I'm curious. Where does the Tommy Makem/Clancy Brothers/ballad stuff fit into the tradition? Where does it come from, and how does it relate to sean nos signing (if at all) and to the tunes?
The songs are genuine enough.
But what they did with them, to try to make them more entertaining to the general public, is entirely another matter. You must remember they were trying to be actors, in New York, and started the singing on the side, to make a bit of money. Certainly Tommy Makem's mother, Sarah Makem, was a fine source singer. What she felt about what her son was doing to the tradition I have no idea.
I read somewhere that a particular four-line verse structure of many of the English language ballads probably came into British folksong around the mid c19, along with refugees from the Irish famine. I'm not sure it's certain exactly where it first took off, Ireland or Britain, but it seems reasonable to suppose it's been in Ireland for some 150+ years.
This structure is the one where, tunewise, the first and last lines are the same, and the middle two lines also are the same as each other (their melody being different from that of lines 1 and 4). Their rhythm and tempo can vary.
Well-known examples of such songs/tunes include Tramps And Hawkers, The Dawning Of The Day, The Rocks Of Bawn, The Patriot Game, Roddy McCorley - they are numerous.
The tune scheme seems to have fitted political or protest or topical songs particularly well, because if you wanted to grab the ear of people quickly with a relevant song and weren't a gifted composer, you could take an "off the peg" tune of this kind - some got used for a number of songs; or if you knocked up a tune, you only had to devise two lines of it, and duplicate them in the way I have described above.
You have to remember that it was the artless 1950's and these guys were churning out songs that people recognised, whose parents might have sang but with a new and exciting edge (influenced by R'n'R, the American and British folk scene) and everyone in Ireland wanted to be a folk singer - the material was emense and endless after all and soon the old instruments were incorporated. Makem & the Clancys, The Sands Family etc, Pete Seeger and even Bob Dylan all played their part in the revival of trad music in Ireland.
I am not an ethnomusicologist, but near as I can tell, there has always been solo singing, and there has always been group singing in places like pubs and in homes.
The fun, singalong, tradition, always gets knocked as lower class, less arty, etc, etc.
Sometimes I think that the more people enjoy a type of music, the more the musical snobs want to knock it and make fun of it.
I remember street singers who would go around the streets singing a song and selling small song sheets with the words of the song on it. I remember my mother buying one such song sheet with the words of The Bold Fenian Men on it for 2d. I suppose it was what would be known nowadays as 'Downloading the lyrics' Incidentally many of the rural type singers in those days used to speak the last line of the song. Sort of an indication that the song was finished, and after listening to 32 painful verses it gave the audience a chance to breath a sigh of relief.
Interesting responses. Pete and iwerzon, what exactly is the Clancys and Makems' break with the tradition? Is it their instrumentation, arrangement, stage show? What makes their takes on a song different from those of Planxty or the Bothy Band or Altan? And why is this valued differently my trad heads, like Al has pointed out?
There was a music hall tradition in England, and vaudeville in America, where the Irish sang these songs for money.
Many of these 'pub songs' are really only as old as that, and they never were performed in some archaic, crystallized ancient sean-nos style in the first place.
The halls and vaudeville were all about entertainment. The Irish in America slowly dominated the minstrel shows from the post-Civil War period until the end, and segued perfectly into vaudeville, etc.
Saucing up a song for entertainment purposes to make some scratch was pretty old hat by the time the Clancies did it in the 50s, only instead of using the late 19th century vernacular of the minstrel show (banjo, fiddle, bones) as was originally done, they used the 1950s American folk revival vernacular of acoustic guitar and Make's whistle and banjo.
Now, it gets sauced up with punk rock and electric guitars ala Mollys and Murphys, but it ain’t nothing but a minstrel vaudeville show.
My point being that saucing up folk songs for entertainment is its own tradition in itself.
…and, dare I say, with many of these instruments (concertina, modern ‘penny’ whistle [Clarke, 1843], etc.) in our instrumental tradition only being around as long as the 19th century too…well…you can argue that until the cows come home, but really it’s six of one, half dozen of the other.
Or, in other words, to heck with the begrudgers. I’ll happily fiddle tunes and sing goofy pub songs in a big ol' musical gumbo pot.
If you "knock up a tune" and you wind up with variations, how many variations do you get from one tune and how long does it take for the tune to give birth to the variations? Nine months?
Actually, I thought the only things which could be wound up were clocks, Al Gore, and George W. Bush.
From what I've read and heard, and people I've spoken with, my impression of the advent of Clancy/Makem, and their popularity, represented the confluence of several different trends and events.
There was the whole skiffle thing, of course, which (again, my impression) not only put together a bunch of musical genres -- including folk and blues -- but also helped inspire people to just get up and sing, without bothering about large ensemble arrangements.
