 Interview with James Fernley And Spider Stacy For - NERVE, AUGUST 1986
The latest saviours of rock and roll limped into Toronto, their bus having broken down at some indeterminate point outside the city. What are you going to do after they finish the tour? the driver, a crusty Southerner, was asked. "Fumigate the bus," he answered. Lucky even to get an interview, I encountered not the lead Pogue, Shane MacGowan of the dental disaster fame, but James Fearnley, accordionist, and Spider Stacey, tin flute virtuoso. Fearnley, a rail of a man with the casual demeanor of a private school history tutor, seems to have cornered the market on dignity among the Pogues. He also manages to play a squeeze box with the same savoir cool that Keith Richards brings to the guitar. Stacey is a different kind of bird. Wearing a tie with a shirt shorn of its buttons, he comes off as a bit bar-worn. Wielding cockney sarcasm with the ease of a habitual joker, he would often find occasion to hiss out a glottal, mischievous chuckle, sounding not too unlike Ernie on Sesame Street. Well into the interview, when I felt them to be a bit at ease, I had to bring up the issue that trails the Pogues from interview to review to interview: booze. "I've got a bit fed up with it, as a matter of fact," James says, obviously hoping to end the matter there. "We drink," Spider adds, "but so do most other people. We don't drink a particularly large amount." "I suppose when we started off we did drink quite a lot," James says, resigned to addressing the subject once more. "When you're new to anything you sort of..." "Actually that's wrong. Some of us have been in groups that made quite a habit of getting drunk before going on stage." "Well, yeah, I was including them." "I've seen you drink on stage with the Nips before so don't give me that bollocks" "I was never drunk on stage with the Nips." "OH JAMES! WASH your mouth out with SOAP!" Spider squeals in the voice of an enraged Southern school marm. "THAT'S A BLACK LIE!" Spider leans back laughing, then continues with an ironic drawl. "Okay, James was never drunk on stage with the Nips...I was always drunk on stage." We continue on the drinking debate until Spider pinpoints where the inevitable "Pogues-as-drunken-music" conclusion chafes him: "It's a kind of racism, really. The whole 'drunken Paddy thing. It's a bit insulting." The Pogues do make good drinking music, but so do Buckwheat Zydeco, Elmore James, Black Flag, and Johann Sebastian Bach. The Irish are reputedly a drinking people, but so are the Germans. The Pogues recurring battle with the boozy metaphor should stand as a warning for the first polka-punk band that finds itself signed to a major label. As for the appeal of the Pogues, it would be facile to say that their music struck an ancestral chord in me. Rather, the Pogues have found a new way to tackle this beast called rock and roll, an enigmatic creature with the ability to sprout new limbs where ever it is hit. If bands like the Pogues continue their assault, pretty soon we won't recognize the thing, and that is undeniably good. In the absence of Shane, his presence is inevitable in any discussion of the band's creative machinery. "I remember sitting around at some girl's flat with Shane," Spider recalls, "and he was fiddling around with the guitar, and he started singing "Paddy on the Railway' which is an old Irish number, one of the cover versions we do, but he started doing it really, really, fast. It was on this Dubliners album we used to listen to. This was a while before the Pogues started and it definitely must have sparked something in Shane's mind. The way he does things-there's the input, and the moment it goes in, everything starts to go into gear. The actual output might not appear till nearly a year later, or suddenly it'll be there. I think he likes to take his time with things." Another comer stone of the Pogues' reputation is the manic energy with which they approach live shows. Certainly, on record, songs like "Waxie's Dargle,' 'Down in the Ground Where the Dead Men Go' and The Sick Bed of Cuchulain' give the game away, strongly suggesting a powerful live presence. "The fact we play all fast, I think that's simply because it hasn't occurred to us to do it any other way." Spider says.. "don't think we could have done it any other way." James adds. "I don't think it comes out of our personalities to play as furiously as we do." "I think it does," Spider says abruptly. "I think we're all fu..." "...You think we're all fusious? I'm not!" "Everybody's got a certain manic streak in them." "Yeah, I'll give you that. That's true." "With the exception of Terry (Woods), who's a different case entirely, everybody was really into punk. I think the vehemence with which we deliver..." "...is because at the beginning we couldn't play very well." "We'd just try to disguise it." "By just walking on and going BOOM! This is yours, we don't want it anymore!" James goes on to describe one of the band's best gigs, in Lon- don on St. Patrick's night. "I was really tickled by one review of that night. I don't know who the journalist was, but he mentioned someone going into the toilets and he had one leg of his jeans missing, his left shoe missing, and no shirt on his back. We get all these clothes thrown on stage, we get shoes..." "...We always get shoes for some reason. We've had one ora just one fucking bra. That was in France." A side effect of playing even vaguely Irish music in a political climate as shaky as Britain is that a band like the Pogues are expected to answer for centuries-old problems in a three-minute tune. But this doesn't interest the band. "We don't write songs that deal with specific political situations," Spider explains. "We do songs that are about broad issues. The general anti-war, anti-authority stance I think is implicit in what we do; it might not be stated but it's implied. It's not our business to make statements about (the Troubles in Northern Ireland). Everybody in the band has their own opinions, but that doesn't add up to the band having a particular platform." Perhaps the best publicity the band ever received was in an interview with Tom Waits around the time his last album Rain Dogs was released. Asked who he listens to, he named a few terribly obscure people and then the Pogues, who he compared to rowdy Irish troubadors the Clancy Brothers. "They're like the Dead End Kids on a leaky boat...there's something really nice about them." "That was great-we feel the same way about him. Not that he's like a drunken Clancy Brother-well I suppose he is like a drunken Clancy Brother. Maybe if he shaved that silly beard off. (laughter) It's a nice beard, Tom!" "Maybe if he got rid of those alligator shoes." The Pogues have gotten this far on what is perceived as a novelty, although from the band's account it seems to have been less intentional than that. As accidentally as they came upon Celtic folk-punk, it seems that they'll continue to absorb musical styles until, far from being a novelty, the Pogues could make an indelible stamp in rock history. Until then, they're more fun than being smuggled into a women's prison on a full moon, and while I'm at it, kiss me, dammit, I'm Irish. The whole gang-MCA-Rick MaGinnis
0 Comments
The Aer Lingus Musical Society Album  On Wings Of Song Album I am proud to have this wonderful opportunity to introduce the boys and girls of the Aer Lingus Musical Society in this their first LP, 'On Wings of Song'. Ireland's national airline, Aer Lingus - Irish, from its start back in 1936 did not have to strive too hard to establish its unique reputation as "The Friendly Airline" its people were, and are, the people of Ireland. We in Aer Lingus-Irish are happy that we have succeeded in conveying our "Irishness" by interweaving into our basic attitudes towards passengers and shippers the quality of warm friendliness, allied to efficiency and commitment to the job. We were once described by an eminent commentator as "the airline with a heart", and that aptly summarises what our staff means to the airline. The members of the Aer Lingus Musical Society are our own staff. With them are some few Dublin Airport staff who up to recently were also airline staff. The society's musical director, Dr. Tadg de Brun, is one of Ireland's younger men of great ability and promise. He would be the first to acknowledge the splendid work done for the society by its former directors over the 11 years of its existence. The society organises and administers its own affairs. While the footballers, hurlers and swimmers of the airline achieve their recreation in competition, the Musical Society members achieve theirs in performing for their friends and, on an ever increasing scale, for charities spread throughout Ireland, Europe and North America. They give freely of their own time for rehearsals through the long winter months, and for hurried week-end trips to almost every point on the extensive Aer Lingus-Irish network. Over the past 11 years they have raised tens of thousands of pounds for charity, and made friends of the people who heard their happy singing or watched their colourful Irish dancing. Their performances have always brought credit on Aer Lingus-Irish. The Musical Society, in my view, constitutes a most worthy ambassador of Ireland, and of its national airline. Their talents match their gay, non-materialistic approach to entertainment. MICHAEL DARGAN Director & Chief Executive. Track List HANNIGAN'S HOOLEY SOMETHING AMHRAN DOCHAIS WHITE ROSE OF ATHENS THE HARP THAT ONCE I DON'T KNOW HOW TO LOVE HIM YESTERDAY ROISIN DUBH FIL, A RUN GORTNAMONA AMAZING GRACE THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN  The Aer Lingus Singers ABOUT THE SERIES EDITOR
Dr Reg Hall is a visiting fellow in the Graduate Research Centre in Culture & Communication at the University of Sussex. Engaged now in preparing A History of Irish Music & Dance in London, his academic work is enhanced by four decades of close contact with many traditional musicians, singers and dancers in the Irish immigrant community. An active musician throughout that time with Bampton Morris and Padstow Blue Ribbon 'Obby 'Oss, he has associated with country musicians in the south of England and he has known a good number of the performers featured in this series. His production credits include a number of significant record releases of traditional music. Lateral thinking, a working class family background and professional experience in social work have contributed to his challenge to received wisdom. His radical views on the whole field of traditonal music and dancing, part of a growing movement of re-assessment, are in the best traditions of Topic Records. TONY ENGLE Managing Director. Topic Records Production by Tony Engle & Reg Hall. Compilation, research & notes by Reg Hall. Edited digital transfers from original sources by Tony Engle, Paul Marsh, Charlie Crump (using CEDAR), & Reg Hall. Mastering by Tony Dixon. Sleeve design by John Haxby, art surgery. Edinburgh. + The producers wish to thank the following for their assistance in preparing this volume: Vic Gammon, Claire Gilliam (National Sound Archive), Heather Horner, Maggie Hunt. Bill Leader, Helen Leader, Paul Marsh, Des Miller, Robin Morton, Steve Roud, Rod Stradling, Keith Summers. Malcolm Taylor (Vaughan Williams Memorial Library) Mike Va The Topic Records catalogue of long-playing records, deleted some time ago with the phasing-out of vinyl, included about 120 albums of English, Irish and Scottish traditional music. The creativity of the original producers-making the recordings, programming the albums and writing the notes-set the standards for their time and their work remains an important stepping stone in our understanding and appreciation of traditional music. In making much of this material available again two or three decades later, Topic Records has adopted an approach for a different medium and a new audience. This formidable project is presented as a series of thematic anthologies, but, more importantly, the selection of material