Category: Folk Music

These posts relate to Folk Music.

Dawning of the Donald
Blog Post · Folk Music

Dawning of the Donald

Daniel KellyLeave a comment

Two things prompted this post, one is the behaviour of Donald Trump and the other was a search for an early ballad to record. I have written before about my own journey out of misogyny and also about the topic of misogyny in folk ballads.

In searching for a ballad, I found a version of The Dawning of the Day printed in broadside and probably published in 1853. I have found two versions from this era, the lyrics are largely the same except one includes an additional final verse. The full lyrics are available here, along with an image of the broadside. The shorter (by one verse) version is available here.

I had originally only been exposed to the shorter version on the Wikipedia page cited above, which includes a Gaelic version and English translation of a song about a man besotted by a young beauty who tells him to “sod off”. Most folk-revival performers have recorded this shorter version, examples being Tommy Makem & Liam Clancy and a much earlier recording by John McCormack.

My recording of the full version goes for 10 minutes!

The Trump connection here is that in the full version of the ballad, after being refused the man rapes the young milkmaid and continues on his way. When he comes back seven months later he spurns her because she is dropsical (swollen, i.e. pregnant). She is, of course, expecting him to marry her but he tells her that he has married someone else for 300 pounds and that she shouldn’t have left her father’s house so early in the morning.

It is easy to feel outrage at the sentiment expressed in this ballad, but possibly understand that the world was a different place in the 1800s and a woman had few rights in the society. If you don’t believe that, be sure to watch the 2015 film Suffragette.

What is far more outrageous is that the man running for President of the United States has been caught on numerous occasions expressing the same attitude towards women as presented in this ballad. I’m not barracking for Hilary Clinton here, in my opinion her and her family, with their sense of elitist entitlement and complete dislocation from the common people, are not much better. If I, or the American people, had any say, I would prefer four more years of Mr Obama or Bernie Sanders, as expressed in this song.

I would be interested to know if the Irish origins of this ballad only ever included the first verses, and that the broadside printed in England grew from a translation of the initial verses and then later addition of some self-serving endorsement of rape-culture tied with victim shaming. It would be hard to know whether the initial collector of the Gaelic ballad truncated the verses for fear of censorship, especially if the ballad only existed in memory. Fortunately, the complete text of Edward Walsh’s Irish Popular Songs published in 1847 is available here and the fact that it predates the broadside and only has the initial verses would support my initial hypothesis (blame the English).

In any case, Mr Trump, a locker-room is not a justification for any objectionable behaviour and I would expect the leader of the free world to be a gentlemen both in public and behind closed doors. I despair at Donald’s example and despair more at the many people trying to justify it.

 

Turning Wave 2016
Blog Post · Folk Music

Turning Wave 2016

Daniel Kelly2 Comments

As I listen to the horrendously funny re-interpretation of the Lord of the Rings, as performed by Martin Pearson, and savor the vision of several people walking out on his rendition of ‘The Vati-Can Can‘ performed in the Catholic Lovat Chapel, I am thinking back on the wonderful weekend just gone in Yass. This is the 5th year that the Turning Wave festival has been held in our small town in New South Wales.

This year the guest from Ireland was the delightful and talented Lydia Warnock, here she is winning the all-Ireland Fiddle title in 2013. Lydia made some interesting comments at her opening Masterclass performance and also as part of the closing concert. The subtext of what she was saying very politely was that Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, while a fantastic way to introduce young children around the world to an Irish culture, which by the 1950’s was in decline after many years of overt or subtle attempts by the English to stamp it out, could come across somewhat stilted in its uniformity.

