natural change is gradual and comes from within, and the sort of change we're looking at now is rapid and is coming from outside."

From where? What is this insidious beast that is stealing Gaelic songs and playing them wrong?

"Today we have the concert which does not allow anyone to be anything other than a person who looks on. Indeed, this move has had serious and damaging effects on the whole of the Gaelic traditions."

Today we have the concert because that's where the money goes. Performance is all.

"Suddenly it has all become part of a college course and with it we see sameness."

Yep. Homogenised, pasteurised and bastardised. That's what happens on a conveyor belt.

Bigmooth:
" From where? What is this insidious beast that is stealing Gaelic songs and playing them wrong? "

On the Royal Mile, squeezing the life out of a set of pipes under the glare of half-a-dozen tourist flash-guns.

Or (genuinely) playing at a Gaelic event and inviting (in English) the audience to join in on "An t-Eilean Muileach" while making it impossible by playing in a rhythm which doesn't fit the words.

Not so long ago every person at a ceilidh was expected to participate and know about the history of the songs or music they played . Today it is a wonder of wonders if they even know the name of the piece as it has been so butchered as to be unrecognisable. So this is progress on a great scale is it?

"expected to participate and know about the history of the songs or music they played "

Mmm, I'd like to think that people would be welcome to come along to an event without these preconditions. We should be encouraging everybody to listen to the music and to participate too (if they are able and willing).

As I recall, one of the most "off putting" things about the folk scene in my younger days was that it was full of so called and(very often) self proclaimed "experts".