and the annotation reflects a revised view of traditional music. Some aspects of traditional music have interested outside observers for a couple of centuries, and it is the values, interests and activities of those outsiders- the founders and activists of the folk-song and folk-dance movements that have set definitions of what the outside world should find interesting in traditional music. Part of the motivation behind the preparation of this series has been to shift the emphasis away from the values of the folk-song collectors and to present traditional music in its own right, reflecting its history, social contexts and the values of its practitioners. The paradox is that, although the focus here is on traditional music, the series owes its existence to the folk-song movement. Some consideration, therefore, of the main phases of that movement is needed to put the series in context. The early folk-song and folk-dance collectors-middle-class, educated and operating within the mentality of their time-were motivated by varying shades of nationalism, and it was held, very commonly within nationalist thinking, that society in general had lost its innocence and that a nation could regain its soul by purifying its culture. Thus, in the 1880s, the notion of a lost golden age informed the Merrie England movement and the Irish and Scottish Gaelic Revivals. Ballad studies, long-established within the field of literature, showed that balladry had once been in the mouths of the common people, while some academic musicians, with an interest in ancient music, pointed to national airs as the potential raw material for new schools of art music to oust what was held to be the offending influence of European romanticism. Getting back to the innocence of a golden age required a search for its survivors; those people thought to have the longest cultural memories, untainted by the artiness of elite society and the vulgarity of the brutalised, industrial poor. The finger pointed to 'the peasantry', and a few dedicated and inspired collectors, most notably at the turn of the century, sought out members of the rural working population and recorded on paper thousands of song airs, song texts and dance tunes. There was no intention of documenting the music-making of those rural workers and their families; the aim was to gather raw material for a minor revolution in art and popular music. Mediating their finds through the conventions of their own culture of art-music and literature, the collectors defined their new genres as 'folk-song' and 'folk-dance' (in Ireland Irish song' and 'Irish dance), which they promoted. often heavily edited and reconstructed, through music publishers, live concert performance and state education systems. The post-war revival of the folk-song movement-the so-called Folk Revival - was inspired initially by models in the American labour movement, and moved politically to the left, where it occupied ground further down the social scale in the urban working and lower middle classes. The Folk Revival was also rooted in a form of cultural moralism, reacting against the commercial music of show business and aiming for the creation of a proletarian entertainment and art form. Whereas the Victorians and Edwardians defined 'folk-song' narrowly, the new wave of the movement was eclectic. Almost anything could be "folk-song-industrial workers' songs, material derived from the music-hall, songs of protest and contemporary writing on social issues. Within the proliferation of British folk-clubs and Irish ballad-lounges, there developed performance styles unique to the folk-song movement, and these styles, owing little to traditional music-making, entered the mainstreams of English, Scottish and Irish popular culture. In parallel with this post-war movement, there was a new phase of field-collecting. made possible by the availability of the relatively cheap means of making sound recordings. Folk-song collecting could now capture the subtleties of intonation, accent, inflection, pitch, rhythm, timing and language of authentic performance. Although some folk song collectors at the beginning of the century had made use of the cylinder recording machine and the British Broadcasting Corporation had made some studio and location recordings in the 1930s and early 1940s, Brian George was the real modern pioneer. Assisted in January 1947 by Seamus Ennis, who had just left the Irish Folklore Commission, he recorded on location in Ireland with a disc- cutting machine for the BBC. Shortly afterwards, working with portable tape- recorders and with little prior knowledge of the extent of traditional music-making in these islands, Alan Lomax (Columbia Records, NYC), Peter Kennedy and Seamus Ennis (BBC, London), Hamish Henderson (School of Scottish Studies, Edinburgh) and Ciarán MacMathuna (Radio Éireann, Dublin) embarked upon endeavours of great discovery and excitement. The initial period, however, was relatively short-lived, particularly as the BBC, the English Folk Dance & Song Society and the major record companies showed no lasting interest. However, national institutions in Scotland and Ireland have continued to collect in the field, and Radio Eireann (now RTC) has for several decades responded to public demand for Irish traditional-music programmes as popular entertainment. The exposure of traditional singers and musicians on radio (albeit very limited in Britain) and commercial records, in folk- clubs and on concerts from the early 1950s has made some impact on the Folk Revival, and within a section of that movement there has developed a taste for authentic performance. The tape-recorder, of course, has been available to amateur enthusiasts, and many-self-financed and working in isolation-have made valuable field-recordings, and a number of independent record producers have made interesting material available. Those at the forefront of contemporary thinking about traditional music and dance have in recent years applied the academic and professional disciplines of ethnomusicology, community studies, social history, biography, multi-media recording and archiving to document and examine them in their social and historical contexts. There has been a shift from the elitist, patronising notion that folk-song" is the corporate and primitive creation of an anonymous, amorphous population of folk, who in the jargon of the 1950s are 'bearers of tradition. It can now be recognised that traditional music and dance are created and developed by real identifiable people within real identifiable communities. While they are at the lower end of the social scale, the vitality and richness of their art and entertainment are as deserving of serious attention as the popular culture and high art of other sections of the community. Any attempt to describe, let alone define, traditional music and dance is inevitably. loaded with paradoxes and contradictions. To start with it there is no popular or even academic consensus about what they include and exclude. Having long co- existed and cross-bred with popular culture, the boundaries between the tradition and popular culture are blurred, and it can be argued there is value in keeping them blurred. Traditional music and dance have belonged primarily to rural working communities, though not exclusively to them and not to all members of every such community. For example, in southern Co. Sligo at the beginning of the century, traditional music-making was for some an almost obsessional daily occurrence, yet for others it was treated with indifference or even open hostility. Evidence suggests that as a general rule the piece-meal migration of rural workers to towns puts an end to their traditional music-making and dancing, yet rural practices and repertories have sometimes been modified to suit the needs of urban communities. It is widely believed that traditional music-making has flourished and survived longest in isolated and remote areas, yet in rural Northumberland, Scotland and Ireland in the 1920s and 1930s it was the bus services, bringing people together, and the gramophone and the radio, circulating repertory and style, that gave the popularity of music-making a significant boost. No community in these islands, including the most isolated and remote, has been free from generations of population shift, as labour has. pursued employment opportunities in the army, at sea, in farm work and heavy construction and in service for the gentry, and as migrant workers have returned home. It is these movements and mixing of populations that have contributed to the dissemination of repertory and modes of practice beyond parish borders. The tradition is essentially an aural one with each performer learning his or her material by ear from another, yet some learned song texts and dance tunes from print and manuscript. Some performed their material exactly as they learned it. while others honed it to their own liking and imbued it with their own meaning and significance. Some struggled as children, unaided and even in the face of family opposition, to make a musical instrument and devise a playing technique, while others had expert tuition from older musicians on factory-made instruments. Some sang primarily at home for family entertainment, others sang to ease the monotony of repetitive labour, while some sang alone for their own satisfaction. In rural England a primary location for traditional music-making was the pub, the preserve of men, incidentally excluding women and children, whereas in rural Ireland it was the domestic kitchen, where gatherings of family and neighbours embraced both sexes and several generations. Most traditional music making has been amateur, yet it was not so long ago that dance musicians were invariably paid for their services and there were livings for dance teachers and street singers and musicians. The broad repertory of traditional songs comes from a number of sources. Some songs originate from composition within the tradition itself, while others have been adapted from material from outside the tradition, most notably from seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century ballad sheets and the nineteenth-century music hall. Some are archaic survivals, but some others are either contemporary or are set in the recent past. The texts are invariably constructed in conventional poetic language and the story lines and scenarios are based on equally conventional themes. Those at the forefront of contemporary thinking about traditional have in recent years applied the academic and professional ethnomusicology, community studies, social history, biograpl recording and archiving to document and examine them in their soc contexts. There has been a shift from the elitist, patronising notion while the tunes, not necessarily though sometimes wedded to particular texts, call on a stock of well-used melodic phrases. The creative potential and vagaries of aural transmission have tended towards mutations and hybrids of both words and tunes, which have resulted in countless variations. The same is true of dance tunes. for, while there is clearly some archaic survival, most dance-tune types were adapted from the dance music of the nobility and gentry (and later middle class) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, tempered by a massive creative force within the tradition itself. The recordings in this series represent cultures that have passed or are passing rapidly, as the social and economic conditions and the habitats that supported them have gone or are going for ever. These performances have timeless appeal and resonances, but what of the meaning and significance these songs and tunes had for the singers and musicians themselves and their audiences? Succeeding generations will have ever-increasing difficulty in grasping the nature and quality of the lives these performers lived. How will they understand the family structures and community ties, the gender roles and the inhibitions between the sexes, the rigid class structures, the livelihoods, the poverty and hardship, and the