Lydia played with a passion and feeling for the music which she described as coming from the people in their 70s from her local area who taught her the music they had learnt by ear in sessions, rather than in a room of thirty other toddlers with fiddles. I’m not sure what the lesson is here, but Ireland is not the only place that a society has attempted to revive or cling to its own historic culture in a way that can strangle the life, or at least the diversity, from it. We witnessed something very similar during our visit to Kazakhstan, where attempts to revive the dress and song post soviet occupation sometimes came across as contrived. This is not a criticism of the attempt, because I see it as a heartrendingly tragic thing for people to be cut off from their culture of hundreds or thousands of years. Lydia also praised Comhaltas for what they have managed to achieve in Ireland.

Some highlights of the festival for me included listening to the Spanish flavoured Señor Cabrales, both at their formal concert in the beautifully restored Lovat Chapel and again in their Sunday morning pub session. Hearing musicians as talented as this play together is a rare experience.

This particular festival was important for me because one of the locals involved with the festival put in the effort to organise a showcase concert of local talent. I have written previously about the song I wrote to commemorate the Sisters of Mercy who came to Yass from Ireland. A local choir had asked me for a song with an Irish connection to the town and I arranged the song for choir (with the help of a member of another choir that I am in). It was a very moving experience to hear 30 voices singing the piece to the 100 people who had stayed around for the closing concert.

Extending myself further beyond the singer/songwriter mould, I was also part of a four-piece Cèilidh style group made up of a local schoolteacher (who performed the magic trick of picking up a concertina 9 months ago and then flying through a set of 9 jigs and reels), a seasoned Irish Flute and Whistle player (from Ireland, her accent lending us some credibility), one of the pillars of the Irish/Folk scene in Yass on Bodhrán and me doing 3-chord percussion on guitar. While getting through the sets without obvious mistakes in front of the audience was a great experience, what I enjoyed most was a 40-minute practice session at a local cafe beforehand. Another comment made by Lydia Warnock was that Irish music is for the community, played in dance halls and pubs, it was never something designed for a stage with a large audience watching on with serious faces and an awkward head-nod, leg jiggle or thigh-slap. Unfortunately our group will be disbanding before reaching the peak of its fame as our Bodhrán player is leaving for Cobargo. Hopefully the festival and the concert will trigger enough interest in the town to establish a more regular session.

The newly formed TRIOC were a delight to listen to, they don’t have their own album but Matthew Horsley, the piper in the group, has a great album Australian Waters, which has also been on my post-festival playlist. You can listen to what they have recorded on soundcloud.

The last highlight for me was sharing the stage with and meeting Lugh Damen as part of the Yass showcase concert. I am already a big fan of Damh the Bard and Wendy Rule and didn’t realise we had a pagan inspired singer/songwriter living so close to Yass. Lugh’s album, Faerytale, collaborating with fiddler Retaw Boyce, is one of the finest examples of this style of music I have heard.

If you happen to be in Australia next September, don’t miss this very special festival.yass_rainbow

Cain en-Abeling
Ballad Analysis · Blog Post · Folk Music

Cain en-Abeling

Daniel Kelly2 Comments

History is always a fickle beast, told by the victors one way, then revised by the victims and then revised again when it suits some future generation. I recorded a version of The Bonnie Hoose o’ Airlie, sung with the same lyrics as those Kate Rusby uses.

While looking at the Wikipedia entry for this song, I noticed that the last two verses in one version detail a rape of the Lady of Airlie and subsequent hunting down and burning of the perpetrators:

But poor Lady Margaret was forced to come doun
And O but she sighed sairly
For their in front o’ all his men
She was ravished on the bowlin’ green o’ Airlie.

“Draw your dirks, draw your dirks,” cried the brave Locheil.
“Unsheath your sword,” cried Chairlie,
“We’ll kindle sic a lowe roond the false Argyle,
And licht it wi’ a spark oot o’ Airlie.”

On this, and other, historical websites, it seems that the song relates to the 1640 sacking of Airlie Castle by Archibald Campbell, 8th Earl of Argyll. The sacking occurred in the context of a power struggle within Scotland between the King and power brokers within the gentry. Theoretically a religious struggle between Presbyterians and the Catholic King, Charles I, it was much more about power within Scotland.

