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Theme Of The Month, Feb 2015: Local Favorites


Jim Besser

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For a start from my side a repost:

 

Dat Du Min Leevsten Büst

 

(You're My Sweetheart)

 

Well-known folk song from Northern Germany, in the Low German language... (am not really happy with my singing here).

 

Best wishes - Wolf

I remember listening to this one before, Wolf. I enjoyed it.

 

I was able to figure out some of it but I'll have to show it to my wife who has a degree in German to see what she makes of it.

 

Nothing wrong with your singing, sounds good and the concertina accompaniment works well.

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Another English concertina duet from me and Joc this month: when Cecil Sharp came to this area in September 1907, he visited a fiddler in Shepton Mallet Union (that is, workhouse!) called James Higgins. Among other tunes, he collected these two, noted as Shepton Mallet Hornpipe and Radstock Jig. (We live about 7 miles from Shepton and 3.5 miles from Radstock.) The first tune sounds like a variant of Dorset Four Hand Reel. It was still being used to accompany local stepdancers on the Mendips several decades later and was collected again in the 1970s from local harmonica player Jim Small from Cheddar. (Geoff Lakeman learnt it from Jim and does a nice version on Crane duet.) You can hear Jim Small's version here.

The second tune is a jig in the old sense of "dance tune", not as we use the term today. John Kirkpatrick has described it as "one of the most extraordinary tunes Cecil Sharp came across." It is known in Ireland and elsewhere as Poll Ha'penny. There's a great version by fiddler Bobby Casey somewhere on the net.

I'm not sure what the step dancers at the Hunter's Rest in Priddy would make of our version, which is based on my arrangement for the Old Somerset Russets village band.

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Another English concertina duet from me and Joc this month: when Cecil Sharp came to this area in September 1907, he visited a fiddler in Shepton Mallet Union (that is, workhouse!) called James Higgins. Among other tunes, he collected these two, noted as Shepton Mallet Hornpipe and Radstock Jig. (We live about 7 miles from Shepton and 3.5 miles from Radstock.) The first tune sounds like a variant of Dorset Four Hand Reel. It was still being used to accompany local stepdancers on the Mendips several decades later and was collected again in the 1970s from local harmonica player Jim Small from Cheddar. (Geoff Lakeman learnt it from Jim and does a nice version on Crane duet.) You can hear Jim Small's version here.

The second tune is a jig in the old sense of "dance tune", not as we use the term today. John Kirkpatrick has described it as "one of the most extraordinary tunes Cecil Sharp came across." It is known in Ireland and elsewhere as Poll Ha'penny. There's a great version by fiddler Bobby Casey somewhere on the net.

I'm not sure what the step dancers at the Hunter's Rest in Priddy would make of our version, which is based on my arrangement for the Old Somerset Russets village band.

 

Great tunes that I haven't heard before. Shepton might work well in one of the Northwest Clog Morris sets I play. And nicely played!

 

Edited to say: duh. Shepton's on John Kirkpatrick's "Orlando's Return" CD.

 

Radstock - an odd and really interesting tune.

Edited by Jim Besser
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For a start from my side a repost:

 

Dat Du Min Leevsten Büst

 

(You're My Sweetheart)

 

 

Hmmm, I missed this. Nicely done, especially good song accompaniment, something I'm trying to improve in my own playing (but not with me singing; that might be considered a war crime). The tune reminds me of another, but I can't put m finger on it.

Edited by Jim Besser
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Great tunes that I haven't heard before. Shepton might work well in one of the Northwest Clog Morris sets I play. And nicely played!

 

Edited to say: duh. Shepton's on John Kirkpatrick's "Orlando's Return" CD.

 

Radstock - an odd and really interesting tune.

 

 

Thanks. Indeed - both of them are on there, though not played together.

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This month’s challenge: record and post something from your little corner of the world. You can define this broadly if you wish - ie tunes from your country - or get regionally specific.

 

As usual, it's fun interpreting Jim B's guidelines. E.g., the Topic title says "Local Favorites". Does that mean favorite tunes of my neighbors, or maybe local tunes that are favorites of mine? Of course, any particular tune could be both. Jim has already indicated that there's plenty of leeway in the interpretation of the "local" designation. Which is good, because I'm going to start by reposting a pair of tunes I've used before:

 

Tompkins & Tobin's

 

The first is a favorite among my own compositions. Can one get any more "local" than that? In addition, I named it after a park near where I used to live in New York City: "Tompkins Square". It's followed by a traditional tune, "Tobin's Favorite", which was widely popular when I lived on the US east coast, but I've found it to be almost unknown in Denmark and Sweden. So I guess that's another kind of "local".

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And Tobin's: I don't know it's origins, but it's a common tune in the New England - Middle Atlantic contra dance world. So it's local to me!

 

Yeah, I heard it -- and played it -- frequently both at contra dances and at Irish sessions. It's the latter that left me surprised that Irish session musicians here in Scandinavia not only didn't know it, but seemed to have difficulty picking it up even after hearing me play it many times. Hence my "local" designation.