high level of violence in the communities that practiced traditional music-making? The brief biographies of the performers should offer some insight into the social contexts and set minds thinking. The dialects and accents in which these songs are sung are being rapidly eliminated, and the subtleties of meaning implied in the inflections, vocabulary and syntax might easily be lost on future listeners. The song-texts, given as the singers sing them and transcribed with a considered balance between standard and dialectal English and Scots, are offered primarily as an aid to understanding. When transcribed in print, the words of some songs seem fragmented or confused. yet in live performance the general drift of meaning is invariably clear enough. This series makes available a large body of recorded songs, instrumental music and calendar customs from the tradition, drawn from the archive at Topic Records and a number of private collections. It includes recordings made on location often in the homes of the performers, some in live public performance and some from commercial 78rpm records now in the public domain. In the case of the English and the Welsh 78rpm records, they were originally issued for a very limited 'folk-song' and 'folk-dance' public, but in the case of the Scottish and Irish records they were put out as ethnic popular music. Some recordings presented here were made by amateur enthusiasts, as early as the mid-1950s, with portable and sometimes domestic equipment and, though the sound has been cleaned up in the studio, they still have something of the quality of a faded holiday snap. The final selection has been governed by a subjective view of good performance and good material, an equally subjective belief in the aesthetic merit and historical value of each track and an eye to fairness of representation. A major constraint has been the nature and the quantity of the material available, which inevitably reflects the self-directing activities and priorities of those who made the recordings. This has resulted in distortions of representation relating to geographical regions, performance genres, and the age, gender and social background of performers: other CDs in the Topic catalogue, however, will fill some of the gaps. My ship shall sail the ocean SONGS OF TEMPEST & SEA BATTLES, SAILOR LADS & FISHERMEN In a sense there is no such thing as a sea song: rather there are songs on nautical themes. This volume brings together a varied selection of such material and a further selection appears on We've Received Orders To Sail: Jackie Tar At Sea & On Shore (Topic TSCD 662). The classic period of sail from the end of the seventeenth century until the middle of the nineteenth, associated with trade in the East and West Indies, wars with the Netherlands, Spain and France, and the acquisition and maintenance of Empire, provided the backdrop for many a good yarn appealing to rural singers and listeners alike. Of course, a good proportion of those who went to sea were from the country. and heroic stories about the seaman's life glamourised a pretty appalling existence. The cut and thrust of battles, cliff-hanging danger, gallant crews and victorious captains were celebrated in such songs as A Broadside, A Ship To Old England Came and Young Henry Martin. However, life for a seaman on board a merchantman or a man o' war was harsh, with a regime of exhausting work, strict discipline and brutal punishment, poor food, primitive living conditions and mortal danger from the elements. The Banks Of Newfoundland deals with the tough life aboard ship in the early days of steam, while the central theme of In Scarborough Town is death during a raging storm at sea. It was probably the theatre of eighteenth-century elite society that first romanticised the sea in British national life with a succession of plays, ballets and songs on romantic, patriotic and heroic nautical themes. The theatre business went hand-in- glove with the publishing and bookselling trades, and not surprisingly the same stereotype characters and situations were portrayed on the stage, in broadsheet ballads and in engraved prints. The sailor is sometimes cast as a constant lover, as in The Dark-Eyed Sailor & In London So Fair, while his sweetheart remains loyal and true, as in The Pretty Ploughboy, in Scarborough Town & A Sailor And His True Love, and maybe even follows him to sea disguised as a man, as in In London So Fair. The dangers of being taken by the press-gang are dealt with in The Lowlands Of Holland and The Pretty Ploughboy, while in the latter song the hero is rescued by his lover. In The Streams Of Lovely Naney and A Sailor And His True Love, the sailor is depicted as less trustworthy, promising marriage only if he should come back again. This characterisation points to a more extreme image of the saucy sailor, Jacky Tar, a feckless rogue when in port, splashing his money about on loose women and booze, as portrayed in Sandy's A Sailor. The Cak And The Ash & Jack Tar Ashore, though rising to the occasion when duty calls. In Riding Down To Portsmouth 6 The Royal Albion he gets his desert, a dose of pox, for his loose living. Among those who within living memory have sung The Royal Albion (better known as The Sailor Cut Down In His Prime), there was and perhaps still is a belief that the song was forbidden in dockyard towns and anyone who sang it publicly was likely to be arrested. Curious, as its warning against immorality was more likely to uphold naval discipline than subvert it! The most enduring survival of the jolly Jack Tar stereotype in popular culture is the balletic character dance. The Sailor's Hornpipe. Almost certainly the creation of the professional stage, its first known performance was at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London in 1730. The Sailor On The Rope (pulling on a rope being one of the mime actions in the stage dance) and The Bonny Bunch Of Roses belong to a genre of eighteenth-century dance tunes that includes The College Hornpipe & Jacky Tar, associated even now with The Sailor's Hornpipe in dance academies. There is a quite different resonance in the songs made up by fishermen and merchant seamen which they sang among themselves. There are no romantic characters or heroic scenarios, but reference to every-day work routines laced with mild in- jokes about their job, their ship, their skipper, their mates and themselves. All these elements can be found in Round Rye Bay For More, Cod Banging. On Board The Leicester Castle and The Fish And Chip Ship. In sharp contrast to their self- deprecating humour, many sea-goers are deeply superstitious and philosophical about their chances of survival at sea. Many, no doubt, have found comfort in the Methodist hymn, Jesus At Thy Command, which suggests an eternal deliverance from the dangers of tempest. Those wishing to pursue these songs further are recommended to consult Steve Roud's computer data-base, Folk-Song Index, held at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, London, which is a comprehensive reference work to printed, manuscript and recorded sources. The only song references given here are to those appearing in the seminal early collection, Francis James Child, The English & Scottish Popular Ballads (1882-98, reprinted New York, Dover, 1965) & the classification system, G. Malcolm Laws, American Balladry From British Broadsides (Philadelphia, American Folklore Society, 1957). The Performers WILLIAM BRIGHTWELL, one of eleven children in a railway plate-layer's family, was born in 1900 in the small village of Little Glenham in Suffolk. He inherited the nickname "Jumbo' as a child on the death of an elderly friend. Jumbo Poacher. His first job at thirteen was as a bird-scarer. The family moved to the small town of Leiston in 1916, and after two years in the army, he returned to Leiston in 1919 and worked briefly as a fisherman, and then as a bricklayer's labourer, a gas-stoker and a docker. Around the end of the Second World War, he became a railway shunter, staying with the job until he retired at 65. He picked up many songs in childhood from his father and other adults and started singing at about eleven years old. "Us kids used to get outside The Lion there when the sheep-clipping was in season, and every Saturday night those old boys would hold their meetings there. After the meeting they'd have dinner and then a song. We'd all hang on the pub windows and listen... And we'd hold their horses for them- you know, they all come by horse and cart -- and they'd give us a bottle of ginger beer." As a young man he cycled a couple of miles across fields most Saturday evenings with his father and his elder brother Bob for the singing and stepdancing at The Eel's Foct Inn at Eastbridge. As he described it. "It was a real old-fashioned little pub. It weren't no bigger than my living room. If you had twenty people there you couldn't undo your jacket! And Mrs. Moreland used to go down the steps to the cellar every time you wanted a pint." Philip Lumpton, keeping order by thumping the table with a gavel or cribbage board, called on each person in turn 'to sing, say or play and those who didn't entertain dropped sixpence in the beer kitty for those who did. Jumbo Brightwell was a member of a steel quoits team, travelling to such pubs as Middleton Bell, Snape Quay, Friston Chequers, Marleford Bell and Blaxhall Ship, where after the matches he took part in the singing and learned new songs. As he said many years later, "I wouldn't have to hear a song more than twice before I had it." The character of The Cel's Foot changed around 1965, and Jumbo Brightwell gave up singing in public then. Ackt: Keith Summers in Traditional Music, VICTOR ALBERT SPENCER BROWN, nicknamed Turp, was born in 1887 at Ashen Wood, West Tisted four miles from Cheriton in Hampshire, the last in the line of thirteen children born to a thatcher and his wife. With little book-learning, he started working in the fields at the age of eight. He lost his mother while still young and, from an orphanage in London, he was placed with various farmers, for one of whom, he recalled, he worked from "half past four in the morning until nine at night for hardly any money and only a little porridge and soup to eat." He was in the Royal Hampshire Regiment from 1904 until 1920, after which he married and settled at Bramdean Common two miles from Cheriton, working as a woodsman and thatcher. Referring to his father, William Brown (from whom George Gardiner collected songs in 1905), he said to Bob Copper, "When I was a little nipper, my dad used to bring me down and squat me up on a bench in the corner, and there I would stay until 'twas time to go home. There was some good old singers round here then, and my old man knew as many songs as any of 'em- more than most." He went on to say, "I learnt all these old ones off my old dad and he always used to finish up a song with a dance..." Turp Brown did the broom dance, and at the age of seventy could still stepdance with energy and style, usually ending with a flourish on top of a pub bench. Ackt: Bob Copper, Songs & Southern Breezes (Heinneman, 1973). & BBC Sound Archive Index, XII.] MARY ANN CAROLAN was born in 1902 in the townland of Tenure, near the town of Drogheda, Co. Louth, and at the time of this recording she and her husband Nicholas were working their farm at Hill o' Rath, near Drogheda. Her father, Pat Usher, had a large repertory of songs which he sang constantly in the house and while working on the farm. He was considered in his community to be a fine exponent on the concertina and he played with energy and dash right up to his death in 1965 at the age of 94. He passed on much of his music, both dance tunes and songs, to his children and nephews. Mary Ann Carolan played the concertina after her father's model and she had a repertory of about sixty songs. After not having played or sung for several years, she began making music again in the mid-1960s. Ackt: Sean Corcoran, HARRY FRED COX was born in 1885, the seventh of thirteen children, at Pennygate, Barton