DEE-TROIT what!?

ahem.

Okay! So it’s definitely almost three in the morning, but I’ve been up all entranced rereading Burnt Offerings by Laurell K. Hamilton anyway, so I thought I’d take a break to write a little update on my weekend. Strap yourselves in, it was a pretty crazy one, haha.

So with some randomness and luck, I happened to end up attending the North American Fleadh Cheoil Midwest Region in St. Louis, MO this weekend! Why, you might be asking? Or…. possibly not asking. But you’re going to hear the answer anyway, so nyaaah. Well! My cousins competed! 😀 For all who might now know (which was me before this weekend, haha) Fleadh is basically the Irish word for festival. And oh my effing god. SO COOL. What a great weekend.

Mairead, the oldest of these three particular cousins, plays fiddle. Her younger sister Siobhan plays the harp (UM, MOST AWESOME INSTRUMENT EVER, ANYONE!?) and their younger brother Conor plays….. well, nothing really. And he didn’t compete in anything this weekend either, so yanno. I think he’s learning the whistle. But uh… that’s another story, so lets just stick to this one. My Uncle Terrence plays…. um, like…. everything. But for this I think he was playing the pipes. I can’t remember what kind/what they’re called, though.

So my relatives swung by Indiana and picked me up along the way on Friday! Ahem. My dad drove me to the McDonalds off of 69 and we met them there. Indiana was pretty much on the way from Michigan to Missouri, I guess. ^_^ Hey, works for me. So I hopped from one car to the other and we were on our way!

We arrived in St. Louis a few hours later and the city is BEAUTIFUL. The arch was frecking AMAZING just to see. I would have loved to go up in it, but time did not permit. So we get to the Marriott where everyone (no really, like… everyone — this is where the Fleadh was being held) was staying. We take our bags up, settle in…. it was a nice beginning to the weekend. After we met up with a few of the other parents and a few of my cousins’ friends, we ended up across the street at TGI Friday’s for dinner. Mmmmm, it was tasty. Better than that damn Applebees food I had the last dinner before I left B-Town, I can tell you that for fucking sure. …. ahem. So we didn’t do too much more that night, but the kids did decide that they needed to get a practice in before the next day, when all the competitions would start up.

So let me make a little sidenote with details here. My cousin Siobhan and six other kids under 18 are in a group music thing. Together, they form the Detroit Grupa Cheoil. Here is how it plays out, I think:

Siobhan – harp
Asher – accordian
Alison – fiddle/whistles
Molly – flute, whistles
Carston – fiddle
Patrick – flute, whistles
Kelsie – fiddle

But basically, that’s just from what I semi-remember. In any case, they compete in the 15-18 Grupa Cheoil part of the competition. And they ABSOLUTELY ROCK. No, I’m serious. They’re actually pretty damn good.

So back to the recap.

Everyone shows up in the room and they run through their tunes a few times. Mairead (who isn’t in the grupa cheoil because she’s afraid she’s going to screw everything up… poor girl, she’s not as fond about competing) and I mostly just hung out on the bed and watched/listened. I helped her a bit/watched her a bit while she did her English homework as well as her health homework. It was pretty cool. Altogether, a pretty great day/night, even with the longass car ride. I haven’t seen my extended-ish family in SO freaking long. It was great to see them this weekend. I don’t think I realized how much I really missed them.

So the next day we were up bright and early. Everyone had somewhere to be, so we had to get our asses moving for the competitions that started at… 8:30-9:00am-ish. We all busted ass, found out my Aunt Moira forget to bring milk but TOALLY remembered the cereal/bowls/spoons/etc. and managed to make it downstairs on time! Here is how the competition placing went down:

-Siobhan/Alison/Asher – first place in trio competition for their age bracket
-Siobhan/Alison – first place in duet competition for their age bracket
-Mairead/Asher – didn’t place in duet competition for their age bracket…. but they SHOULD have been top three, dammit — they totally rocked the house
-Siobhan – first place in solo harp competition for her age bracket (which she just moved into this year, too — so now he’s playing with some of the older kids, 12-15, I think)

It had been an awesome day so far. Later on Siobhan and I went swimming in the whimy pool and spent most of the time staring out the window at the baseball stadium across the street or being paranoid that the pool was going to collapse through the floor. It was on the second level. And yes, we ARE dorks. Next up there was more Grupa Cheoil practice and we managed to completely take over/trash the second floor’s lobby area. Ahaha. Very nice, right? I feel bad for everyone on the second floor…

A few hours later(after Carston guessed my age to be 17, Molly guessed it to be 15, Conor told me I looked like I was 12 and Kelsie guessed correctly that I was 19), it was finally time for the Grupa Cheoil competition for their age bracket to start.

They went up against three other groups. And let me just say, biased or not, they did great. They had a spectacular performance, even if they did speed up the last part of their tunes a little bit. They kept it together, got the crowd going and really made a strong showing. And if you ask me, the group that beat them wasn’t that great. Here is how the placing went:

Riley Grups Cheoil – didn’t place
Irish Academy of Music er… something – 3rd place
Detroit Grupa Cheoil – 2nd place
St. Louis Academy of Irish Music – 1st place(COUGHRIGGEDCOUGH!)

In any case, everyone did their best and it was some great music to listen to, so that was pretty cool.

Moving on to the next competition. So my Uncle and a bunch of the other parents threw together the requirements for the adult age group Ceili band. They practiced together….. twice, maybe? And their drummer, which was required, had never actually played snare drum before. So rock on for them! Talk about freaking talent…. because they placed freaking SECOND. Wow. And that is about alllll I can think of to say about that.

The rest of the night was just as good as everything before. Everyone hung out in the hotel rooms, there was pizza and pop, lots of laughs and jokes and great music ALL over the hotel at various random sessions. We ended up in bed around 4:00-5:00am-ish. Great fun, great fun.

Haha, the only thing not so fun was that we woke up around 11:00-12:00am the next morning — this past morning. xD We packed up our stuff and we out of there…. eventually. Next thing I knew it we were walking over to the arch! It was fucking amazing, just so everyone knows. I think I have one picture from my disposable camera…. and then my Aunt and Uncle should be sending me copies from their digital. If you’re ever in St. Louis, you should definitely check out the arch.

We finished up our St. Louis adventure by having lunch at some random brewery and heading out of town. They dropped me off here at home and continued back up to Michigan.

What a blast. What a great, great, GREAT weekend

. Anyone that can over attend a Fleadh, totally go for it. It’ll be worth it. I mean it.

edit:
Ah-HA! I found some information, for those who were wondering:

Ceili Bands: (Minimum of 5 members, maximum of 10) Grades “a” and “b”: One tune from each of TWO classes. Grade “c”: Two reels in succession, plus one tune from each of two other classes. Grade “d”: two reels in succession, plus a maximum of two tunes played in succession from each of three other classes listed above. In the event of a recall in Grade “d” (Senior) a Band may not repeat any of the tunes it has played in its first performance.

Grupai Cheoil: (Minimum of 4 members, maximum of 20 members) Own choice of music for a maximum of 6 – 8 minutes but with a limit of ten minutes on stage. Whistlers and lilters may be included, as well as players of bodhran and bones, but piano and drums are not permitted. Efforts should be made to play tunes other than jigs, reels and hornpipes, e.g. slow airs, set dances, old marches, harp music etc. Attention should also be given to instrumentation arrangements and presentation of the music. A list of music pieces in the order to be played, e.g. slip jig, march, etc., shall be submitted by each group leader to the adjudicators prior to the performance.