Canada and the States have developed their own indigenous body of tunes based on Irish and Scottish traditional music.There are also regional styles of playing in both these former colonies.
Is there an equivalent bunch of tunes in Australia an New Zealand?
As far as Australia is concerned, the short answer is "yes", with many dance tunes developed from the traditional music of Europe. However, many of these "Australianised" tunes disappeared from popular culture as social customs changed during the 20th Century.
A good starting point for information about Australian traditional dance tunes is the website of the Wongawilli Colonial Dance Club Inc., a group with a particular passion for the wide spectrum of Australia's folk music heritage. http://www.wongawillicolonialdance.org.au/
To quote from one of their publications:
"Many of the folk dances which appeared in Australia had their traditional tunes and characteristic rhythms. In the earliest days of European settlement social dance music was provided by regimental bands and at less formal functions by a fiddler, perhaps accompanied by whistles, fifes or flutes.
The large influx of migrants from 1851 due to the 'gold rushes' provided further musical traditions to enrich the dance music. Military bands, brass bands, the German Band and string bands were immensely popular for formal city balls and functions.
Bush communities were different with the dance musicians usually without any formal musical training. However, tunes were often learnt from music played by visiting town bands or other locals who played from printed sheet music. These musicians who played by ear had a mixed repertoire with a core of British and European folk tunes, and snippets of popular music from travelling shows and music halls.
The inherent characteristics and special rhythms and tempos for particular dances were generally accurately handed down but the melody passed on aurally tended to change and develop.
The basic instruments used were button accordion, anglo-concertina, fiddle, tin whistle, harmonica and whenever available a piano. The piano was common in pubs, public halls, schools as well as homes.
The folk revival of the late 1950s began with the aims of reviving the music and instruments of the past. However as time has passed the repertoire and instruments of the new 'bush bands' have generally followed an Anglo-Celtic style with an obsession for revived British and Irish music which is inconsistent with Australia's past folklore influences from many nations."
Thanks GraemeO. that is a great staring place.
In the listing of instruments in the quote you supplied , banjo and mandolin and their akward offspring banjo-mandolin are not mentioned. When looking through Ebay listings there are always a few banjo-mandolins with Australian listings. Were they commonly used
in "Bush Bands" or other folk bands?
I have a small abc collection of Australian tunes - I can't remember where I downloaded it from. A significant part of it is made up of waltzes and polkas, with other European dance forms such as mazurka, varsoviana and schottische - many of these are attributed to known Australian composers. There are also a few tunes called 'set tunes', either in jig or polka time - presumably used to accompany some descendant of Irish set dancing.
I suspect the banjo-mandolins came from early 20C.
However there are a few Australian songs referencing banjo, notably the Drover's Dream which mentions "the violin, the banjo and the bones", from the late 1800s I suppose.
My uncle who was a telephone engineer in the 1940s and 1950s often reminisced about a certain country pub west of Geelong where there was a piano and a "lagerphone" (stick covered in bottletops) for use of patrons and they would have many a jolly session into the wee hours.
But overall, I suspect Australian communities were mostly too mobile (socially and geographically) , too recent, and not isolated enough, to really develop and keep distinctive styles developed from Anglo-Celtic music beyond WW2. There is no real equivalent of the Appalachians or Cape Breton in Australia.
I was often told about this one or that one of the relatives from my grandparents' and great-grandparents' generation who was a great fiddler, but not a one in my parents' (b.1920s) generation.
I'd wondered if Perth or Tasmania might have been isolated and stable enough to generatea distinctive local style.
In Newfoundland the 'lagerphone' is called the 'ugly stick'
I loved Stockton's Wing version of it when I was very young, don't think I've heard it in years though. Hope it's still as nice a piece of music as I remember it being.
There are local styles of music of course, but not a big tradition of distinctively Australian fiddle tunes descended from Irish and/or Scottish and pre-dating the 50s folk revival that would be the equivalent of what you can find in Canada and the USA.
I grew up in a largely Irish-Australian rural area, and there were house parties, plenty of music, but it was bloke with the green sash singing "Danny Boy", the uncle standing on the verandah at the barbecue with his hands in his pockets singing "Galway Bay" in a big baritone, the neighbour with the accordion playing "Botany Bay" or "Macnamara's Band", dad singing the Wild Colonial Boy or The Freehold on the Plain, a few of the old blokes had recitations as their party piece, that was more common than songs really. It was great, especially when I realised that relatively few fellow Australians had a childhood like that, but there was no special set of fiddle tunes or dance tunes I can recall, and no style of playing I can recall where you'd hear a player and go "ah, Australian"
There's loads of stuff produced since the 1950s of course but heavily influenced by new recordings from the UK/Irish/US folk revival. I think McMandolin was looking for something deeper-rooted than that.
There's a fine old book by John Meredith and Hugh Anderson called Folk Songs of Australia (Ure Smith Sydney, 3rd impression 1967; isbn 0 7254 0476 0). John went around the bush gathering songs and tunes from older people during the 50s and 60s. Many of the tunes will be familiar to people at the Session as old standards from Ireland Scotland and England, but there are different settings and some unique tunes too. The songs obviously tend to be very Australian in character. The book also has a wealth of photos and anecdotes. Not sure if it is still available.
John's field recordings are held by the National Library of Australia, and in 2001 the library released a double cd with selected recordings on it called "Sharing The Harvest". You can probably still order it off the net.
I came across the Merideth/Anderson collection in a used book store. It was one of the things that started me wondering about Australian trad music.The songs are great but I'm awfully fond of tunes.
Graemeo link http://www.wongawillicolonialdance.org.au/ has 35 or so tunes to play with. This will be fun .
"The Little Burnt Potato" is such a popular tune around here that I'd assumed it was Canadian.
The longer answer to McMandolin's original question appears to be that the Irish influence on 19th and early 20th Century Australian dance music was subtle rather than direct, while the modern folk revival has resulted in a new wave of Irish and Scottish tunes arriving here relatively recently. These new arrivals have made themselves at home so readily that they are often mistakenly thought to be part of the 19th Century Australian tradition, and to a large extent they have replaced it.