Turf, close to Barton Broad in north-east Norfolk. His father Bob, having worked initially as a labourer, went to sea as a young man on the herring fleet out of Great Yarmouth. He later worked on the wherries, the cargo sail-boats that plied the Broads, before returning to farm work. Harry had a hard childhood and left school at thirteen. He went into farm work, developing additional skills particular to the Broads, such as reed-cutting, thatching and basket-making, as a supplementary source of income. During the Great War, he served in the Royal Navy on a mine- layer. He married at the age of forty and settled near home at Catfield Common. His paternal grandfather and his father were noted singers in the community his father also played the fiddle and his mother sang as well. His father was reputed to have been able to sing two songs each watch on trips at sea that sometimes. lasted three months. Before he married, Harry spent a lot of his time not only working along side his father but playing and singing with him in pubs, and the majority of his songs came from his father. He was very quick to pick up a new song and he retained a phenomenal memory. Whether he learned songs from song-sheets is not known for certain, but he sang many that were included in the collection (which still exists) of broadsides his mother had bought on trips to the market in Norwich as a young woman. Harry sang in pubs, probably until he was middle-aged, and was known for the outstanding quality of his performance and his endless repertory of old songs. He stepdanced and played dance tunes and song airs on the fiddle, the tin-whistle and melodeon. When in old age, he sang and played at home for his own amusement. He was 'discovered just after the Great War by E. J. Moeran, a young composer collecting folk-songs, and some of his material was published in the Folk Song Journal in 1922. From the late 1940s until shortly before he died, he was visited and recorded by numerous song collectors including E. J. Moeran, Francis Collinson, Peter Kennedy and Alan Lomax, and he made occasional appearances on the radio and television. Ackt: Paul Marsh.I Celtic Mouth Music As firmly rooted in Celtic consciousness as the blues are in America's South, mouth music is vocal music made for dancing when there aren't instruments or trained musicians around. Imitating fiddles, accordions, bagpipes and Jew's harps, mouth musicians developed fantastic vocal effects, creating a rhythmic, tuneful music unlike any other. For generations, mouth music made it possible for Irishmen, Scotsmen, French Canadians, Acadians and people in Appalachia to have "a bit of a birl" when good times couldn't otherwise be found. Known by colorful names like "diddling" and "lilting," celebrated for its bawdy or nonsensical but always playful lyrics, mouth music has found its way into ambient and pop music by groups like The Cranberries. But such efforts only hint at the sounds mouth musicians are capable of. In addition to 37 tracks of this wild and beautiful music, Celtic Mouth Music contains many stories about the phenomenon and its practitioners, both legendary and real. It even holds a lesson on how to make your own mouth tunes. With contemporary and archival tracks from Ireland, Scotland, the U.S., Canada and France, Celtic Mouth Music will expose you to a traditional marvel that's been overlooked for too long. -for all its names both beautiful and strange, mouth music's a very basic phenomenon. Built on favorite old melodies and rhythms, on the quips that slip out of folks when they're frisky or drunk, mouth music is for making music especially for dancing when there aren't instruments around. Though found in various forms throughout the world, mouth music is highly developed among the Gaels. The mesmerizing rhythms of mouth tunes made them a kind of Celtic street-corner soul music centuries ago, a tradition that has gained too little attention. Known as diddling, lilting, jigging and port-a-beul ("porsht-uh-bee- ul") in Great Britain and Ireland, mouth music became part of the musical baggage of Scots and Irish emigrants-driven abroad by poverty or persecution, and forced to travel light. It accompanied them to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, where it was absorbed by Acadian and French-Canadian culture, and down into the southern Appalachians. "Mouth music" is likely a translation of the Scots Gaelic port a beul ("tunes from the mouth"), the genre's richest form. But whether from the mouths of practiced singers or tinkers, whether sung in English, Gaelic, the Doric of northeast Scotland or meaningless syllables, mouth tunes share cer- tain irreducible traits: sexual frankness, delight in the absurd and-above all- the word-wizardry that propels their compound rhythms. Though not all mouth music originates in dance (listen to Talitha MacKenzie's rendition of "The Cave of Gold," track 21 on the enclosed CD), it always swings. Sung with the sparse addition of bones, bells or jew's harps, if accompanied at all (in unison, traditionally, not harmony) mouth music continues to offer ground for experiment, and a reminder-in a time of increasingly sophisticated music production-of the power of the human voice. The most colorful story of Scottish mouth music's origin suggests it was born when the bagpipes were banned after the second Jacobite rising against the British crown in 1745. Nonsense lyrics were fitted to precious pipe tunes, helping players recall the intricate quavers that gave the originals "lift." The method ensured the classical body of bagpipe music was not lost. Mouth music, howev- er, soon developed a life of its own, with practitioners contriving new tunes for dances, enlivening gatherings where instruments weren't to be found. Like lots of good stories, this one smooths history's rough edges, and contains various contradictions. The bagpipes weren't ever banned, for one thing, though a man was hanged for possessing a set in York in the 1740s (disincentive enough!). A more complex memory system called canntaireachd, which bagpipers use to teach each other tunes, had long existed-and lilting a tune to teach the melody is a universal practice. Song and dance are also, of course, intimately connected; in some form, mouth music is undoubtedly ancient (the gigue form, on which much mouth music's propounded, has existed for over four hundred years). And mouth music, finally, has various precedents-Scots musical culture carries a wealth of imitative song forms, as Annie Johnston's exquisite bird songs on this album (track 25) demonstrate. Singing to accompany the rhythm of work activities, including rowing, reaping, spinning, milking and "waulking," or shrinking wool, is also a highly developed feature of Scottish culture. Scottish mouth music's greatest period of growth came during late nineteenth century religious revivals, when Calvinist ministers forbade indigenous music. Church hostility to traditional pleasures-which sometimes saw violins, pipes and harps thrown onto bonfires-continued to this century. Though the Catholic Church was also sometimes hostile to traditional music, Ireland's long periods of poverty are more central to mouth music's development there. In thousands of isolated villages well into the 1950s, lilting offered an opportunity to dance when the day's labors were done, and instruments or musicians with sufficient skill and repertoire to keep the company dancing-were scarce. The great singer Margaret Barry said Ireland's County Wexford was once "great country for diddling, or 'doodlin,' as they called it there." Paddy Tunney says "scrapy ould fiddlers were helped along" during Donegal dances by lilting from the crowd. Singer and flute player Micho Russel of Clare says young women were "picked out specially" to lilt at weddings, often in groups of three- a pretty sight, one imagines, and a joyful noise. "Everyone could lilt in them days," says 84-year-old fiddler and singer Tommy Gunn of his youth in Derrylin, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. In Derrylin there were these two fellows, the Gilroys. Tommy lilted, and Johnny was the best dancer you ever saw. They'd come out on the floor in the Owens' parlor Tom, John and Mary, John's dancing partner, and Tommy would kinda get down on one knee. Then he'd start to lilt. He'd start off nice and steady-Doodle aiddle doodle aiddle doodle aiddle did- dle dee dum... and John and Mary would commence to dance a reel. John wore hob-nail boots, y'see, and Mary had a pair of clogs with steel strips 'round the bot- tom. Between the lilting and dancing it made a great sound. Two of the Owenses were flute players; two were fiddlers-they hosted the country dances. None of them married anyone in his life. The only interest those people had was music-they'd play all night in order to get a tune right, and sometimes they woke the whole village fighting about how to play a reel. I was only a young lad, fourteen or fifteen. One day a neighbor was making hay and went over to the Owens' for a rake-this is a gospel story I'm telling you. John Owens-he was one of the fiddle-playing Owenses-was digging a hole in the floor; he had dug up all the flagstones in the parlor! This fellow the neighbor looks down at John. "I'll tell you one thing, John," he says, "when you die they won't have to carry you far to bury you." "Would you like to know what I'm doin'?" John asks. "Do you see that great earthenware pot outside? I'm gonna bury it here and put the flagstones over it. And when John and Mary dance, the rhythm'll be like a kettle drum 'neath their feet!" Sure enough, it made an incredible sound. I used to lie in bed and listen to the music and dancing coming from the Owens' house. You could hear it all over the village, way out in the country... TOMMY GUNN Lilting's part of a larger tradition, called the séan nos, or "old style" in Ireland, which emphasizes subtle ornamentation and embellishment in song. Fine séan nos singers like the late Joe Heaney from Carna in western Ireland could hold listeners spell- bound with song and story for hours on end. In his turn, Heaney remembered lilters who had just one tune to their names, but who lilted that tune so well they kept villages dancing all night! With economic development, lilting declined. Mouth music's seldom used for dancing now, and is sometimes viewed as an anachronism, even a sport, used by singers to show off their voices at Scotland's Gaelic Mòd or the All-Ireland Championships. Great lilters are now scarce, according to long- time watchers of the traditional scene. "When you hear a great old-style lilter," says Harry Bradshaw, senior producer at RTE Radio One in Ireland-"you know it." A GLASS OF RUM PUNCH There once was a man had three daughters. Their mother, God bless her, was dead. The father was the apple of his daughters' eye, they the apple of his. One night the father came home sorta lame lookin'. He didn't feel good, and he went up to bed. The daughters put their heads together. "What can we do to make daddy happy? We have to do something," they said. They decided to make him a glass of strong punch. They got a big glass and filled it up with rum, adding cloves and hot water. They put sugar in it, and took it up to his bedroom and gave it to him. The following morning their father was jumping on the landing! The oldest daughter came up and asked, "Did the rum do?" "Did the rum do?" he laughed. The second girl came up and asked, "Did the rum do, Da?" "Did the rum do, indeed!" he laughed again. The youngest came in and asked, "Did the rum do, daddy?" Their father looked at them. He started to tap his foot and began to sing, "Didderumdo, o didderumdo, o didderumdo dad-dy? Didderumdo, o didderumdo, o didderumdo, me daughters..." STORY OFTEN RECITED BY JOE HEANEY (courtesy Ethnographic Archive, University of Washington) They have a great genius for music.... Several of both sexes have a quick vein of poesy, and in their language (which is very emphatic) they compose rhyme and verse, both of which powerfully affect the fancy.
