Here is another tune from the Folk Orc vaults. It's Irish, it's a polka, it's part of the Belfast to New York set and according to James Cameron's vision it is one of the tunes that Irish immigrants played on the titanic, it's John Ryan's Polka. Like so many tunes, we are left with questions. Who was John Ryan? Where did he get his Polka? What did he do with his Polka and of course, what the hell is a Polka? Let's start with who he was, and to be honest, we don't really know. There is some speculation I have come across that suggests the tune was written by a fiddler named Sean Ryan who was fiddling around Ireland in the twentieth century. I can definitely see this as a possibility. For one, I can envision the scenario where an englishman has asked an irishman, "what tune is that you playing?" the irishman replying, "it's sean ryan's polka." and the englishman, not really understanding what the irishman said has written down John rather than Sean. It's is also notably not in the O'Neills book of 1001 Irish Dance tunes, which rather suggests it is a later tune than that book which was published in 1907. Although that is by no means hard evidence, it such a good tune it is hard to imagine that it wouldn't have made it across the pond and appeared. This does cause a problem form James Cameron though as Sean Ryan wasn't born until 7 years after the titanic sunk, so it looks like your film may not have been 100% historically accurate Mr Cameron. Shocking i know.
Moving on to elements of this tune that we can be sure about we should look at its key to start with, which is D Major, straight up, couldn't be more in D Major if it tried. So you are looking for the notes D E F# G A B and C# on your instrument. Try playing these notes over the backing track below before learning the tune, this will get your fingers ready, if you look at the range then you will see that the lowest note you will need is an F# and the highest is an A the octave above. Keeping within this range will further help you in playing the tune. The lead instrument on the backing track shuts up around 3:56, so skip forward to there if you prefer to jam without that distraction.
A polka is in historical terms is an eastern european dance. However, this has little to do with playing tunes, an Irish Polka - as they are often referred to - is simply a tune that is written in 2/2 time or two beats to the bar. The accent is on the off-beat, which creates the oom-pa, oom-pa, oom-pa rhythm. The practical implication of this is that the first beat of the bar creates the pulse, which means the pulse or main beat happens more often that it would in a tune written in 4/4, and the off-beat accent is chasing it constantly. Therefore, polkas tend to be quite fast tunes naturally, or if not technically fast, they feel like they are running along at a pace.
Here is the rhythm diagram for playing along, you can see how the accent is on the + after the 1. The short arrow on the 1 is signifying a short strum, usually the lower sounding 2 or 3 strings of your instrument. The longer arrows are either full strums (all the strings) or for a more dynamic sound, the 3 or 4 highest sounding strings.
There you go, John Ryans Polka, at a time in the not too distant future there will be posts on its companions in the Belfast to New York set; Girls of Belfast and New York Girls.
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John Ryan’s and Drowsie Maggie long time favourites of mine. Like the format of these posts, useful to have the BT’s for a bit of a blast through!