According to notes in "Australian Traditional Dance Tunes" (produced by the Wongawilli Colonial Dance Club that I referred to near the top of this thread) the dominant dance music in the 19th Century was played for European ballroom dances (as it probably was also in Ireland at the time). To quote:
"From the time of earliest settlement (1788) the older country dances were rapidly replaced by new dance fashions constantly arriving in the colony and adopted by all classes of society. As early as 1820, the waltz and quadrille had been established alongside these country dances, jigs and reels. By the 1850s the scene was dominated by further quadrilles such as the Lancers, Caledonians and Parisian, with the Alberts, Fitzroy, Waltz Cotillion and others to follow. Also fashionable were the Waltz, Galop, Schottische, Polka Mazurka and Varsoviana."
Irish musicians were plentiful in Australia by the mid to late 19th Century, but they too were mainly playing (and composing, or adapting) tunes for ballroom dances, although they probably played other tunes at home and in family gatherings. Apparently, the most common Irish music heard by the general public was sentimental songs and airs, rather than jigs and reels (which seems to fit with Bren's experience, many years later). In earlier times, immigration to Australia was an irrevocable step for most immigrants, many of whom left a lot of their culture behind and were determined to fit into the new society they were joining. Modernity and newness were all the rage, rather than nostalgia for the past. It is likely that few immigrants ever expected to be able (or to want) to return "home".
The modern Australian folk and bush band "revival" (mostly city-based) is not really a true revival. It has become intertwined with the adoption of a lot of freshly imported tunes from the English and Irish folk revival, as Bren noted above. There is little continuity between what is played by many modern bush bands and what was played by country dance bands a hundred years ago or more. Many newly imported Aglo/Celtic tunes have been adopted in the mistaken belief that they are part of Australia's musical past.
Meanwhile, as noted by Ger the Rigger some of the dance music from the 19th and early 20th Century is stored in archives in the National Library of Australia, collected and preserved by a few enthusiasts who travelled the country recording what they could still find. Some of today's musicians are interested in this part of our heritage, so some of the tunes are being dusted off and are making their way back into circulation, and some new tunes are written in the older style.
McMandolin asked whether Perth might be isolated enough to have developed a distinctive music style. Not as far as I am aware. Ever since European settlement the Perth region has experienced periods of rapid population growth through immigration (both from overseas and from within Australia), so that at any one time a large part of the population was born elsewhere. This sort of population dynamic, along with enthusiasm for the "new", doesn't seem to have provided the stability needed for a regional style to become established.
As was mentioned before - we are still fairly new - I'm sure in another 300 years we will have more music that can be recognised as 'Australian style' - especially as the tune scene is getting stronger and stronger. Its true that America has a really flavour to playing that you can spot a mile away - like for example - Liz Carrol.
Also there are a fair number of trad players composing really fantastic tunes here, so I'm sure that will contribute to the sound.
Was McMandolin talking about Australian tunes like Wongawilli - or was he talking more about Irish trad being played with a local flavour - like in Newfoundland?
As for Cape Breton - even though it is unique - you can hear the scottishness in the music - you would never mistake if for Irish.
You can't look past Adrian Barker and Ben Stephenson's exploration of this with their CD 'Undertones' which came out of them doing research in the National Library of Australia's recordings section.
<paste>
IRISH MUSIC FROM AUSTRALIA
Something like the initial idea for this album came up in the bar of a backpackers hostel in York. England. in 2002. At the time we were both living in Ireland. Ben in Galway and Ado in Ennis- and we were reflecting on the always slightly strange situation of being Australians who. with no immediate family connections to Ireland. had nonetheless been drawn to Irish traditional music. In Ireland it was, unsurprisingly. sometimes a bit of an oddity for the locals to find an Aussie playing tunes. For our part. we were each struck by the recognition. which had somehow never been so clear before. That our understanding of the music we love to play is indelibly marked by having done most of our hard graft of learning not in Ireland but in Australia. Talking about all this over a few pints. we started to wonder a bit more about the roots of Irish music in Australia beyond our own relatively recent experience.
All that serious talk and reflection was buried under a pile of tunes for another couple of years, before we learned of the National Folk Fellowship. an annual award jointly sponsored by the National Library of Australia and the National Folk Festival. Providing a four-week residency in the Oral History arid Folklore Collection of the NLA. The Fellowship grants an insiders access to the extensive body of Australian field recordings held in the collection. Realising what an ideal opportunity the fellowship presented. we made what proved to be a successful application for 2005 06. and soon found ourselves in the depths of the NLA with a CD player. tape deck, and a pile of recordings which somehow seemed to keep growing despite our best efforts to control it!
The thousands of hours of reel-to-reel tapes. cassettes and DATs in the NLA’s Folklore Collection owe their existence to a relatively small number of dedicated collectors, beginning with the pioneering work of the likes of John Meredith in the 1950s. Merro, and those who have followed him, set out to find and document traditional music in Australia it’s many guises. as well as record something of the lives of the men and women who played and sang it. It’s interesting that though Australia is. and has long been, a highly urbanised society, much of the hunting for an authentic Australian music has taken place in the bush. As a consequence, the Folklore collection at the NLA is also to a fair extent shaped by that perspective, constituting a unique aural document of the cultural life of rural Australia reaching back into the 1800s.
An important element of our project was to attempt to link today's music with that of the older Australian players, and in doing so to distill some of the Irish ingredients in what is often referred to as Australian 'bush’ music. One thing that is immediately clear when listening to the range of recorded material in the collection is the intermingling of tunes and styles of playing from a range of distinctive traditions, transplanted into Australia in the years since European arrival - most clearly to our ears the music of the English, Irish, Scots and Germans. Among recordings of the older Aussie players. we found that most had at least a smattering of Irish tunes among a repertoire that could include anything from 'Rule Brittania’ to ‘Yankee Doodle’. So we certainly didn't discover. and nor did we expect to. that traditional music in Australia is all actually Irish music in disguise. What we did discover, however and what we really had hoped to find, were some great tunes and distinctive variations of tunes many of which we hadn't heard before. ....
I was just about to write something about Ben and Ado's album but you've beaten me to it by a few seconds! All that remains is for me to provide an internal link: http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/2011, and to say that it's a really great album and that you should buy it.
Benno and Ado's album really is a treat, some great variations of tunes on there. Its well worth checking out.
Noxious Blanket rang me earlier to say he was going to put something on this thread about their album - Strungup - did you know there is a thread about psychics and tunes? Maybe you should head to that thread!!