MARTIN MARTIN A DESCRIPTION OF THE WESTERN ISLES OF SCOTLAND (CA. 1695) Puirt-a-beul singing is perhaps the most exquisite of mouth musics, a practice requiring rhythmic precision and Gaelic fluency. But despite the demands that such tunes make on singers, experts like Kenna Campbell insist puirt-a-beul aren't songs at all, but instrumental tunes whose lyrics power their rhythms. "A Nova Scotian friend once proved this for me," says Campbell, "by chant- ing the words of some puirt-a-beul tunes without the music. My feet began to itch immediately-I couldn't help moving! The words are fitted so neatly for their rhythm, they perfectly match the steps of the dance. You really don't need the melody at all, we realized, the rhythm is held so securely by the words." Great puirt-a-beul singing often travels in families. The Campbells hail from a long line of pipers from Greepe, on the Isle of Skye. "Most of the puirt we sing are also played on the pipes," says Campbell, whose two brothers, two sisters and two daughters are adept puirt singers like her father's family, from whom they learned the skill. "Our singing's strongly informed by the pipe's sound." As with other Celtic music, stringing together two or three puirt-a-beul in a satisfying set is an art in itself. "Ideally, you go for a related key in moving from one to the next," says Campbell. "But sometimes the tessitura-the combined range of pitch-is too wide. Then you must hunt for something else that works." Occasionally, puirt-a-beul contain vocables (the "hollow" or nonsense syllales one finds in thousands of songs, which form the meat of lowlands Scots did- ling and Irish lilts). Generally, however, they have lyrics, as in this song of Ewen's oracle, or boat, part of a class of puirt-a-beul probably devised for children: O look at Ewen's coracle With twenty-five white oars! Look at Ewen's coracle Passing the White Point. Ewen, Ewen Ewen will be skipper of her Ewen, Ewen Passing the White Point. "It would be fascinating to know the circumstances in which these tunes rose, for the words are very clever," says Morag Macleod, a lecturer in Gaelic ong at Edinburgh's School of Scottish Studies. "For the most part we don't now their origins or who made them." This translation of one, addressed to a re that's slow to start, offers a hint of their whimsical qualities: "Quite a lot of them had bawdy texts," says Macleod. "When field historians first set out to collect them, people simply wouldn't sing them." The meaning of many puirt-a-beul tunes is obscure. Some may have constituted a kind of insider speech. The lyric to one popular puirt-a-beul-"The ewe with the crooked horn has a full udder"-meant "the whiskey still is full," according to Macleod. Great puirt-a-beul singing wants intensive practice. "Finding breathing spots is also an art," says Campbell, "something that must be worked out in advance." Often, such openings come nowhere near the end of a line, but in oxygen-afford- ing hollows in the body of the tune. You have to assume the music will be danced to, and sing with the absolute precision of instrumental music. You can't just break off and have a breath and a pie and a pint at the end of the phrase-if you do, someone's left with a leg up in the air! KENNA CAMPBELL Once, while I was traveling through the Irish Gaeltacht-way back in the early '60s when the women were still wearing their shawls and the old men their bainín (the white homespun trousers made by local weavers), I stopped in a pub in a little coastal town called Spiddal. When the people learned I was a singer, they asked me to come home with them and give them some tunes. We drove to a lonely farm out in the hills. We went inside, and there was an old woman seated by the fire. She had a rag in one hand and a snuffbox in the other. They asked would I sing, and I replied that the custom, as I understood it, was a song from the host first, then singing till dawn from the guest. The old woman nodded; she appreciated my awareness. But she wouldn't begin unless the flute player held her hand-an old custom-to draw energy from him. The first song that I sang was "Molly Bawn." Almost immediately the people began to shout, "My love on your voice!" and "Get it out well!" in Gaelic. When the Irish encourage you, you really get a boost. I took off! I started to sing some mouth music, and they got excited. Stop, they said, stop! They hadn't heard that sort of music in thirty years. I waited while they laced up their heavy-studded boots, pulling their caps tight 'round their heads, then they made me start again. I sang for hours. Every time I stopped they cried "Aris!" ("Again!") They were step-dancing like fury-in the old style, their whole bodies moving on the flagstone floor. I tell you, the sparks really flew. NORMAN KENNEDY
Celtic music in a all its many guises carries enormous sway all over the world. The sad nature of Irish history is such that emigration has been a major factor for Irish life over the last two centuries with the result that there barely seems to be a nation on the planet that doesn't have a cluster of its population with Irish blood. The success of the shows Riverdance and Lord Of The Dance during the 1990s triggered an amazing upsurge in the popularity of all types of Irish culture. People in the unlikeliest far-flung outposts started looking into their history and discovering Irish ancestry. Celtic theme bars sprang up everywhere from Bradford to Beijing and after so many years of being ignored and even ridiculed as a musical backwater, Ireland was suddenly elevated to a position of international cultural eminence. There are now outstanding Irish musicians living all over the world. especially in America - where Irish immigrants effectively kept traditional music alive when it was dying on its feet at home - but you also get a lot of aberrations masquerading in the name of Celtic music. So for the real Irish musical soul you have to go to... Ireland. Tourism and an economic boom fuelled by the Celtic tiger have brought prosperity and radically changed the face of Ireland - but not its soul. The music the real music found in the remoter areas of the country is as rich and proud and passionate and sad and beautiful and inspiring and joyful and heartfelt as it ever was. The here are many great instrumental traditions throughout Ireland - from the legendary old fiddle players of Sligo to the travelling uilleann pipers, Galway ceili bands and the magical traditional music embedded in the Gaeltacht Irish speaking areas of Connemara, Waterford and Donegal. Such is the treasure chest of instrumental virtuosity, in fact, that the wonderful singing tradition of Ireland is often overlooked. Unlike their ancestors. who often never left their villages, let alone their county or country, the singers of today are exposed to and influenced by other cultures. Television and radio have seen to that and the spread of travel to and from Ireland has accelerated it. Yet the best of the modern generation of singers understand and draw on the spirit of those old singers to whom music was an instinctive and integral part of their social being and whose songs reflected the joy, sorrow, hardship and sense of fun that has always been such a telling part of the fabric of Irish rural life. They certainly don't come much better than Dolores Keane, whose upbringing by her aunts Sarah and Rita Keane - both legendary traditional singers in the small farming community of Caherlistrane, Co. Galway invested in her a deep, empathy with the music and the history that had shaped it. There are many who believe that Dolores Keane is the greatest singer ever to come out of Ireland, a view that gains much weight when you hear her tackle Galway Bay, a populist song done to death down the years but given such earthy depth by Dolores it surely counts as the definitive version. Sinead O'Connor, too- who talks of the characters who populate her songs as 'ghosts' is one of the greats. Such attention is focused on her media persona and the various controversial events surrounding her life that her uniquely intense way of getting under the skin of a song is usually overlooked. Maura O'Connell is another with a fantastic pedigree-establishing her reputation as a feisty young singer with one of the finest Irish bands of them all. De Dannan, before heading off to Nashville to conquer new fields, geographically and musically. But while you can take the singer out of Ireland and Wall Around Your Heart' is a beautiful song by the fine American singer songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter - you clearly can't take Ireland out of the singer. And nor would you want to. Not when it produces majestic performances by the likes of the Gaelic singers Maighread Ni Dhomnaill (whose brother and sister were founding members of the great Bothy Band) and Aoife Ni Fherraigh from Donegal, whose 'Seacht Suailci is effectively a hymn. The thrilling accordion player Sharon Shannon-who originally made her name as a member of The Waterboys has taken Irish traditional music into previously uncharted territories, but 'Queen Of The West- from her very first solo album in the early '90s shows her at her best playing pure Irish music, Shannon's band also provided an early showcase for the highly inventive singer/fiddle player/folklorist Maire Breatnach, who was also one of the early members of the cast of Riverdance and a member of Donal Lunny's supergroup Coolfin. Aine Ui Cheallaigh also starred in Riverdance and has worked with the great Galway box player Mairtin O'Connor. Donegal singer and fiddle player Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh is now rightly regarded as one of the supreme figures in modern Irish music as the focal point of the band Altan, but the track included here catches her fresh style at an embryonic stage before she and her late husband, the flute player Frankie Kennedy, launched Altan together. At the extreme we get the harpist and singer Mary O'Hara performing Morning Has Broken' when she was making a comeback having previously given up music to become a nun following the sudden death of her young husband. American Eva Cassidy performs one of the songs that made her a posthumous star. 