I'm definitely not an expert on this, but I believe that a general improvement in mass production etc., helped make instruments like guitars and banjos more plentiful and cheaper for people to buy -- and with with skiffle and the "hootenany" boom that followed soon after, they did so.
Along with this was the continuing development and proliferation of mass communication, not just radio but then TV, which brought the Clancys/Makem music to a much larger audience than would've been possible a couple of decades earlier.
An important consideration for all this, too, is something that the Clancys themselves but also other observers have noted: Irish music had come to be considered "bog music," just something played (if at all) by old rustics out in the middle of nowhere, with no kind of relevance for contemporary audiences. But the Clancys brought an equally contemporary sense of stage presence and presentation to their interpretation of the music.
Jasonb, I would suggest that the Clancys brought both new arrangements, and a stage presentation, to something that they all knew but were used to hearing in a much more staid and solitairy style of performance.
And maybe they weren't the first, nor will they be the last, but they provided the whole scene with a kick up the rectum that many resented for their success and acclaim and what they'd done to the songs.
Fairport, `Steeleye, Planxty, the Bothies, Altan, it still goes on, but the only thing to complain about is when one person or group does it and then there are suddenly clones everywhere without a modicum of either talent or respect for the original material they are working from.
Sean above has, of course, just said much the same as me, more eloquently perhaps.
Good on yer, Sean !
SWFL raised the music hall tradition, which definitely shaped the Clancy approach. Yet the collective singing tradition I mentioned goes back much longer. The oldest books I have ever read, and histories of old times, describe people singing together, whether families, workers, sailors, drinkers. This is not just an Irish thing, it is a human thing, which happens to have a rich tradition in Ireland as well as other places. And yet, perhaps because it is frequently the music of the common man, it tends to get looked down upon. It is too bad, because I would submit that collective singing has more in common with the collective playing of a session than does the solo singing that more often punctuates sessions.
My grand daughter is getting exposed to it now, in fact my wife and I rarely play the radio when she is in the car, instead we sing our way from place to place.
Songs and such...
Songs and such...
I'm curious. Where does the Tommy Makem/Clancy Brothers/ballad stuff fit into the tradition? Where does it come from, and how does it relate to sean nos signing (if at all) and to the tunes?
# Posted on November 12th 2008 by jasonb
Re: Songs and such...
The songs are genuine enough.
But what they did with them, to try to make them more entertaining to the general public, is entirely another matter. You must remember they were trying to be actors, in New York, and started the singing on the side, to make a bit of money. Certainly Tommy Makem's mother, Sarah Makem, was a fine source singer. What she felt about what her son was doing to the tradition I have no idea.
# Posted on November 12th 2008 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Songs and such...
I read somewhere that a particular four-line verse structure of many of the English language ballads probably came into British folksong around the mid c19, along with refugees from the Irish famine. I'm not sure it's certain exactly where it first took off, Ireland or Britain, but it seems reasonable to suppose it's been in Ireland for some 150+ years.
This structure is the one where, tunewise, the first and last lines are the same, and the middle two lines also are the same as each other (their melody being different from that of lines 1 and 4). Their rhythm and tempo can vary.
Well-known examples of such songs/tunes include Tramps And Hawkers, The Dawning Of The Day, The Rocks Of Bawn, The Patriot Game, Roddy McCorley - they are numerous.
The tune scheme seems to have fitted political or protest or topical songs particularly well, because if you wanted to grab the ear of people quickly with a relevant song and weren't a gifted composer, you could take an "off the peg" tune of this kind - some got used for a number of songs; or if you knocked up a tune, you only had to devise two lines of it, and duplicate them in the way I have described above.
# Posted on November 12th 2008 by nicholas
Re: Songs and such...
One question - if you knock up a tune, do you wind up with a lot of variations?
# Posted on November 12th 2008 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Songs and such...
You have to remember that it was the artless 1950's and these guys were churning out songs that people recognised, whose parents might have sang but with a new and exciting edge (influenced by R'n'R, the American and British folk scene) and everyone in Ireland wanted to be a folk singer - the material was emense and endless after all and soon the old instruments were incorporated. Makem & the Clancys, The Sands Family etc, Pete Seeger and even Bob Dylan all played their part in the revival of trad music in Ireland.
# Posted on November 12th 2008 by iwerzon
Re: Songs and such...
I am not an ethnomusicologist, but near as I can tell, there has always been solo singing, and there has always been group singing in places like pubs and in homes.
The fun, singalong, tradition, always gets knocked as lower class, less arty, etc, etc.
Sometimes I think that the more people enjoy a type of music, the more the musical snobs want to knock it and make fun of it.
# Posted on November 12th 2008 by AlBrown
Re: Songs and such...