I know! Isn't that so weird, Beebs? Maybe all of us are like inter-connected in some way via brainwaves that zap through the air faster than the speed of light, and that's why we all play trad. *And*, this has only just started happening so I reckon your newly-born child has something to do with it. Maybe Cian is like the Messiah of Irish Music and all the brainwaves emanate from him and stuff.
This is a thoughtful discussion.
Yes I am also curious about New Zealand and if there are any thoughts about South Africa and other Anglo colonies I'd be interested to read them.
Yes Patkiwi - but I only know about Australia because I'm from Australia so I wouldnt want to start talking about something I know nothing about? Anyone got any ideas on NZ?
I live in Perth and up above someone asked about Australian music in Tasmania and Perth. Sorry I can't help but the Australian music that I have heard here is all so-called Bush Band stuff that sounds to me like a composite of Scottish, Irish & English trad music. I will try and ask one of the local musicians who plays in a bush band whether there is an older style of Australian Music with origins over 70 - 80 yrs age.
Just like Bridie I know even less about NZ music - Hiya Beebs!
Enough of saying nothing.
BB has successfully summed up NZ/Oz relations " but I only know about Australia because I'm from Australia". Brilliant insight !!
While there were a number of noted Irish musicians actively playing in NZ over the last 150 years it is fair to say that none of the music stayed or became adapted. Having been part of the bush band revival in the eighties it is also fair to say that the music owed more to Steeleye Span's folk rock plodding than any sense of traditional Irish culture. Plus the fact that they were doing over the pond. The music and the dress code were a complete mythology but amazingly everyone bought it. The Scots, on the other hand, have maintained a musical tradition albeit exclusively on the bagpipes. NZ has consistently produced world class pipers and tunesmiths since the great migration waves of the 1800s. It's odd that fiddle music never took hold ala Cape Breton despite the massive connections that NZ has with Cape Breton. NZers at large have absolutely no idea about the wealth of bagpipe music in the country. Sevral other communities have maintained musical traditions most notably Puhoi north of Auckland which was populated by expelled Czech Bohemians who brought their own pipes and fiddles with them and are still played to this day. Everyone in that tiny village played music and it is said that a lot of the professional piano accordion players in Sydney come from Puhoi. Dalmations in the central North Island have also retained their music although to a lesser degree. NZ also has a very active piano accordion culture. To my ear the Kokatai Band on the west coast of the South Island sums up NZ music, a hybrid of Victorian standards with European influences played on concertinas and Stroh fiddles.
NZ and OZ relations? Its all in your head. So please enlighten me on all that you know about Australia? And no, I dont mean what you've learned from Home and Away and Neighbours.
I'm not going to pretend I know something about NZ when I dont. Dont be offended about it - I know nothing about Papua and they are close - and I hazard a guess you probably dont know anything about Papua either - shame on you.
Although now that you tell me that there is a big piano accordion culture in NZ I feel like Ive missed out and will eagerly learn all I can and may even take up the piano accordian and play it with a NZ flavour - thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
I think bb's comment was cautious and entirely reasonable, and I reckon you were a bit quick with the ole trans-Tasman counterpunch there Patkiwi. Take it out on the rugby paddock old chum, not here. My daughters and a good whack of my social circle are Kiwis, but we live in Oz and I wouldn't presume to speak on behalf of those who are active playing music in the land of the Long White Cloud (anymore than i'd speak for people in Perth or Tassie). I do know that in all my travels in NZ I've never heard anyone playing Irish music, though I've certainly heard the pipers.
All that aside, your posting has some really interesting info in there Patkiwi (I had no idea the feared Stroh was still writ so large out there!) and it would be great to have a thread devoted exclusively to NZ. It was a bit unfortunate that this thread lumped both countries together, since we do have very different histories and a completely different ethnic mix.
I know some lovely tune players who live in NZ...they've been over to The National folk festival in Canberra twice.
Ger - I agree - a seperate post would be better - cause we are completelt different countries. And i wouldnt pressume to know about other places in Oz - Ive never been to west Oz so why would I pretend to know about it?
Hey BB,
Tóg é bóg é, it's a friendly little dig of no consequence between mates. Having been to Australia on numerable, numerable occasions to visit family, surf and play music from Sydney to Perth I can assure you that I do know a bit about that great country. And Ger, leaving it to the rugby paddock is a little unfair these days mate, I'd prefer a more even setting, around the table with a few tunes where everyone gets a fair go.
Anyways, getting back to original thread. There were a couple of singers at the local session last night in Toronto who gave us a song in the Bangla language with a melody straight out of the Hebrides. Apparently Bangladesh has adopted hundreds of bagpipe melodies and incorporated them into the local traditions and made songs out of them.
Oh for god's sake if your'e talking about Irish music in Oz and NZ you're talking about like basically a handful of people who can play. Stop making it out as though there's some sort of historical "scene" here! There's not! It's sh*t!
Like basically a handful who can play yeah and we all know each other personally and either feck each other or look after each other's babies. It's like sheesh, god, shut up
Guys
I'am WAY too busy to answer this, but here goes.
NZ is too small to support a local style IMO, there would have been a bunch of immigrents at various times in the last 150 years ( ? ) who played, There may have beeen social session playing in NZ where the Irish settled ( West Coast South Island ?) Don't know.
Wellington used to have a rockin' Irish scene in the middle of the last C, but I don't know if they played tunes ?
There was an Egan a piper who emigrated from Co Clare http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=36992 to the East Coast South Island. Bob Bickerton has suggested to me there was a community of piper musicians down there ?
By the time I arrived ( late 80's ) there were no good tunes ( that I could find ), like Australia "Irish" music was heard as part of a Bush-band thing. Awful IMO .
New Zealand was a colony that once saw an attempt to bar Irish immigrents, so Irish music was not always welcome.
Immigrents perhaps didn't always value it, ( bit like at home )
Anyway theres a small but thriving tune and session scene here now (at least in Wellington ) and CeolAneas is helping people develop a tune repetoire and skills to take back to their locality. Also tutors are being imported so that people get access to and inspiration from top players eg:
June McCormack
Michael Rooney
Chris Norman
Hammy Hamilton
John Carty
the various members of Lunasa and Trouble in the Kitchen.
But ya, the community of players is too small to support a local NZ "style" IMO.