'Fields Of Gold', originally written by Sting, but which has now embarked on a new life as part of the furniture of Irish folk music. Niamh Kavanagh - who appeared in The Commitments and sang at the Grammys performs the song that won her the 1993 Eurovision Song Contest while Newfoundland singer Pamela Morgan shows what she can do without Figgy Duff, the pioneering Canadian Celtic band she fronted for 19 years. At the outwardly commercial end. one of Ireland's biggest names Mary Duff and who regularly performs with Daniel O'Donnell sings one of her best known recordings 'Silver & Gold, Loretta Sullivan does the Carpenters, Rose Marie bravely tackles one of Ireland's most celebrated pub singalongs and Ryan & Rachel O'Donnell, fresh from their 300,000 units selling 'Celtic Chillout Album' do their Titanic impression. Irrepressible, the lot of 'em. COLIN IRWIN, September 2003 Celtic music has captivated the ears and hearts of people around the world over the past decades. It offers a vast wealth of tunes for dancing and listening, and songs for work and play, reflecting both joy and sorrow. Traditional Celtic instruments emulate the most human expressions - fiddle, flutes and harp give voice, and the bodhrán is at the heart. Musically speaking, the modern Celtic world stretches from Ireland, Scotland and Wales, to Brittany (France), Galicia and Asturias (Spain), and across the Atlantic to Canada and parts of the United States (a result of massive French, Scottish and Irish immigration to the Americas). It essentially parallels the lands of the six Celtic languages: Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Manx (no longer spoken as a 'first language' in the Isle of Man), Welsh, Cornish and Breton. More than 2000 years ago, Celtic-language speaking people lived throughout large parts of continental Europe. Celtic cultures survive to this day in those parts of Europe that the Romans were unable to or uninterested in conquering. The term 'Celt' comes from the ancient keltoi, which was used by the Greeks to refer to 'barbaric' tribes from these regions. If only they had listened more closely to the music! The modern Celtic music revival was triggered, in large part, by the folk movements that grew around the world in the 1960s. While Celtic music was alive and well in some places (such as the pubs of Ireland, or the fest-noz celebrations of Brittany), it had to be recreated in others. In Wales, many of the Celtic traditions were lost during the Nonconformist movement in the eighteenth century, and musicians have had to reconstruct traditional works. By contrast, in Galicia and Asturias in Spain, Celtic languages have not been spoken for centuries, but the traditional music has Celtic roots. Over the past four decades, the movement has exploded literally in all directions, as groups like Kila, Shooglenifty and Capercaillie seamlessly incorporate jazz, rock, R&B, electronica and elements of world music with traditional Celtic sounds. Celtic music has reached new levels of popularity in virtually every corner of the globe (indeed, there are now more than 400 Celtic music festivals worldwide). This collection includes both traditional and contemporary music from all of these regions, as swirling fiddles, flutes and pipes meet the melodic trills of the harp, while guitars and mandolins are underpinned by the heartbeat rhythm of the bodhrán. It is a Rough Guide to the very best musicians creating Celtic music today. DERVISH - With a combination of virtuosic instrumentation, touching vocals and energetic arrangements, Dervish has deservedly become one of the most popular Irish folk ensembles. This Sligo-based line-up has a mesmerizing effect on audiences around the globe, who seem captivated not just by Dervish's timeless music, but by singer Cathy Jordan's remarkable stage presence and stories about each song. 'Jig Songs' is a set of three classic jigs, with the humorous and lilting lyrics associated with infant dandling songs. The legendary blind harper and troubadour Turlough O'Carolan wrote the third jig. Although the author of the lyrics is unknown, the name of the tune is said to honour the young boy who would open the gate when O'Carolan was visiting his sweetheart, Bridget Cruise! KILA-Dublin-based Kila are a large and playful musical outfit based around the three brothers Ó Snodaidh: Rossa, Rónán and Colm. They mix funky beats and artful percussion, classic psychedelic rock sounds and singer Rónán's guttural Gaelic rap vocals with the fiddles and uillean pipes of traditional Irish music. The result is music of epic scope and maximum danceability. The band has earned legions of rabid 'Dead-head-style fans around the world - over the last few years they have played in twenty-five countries on four continents (including four WOMAD festivals), and have seen their albums achieve gold and platinum sales status in Ireland. MERCEDES PEÓN - Mercedes Peón hails from Galicia, where she is part of a generation of feisty young women who are driving Spanish Celtic music in exciting new directions. Her vocal prowess is impressive and expressive: on one song she gently croons a lullaby, while on the next her raptor-like shriek pierces the air and stands your hair on end. Although she blends electronics into her mix, her love for the deep traditions of Galician vocal music is evident in the careful way she captures the sound, spirit and essence of the great female vocalists who have come before. CAPERCAILLIE-Over the past two decades, Capercaillie has woven an intricate blend of traditional Scottish melodies on fiddles, whistles, pipes, accordion and bouzouki, and popular music with touches of African, Latin and Arabic rhythms. Add the exquisite vocals of Karen Matheson and, boom, it is a sound that has captivated audiences worldwide. In recent years the band seems to be popping up everywhere. There was the soundtrack to Rob Roy, the collaboration with Equatorial Guinea's 'Hijas Del Sol' ('Daughters Of The Sun'), and even the first Gaelic single to hit the Top 40 in the UK. Matheson began singing by listening to her grandmother, a singer from the island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides. That is where she learned the puirt-a-beuls (Celtic mouth music) and 'waulking songs' (music sung traditionally to the beating of wool cloth into felt). Her vocal range is simply remarkable- as is her list of loyal fans, who include 007 himself, Sean Connery. NATALIE MacMASTER-Celtic's musical roots extend on both sides of the Atlantic. On Cape Breton Island (Nova Scotia, Canada), half of the population is of Scottish ancestry, and one of that province's greatest stars is Natalie MacMaster, who has been wowing audiences with her incendiary fiddle playing and step dancing since she was a child. Natalie first picked up the instrument at the age of 9, and began performing publicly when she was a teenager. Since then, her tours have taken her from Alaska to Antarctica. Her skills are always in demand, and she has performed with international talents as diverse as The Chieftains, Alison Krauss, Paul Simon, Carlos Santana and Luciano Pavarotti. SKOLVAN - The title of this song, 'Bal Plinn Du Vertige' ('The Vertigo Plinn Ball'), refers to the imagined wooziness of dancing a spirited plinn high on the ramparts of a central Breton chateau. One can only imagine why! In this tune we hear the original Skolvan line-up of Youenn Le Bihan (a brilliant player of all kinds of pipes), Gilles le Bigot (guitarist and sometimes member of Kornog), Fañch Landreau and Yann-Fañch Perroches. The album Swing And Tears was awarded the critics' choice for Album of the Year by both Trad magazine in France and the UK's fRoots in 1994. OLD BLIND DOGS - Contrary to what this band's name suggests (elderly, optically challenged musicians), the Old Blind Dogs are in fact a dynamic group of young Scots at the heart of the modern Celtic revival. Their trademark sound is centred around the gritty fiddling of founding member Jonny Hardy and Jim Malcolm's moving vocals. In 2004, Malcolm was named Songwriter of the Year at the 2004 Scots Traditional Music Awards. The line- up also includes Rory Campbell (small pipes), Aaron Jones (bouzouki, guitar, bass) and Fraser Stone (percussion). The group is rooted in Aberdeenshire on Scotland's northeast coast, a region rich in folk songs and fiddle traditions. 'Monymusk Lads' is a traditional night-visiting song. KORNOG-Kornog has been creating exemplary Breton Celtic music since 1980. Two things set this band apart from the pack: the band was created by ex-Battlefield Band singer and bouzouki player Jamie McMenemy, who brings his uniquely Scottish influence; and the group has always focused in large part on mid-tempo tunes and ballads not intended for dancing, in contrast to most Breton music, whether it is played by smaller ensembles like Skolvan or huge fest-noz bombarde, binou, large-pipe and drum bands. That said, the lively plinn (a traditional dance from Brittany) here is in fact a dance tune. Kornog is the Breton word for 'west', and this piece comes from the anagrammatically titled album Korong, named for the river that runs through Brittany. LLAN DE CUBEL-Launched in 1984, Llan de Cubel is one of the leading exponents of traditional Asturian folk music (a Celtic region neighbouring Galicia in northern Spain). The band's songs are predominantly acoustic, with bagpipes, fiddle, wooden flute, Asturian drums, accordion, acoustic guitar and bouzouki. The group has carried out extensive research into the ancient folk music of Asturia, through both field research and archival work. These form the basis of their repertoire, which includes alboraes (dawn) tunes), marches, religious music, vaqueiraes (mountain songs) and villancicos (carols). CELTIC FIDDLE FESTIVAL -The liner notes to Celtic Fiddle Festival's ground- breaking album Rendezvous begin: 'A Scotsman, an Irishman, and a Frenchman walked into a bar...' There isn't a punchline about the trio's sexual exploits. That trip to a pub, in fact, led to a brilliant collaboration between three talented fiddlers: Kevin Burke (Ireland), the late Johnny Cunningham (Scotland) and Christian LeMaître (France, also of the group Kornog). Celtic Fiddle Festival seamlessly bring together the regional folk repertoires of three lands, and unite them with magnificent precision to create a pan-Celtic, border-defying tour de force. 