While the newly made Earl of Airlie, James Ogilvy, was away aiding the king, Archibald procured a Commission of fire and sword from the parliament and raised a small army to sack Airlie Castle. Importantly, the historical sources show that James’ son, Lord Ogilvy was present at the time and that Lady Ogilvy was turn out of her castle, but not raped in the way described in the version above.

The Electric Scotland page on this story goes into detail of the subsequent retaliation by the Ogilvy family. It would seem that this particular incident was part of an ongoing feud between the Campbells and the Ogilvys.

The Wikipedia page for the song implies that the song may have been re-written in part around the 1745 Jacobite rebellion as a propaganda piece. Certainly, the numerous versions of this ballad collected by Child, don’t seem to include the inflammatory verses above.

This tactic of dredging up a past wrong and re-painting it in the colours necessary for fanning the flames of a new conflict is not uncommon. One could wonder whether Cain ever really killed Abel in a jealous rage over his inadequate vegetables, or if some of Abel’s descendants later re-framed a minor conflict in order to justify brutality against some of Cain’s descendants for their own personal gain.

Personally, I find it repulsive that fanciful horrors from the past are used to birth real horrors in the future. It seems as though the human race is in an escalating spiral of brutality driven by carefully constructed propaganda.

Here in Australia, we are witnessing precisely this type of manufactured outrage against Muslims and, more generally, immigrants. It is also a key foundation of the Trump campaign in the US. I guess the philosophical lesson is that if you read, see or listen to something and start to feel outrage rather than compassion, then look beneath the surface to see who is pushing your button and ask why.

Sisters of Yass
Blog Post · Folk Music · My Own Music · Spirituality and Philosophy

Sisters of Yass

Daniel Kelly3 Comments

I was asked to write an Irish song for an upcoming music festival. Often my song-writing requires a specific catalyst and the songs tend to come out fully-formed in a few minutes. In searching for a suitable subject for a song, I remembered one of the key Irish connections to our small town in Australia; that being, the Sisters of Mercy who came here in 1875 to set up a school.

My children go/have gone to the primary school that a group of Sisters from Rochfortbridge in County Meath, Ireland, started when they arrived in the town in 1857.

I should caveat my post with the statement that I am sceptical of the capacity for closed religious orders of monks or nuns to maintain a healthy lifestyle in the long term. Victor Hugo dedicates a significant part of Les Misérables to describing the dangers associated with these groups. As a society we have been doing some painful looking into the past on this issue, the Magdalene Sisters in Ireland being a key relevant example. That said, I have great respect and admiration for the courage of these nuns who travelled, on request, to Australia with the intention of doing some good through education.

The song that I wrote is a fanciful re-imagining of brave young(ish; Eliza Fielding was 41) women leaving their native home in Ireland and coming to this dry, brown, land with its mix of recently displaced native peoples, rough settlers and wealthy sheep-station owners. I chose to present the emotion of longing for their (much) greener home but also their desire to share a message of love (and mercy). I have chosen one anecdote from a historical website[i] article that describes how the sisters allowed the local aboriginal children into their classes, but were later forbidden to do so by the State Department for Education. In response, the sisters set up a separate classroom until the classes were eventually integrated.

I also know that the lives of the founder of the Sisters of Mercy order, Catherine McAuley, and one of the key sisters who came to Yass, Mary Paul Fielding, are still remembered at the Mt Carmel School through the naming of their school houses and the annual events that the children are engaged in. The buildings that the sisters built and later lived and taught in are still standing. St Augustine’s Chapel, in particular, has recently be renovated and used as one of the most beautiful venues for the Turning Wave Festival held here in September.

A more in-depth biography of Mary Paul Fielding is provided on the Sisters of Mercy website[ii], including the names of all the sisters who came to Yass. Mother Fielding, in particular, is buried in Wilcannia, far inland New South Wales, definitely qualifying as ‘under a sunburnt sky’.