The barring of Irish immigration to NZ thing is interesting. Although that wasn't the case in Australia (hell, the British government gladly paid to export half of my ancestors!) there was always a lot of ant-irish feeling here. It hit a real level of hysteria when the Fenians escaped from the West and the Prince of Wales got shot in Sydney by some maddy who just happened to be Irish as well (don't worry, they lynched him). Certainly my mother and grandparents often talked about anti-Irish feeling (often expressed as anti-Catholicism). Interestingly, late in the 19th century there was a stained glass window in St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney (Anglican) devoted to the BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary, that is). They ended up with an archbishop who oddly began life with the Free Kirk and who had a beard and a money belt installed on her (turning her into Judas!) so as not to have any papist idolatory in a protestant cathedral. That's pretty extreme even in Sydney!
The point of this ramble is that although there was also significant ill-feeling to Irish immigrants to the US mid 19th century, there were probably much greater pressures to assimilate in the less populous and more scattered colonies of what is now Australia.
Gidday Pat,
Surely the point of the Puhoi Bohemian Band negates the argument that NZ is too small to support a local variant of a particular music genre, given that that was the thrust of the original question. People have been coming from abroad to Puhoi for decades to check out their scene because the lads continued to play a rare form of music, albeit now virtually lost because the band members are dying and the young blood has buggered off over the ditch. Despite the huge Irish influence in NZ culture over the years, which has been largely airbrushed out of the history books, Irish traditional music was never really grounded in any local form with one glaring exception to my previous post in that Thomas Bracken wrote the words to our current national anthem, "God Defend New Zealand", the melody having been composed by John Joseph Woods whose signifance is worhty of only 2 Google hits unfortunately.
Hi again Pat,
I've never heard of any official ban on Irish immgration, certainly there were groups and interests trying to have Chinese, Jewish, French, you name it, stopped from going to NZ but the government refused any efforts to accomodate them with the unfortunate exception of a head tax applied to Chinese immigrants. NZ has always had an open door policy, it is one of the fundamental cornerstones of our society. I feel that Bob is a more than a wee bit wide of the mark suggesting that there was a "community of pipers". It would have been nice but I don't think it ever happened.
They didn't assimilate much in my corner of SW Victoria Ger - the population was still almost 50% Irish-descent Catholic in the 1960s, after immigration through Geelong and Portland in the 1850s-1880s , and in many towns and rural districts they were the majority, Catholic married Catholic for several generations of large families, and even my liberated non-churchy sisters all ended up marrying men of Irish-Catholic descent.
But still no continuous tradition of Irish music or any hybrid, unless you count a liking for country & western.
There were definitely fiddlers among the great-grandparents' generation, because I heard stories about them, but what music they played, I have no idea.
Yeah, similar thing in my grandmother's family in northern NSW...marrying into other Irish cathololic families and pillars of the church, but no conscious Irish self-identification and cultural stuff like you see in the US, where people can be six or seven generations in the US and still say they're Irish (which seems to raise eyebrows in Ireland when they visit!). The most people here have ever said in my hearing is that they are of Irish descent, but unless they're into genealogy that's about as far as it goes. Of course, until the wave of Greek and Italian migration in the fifties, about the only other catholics in the country were other people of Irish descent, and since if you married outside the Church right up to my parents' generation you never got to speak to half your friends or relatives again, I reckon that's why most people kept the thing going.
There must be some good reason why these people uniformly dropped the music (if not the drinking and the praying), and I reckon the social pressures of the 19th Century Oz colonies would have had a lot to do with it. But, sure, it might have just been that the tone deaf ones emigrated to Oz!
(Most of the Greeks can't have been Catholic. They're Orthodox on the whole. The Catholic crusaders trashed Constantinople and the Greeks have never forgotten it.)
Indeed! and the Greek music scene in Melbourne could be argued to be in a much stronger state than the Irish music scene... but that's a discussion for another, er, website.
Some of the leading rebetika bouzouki revivalists (as well as trad/modern Greek function players) are in Melbourne, so I'd be surprised if they don't get together with the "ITM" crowd now and then.
Ger, I reckon it was prosperity and mobility rather than social pressures that caused the music to fizzle out. The only one of my dad's generation that played anything was a banjo player in a jazz band in the 40s, offshoot of Smacka Fitzgibbon's. He turned to Irish and Scottish music in his retirement not long before he died
You may well be right Bren, although I'm not sure that people in mid-19th Century Australia were any more mobile and prosperous than people in the States. Certainly some of my family moved around quite a bit, though I wouldn't say that any of them exactly prospered. The few musical ones tended to play classical music and the dancers like my grandfather kicked around to dance hall stuff like the fox-trot. But no whiff of anything distinctly Irish other than the Catholic Church. And drinking. And fighting. Luckily not often all at the same time, although i think being drunk in Church and fighting at the pub happened quite a bit!
Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Canada and the States have developed their own indigenous body of tunes based on Irish and Scottish traditional music.There are also regional styles of playing in both these former colonies.
Is there an equivalent bunch of tunes in Australia an New Zealand?
# Posted on September 22nd 2006 by McMandolin
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
As far as Australia is concerned, the short answer is "yes", with many dance tunes developed from the traditional music of Europe. However, many of these "Australianised" tunes disappeared from popular culture as social customs changed during the 20th Century.
A good starting point for information about Australian traditional dance tunes is the website of the Wongawilli Colonial Dance Club Inc., a group with a particular passion for the wide spectrum of Australia's folk music heritage.
http://www.wongawillicolonialdance.org.au/
To quote from one of their publications:
"Many of the folk dances which appeared in Australia had their traditional tunes and characteristic rhythms. In the earliest days of European settlement social dance music was provided by regimental bands and at less formal functions by a fiddler, perhaps accompanied by whistles, fifes or flutes.
The large influx of migrants from 1851 due to the 'gold rushes' provided further musical traditions to enrich the dance music. Military bands, brass bands, the German Band and string bands were immensely popular for formal city balls and functions.
Bush communities were different with the dance musicians usually without any formal musical training. However, tunes were often learnt from music played by visiting town bands or other locals who played from printed sheet music. These musicians who played by ear had a mixed repertoire with a core of British and European folk tunes, and snippets of popular music from travelling shows and music halls.
The inherent characteristics and special rhythms and tempos for particular dances were generally accurately handed down but the melody passed on aurally tended to change and develop.
The basic instruments used were button accordion, anglo-concertina, fiddle, tin whistle, harmonica and whenever available a piano. The piano was common in pubs, public halls, schools as well as homes.