'Laridé/Gavotte' is a fast-paced Breton dance from Pontivy. BOHOLA-Bohola is a wonderful Irish traditional group from Chicago. Led by accordionist Jimmy Keane, the band displays a particular talent for creating challenging and unlikely sets that stray outside of the common 'all- jigs' or 'all-reels' mould. A typical Bohola set may start with an air or slow reel followed by a ballad, then morph into a hornpipe and finish with a jig. This short song is pure nostalgia for the simple life of 'old' Ireland, a place that knew nothing of today's digital infrastructures and new money. It's worth seeing a Bohola show for Keene's acerbic wit and the band's between- song banter alone! TEADA - Téada (the word means 'strings' in Irish Gaelic) is a young band of musicians who have quickly established themselves as leaders in the traditional Irish session scene. Bandleader Oisín Mac Diamarda learned his fiddling in County Clare and in Sligo, integrating the best of both traditions into his deft and lyrical style of playing. He also holds an honours degree in Music Education. The group has received multiple nominations and awards from Irish Music Magazine and keeps a busy touring schedule NIAMH PARSONS-When Ireland's Niamh Parsons sings, her captivating voice demands immediate and rapt attention. As a balladeer, she is in very select company, enjoying frequent comparisons with June Tabor and Dolores Keane. This traditional-style song, written by Joseph Campbell (1879-1944), is a more recent addition to the Irish ballad repertoire. Although she is spectacular when her voice is given sparse accompaniment, one should also explore Parsons' work with her band The Loose Connections. Her duet version of Tom Waits' 'The Briar And The Rose', featuring Fran McPhail, is simply not to be missed. FFYNNON-Ffynnon is one of the leading exponents of Welsh Celtic music. Drawing upon research into Welsh music as far back as the seventeenth century, this haunting trio fuses ancient with modern in their stark arrangements (accordion, keyboard, guitar, bodhrán) and a touch of jazz. 'The musical tradition in Wales is extremely robust,' they explain. 'After all, this is the "Land of Song" and that's a label which developed during the religious period, when the Welsh realized that they could beat the English at major singing competitions in London, and in the mid-1870s there were 40,000 singers (mostly choral) competing at the Llanelli National Eisteddfod [National Arts Competition]!" ALAN STIVELL- Alan Stivell was born Alan Cochevelou in 1944, in Gourin, Brittany. His interest in Celtic music was sparked when his father. reconstructed an ancient Celtic harp in 1953. As a teenager, he began learning the Breton language, and also several traditional instruments from the region, including the bombarde (a double-reeded wind instrument) and the Breton bagpipes. By the mid-1960s, he began experimenting with modern music. His recordings became mega-hits: for example, a live recording at the Olympia in Paris in 1972 with Breton compatriots Dan Ar Braz and Gabriel Yacoub sold 1.5 million copies. As the folk revival began to fade in the late 1970s, Stivell moved more towards electronic music. 'Cease Fire' is from his album Brian Boru, which was dedicated to the legendary Irish chieftain who defeated the Vikings. THE POOZIES -The Poozies are an ever-evolving pan-Celtic outfit originally formed by two electro-harpists, Patsy Seddon and Mary McMaster (aka Sileas), along with vocalist Sally Barker. For a short while, the group also boasted the voice of folk megastar Kate Rusby. The current line-up includes Seddon and McMaster with accordion player Karen Tweed and fiddler Eilidh Shaw, all of whom are busy with various solo and side-projects. The Poozies: are known for glorious vocal harmonies, a widely varied repertoire (which includes music from across Europe) and a free-spirited approach to arranging. FLOOK-Flook burst on to the scene in 1999 with a stellar debut album called Rubai, featuring an unlikely pair of lead instruments: two flutes. The award- winning Anglo-Irish quartet (from Manchester, England) is known for spontaneous and energetic live sets in which band members shift effortlessly between guitar, mandolin, bouzouki, accordion and bodhrán, and audiences always end up on their feet. In particular, band founder Sally Allen is renowned for her jaw-dropping stamina and agility in concert. SHOOGLENIFTY- Scotland's visionary Shooglenifty has created a genre of a electronica-inspired acoustic music that stands alone. The self-proclaimed 'acid-crofters' are musical alchemists who take as much influence from electronica and progressive rock as they do from traditional Celtic music. What a heady blend it is: hypnotizing rhythmic underpinnings, brilliantly subtle thematic segues, and stellar playing by all. There's nothing like a Shooglenifty show to turn even the most inveterate wallflower into a sweaty, grinning, whirling dervish on the dancefloor. The track 'Glenuig Hall' comes from the band's fourth studio album, The Arms Dealer's Daughter. Philly Markowitz is a broadcaster whose world-music programme Roots and Wings has been heard across Canada on CBC Radio since 1992 (http://cbc.ca/rootsandwings). She is also a print journalist, concert promoter, event emcee, DJ and songwriter. Philly lives beside the Saugeen River in Grey County, Ontario, with her husband and their two free-range kids. Dan Rosenberg has crisscrossed the globe in search of regional folk music traditions. To date, he has been to more than forty countries, and has lugged back an eclectic collection of recordings and musical instruments to Toronto, Canada, where he works as a journalist for fRoots, the Rough Guides, Outpost and Afropop Worldwide Radio. The Rough Guide To Celtic Music Over the years rough fragments of ancient Irish stories and melodies have been polished into brilliant gemstones of song by a small group of dedicated musicians, and today virtually the entire body of Irish song has been collected, annotated and published. Most famous of all collectors was Thomas Moore (1779- 1852), who wrote hundreds of poems and set them to mostly Irish melodies. Yet it was left to George Petrie (1789-1866) to discover in 1855 the most famous of all Irish melodies: The Londonderry air. This has been set by a host of poets, the best known version being Danny Boy. Petrie's collections were augmented by several large volumes by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852- 1924), professor of composition at the Royal College of Music from 1887 until his death. His work was thought to be the last word on the subject. Smaller collections were published by Nathaniel Clifford Page (b. 1866), Robert Dwyer Joyce (1830- 1883), and Timothy D. Sullivan (1827-1914). James Lynam Molloy (1837-1909) both collected and composed, his most famous original
works being Love's old sweet song, The Kerry dance, and Bantry Bay. The earliest dateable Irish melody is I am a girl from beside the River Stur (c. 1580), best known today as the tune of The croppy boy. Up until 1840, the proportion of anonymous Irish melody was always greater than that attributed with certainty to professional composers. Ireland's first composer of truly international stature was probably John Field (1782-1837). A pupil of Giordani and Clementi, Field invented the Nocturne. Field had no direct successor, but the next generation provided Michael William Balfe (1808-1870), a man of comparable reputation and popularity whose operas were a huge success in Italy, France and England; The Bohemian girl (1843) could be heard everywhere from San Francisco to St. Petersburg. However, so strong was social prejudice against opera in English that it might have been better for Balfe had this work had an Italian text! A contemporary of Balfe was William Vincent Wallace (1812- 1865), composer of Maritana(1845). These two operas, along with Benedict's The Lily of Killarney, were long known as "The English 'Ring"". At this time Ireland west of the Shannon was so remote as to seem almost another country. From here came the collector Patrick Weston Joyce (1827-1914), who produced an edition of 843 songs, while the Country Clare circus clown Johnny Patterson (c. 1840-1899) was thrilling audiences with The garden where the praties grow, and The ould turf fire, both his own original compositions, words and music. Best known for western subjects was Percy French (c. 1854-1920), who will always be remembered for Phil the fluter's ball. The area which now constitutes Northern Ireland became famous for the music of Sir Hamilton Harty (1879-1941), composer, and longtime conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester. Helen Selina Sheridan (1807-67), a daughter of the playwright, (on marriage, Baroness of Dufferin), became famous for the words of The Irish emigrant, and Terence's farewell to Kathleen (both 1846). The most important Belfastman represented here is the collector Herbert Hughes (1882-1937), whose four large volumes were published by Boosey between 1909 and 1936; he is heard as an accompanist on this record. A man of very special status was Samuel Lover (1797-1860); here was the Irish equivalent of Francis Bacon - the complete man. He combined the careers of singer, poet, composer, conductor, impresario (of vast schemes and productions) and finally, after his sight disappeared, loveable raconteur. His best known works are Molly Bawn, which is an aria from his opera Il Paddy Wack in Italia, and The low back'd car. Perhaps the best known personality amongst Irish singing actresses is Barbara Mullen (1914-1979), still affectionately remembered for her portrayal on television of the housekeeper Janet McPherson in the long-running and acclaimed drama series Dr. Finlay's Casebook. However, she had long before made her mark as soprano, dancer and romantic female lead on both stage and screen. Her first rise to prominence came in the film Jeannine of 1942. Her earnest and sweet-natured temperament are here reflected in a most distinguished group of Irish poems and melodies. The singing combines verbal naturalness with comfortable vocal placement. During the inter-war years two Irish baritones were thrust into world prominence. James McCafferty was the protégé of Herbert Hughes, and the older man taught him how to discover the true heart of a song, giving him a complete understanding of the balance between words and music. McCafferty enjoyed a wide success both on record and concert hall, as did his great contemporary, Robert Irwin (b. 1900). Following his US début on 14 March 1937 in New York, Irwin became in demand all over the world for his cultivated yet spontaneous personality, and superb lyric voice. The two very different songs presented here are instructive. The Palatine's daughter shows how to sing a humorous Irish song. Quilter's Go, lovely rose on the other hand is a superbly fluent and moving interpretation of this deeply-felt romantic ballad. The most distinguished Irish soprano of all was Margaret Burke Sheridan (1889-1958). Born in