Edited by JimLucas
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And Tobin's: I don't know it's origins, but it's a common tune in the New England - Middle Atlantic contra dance world. So it's local to me!

 

Yeah, I heard it frequently both at contra dances and at Irish sessions. It's the latter that left me surprised that Irish session musicians here in Scandinavia not only didn't know it, but seemed to have difficulty picking it up even after hearing me play it many times. Hence my "local" designation.

 

 

I've also played it sometimes when pressed into service playing for rapper sword. One of those jigs you can play at 180 BPM without your head exploding.

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... plenty of leeway in the interpretation of the "local" designation.

So for my second contribution, a different version of "local". This is a polska from Jämtland, the Swedish län (county) where I've been spending a lot of time in recent years (ever since a friend moved to a village in the middle of the forest there). I first came across it in a book, "Spelkvinnor i Jämtland" ((Folk Musician Women in Jämtland), where it's attributed to the playing of one Sigrid Ward, a durspel (melodeon) player who lived 1787-1877. It's become one of my personal "local" favorites.

 

Polska from Sigrid Ward

(Warts and all.)

Oh yeah... on treble English..

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An original composition from me.

 

I mostly name my instrumental compositions after places in the area where I live. This is my most recent composition and the Moors in the title are the North Yorks Moors which is a National Park near where I live. The area of the National Park is famous for its heather moorland which is particularly splendid in the early autumn when the heather is in bloom. My younger daughter once described it a "A blaze of purple"

 

The Road Across The Moors

 

Played on my Morse CG Anglo and accompanied by Bass Recorder playing harmony (I wrote it in two part harmony), Keyless Wooden Flute and a drone from a Shruti Box.

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Some tunes are "local" to more than one location. E.g., the tune commonly known in English-speaking countries as "Soldier's Joy" has also been claimed as a "native" tune in -- at least -- Norway, Finland, and Poland. For some tunes, it seems, different versions are associated with different localities. E.g., "Princess Royal", which is said to have been composed by the Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan, is also a popular Morris dance tune, with a different version for each village's tradition.

There's a traditional dance popular in some parts of Sweden that's known as "engelska", which is Swedish for "English". Not surprisingly, it has some similarities to traditional English reels.. So is it any surprise that at least one of the engelska tunes has an English counterpart. Here's the tune, found in tradition, but also in a manuscript from the early 1800s:

engelska

And here's the contemporary English-Irish-Scottish version as I'm used to it. (Bluegrassers tend to play it faster and with less "bounce".)

Fisher's hornpipe

(I should probably also put a link to that one in last month's Theme thread. It is a "swingy" hornpipe.)

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As for Quince Dillon's High D Tune. I was at a select old time jam in Brooklyn last night and we were playing this tune. Banjo, fiddle, guitar and me on Anglo concertina. It sounded great. So sorry I did not record this for you to hear.

 

I'd be real interested in hearing how you play Quince Dillon, Jody.

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An original composition from me.

 

I mostly name my instrumental compositions after places in the area where I live. This is my most recent composition and the Moors in the title are the North Yorks Moors which is a National Park near where I live. The area of the National Park is famous for its heather moorland which is particularly splendid in the early autumn when the heather is in bloom. My younger daughter once described it a "A blaze of purple"

 

The Road Across The Moors

 

Played on my Morse CG Anglo and accompanied by Bass Recorder playing harmony (I wrote it in two part harmony), Keyless Wooden Flute and a drone from a Shruti Box.

 

Very nice. Great blend of instruments.

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There's a traditional dance popular in some parts of Sweden that's known as "engelska", which is Swedish for "English". Not surprisingly, it has some similarities to traditional English reels.. So is it any surprise that at least one of the engelska tunes has an English counterpart. Here's the tune, found in tradition, but also in a manuscript from the early 1800s:

 

engelska

 

And here's the contemporary English-Irish-Scottish version as I'm used to it. (Bluegrassers tend to play it faster and with less "bounce".)

 

Fisher's hornpipe

 

(I should probably also put a link to that one in last month's Theme thread. It is a "swingy" hornpipe.)

 

Very cool. We played Fishers for a contra dance last week - smoothed out, no swing, very fast. Intriguing to hear the engelska version.

Another example: the colonial American tune Jefferson and Liberty, which is the same as the Irish traditional tune The Gobby-O. Or maybe the English country dance tune, The Gobbio.

 

'Local' is a pretty loose term. Which makes things more interesting, IMO.

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I didn't want to let February slide by without posting some kind of tribute to Ed Reavy (1897-1988). The great composer of Irish dance music, who spent most of his life a few miles from where I'm sitting, is both Local and a great Favorite of mine.

 

Hornpipes were arguably Ed Reavy's forte; here are a couple that I particularly like.

 

http://youtu.be/BeBFDXLe58Q

 

Bob Michel

Near Philly

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