The folk revival of the late 1950s began with the aims of reviving the music and instruments of the past. However as time has passed the repertoire and instruments of the new 'bush bands' have generally followed an Anglo-Celtic style with an obsession for revived British and Irish music which is inconsistent with Australia's past folklore influences from many nations."
Best wishes
# Posted on September 22nd 2006 by GraemeO
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Thanks GraemeO. that is a great staring place.
In the listing of instruments in the quote you supplied , banjo and mandolin and their akward offspring banjo-mandolin are not mentioned. When looking through Ebay listings there are always a few banjo-mandolins with Australian listings. Were they commonly used
in "Bush Bands" or other folk bands?
# Posted on September 22nd 2006 by McMandolin
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
I have a small abc collection of Australian tunes - I can't remember where I downloaded it from. A significant part of it is made up of waltzes and polkas, with other European dance forms such as mazurka, varsoviana and schottische - many of these are attributed to known Australian composers. There are also a few tunes called 'set tunes', either in jig or polka time - presumably used to accompany some descendant of Irish set dancing.
# Posted on September 22nd 2006 by granama
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
I suspect the banjo-mandolins came from early 20C.
However there are a few Australian songs referencing banjo, notably the Drover's Dream which mentions "the violin, the banjo and the bones", from the late 1800s I suppose.
My uncle who was a telephone engineer in the 1940s and 1950s often reminisced about a certain country pub west of Geelong where there was a piano and a "lagerphone" (stick covered in bottletops) for use of patrons and they would have many a jolly session into the wee hours.
But overall, I suspect Australian communities were mostly too mobile (socially and geographically) , too recent, and not isolated enough, to really develop and keep distinctive styles developed from Anglo-Celtic music beyond WW2. There is no real equivalent of the Appalachians or Cape Breton in Australia.
I was often told about this one or that one of the relatives from my grandparents' and great-grandparents' generation who was a great fiddler, but not a one in my parents' (b.1920s) generation.
# Posted on September 22nd 2006 by Bren
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
I'd wondered if Perth or Tasmania might have been isolated and stable enough to generatea distinctive local style.
In Newfoundland the 'lagerphone' is called the 'ugly stick'
# Posted on September 22nd 2006 by McMandolin
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
I suppose "Skidoo" a reel that was composed by Steve Cooney might be considered as such?
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/352
I loved Stockton's Wing version of it when I was very young, don't think I've heard it in years though. Hope it's still as nice a piece of music as I remember it being.
# Posted on September 22nd 2006 by Murrough
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Nice one, found it... this is the first time I've heard it in years:
http://folkenlared.castpost.com/529951.html
# Posted on September 22nd 2006 by Murrough
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
There are local styles of music of course, but not a big tradition of distinctively Australian fiddle tunes descended from Irish and/or Scottish and pre-dating the 50s folk revival that would be the equivalent of what you can find in Canada and the USA.
I grew up in a largely Irish-Australian rural area, and there were house parties, plenty of music, but it was bloke with the green sash singing "Danny Boy", the uncle standing on the verandah at the barbecue with his hands in his pockets singing "Galway Bay" in a big baritone, the neighbour with the accordion playing "Botany Bay" or "Macnamara's Band", dad singing the Wild Colonial Boy or The Freehold on the Plain, a few of the old blokes had recitations as their party piece, that was more common than songs really. It was great, especially when I realised that relatively few fellow Australians had a childhood like that, but there was no special set of fiddle tunes or dance tunes I can recall, and no style of playing I can recall where you'd hear a player and go "ah, Australian"
There's loads of stuff produced since the 1950s of course but heavily influenced by new recordings from the UK/Irish/US folk revival. I think McMandolin was looking for something deeper-rooted than that.
# Posted on September 23rd 2006 by Bren
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
There's a fine old book by John Meredith and Hugh Anderson called Folk Songs of Australia (Ure Smith Sydney, 3rd impression 1967; isbn 0 7254 0476 0). John went around the bush gathering songs and tunes from older people during the 50s and 60s. Many of the tunes will be familiar to people at the Session as old standards from Ireland Scotland and England, but there are different settings and some unique tunes too. The songs obviously tend to be very Australian in character. The book also has a wealth of photos and anecdotes. Not sure if it is still available.
John's field recordings are held by the National Library of Australia, and in 2001 the library released a double cd with selected recordings on it called "Sharing The Harvest". You can probably still order it off the net.
# Posted on September 23rd 2006 by Ger the Rigger
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Here's a link to purchase the cd:
http://www.wongawillicolonialdance.org.au/sharingharvest.htm
# Posted on September 23rd 2006 by Ger the Rigger
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
I came across the Merideth/Anderson collection in a used book store. It was one of the things that started me wondering about Australian trad music.The songs are great but I'm awfully fond of tunes.
Graemeo link http://www.wongawillicolonialdance.org.au/ has 35 or so tunes to play with. This will be fun .
"The Little Burnt Potato" is such a popular tune around here that I'd assumed it was Canadian.
# Posted on September 23rd 2006 by McMandolin
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
The longer answer to McMandolin's original question appears to be that the Irish influence on 19th and early 20th Century Australian dance music was subtle rather than direct, while the modern folk revival has resulted in a new wave of Irish and Scottish tunes arriving here relatively recently. These new arrivals have made themselves at home so readily that they are often mistakenly thought to be part of the 19th Century Australian tradition, and to a large extent they have replaced it.
According to notes in "Australian Traditional Dance Tunes" (produced by the Wongawilli Colonial Dance Club that I referred to near the top of this thread) the dominant dance music in the 19th Century was played for European ballroom dances (as it probably was also in Ireland at the time). To quote:
"From the time of earliest settlement (1788) the older country dances were rapidly replaced by new dance fashions constantly arriving in the colony and adopted by all classes of society. As early as 1820, the waltz and quadrille had been established alongside these country dances, jigs and reels. By the 1850s the scene was dominated by further quadrilles such as the Lancers, Caledonians and Parisian, with the Alberts, Fitzroy, Waltz Cotillion and others to follow. Also fashionable were the Waltz, Galop, Schottische, Polka Mazurka and Varsoviana."
