[Bards] Differing Styles

[Pádraig Ruad Ó Maolagáin]

No flames necessary, as I believe that song, story and poem all have their
individual advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses.

Song is my bardic medium of choice, and when I'm on form, I can bring
sighs, tears or laughter from my audience.  (Sometimes when I'm not on
form, too, but for the wrong reasons.)  But I can recall a number of
competitions where a storyteller had my best effort in song beat hollow
with a excellently told tale.  Each competition is unique, even if the
format is a familiar one; the mix of bards competing, the judges, the
pieces chosen for presentation, are always different.  Heck, the weather,
the time of day or night, the mental and physical states of all those
involved, all of these factors and more affect not only how a piece is
performed, but how it is received by the target audience.

And as I've expressed before, I believe practicing storytelling and poetry
as well as singing makes me better at all three, so you'll hear no
complaints from me when a competition requires me to step outside of what
I consider my main strength.

Padraig
-- 
Nunc est bibendum.
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Politicians prefer unarmed peasants.

Pat Mullins wrote:
> Wow! I was expecting some flame for this:
>
> Pat Mullins <paedrics at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Finally, this may be my personal bias as a non-singer, but it seems to me
> that in  best piece or any style competitions, a great singer will
> usually, if not always, beat a great storyteller or poet, all other things
> being equal. Is a performer who can sing three songs very well a better
> bard than a performer who can perform a piece of Beowulf from memory, part
> of Shakespeare's Henry V, and a No S**T There I Was story, all done well?
> but I couldn't even get a spark. Maybe its not just MY perception...
> It's interesting that the ones complaining about differing styles are the
> SINGERS!
> Leave some competitions for the rest of us, will ya!
> Paedric
> Just trying to agitate, now.
> I've got  my asbestos skivvies on!