Castlebar, Co. Mayo she studied in London and Italy with Alfredo Martino, making her début during 1918 in Rome singing in La Bohème. A great favourite of Toscanini and Puccini she sang at La Scala, Covent Garden, and the Teatro San Carlo, Naples. Her beautiful personality shines through a truly massive voice and a technique which was surpassed by few other dramatic sopranos, yet there always remains a gentleness which often leaves a male listener wishing that she were his sister. She is a dearly loved artist. The other soprano in this compilation is the pleasing Delia Murphy (b. 1903), wife of the Irish ambassador to Britain. She is remembered principally for the fine series of songs she recorded for HMV in the late 1930s. The tenor Cavan O'Connor-at the time of writing happily still with us, well past his ninetieth year - was an unashamedly popular artist who sang in concert halls, pubs and clubs. He recorded extensively, and the example included here makes it easy for us to understand why he was so well-liked: grace, charm and lightness of style. The Irish-American baritone Dennis O'Sullivan enjoyed global fame during his lifetime. Born in San Francisco in 1868, he had a glittering career. After studying with Vannuccini in Florence and Sir Charles Santley (1834-1922) in London, he made his début there on 6 March 1895. On 2 March 1896 he sang in Stanford's opera Shamus O'Brien at the Opéra-Comique in London. O'Sullivan was also a straight actor, performing the plays of Boucicault. Tragically, O'Sullivan died in Colombus, Ohio in 1908 at the age of 40. The bass-baritone Patrick Colbert was born in Waterford in 1897 (died London, 1971). He made his début at an early age with the O'Mara Opera Company. Moving to England, he joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, toured the USA and Canada with them in 1927, and left them shortly thereafter. Colbert was subsequently a member of the Carl Rosa Opera Company. Sir Compton Mackenzie admired him greatly. Phil the flutter's ball was the song most closely associated with Patrick Colbert, and he used it as a sort of signature tune. As can be heard here, it is a wonderful vehicle for displaying his sonorous dark timbre and impeccable diction. Phil the fluter's ball is the true story of a penniless man who decided to face his poverty by throwing one last dance in his barn. The barn still exists, and is a tourist attraction today, particularly as its dimensions are no larger than an average modern living room. William F. Watt, born in Waterford c. 1895, is known almost exclusively today from his recordings, which were made for Panachord, Columbia and Irish HMV between 1923 and at least 1932. He is here heard in a very pleasant rendition of Moore's almost mystical No, not more welcome. Denis O'Neil, however, had a career of some 35 years, making his records for Gramophone and Typewriter, Panachord, and for Edison Bell. Another well-known tenor represented here is Thomas Aspinall Burke (Tom Burke). Born in Leigh, Lancashire (of Irish descent) he was first employed as a coal miner, before it was discovered that he had a voice. He studied at the Manchester College of Music & the R.A.M. in London before going to Italy to study under Ernesto Colli and Fernando de Lucia, the great Neapolitan tenor. His début was at the Dal Verme in Milan in 1919 as the Duke in Rigoletto. This was followed by seasons at Covent Garden 1919, and 1927-1928. Puccini said of him "I have never heard my music sung so beautifully". Tom Burke (1890-1969) sang in the first English performances of Gianni Schicchiand Il tabarro. The Minstrel Boy was his encore, and that is why it is included here. In that rousing old warhorse Excelsior! Burke is partnered by the fine baritone Foster Richardson. An early star in the firmament of great Irish singers was the famous baritone J.C. Doyle, of whom James Joyce wrote in Ulysses that he would be hearing that night "J.C. Doyle. The best". The novel is set in Dublin on 16 June 1904, "Bloomsday". Doyle was a veteran of the recording industry, and his records are avidly collected. Another artist of the highest international reputation was Harry Plunket Greene (1865-1936), a baritone (sometimes listed as bass baritone) who once heard can never be mistaken. Born at Old Connaught House, County Wicklow, he was only 17 when he went to Stuttgart to study with Hromada, travelling a year later to Florence for further tuition with Vannuccini. After his Covent Garden début in 1890, he soon went on to create many Parry works, also The Dream of Gerontius (1900). He married Sir Hubert Parry's daughter Gwendolen, and then alternated his career between England and the USA. Noted for his fine enunciation, he made a great impression overall. Greene opens with Off to Philadelphia, which must surely rank as one of the most deeply tragic songs in the English language. It was arranged for Greene in 1889 by Walter Battison Haynes, at the special request of Arthur Boosey. There follows The garden where the praties grow, a song much associated with McCormack; in this interpretation the song's unpretentious charm is just as much in evidence, but it is evinced in a rather different way. We conclude this anthology, and Greene's contribution to it, with Poor old horse, his most famous recording and an unashamed tear-jerker if ever there was one. STEPHEN O'CONNOR It would be expected that a program of Irish music would fill the spacious cavern of Carnegie Hall on the night of St. Patrick's Day, after a parade up the gusty lengths of Fifth Avenue. And it would also be expected that a pretty girl would add to the attraction, the Irish eye being what it is. But Carmel Quinn's appearance there on that night in 1955 caused such a crowd and a crush of Irish and non-Irish alike that there was almost a brannigan amongst those who could not get in. Along with all this, her first collection of recorded songs was just out, and reaching astonishing sales peaks, dropping only slightly after the holiday and keeping up an unusual pace all year. None of this was surprising to the fans who had followed Carmel Quinn's career on the Arthur Godfrey program and on records, and it is in response to their fervent demands that this second collection of Irish songs is being released.
It would probably be enough to say that Carmel Quinn is Irish, and let her peculiar and lasting charm go at that, but it goes deeper, too. After all, other lassies have tilted their heads and provided periods of song, but what sets Carmel apart is a voice of uncommon appeal and warmth, and her uncanny selection of material. Only occasionally does she sing an Irish "standard"; rather, she sings the lesser-known and in many cases more beautiful ballads that she has brought with her from Ireland. Often she has had to search deeply into publishers' stock for sheet music to songs she wishes to present, and often she has scoured New York City and other American centers for copies of music that is fresh, unhackneyed and altogether delightful. Naturally, when she sings the unfamiliar music so charmingly, her audiences ask her to sing their old favorites, and naturally she complies, in- vesting them with her own personal ap- proach. But she is happiest introducing less well-known ballads from the Ould Sod, and it is her evident pleasure in her singing that helps to make it so engaging. The natural poetry of Irish speech is intensified in these songs, and enhanced by the alternately mournful and merry moods of the music. As the Irish are fond of pointing out, some of the greatest masters of the English language-Sheridan, Wilde, Yeats, It would be expected Irish music would fill the Carnegie Hall on the Day, after a parade up Joyce, Shaw-have had strong currents of Gaelic blood running in their veins, and the rhythms and cadences of Gaelic itself flows over into whatever an Irishman writes or says. The celebrated emerald green of the countryside itself, with its lights and shadows, seems almost to color the music, and one must not forget the wide collection of other-worldly creatures that inhabit Irish legend, not only the little men but the great heroic giants and the lovely Irish heroines. With so vivid a folklore, it becomes impossible to draw the line between the creations of yesterday and those of today, and the result is a richer and more fascinating treasury of song. Since her arrival in this country only a little more than a year ago, Carmel Quinn has brought us many of those wonderful songs. Of those she sings in this collection only a very few will be familiar, but all of them deserve to be heard more often. Any- one whose knowledge of Irish song is limited for the most part to "Mother Machree" is in for a handsome surprise, and those who have avoided many similar songs because of bleating tenors will find in Miss Quinn's voice an instrument fit to sing with the harps of the minstrels. Born in Dublin, Carmel Quinn had a musical background, engendered by her father, an excellent violinist. Upon completion of her early schooling, she entered college with the intention of becoming a teacher, but soon thereafter took a chance on an audition for singers at the Dublin Theatre Royal. She won a week's engagement, and went from there to the Crystal Ballroom, for two months. Another audition won her a permanent spot singing with Johnny Devlin's Orchestra, and other orchestra and theatrical engagements followed. At length she went to London and made her radio debut over the BBC. In March of 1954, she crossed the ocean" to America, and a few months later-on October 18-she appeared on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts program, making a simultaneous debut on radio and television. She won handily, moved into the Godfrey troupe, and swiftly became one of the best- loved new stars of recent years. In this pro- gram, her shining talents are admirably demonstrated in the kind of songs she loves best, and the result is an endearing addition to the shelf of melodious Irish music. The set list of songs. The Old Rustic Bridge by the Mill Johnny Gray Loch Lomond Asthoreen Bawn The Magic Piper Down by the Glenside Handsome Johnny Flynn The Claddagh Ring Ballyhoe The Old Boreen (Kate Muldoon) Bright Silvery Light of the Moon The Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow Aghadoe sheet music and tin whistle notes. Recorded by Liam Clancy. Key of G.  Now We Are Free Easy Piano Sheet Music with letter notes for flute / recorder from Gladiator.    |
Martin DardisIrish folk song lyrics, chords and a whole lot more Archives
March 2025
Categories |
RSS Feed