I remember street singers who would go around the streets singing a song and selling small song sheets with the words of the song on it. I remember my mother buying one such song sheet with the words of The Bold Fenian Men on it for 2d. I suppose it was what would be known nowadays as 'Downloading the lyrics' Incidentally many of the rural type singers in those days used to speak the last line of the song. Sort of an indication that the song was finished, and after listening to 32 painful verses it gave the audience a chance to breath a sigh of relief.
# Posted on November 12th 2008 by Free Reed
Re: Songs and such...
Interesting responses. Pete and iwerzon, what exactly is the Clancys and Makems' break with the tradition? Is it their instrumentation, arrangement, stage show? What makes their takes on a song different from those of Planxty or the Bothy Band or Altan? And why is this valued differently my trad heads, like Al has pointed out?
# Posted on November 12th 2008 by jasonb
Re: Songs and such...
There was a music hall tradition in England, and vaudeville in America, where the Irish sang these songs for money.
Many of these 'pub songs' are really only as old as that, and they never were performed in some archaic, crystallized ancient sean-nos style in the first place.
The halls and vaudeville were all about entertainment. The Irish in America slowly dominated the minstrel shows from the post-Civil War period until the end, and segued perfectly into vaudeville, etc.
Saucing up a song for entertainment purposes to make some scratch was pretty old hat by the time the Clancies did it in the 50s, only instead of using the late 19th century vernacular of the minstrel show (banjo, fiddle, bones) as was originally done, they used the 1950s American folk revival vernacular of acoustic guitar and Make's whistle and banjo.
Now, it gets sauced up with punk rock and electric guitars ala Mollys and Murphys, but it ain’t nothing but a minstrel vaudeville show.
My point being that saucing up folk songs for entertainment is its own tradition in itself.
…and, dare I say, with many of these instruments (concertina, modern ‘penny’ whistle [Clarke, 1843], etc.) in our instrumental tradition only being around as long as the 19th century too…well…you can argue that until the cows come home, but really it’s six of one, half dozen of the other.
Or, in other words, to heck with the begrudgers. I’ll happily fiddle tunes and sing goofy pub songs in a big ol' musical gumbo pot.
# Posted on November 12th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Songs and such...
If you "knock up a tune" and you wind up with variations, how many variations do you get from one tune and how long does it take for the tune to give birth to the variations? Nine months?
Actually, I thought the only things which could be wound up were clocks, Al Gore, and George W. Bush.
# Posted on November 12th 2008 by fauxcelt
Re: Songs and such...
From what I've read and heard, and people I've spoken with, my impression of the advent of Clancy/Makem, and their popularity, represented the confluence of several different trends and events.
There was the whole skiffle thing, of course, which (again, my impression) not only put together a bunch of musical genres -- including folk and blues -- but also helped inspire people to just get up and sing, without bothering about large ensemble arrangements.
I'm definitely not an expert on this, but I believe that a general improvement in mass production etc., helped make instruments like guitars and banjos more plentiful and cheaper for people to buy -- and with with skiffle and the "hootenany" boom that followed soon after, they did so.
Along with this was the continuing development and proliferation of mass communication, not just radio but then TV, which brought the Clancys/Makem music to a much larger audience than would've been possible a couple of decades earlier.
An important consideration for all this, too, is something that the Clancys themselves but also other observers have noted: Irish music had come to be considered "bog music," just something played (if at all) by old rustics out in the middle of nowhere, with no kind of relevance for contemporary audiences. But the Clancys brought an equally contemporary sense of stage presence and presentation to their interpretation of the music.
# Posted on November 12th 2008 by sts
Re: Songs and such...
Jasonb, I would suggest that the Clancys brought both new arrangements, and a stage presentation, to something that they all knew but were used to hearing in a much more staid and solitairy style of performance.
And maybe they weren't the first, nor will they be the last, but they provided the whole scene with a kick up the rectum that many resented for their success and acclaim and what they'd done to the songs.
Fairport, `Steeleye, Planxty, the Bothies, Altan, it still goes on, but the only thing to complain about is when one person or group does it and then there are suddenly clones everywhere without a modicum of either talent or respect for the original material they are working from.
Sean above has, of course, just said much the same as me, more eloquently perhaps.
Good on yer, Sean !
# Posted on November 12th 2008 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Songs and such...
SWFL raised the music hall tradition, which definitely shaped the Clancy approach. Yet the collective singing tradition I mentioned goes back much longer. The oldest books I have ever read, and histories of old times, describe people singing together, whether families, workers, sailors, drinkers. This is not just an Irish thing, it is a human thing, which happens to have a rich tradition in Ireland as well as other places. And yet, perhaps because it is frequently the music of the common man, it tends to get looked down upon. It is too bad, because I would submit that collective singing has more in common with the collective playing of a session than does the solo singing that more often punctuates sessions.
My grand daughter is getting exposed to it now, in fact my wife and I rarely play the radio when she is in the car, instead we sing our way from place to place.
# Posted on November 13th 2008 by AlBrown