I do wonder whether my song reflects the feelings in the hearts of the women that came here, especially the young postulants and sisters. Maureen Healy writes in Life out West, her article in the Australasian Catholic Record[iii] in June 2015,

“We pray with our Pope Francis that the Spirit of joy will return to our world, that we will recognise through the eyes of mercy that our children will benefit from the care and the concern of others, and that our elders will be honoured.”

With the way the world seems to be going at the moment, I admire her optimism. The history of the Sisters of Mercy in Australia and the economic and social circumstances that caused young women to leave Ireland and live a life of hardship and service all over Australia are fascinating. Sophia McGrath’s case study of the Parramatta Sisters of Mercy[iv], published in 1995 gives significant insight into this world.

A quote from the above article:

“In 1906 Sister M.Alphonsus Shelly, a pioneer Sister, wrote to Moran: ‘Father Murray CSSR has given a beautiful retreat to the Children of Mary in Surry Hills. It will, please God, be productive of great good. There is a true nursery of vocations there.”

The phrase ‘nursery of vocations’ gives some idea of how young girls were considered (or groomed) for entry into the vocational life. I wonder how many entered because of religious fervour which had been intentionally fanned, how many entered because of the challenges created by their social class and how many entered because, at the time, there were few other opportunities for women in the world other than being a servant-wife.

Sisters of Mercy at the Aboriginal Reserve in Yass
Sisters of Mercy at the Aboriginal Reserve in Yass [i]
[i] http://yass.cathzone.com/Media/Default/Page/history/mercynuns.pdf

[ii] http://www.mercyworld.org/heritage/tmplt-foundressstory.cfm?loadref=182

[iii] Healy, Maureen. Life out west [online]. Australasian Catholic Record, The, Vol. 92, No. 2, Jun 2015: 148-153

[iv] McGrath, Sophie. Women religious in the history of Australia 1888/ 1950: a case study, the Sisters of Mercy, Parramatta [online]. Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 81, No. 2, Dec 1995: 195-212

Stand Up, Sing Out
Blog Post · Folk Music

Stand Up, Sing Out

Daniel KellyLeave a comment

I’m not sure why it took me so long to record a version of Siúil A Rún for my folk channel on YouTube. This song has a particular personal meaning for me, which I think it is worthwhile sharing.

Setting aside the controversy over how badly the Irish language was treated through English oppression and the inevitable loss that comes with emigration, I first heard this song as Buttermilk Hill. There is a fantastic discussion of the Folk Process as it relates to this song in John Cowan’s 2005 blog post, Recycled Knowledge. Looking back and realising that the ‘bibble in the boo’ gibberish I was sold as a child, was actually the trampled remains of someone else’s language, makes me both sad and angry. However, I set this aside for the purpose of this post.

Buttermilk Hill was a song taught to me by the school music teacher in year 7. I was only twelve at the time and had just moved from a different school. I cannot remember the name of this vibrant woman, who belted out Little Boxes and I wish I was a Fishy in the Sea with such enthusiasm that most of the class ended up doing their best to sing along.

In addition to singing sessions with each class, this teacher also ran the choir. During one of the weekly class music sessions she asked if anyone wanted to be in the choir, and said they could sing a verse of one of the songs on their own.  This was obviously before the days of mass participation and minimal public scrutiny of talent.

As an insecure twelve year old, in a new school and in front of the whole class, this seemed an unreasonably high hurdle to set for joining a school choir. I put my hand up, drawing a few sniggers from my male classmates, and said I would sing a verse of Buttermilk Hill.

In that instance of fear and excitement, I found my voice. I’m not sure if something still left in this song called to an Irish heritage in me that wanted a way out, or if it could have been any old melody, but it was a pivotal moment for me. Through the subsequent 28 years I have always found a way to be in a choir, sing at a cafe or music festival or even just post folk videos to YouTube. It also means I have had the pleasure of singing all five of my children to sleep (or not sleep, as the case may be).