Irish musicians were plentiful in Australia by the mid to late 19th Century, but they too were mainly playing (and composing, or adapting) tunes for ballroom dances, although they probably played other tunes at home and in family gatherings. Apparently, the most common Irish music heard by the general public was sentimental songs and airs, rather than jigs and reels (which seems to fit with Bren's experience, many years later). In earlier times, immigration to Australia was an irrevocable step for most immigrants, many of whom left a lot of their culture behind and were determined to fit into the new society they were joining. Modernity and newness were all the rage, rather than nostalgia for the past. It is likely that few immigrants ever expected to be able (or to want) to return "home".
The modern Australian folk and bush band "revival" (mostly city-based) is not really a true revival. It has become intertwined with the adoption of a lot of freshly imported tunes from the English and Irish folk revival, as Bren noted above. There is little continuity between what is played by many modern bush bands and what was played by country dance bands a hundred years ago or more. Many newly imported Aglo/Celtic tunes have been adopted in the mistaken belief that they are part of Australia's musical past.
Meanwhile, as noted by Ger the Rigger some of the dance music from the 19th and early 20th Century is stored in archives in the National Library of Australia, collected and preserved by a few enthusiasts who travelled the country recording what they could still find. Some of today's musicians are interested in this part of our heritage, so some of the tunes are being dusted off and are making their way back into circulation, and some new tunes are written in the older style.
McMandolin asked whether Perth might be isolated enough to have developed a distinctive music style. Not as far as I am aware. Ever since European settlement the Perth region has experienced periods of rapid population growth through immigration (both from overseas and from within Australia), so that at any one time a large part of the population was born elsewhere. This sort of population dynamic, along with enthusiasm for the "new", doesn't seem to have provided the stability needed for a regional style to become established.
Best wishes
# Posted on September 23rd 2006 by GraemeO
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
As was mentioned before - we are still fairly new - I'm sure in another 300 years we will have more music that can be recognised as 'Australian style' - especially as the tune scene is getting stronger and stronger. Its true that America has a really flavour to playing that you can spot a mile away - like for example - Liz Carrol.
Also there are a fair number of trad players composing really fantastic tunes here, so I'm sure that will contribute to the sound.
Was McMandolin talking about Australian tunes like Wongawilli - or was he talking more about Irish trad being played with a local flavour - like in Newfoundland?
As for Cape Breton - even though it is unique - you can hear the scottishness in the music - you would never mistake if for Irish.
# Posted on September 23rd 2006 by bb
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
You can't look past Adrian Barker and Ben Stephenson's exploration of this with their CD 'Undertones' which came out of them doing research in the National Library of Australia's recordings section.
From their website:
http://www.folktrax.com/folktrax2/BST001.php
<paste>
IRISH MUSIC FROM AUSTRALIA
Something like the initial idea for this album came up in the bar of a backpackers hostel in York. England. in 2002. At the time we were both living in Ireland. Ben in Galway and Ado in Ennis- and we were reflecting on the always slightly strange situation of being Australians who. with no immediate family connections to Ireland. had nonetheless been drawn to Irish traditional music. In Ireland it was, unsurprisingly. sometimes a bit of an oddity for the locals to find an Aussie playing tunes. For our part. we were each struck by the recognition. which had somehow never been so clear before. That our understanding of the music we love to play is indelibly marked by having done most of our hard graft of learning not in Ireland but in Australia. Talking about all this over a few pints. we started to wonder a bit more about the roots of Irish music in Australia beyond our own relatively recent experience.
All that serious talk and reflection was buried under a pile of tunes for another couple of years, before we learned of the National Folk Fellowship. an annual award jointly sponsored by the National Library of Australia and the National Folk Festival. Providing a four-week residency in the Oral History arid Folklore Collection of the NLA. The Fellowship grants an insiders access to the extensive body of Australian field recordings held in the collection. Realising what an ideal opportunity the fellowship presented. we made what proved to be a successful application for 2005 06. and soon found ourselves in the depths of the NLA with a CD player. tape deck, and a pile of recordings which somehow seemed to keep growing despite our best efforts to control it!
The thousands of hours of reel-to-reel tapes. cassettes and DATs in the NLA’s Folklore Collection owe their existence to a relatively small number of dedicated collectors, beginning with the pioneering work of the likes of John Meredith in the 1950s. Merro, and those who have followed him, set out to find and document traditional music in Australia it’s many guises. as well as record something of the lives of the men and women who played and sang it. It’s interesting that though Australia is. and has long been, a highly urbanised society, much of the hunting for an authentic Australian music has taken place in the bush. As a consequence, the Folklore collection at the NLA is also to a fair extent shaped by that perspective, constituting a unique aural document of the cultural life of rural Australia reaching back into the 1800s.
An important element of our project was to attempt to link today's music with that of the older Australian players, and in doing so to distill some of the Irish ingredients in what is often referred to as Australian 'bush’ music. One thing that is immediately clear when listening to the range of recorded material in the collection is the intermingling of tunes and styles of playing from a range of distinctive traditions, transplanted into Australia in the years since European arrival - most clearly to our ears the music of the English, Irish, Scots and Germans. Among recordings of the older Aussie players. we found that most had at least a smattering of Irish tunes among a repertoire that could include anything from 'Rule Brittania’ to ‘Yankee Doodle’. So we certainly didn't discover. and nor did we expect to. that traditional music in Australia is all actually Irish music in disguise. What we did discover, however and what we really had hoped to find, were some great tunes and distinctive variations of tunes many of which we hadn't heard before. ....
# Posted on September 23rd 2006 by TheCurvyFiddle
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
I was just about to write something about Ben and Ado's album but you've beaten me to it by a few seconds! All that remains is for me to provide an internal link: http://www.thesession.org/recordings/display/2011, and to say that it's a really great album and that you should buy it.
# Posted on September 23rd 2006 by Dow
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
And if you are after Australian folk songs you can't go past Mark Gregory's website:
http://folkstream.com/songs.html
# Posted on September 23rd 2006 by TheCurvyFiddle
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Benno and Ado's album really is a treat, some great variations of tunes on there. Its well worth checking out.
Noxious Blanket rang me earlier to say he was going to put something on this thread about their album - Strungup - did you know there is a thread about psychics and tunes? Maybe you should head to that thread!!
# Posted on September 23rd 2006 by bb
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
I know! Isn't that so weird, Beebs? Maybe all of us are like inter-connected in some way via brainwaves that zap through the air faster than the speed of light, and that's why we all play trad. *And*, this has only just started happening so I reckon your newly-born child has something to do with it. Maybe Cian is like the Messiah of Irish Music and all the brainwaves emanate from him and stuff.
