Two Manx Tunes

[wayman]

I thought I'd start recording some videos and getting a bit of a concertina presence online. Here are two tunes (one trad., one more recently written) from the Isle of Man, played on my 32-key Morse C/G Céilí:

 

"Allen Barbara", written by David Kilgallon

(as learnt from the Barrule album)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5DgQ-Oc02Y

 

"Yn Billey Keirn" (The Rowan Tree), trad.

(arrangement inspired by King Chiaullee playing for Perree T)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxv2Vqez_9Y

 

(Yes, 32-key. It's unique.)

 

More to follow, perhaps even soon, now that I have a home recording set-up!

[David Barnert]

Hey, Will, nice playing.

 

And let me cast a vote in favor of the practice of including the player's face in the shot when recording concertina videos. "Concertina face" be damned!

[Robin Harrison]

Lovely playing and interesting tune, Will. Well done

Do you have a pdf of the notes ?

Robin

[wayman]

Good grief, I typed a reply, navigated away from the page, and it was gone :-( Okay, a second go at this...

 

David, yes, I need to work on getting rid of that "concertina face"! I'm focused intently on a dot on the wall, can you tell? :-) But yes, I agree that it's nice when videos include the player and not just the instrument, even if the face is a bit odd.

 

Robin, I don't have transcriptions of either tune, but yes, those would be nice. I can try to make them. For "Allen Barbara" I'll start with asking David Kilgallon if he already has and would share such a pdf.

 

For "Billey Keirn", well, that's a more interesting story. The tune *is* printed in Leighton Stowell's collection of Manx dances, but what's printed is ... well, sort of dippy. I initially tried playing the tune as written for And Sometimes Y (the American Manx dance group), and ... it was not a good fit for the dance, probably because they learned the dance from Perree Bane and Perree T, contemporary Manx dance groups who may dance it with greater vigor than in days of yore? Or just a different sensibility?

 

In the recordings I have where PB and PT dance it, it's to a very different tune than the printed one. The first two bars of the B part in Leighton Stowell become the first two bars of the A part of the new tune; and pretty much everything else is different!

 

So I learned that tune off video recordings of those dancers, with the band King Chiaullee playing.

 

One version (with Perree Bane dancing), KC are playing the "new tune" straight -- that is, five times through the tune, all the same as what I play the first time through in my recording. The other version (with Perree T dancing a sort of "fools dance" interpretation of the dance), KC plays with the tune a lot ... with a minor here, and a mixolydian there, here a modulation, there a tempo change, everywhere a quack quack... which is what I do in my recording.

 

Last night I asked Adam Rhodes, KC band member, about the tune -- did it have a different name, or attribution? and he replied

 

"it's the tune we've always played for Billey Keirn, but we spruced it up a bit! It's normally in Em and Gmajor, we messed around with it and changed keys etc. ... I'm sure the guys wouldn't mind not getting a credit as such, it's a trad tune and the arrangements were just us fannying around years ago!"

Perhaps this new tune just totally supplanted the one Leighton Stowell notated, assumed the title "Billey Keirn", and had already done so decades ago? Because Adam suggests "the tune we've always played ... a trad tune" was already this "new tune". Where that new tune came from, or how it may have evolved out of just two bars of the Leighton Stowell tune, I have yet to discover. (I've looked through some Manx tune collections, and I haven't spotted any tune that resembles it closely....)

 

(Ian Radcliffe, can you shed any light on this?)

 

It's definitely worth notating this one, and I'll do so.

 

Will

Edited November 4, 2013 by wayman

[Anglo Enthusiast]

Terrific playing!

[David Barnert]

David, yes, I need to work on getting rid of that "concertina face"! I'm focused intently on a dot on the wall, can you tell? :-) But yes, I agree that it's nice when videos include the player and not just the instrument, even if the face is a bit odd.

My point was that we all have concertina face and shouldn't let that stop us from showing our faces on-screen. Hell, folks see our faces when we play for morris dancing, they might as well see them on youtube.

 

Here's a video I put up on youtube this afternoon. If there's a way to "work on getting rid of concertina face" I'm not aware of it.

[Jim Besser]

I thought I'd start recording some videos and getting a bit of a concertina presence online. Here are two tunes (one trad., one more recently written) from the Isle of Man, played on my 32-key Morse C/G Céilí:

 

"Allen Barbara", written by David Kilgallon

(as learnt from the Barrule album)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5DgQ-Oc02Y

 

"Yn Billey Keirn" (The Rowan Tree), trad.

(arrangement inspired by King Chiaullee playing for Perree T)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxv2Vqez_9Y

 

(Yes, 32-key. It's unique.)

 

More to follow, perhaps even soon, now that I have a home recording set-up!

 

Nice tunes, especially the second.

 

They're on my list for the next time we wander up your way!

[Anglo Enthusiast]

 

David, yes, I need to work on getting rid of that "concertina face"! I'm focused intently on a dot on the wall, can you tell? :-) But yes, I agree that it's nice when videos include the player and not just the instrument, even if the face is a bit odd.

My point was that we all have concertina face and shouldn't let that stop us from showing our faces on-screen. Hell, folks see our faces when we play for morris dancing, they might as well see them on youtube.

 

Here's a video I put up on youtube this afternoon. If there's a way to "work on getting rid of concertina face" I'm not aware of it.

 

Thanks for sharing that video, David. I thoroughly enjoyed both the one from this afternoon of you performing the waltz and the other video of you playing the bastari.