More than just being about the singing, this simple act of stepping over fear of what others might think of my voice, has been critical to many other choices in life. Making a bold presentation at a job interview, asking the stupid questions at university, taking a shot at a beautiful woman despite my knees shaking, all of these seem to have had something in common with the decision to sing.

I don’t know what happened to this ilk of music teacher, or what happened to the Australian school music curriculum. From a distance it seems to be about mass rock dance events, mass participation and very little true love for the joy of singing. I am grateful for the experience I had, and the good that it continued to do throughout my life.

Ballad Analysis · Blog Post · Folk Music

No Politics Please, We’re Folk Singers

Daniel KellyLeave a comment

A large number of the folk songs I collect and record for YouTube are political in nature. Whether they are bemoaning the unfair life of a coal miner in the 1800s, a dam builder in Scotland in the 1950’s or a conscripted soldier in the Napoleonic wars, the political theme is clear. There are others that take a more philosophical approach and advocate or denounce a particular political view, Alastair Hulett’s, Dictatorship of Capital is a good example, as was the thieving of My Love’s in Germany by Robert Burns to make a point about Jacobites.

I knew about Bob Dylan from a young age, mostly because my parents followed him into his Pentecostal Christian phase. I think the 2007 biographical movie I’m Not There did a fantastic job of showing Dylan’s immense capacity to change his image to fit the times, and probably fit his interests as an artist. As I looked into Dylan later in life, I noticed his distinct move from folk Messiah to electric narcissist rocker. When I was in New York in 2014, I spent some time walking through Greenwich village pondering what went down there in the 1960’s. I tried to imagine what was going through the minds of Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and Dave Van Ronk as they witnessed Dylan’s chameleon act.

Someone who was every bit the 60’s folk musician that Dylan was, but never made it through the 1970’s was Phil Ochs. It took me much longer to learn about Phil as he died the year I was born and his work largely fell from view as Dylan’s flourished. I mention Ochs and Dylan in the context of this article because I wonder whether these two can be looked at in terms of the true believer and the salesman. Was it Ochs’ status as a true believer that caused his breakdown when the perceived wave of socialism, freedom and equality fell flat? And is there an argument to be made about the quality of each as a person? Do we care if our artists genuinely believe what they sing, write or paint?

I write songs about things that I care about. I have written about the treatment of refugees by Australia, the horse racing industry, a local road that claims a few lives each year and the lack gender equality in our society. I have also written a number of songs about the banning and subsequent imprisonment, torture and execution of Falun Gong adherents in China since 1999. This subject is close to me as I learned this peaceful meditation and exercise system myself in 1998. I knew first hand that the global propaganda campaign run by the Chinese Communist Party was a lie. It has taken 16 years, but most governments of the western world have now acknowledged this. My most recently published song, Spring Comes, highlights the stories of a handful of people caught up in this saga.

For me, folk music is a way to share what we have seen and experienced with other humans. In sharing we seek a mirror, a nod of understanding, a smile or even a tear. It is disconcerting to think that some on the other side of the microphone might not necessarily be sincere in their sentiment.

I do know, and have met, many folk musicians who are sincere about what they sing. They sing not just to record, but also to influence. The story of Alistair Hulett’s efforts to keep a local swimming pool in Glasgow open, as documented here by Gavin Livingstone is just one example. I’m sure we have lost many like Phil Ochs when advocacy fails, but I cannot resign myself to the idea that we should stop trying to change the world for the better through song.

Blog Post · Folk Music

One Day in a Perfect World

Daniel KellyLeave a comment

It was probably in 2006 when I first heard Colum Sands play at the National Folk Festival here in Australia. His carefully crafted and insightful song about the troubles in Ireland, Last House in Our Street, was a trigger to collect all of his albums. It was a good investment.

I wasn’t intending to go to the National this year as juggling five young children has made it a challenge. However, when I heard Colum on the radio in the weeks beforehand, promoting the festival, it suddenly became a much more attractive option.