# Posted on September 23rd 2006 by Dow
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Didn't the original question include NZ in the discussion ?
# Posted on September 23rd 2006 by Patkiwi
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
This is a thoughtful discussion.
Yes I am also curious about New Zealand and if there are any thoughts about South Africa and other Anglo colonies I'd be interested to read them.
# Posted on September 23rd 2006 by McMandolin
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Yes Patkiwi - but I only know about Australia because I'm from Australia so I wouldnt want to start talking about something I know nothing about? Anyone got any ideas on NZ?
# Posted on September 25th 2006 by bb
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Why did I put a question mark after my statement that was not a question?...duh!
# Posted on September 25th 2006 by bb
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
I live in Perth and up above someone asked about Australian music in Tasmania and Perth. Sorry I can't help but the Australian music that I have heard here is all so-called Bush Band stuff that sounds to me like a composite of Scottish, Irish & English trad music. I will try and ask one of the local musicians who plays in a bush band whether there is an older style of Australian Music with origins over 70 - 80 yrs age.
Just like Bridie I know even less about NZ music - Hiya Beebs!
Enough of saying nothing.
# Posted on September 25th 2006 by Donough
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
BB has successfully summed up NZ/Oz relations " but I only know about Australia because I'm from Australia". Brilliant insight !!
While there were a number of noted Irish musicians actively playing in NZ over the last 150 years it is fair to say that none of the music stayed or became adapted. Having been part of the bush band revival in the eighties it is also fair to say that the music owed more to Steeleye Span's folk rock plodding than any sense of traditional Irish culture. Plus the fact that they were doing over the pond. The music and the dress code were a complete mythology but amazingly everyone bought it. The Scots, on the other hand, have maintained a musical tradition albeit exclusively on the bagpipes. NZ has consistently produced world class pipers and tunesmiths since the great migration waves of the 1800s. It's odd that fiddle music never took hold ala Cape Breton despite the massive connections that NZ has with Cape Breton. NZers at large have absolutely no idea about the wealth of bagpipe music in the country. Sevral other communities have maintained musical traditions most notably Puhoi north of Auckland which was populated by expelled Czech Bohemians who brought their own pipes and fiddles with them and are still played to this day. Everyone in that tiny village played music and it is said that a lot of the professional piano accordion players in Sydney come from Puhoi. Dalmations in the central North Island have also retained their music although to a lesser degree. NZ also has a very active piano accordion culture. To my ear the Kokatai Band on the west coast of the South Island sums up NZ music, a hybrid of Victorian standards with European influences played on concertinas and Stroh fiddles.
# Posted on September 25th 2006 by Patkiwi
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
NZ and OZ relations? Its all in your head. So please enlighten me on all that you know about Australia? And no, I dont mean what you've learned from Home and Away and Neighbours.
I'm not going to pretend I know something about NZ when I dont. Dont be offended about it - I know nothing about Papua and they are close - and I hazard a guess you probably dont know anything about Papua either - shame on you.
Although now that you tell me that there is a big piano accordion culture in NZ I feel like Ive missed out and will eagerly learn all I can and may even take up the piano accordian and play it with a NZ flavour - thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
# Posted on September 26th 2006 by bb
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
I think bb's comment was cautious and entirely reasonable, and I reckon you were a bit quick with the ole trans-Tasman counterpunch there Patkiwi. Take it out on the rugby paddock old chum, not here. My daughters and a good whack of my social circle are Kiwis, but we live in Oz and I wouldn't presume to speak on behalf of those who are active playing music in the land of the Long White Cloud (anymore than i'd speak for people in Perth or Tassie). I do know that in all my travels in NZ I've never heard anyone playing Irish music, though I've certainly heard the pipers.
All that aside, your posting has some really interesting info in there Patkiwi (I had no idea the feared Stroh was still writ so large out there!) and it would be great to have a thread devoted exclusively to NZ. It was a bit unfortunate that this thread lumped both countries together, since we do have very different histories and a completely different ethnic mix.
# Posted on September 26th 2006 by Ger the Rigger
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
I know some lovely tune players who live in NZ...they've been over to The National folk festival in Canberra twice.
Ger - I agree - a seperate post would be better - cause we are completelt different countries. And i wouldnt pressume to know about other places in Oz - Ive never been to west Oz so why would I pretend to know about it?
# Posted on September 26th 2006 by bb
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Hey BB,
Tóg é bóg é, it's a friendly little dig of no consequence between mates. Having been to Australia on numerable, numerable occasions to visit family, surf and play music from Sydney to Perth I can assure you that I do know a bit about that great country. And Ger, leaving it to the rugby paddock is a little unfair these days mate, I'd prefer a more even setting, around the table with a few tunes where everyone gets a fair go.
Anyways, getting back to original thread. There were a couple of singers at the local session last night in Toronto who gave us a song in the Bangla language with a melody straight out of the Hebrides. Apparently Bangladesh has adopted hundreds of bagpipe melodies and incorporated them into the local traditions and made songs out of them.
# Posted on September 26th 2006 by Patkiwi
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Oh for god's sake if your'e talking about Irish music in Oz and NZ you're talking about like basically a handful of people who can play. Stop making it out as though there's some sort of historical "scene" here! There's not! It's sh*t!
# Posted on September 26th 2006 by Dow
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Like basically a handful who can play yeah and we all know each other personally and either feck each other or look after each other's babies. It's like sheesh, god, shut up
# Posted on September 26th 2006 by Dow
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Did you spill something on your blanket?
# Posted on September 26th 2006 by Ger the Rigger
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Dow! Youre mental.
# Posted on September 27th 2006 by bb
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Guys
I'am WAY too busy to answer this, but here goes.
NZ is too small to support a local style IMO, there would have been a bunch of immigrents at various times in the last 150 years ( ? ) who played, There may have beeen social session playing in NZ where the Irish settled ( West Coast South Island ?) Don't know.
Wellington used to have a rockin' Irish scene in the middle of the last C, but I don't know if they played tunes ?
There was an Egan a piper who emigrated from Co Clare
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=36992 to the East Coast South Island. Bob Bickerton has suggested to me there was a community of piper musicians down there ?
