Those of you who are English and of a certain age will understand me instinctively when I mention ‘Singing Together’. It was a regular BBC broadcast for schools during the 1950s. Those of us brought up on it can, at the drop of a hat, sing word perfect such classic English folksongs as ‘The British Grenadiers’, ‘The Keel Row’, The Keeper Did A’Hunting Go’, ‘Dashing Away With The Smoothing Iron’ and this one - ’Golden Slumbers’ - sung to us at Infant School in the early afternoon as we were got tucked up for our afternoon sleep - and the teachers’ tea break.
Here it is sung by the Cambridge Singers conducted by John Rutter.
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This song was written by the Irish singer, Sinead Lohan, and recorded by her on her album ‘No Mermaid’. She sings it there with her characteristic dreamy innocence and charm. Unfortunately the album is infected with the virus of an overactive producer who seems to have insisted on adding extraneous effects to the musical background and filtering the sound through a coke-lined sieve. For a few hearings this is exhilarating but thereafter starts to tire the ear. Here is the song sung straight, and very good it is. It is performed by the American country group, Nickel Creek.
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Posted in Folk Music on Oct 6th, 2008 No Comments »
I posted earlier (Kilkelly) about separation and the effects of emigration, on those left behind. Here is a song on a similar theme but from the other standpoint. The widespread practice among the peasantry of dividing the land equally among the sons ensured that they could not all survive on the fragments handed down to them. Some had to seek work elsewhere. Before mass emigration to America, the main option was soldiering.
“When he sleeps he dreams he’s a farmer again, but now he’s a man of war.”
Here it is by the Albion Band, from a live concert. I don’t know where or when but within the last ten years.
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Posted in Folk Music on Sep 25th, 2008 No Comments »
This is a traditional Scottish love song, here sung by Sinead O’Connor, live, from a broadcast concert in February 2003. The song is sung from the male point of view, Sinead sings it straight, in both senses of the term. She does not pretend to give it a fashionable gay allusion. It’s a man’s song and she sings it as such.
Her voice is far from perfect. It is breathy and limited in range. There are times when it seems close to the end of its tether, but she keeps control of it. Its hard edge is still there at higher volume. For the most part it is whispered, her lips close up against the microphone. And she manages to invest it with an intimacy that other versions miss. It’s not a declaration of love more a man pleading and helpless in the pain of a love that is beyond his power to control.
“I wish I was in some deep valley, where womankind cannot be found, where little birds sing on their branches every morning a different song.”
O’Connor captures better than anyone else the abject helplessness of a man’s love, his own fascination with the object of it, and the agony of his doubt about its being returned.
It is unforgettable.
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Posted in Folk Music, Rock on Aug 25th, 2008 No Comments »
An intense, insistent and hypnotic version of this tragic and vicious ballad from Fairport Convention. The late Sandy Denny’s deadpan vocal suits it perfectly. Dave Swarbrick on banshee wailing violin, Richard Thompson’s guitar crackling with electricity.
“I’d rather a kiss from dead Matty’s lips than you with your finery” before being skewered to the wall.
The coda is a long instrumental, an improvised duet between Swarbrick and Thompson, a tribute to their close musical relationship in the band, cranking up the tension.
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Posted in Folk Music on Aug 15th, 2008 2 Comments »
I’m not sure if this is a Scottish or an Irish song (I’m inclined to thinking it Scots) but this is a superb version by the Black Family. Mary Black takes the lead vocal, but the effect is in the chorus when they all join in. It’s a universal song about what we all know - that new love is always sweeter than true love.
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Posted in Folk Music on Aug 13th, 2008 No Comments »
For me this is one of the most dramatic and tragic songs ever recorded by The Corries. It never fails to move me. In part it is because of the simple direct singing of the late Roy Williamson but in part too by the dramatic colour given by the instruments played by Roy and Ronnie Browne. These are Combolins, hybrid instruments, designed and made by Roy Williamson himself. The two instruments aren’t the same - the one played by Roy comprises guitar strings and some thirteen extra strings which act as a drone. Ronnie’s instrument is a combination of mandolin and guitar with an additional four bass strings.
The song is an ancient Scottish ballad about love and vengeance. I have written a fuller appreciation of the song here.
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Posted in Folk Music on Aug 8th, 2008 No Comments »
Leezie Lindsay, part traditional Scottish song, part Robert Burns, was put to new use by Eddi Reader in her 2007 album ‘Peacetime’. For her version she kept the Burns chorus and added new verses written by herself and Boo Hewerdine. What was originally a song about Leezie Lindsay being wooed by the Laird MacDonald now becomes a song of longing – to be out of the city and in the Highlands with her. The city is in the verse – its noise, cars, and lights that extinguish the stars, where you “can’t hear the birds when they’re singing” and the “river is losing its voice”. In the last verse with Leezie, in the Highlands where she is, is love and a truer home.
A touching song from a lovely album.
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Posted in Folk Music on Aug 5th, 2008 3 Comments »
Wisewebwoman’s recent moving post about emigration and feelings of rejection has prompted thoughts of exile. So I’m posting this heartbreaking song, written from letters a father sent to his son emigrated to America and whom he never saw again.
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Posted in Folk Music on Jul 27th, 2008 2 Comments »
When I first went to University in 1964, I immediately joined the “Ballad and Blues” Club. It was actually a folk club, but the title was I suppose, meant to show wider sympathies. There I got to see Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, Guy Carawan, the Liverpool Spinners (rather good but somewhat disdained later for their commercialism), the Clancy Brothers and more. Tony Rose was a stalwart of the club at the time.
One of the popular songs at the time was the Irish song “The Holy Ground”. This usually came in after “The Whiskey in the Jar” or some other roaring song, to lower the temperature. Like all the best Irish songs, it’s about longing for home - always the exile’s holy ground - here through the eyes of a girl longing for her lover to return from sea.
Here’s Mary Black singing it.
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