My wife and I and three of our sons (12, 4 and 1) went along for the Friday. Hearing Colum play some songs from his new album along with Buskers and the funny song about the donkey was worth every cent of the ticket. My wife was also brave enough to meet Colum and get the newly purchased copy of Turn the Corner signed.

This post isn’t intended to be a report from our day at the festival, but more about the nature of this particular festival. Every year that I have attended, it has felt like stepping into Diagon Alley. A world where socially conscious people sit and listen to well-crafted music by everyone from the 10yr old with their first ukulele, to masters of the art. People are patient, generous and friendly.

Sometimes the odd ‘normal’ Canberran buys a ticket by accident and can be spotted wandering in a daze, like a muggle at a Quiddich match. I don’t know if this phenomena is common to all folk festivals, I haven’t been to many others but the ones I have been to don’t compare to the National. The slogan for the 50th anniversary, “5 days in a perfect world”, certainly rings true for me.

Despite living in Canberra since 1994, it was not until I was asked to help teach some morning Qi Gong exercises and coordinate a Chinese Dance display in 2006 that I discovered this incredible alternate universe. As one who has dabbled in the magic arts, I do wonder whether it is the concentration of so many people of a certain type, performers, organisers, volunteers and general attendees that creates the otherwise unexplainable vibe.

I’m sure that any one of the performers could put on a great concert, but I doubt if people would walk away with the same feeling that comes from spending some time at the National.

My son lost his Ukulele within the first 15 minutes of being at the festival. On Tuesday I had a phone call from the lost-property folks letting me know that it had been returned. As I said to my wife after my son noticed it was missing, “don’t worry, this is the National, these people don’t steal stuff”.

I should mention a few new performers that we enjoyed listening to. The harmonies provided by the three lads from The Young’uns were superb. It is great to have acts of this calibre come over from the UK and their selection of left-leaning songs was brilliant. I had to record my own version of John Ball, after hearing them perform it.

Co-cheòl also impressed.  Unfortunately the venue (Lyric) was probably half the size of the audience trying to get in. Fortunately my son and I had pre-positioned. With success on their Pozible campaign, they should have a debut album out in the near future. Multi-instrumentalists and with a solid choral background, their songs were heavenly to listen to.

We made sure to catch up with past festival favourites of ours, Cloudstreet and The Roaring Forties who put on a Cicely Fox Smith special that I was very pleased to sing along loudly to. The downside of a single day ticket is that you inevitably miss some performers, so it was a great disappointment to miss the Wheeze and Suck Band and also the Fiddle Chicks.

An important event that didn’t occur until the end of the festival was the presentation to Tony Eardley of the Alistair Hulett social justice songwriting award. You can see Tony’s excellent song “Sally Cross The Water” here. I first heard Tony sing Portugal Beach at the 2008 National and had it stuck in my head for 7 years until I finally met him in the Blue Mountains last year and purchased a copy of his album Desire Lines.

Maybe this feeling is unique to me, but I suspect others feel similarly about this event. It is only sad that every other day is now just one which isn’t spent at the National.

Women’s Day (Men stop being Bastards)
Blog Post · Folk Music · My Own Music

Women’s Day (Men stop being Bastards)

Daniel KellyLeave a comment

I wrote a song to express my sentiments on Women’s Day this year. I have included the lyrics below:

Women’s Day (by Daniel Kelly, 2016)

You pulled her hair in primary school,
Teased her ‘caus you thought it made you cool,
Laughed at her when she knew more than you

Girls can’t run, girls are weak,
Make them cry, don’t let them speak,
It’s really no surprise how we got here

Chorus:

It’s women’s day, it’s women’s day,
There has to be a better way,
To say the things still in my head
Let’s call it ‘Men don’t be Bastards’ day instead.