By the time I arrived ( late 80's ) there were no good tunes ( that I could find ), like Australia "Irish" music was heard as part of a Bush-band thing. Awful IMO .
New Zealand was a colony that once saw an attempt to bar Irish immigrents, so Irish music was not always welcome.
Immigrents perhaps didn't always value it, ( bit like at home )
Anyway theres a small but thriving tune and session scene here now (at least in Wellington ) and CeolAneas is helping people develop a tune repetoire and skills to take back to their locality. Also tutors are being imported so that people get access to and inspiration from top players eg:
June McCormack
Michael Rooney
Chris Norman
Hammy Hamilton
John Carty
the various members of Lunasa and Trouble in the Kitchen.
But ya, the community of players is too small to support a local NZ "style" IMO.
Pat
But its a small scene as Noxious said ( bluntly )
# Posted on September 27th 2006 by Pat Higgins
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
The barring of Irish immigration to NZ thing is interesting. Although that wasn't the case in Australia (hell, the British government gladly paid to export half of my ancestors!) there was always a lot of ant-irish feeling here. It hit a real level of hysteria when the Fenians escaped from the West and the Prince of Wales got shot in Sydney by some maddy who just happened to be Irish as well (don't worry, they lynched him). Certainly my mother and grandparents often talked about anti-Irish feeling (often expressed as anti-Catholicism). Interestingly, late in the 19th century there was a stained glass window in St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney (Anglican) devoted to the BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary, that is). They ended up with an archbishop who oddly began life with the Free Kirk and who had a beard and a money belt installed on her (turning her into Judas!) so as not to have any papist idolatory in a protestant cathedral. That's pretty extreme even in Sydney!
The point of this ramble is that although there was also significant ill-feeling to Irish immigrants to the US mid 19th century, there were probably much greater pressures to assimilate in the less populous and more scattered colonies of what is now Australia.
# Posted on September 27th 2006 by Ger the Rigger
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Gidday Pat,
Surely the point of the Puhoi Bohemian Band negates the argument that NZ is too small to support a local variant of a particular music genre, given that that was the thrust of the original question. People have been coming from abroad to Puhoi for decades to check out their scene because the lads continued to play a rare form of music, albeit now virtually lost because the band members are dying and the young blood has buggered off over the ditch. Despite the huge Irish influence in NZ culture over the years, which has been largely airbrushed out of the history books, Irish traditional music was never really grounded in any local form with one glaring exception to my previous post in that Thomas Bracken wrote the words to our current national anthem, "God Defend New Zealand", the melody having been composed by John Joseph Woods whose signifance is worhty of only 2 Google hits unfortunately.
# Posted on September 27th 2006 by Patkiwi
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Hi again Pat,
I've never heard of any official ban on Irish immgration, certainly there were groups and interests trying to have Chinese, Jewish, French, you name it, stopped from going to NZ but the government refused any efforts to accomodate them with the unfortunate exception of a head tax applied to Chinese immigrants. NZ has always had an open door policy, it is one of the fundamental cornerstones of our society. I feel that Bob is a more than a wee bit wide of the mark suggesting that there was a "community of pipers". It would have been nice but I don't think it ever happened.
# Posted on September 27th 2006 by Patkiwi
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
They didn't assimilate much in my corner of SW Victoria Ger - the population was still almost 50% Irish-descent Catholic in the 1960s, after immigration through Geelong and Portland in the 1850s-1880s , and in many towns and rural districts they were the majority, Catholic married Catholic for several generations of large families, and even my liberated non-churchy sisters all ended up marrying men of Irish-Catholic descent.
But still no continuous tradition of Irish music or any hybrid, unless you count a liking for country & western.
There were definitely fiddlers among the great-grandparents' generation, because I heard stories about them, but what music they played, I have no idea.
# Posted on September 27th 2006 by Bren
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Yeah, similar thing in my grandmother's family in northern NSW...marrying into other Irish cathololic families and pillars of the church, but no conscious Irish self-identification and cultural stuff like you see in the US, where people can be six or seven generations in the US and still say they're Irish (which seems to raise eyebrows in Ireland when they visit!). The most people here have ever said in my hearing is that they are of Irish descent, but unless they're into genealogy that's about as far as it goes. Of course, until the wave of Greek and Italian migration in the fifties, about the only other catholics in the country were other people of Irish descent, and since if you married outside the Church right up to my parents' generation you never got to speak to half your friends or relatives again, I reckon that's why most people kept the thing going.
There must be some good reason why these people uniformly dropped the music (if not the drinking and the praying), and I reckon the social pressures of the 19th Century Oz colonies would have had a lot to do with it. But, sure, it might have just been that the tone deaf ones emigrated to Oz!
# Posted on September 28th 2006 by Ger the Rigger
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
(Most of the Greeks can't have been Catholic. They're Orthodox on the whole. The Catholic crusaders trashed Constantinople and the Greeks have never forgotten it.)
# Posted on September 28th 2006 by nicholas
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Major apologies to Greek Australians (who after all made Melbourne into the third largest Greek city in the world).
# Posted on September 28th 2006 by Ger the Rigger
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Indeed! and the Greek music scene in Melbourne could be argued to be in a much stronger state than the Irish music scene... but that's a discussion for another, er, website.
# Posted on September 28th 2006 by SirNose
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
Some of the leading rebetika bouzouki revivalists (as well as trad/modern Greek function players) are in Melbourne, so I'd be surprised if they don't get together with the "ITM" crowd now and then.
Ger, I reckon it was prosperity and mobility rather than social pressures that caused the music to fizzle out. The only one of my dad's generation that played anything was a banjo player in a jazz band in the 40s, offshoot of Smacka Fitzgibbon's. He turned to Irish and Scottish music in his retirement not long before he died
# Posted on September 30th 2006 by Bren
Re: Australian and New Zealand Tunes
You may well be right Bren, although I'm not sure that people in mid-19th Century Australia were any more mobile and prosperous than people in the States. Certainly some of my family moved around quite a bit, though I wouldn't say that any of them exactly prospered. The few musical ones tended to play classical music and the dancers like my grandfather kicked around to dance hall stuff like the fox-trot. But no whiff of anything distinctly Irish other than the Catholic Church. And drinking. And fighting. Luckily not often all at the same time, although i think being drunk in Church and fighting at the pub happened quite a bit!
# Posted on September 30th 2006 by Ger the Rigger