Took her on a date when you were fifteen,
Tried to squeeze her into your shallow dreams,
She was never gonna be the one you loved

It’s hard to know how to relate,
When all you’re ever taught is hate,
I wish I hadn’t lived with it so long

Chorus

When the children came, she stayed at home,
No women’s wage could pay those bills,
In a market made by men you’ll never win

They say you can always start again,
But only if you pay the price,
Your family, your dignitary and soul.

Chorus

More than a thousand years to prove,
The truth that we already knew,
There’s nothing that a woman cannot do

I wrote the song reflecting on the strong women I have known during my 39 years, and especially in relation to the treatment of women that I grew up observing as a child in Queensland during the 1980’s. Treatment which, to my shame, I emulated. It was not until I left home at seventeen and was exposed to the work of Tori Amos and a broader range of movies and television that I started to re-think the ideology that I had been raised in.

This blog post is about dissecting the origins of my behaviour and, hopefully, to let women know that there are men in society who value their contribution as complete people, rather than trophies, servants or sex toys. I’m also writing to encourage men to think about their attitudes towards women; where those attitudes come from and whether they are your own or imposed.

Why do we, Crucify ourselves
Every day, I crucify myself
Nothing I do is good enough for you
Crucify myself, Every day
And my heart is sick of being in chains
(crucify, from Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos)

The Little Earthquakes album, released by Tori Amos in 1992, had a magical property for me. It took an arrogant, selfish and condescending young male mind and rubbed my face in a thousand years of women’s suffering. I’m not ashamed to admit that I would often be reduced to a sobbing mess after listening properly to some of the songs on this album.

I’m not for a second suggesting that forcing every 17yr old male to listen to Tori Amos is going to solve the problem of gender imbalance, but for me it was a transcendent experience.

The social experiment, done by fanpage in Italy demonstrated with boys 6 to 11, that the tendency towards violence against women must be developed after this age. I’m not just talking about physical violence here, much of the violence against women is verbal and focused on how they look, how they feel and express feelings or how their interests and skills are trivial. Excluding someone from opportunity in society on the basis of their sex is violence.

The lyrics in the song above are all biographical. There were many beautiful young girls in my classes during school that I would tease relentlessly. Not playful teasing, but cruel verbal abuse. Even in my first years of university I would ridicule girls that social norms labelled overweight or unattractive. Girls who were considered attractive would be assumed to be sexually available and subject to a different form of abuse. How had society instilled such a shallow value system in me? I guess I could blame the fact that every storybook, television advertisement, movie and sitcom I was exposed to had the male hero exclusively pursuing a certain type of willing, beautiful, girl whose main purpose was to gush over said hero and fall helplessly into his arms. In my defence, I do not believe that very many young boys could resist an onslaught of this type if it is not countered by an alternate view in the adults and other children they are exposed to. This does not in any way excuse my behaviour or change the harm that was caused.

By the time I was finishing high-school, I ended up inviting a girl to the school formal that I had barely said five words to. My interest purely stemming from the fact that she looked like a singer who I had become infatuated with. As expected, things did not go well, and I was left confused when life did not imitate what I had seen on television and read in books.

I am angry at the way in which this attitude towards women sits at the core of Australian society. Unless a women chooses to forgo having children and is willing to endure harassment, it is unlikely that she will rise very far within her profession. This is evidenced by the average 18% pay gap [i] and means that when selecting top scientists, top doctors, top lawmakers, we are excluding between 5-15% of the available population, purely based on an antiquated idea that men are superior.

Other nations have moved on, providing in-workplace child care, flexible work arrangements and paternal leave. There is no logical reason for this absurd situation, yet in every field that women have fought to become part of, they have faced, and still face, a mountain of resistance.

If anything, celebrating Women’s Day in Australia is really just pointing to our failure. I encourage you to read the story of Rosmary Folett, the first female chief minister in the Australian Capital Territory. It is a story of triumph; her succeeding in doing a job she was highly qualified to do despite a wall of male ignorance and prejudice. However, the point is that she should not have had to, and how much better could she have done if time had not been wasted combating said prejudice? Enough is enough, it is time for balance to be returned.

He said you’re really an ugly girl
But I like the way you play
And I died
But I thanked him
Can you believe that
Sick, sick, holding on to his picture
Dressing up every day
I wanna smash the faces of those beautiful boys
Those Christian boys
So you can made me come
That doesn’t make you Jesus

(Precious Things, from Little Earthquakes, Tory Amos)

[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap_in_Australia

Who Gets a Song?
Ballad Analysis · Blog Post · Folk Music

Who Gets a Song?

Daniel KellyLeave a comment

What is the relationship between a folk song and its genesis? How important is it to the worth of a song that there is a personal connection of some sort between the author, subject and audience? It could be argued that ever since the popularisation of the broadsheet, around 1712, this connection has been broken. With songs copied from one region and spread all over the country (and globe) to be sung by singers to audiences, neither of whom have any tangible connection to the subject matter.

Thinking back to the time of the bards, their songs were closely linked to the living memory of a specific region, clan or tribe. The audience could often trace their lineage to the heroes of a song, or even have eyewitnesses to the events amongst the living population.

We could be sceptical and assume that the bard was the equivalent of Fox News or a Murdoch tabloid, with truth in reporting highly dependent on who is paying their salary (or threatening to kill them). A brief research into the Fili of Ireland would suggest otherwise. It is because of the Fili and Bards of Wales and Scotland that such well preserved stories as those retold in Coll the Storyteller’s Tales of Enchantment or in Padrig Colum’s Treasury of Irish Folklore are still available to us, much as they would have been performed and told 500 years ago. Prior to the introduction of Christianity, the storyteller held a very high place in Celtic society, even at the same level as the chief or king.

This ramble was prompted by my reading of a book that details close to 300 years of linen manufacture in Maghera, Ireland. The book, Linen on the Green, was written by Wallace Clark, my great-great uncle. In the book is a story of one Jackson Clark (1762-1788), who had married the daughter of a local General (James Patterson). Jackson dies after falling from a horse while racing back from work to try and catch his young wife in bed with his uncle. To me, this had the makings of a good folk song, so I wrote one.

This got me thinking, why does the story of a young girl pushed into the river by her elder sister (Twa Sisters), or the tale of a young girl dying for her criminal lover (The Highwayman) warrant selection and perpetuation by society through immortalisation in song. Any folk researcher will know the process of evolution these songs go through, where the town, villain, trade or names get changed for whatever will better connect with a local culture, or serve a particular political agenda. A good example being the Recruited Ploughboy who becomes a Recruited Collier in the time when ploughing has been given over to machines. In some cases we know that the song (or poem), as for The Highwayman, has no link to real events and is purely from the imagination of the author.

So why was it that the death of my great-great-great-great-grandfather was never made into a popular song? Someone who died after riding to his love across the river Annan got a song. Could we assume, like Carl Jung, that there are archetypes of human existence that are frames upon which a particular folk song will stick because they align with these sub-conscious memes? Is this why many millions of other stories and the songs written about them fade into oblivion? Or instead, is it the writers of songs and poems that shape new archetypes from human experience which rise of fall on their merits.

This capturing of snapshots of human existence is one of the many reasons why I love folk music. There is a local singer/songwriter here in Australia, John Warner, who wrote about the experience of a group of convicts in Victoria. Anderson’s Coast, performed here by Nancy and James Fagan, captures the story of people that would otherwise never have been told. Hearing John sing the song himself is an experience worth tracking down, unfortunately there isn’t one on YouTube.

Ballad Analysis · Blog Post · Folk Music

That’s Women’s Work!

Daniel KellyLeave a comment

I have been listening to Alistair Hulett’s version of The Weaver and the Factory Maid since purchasing the album In Sleepy Scotland from the UK back in 2010. I always thought of it as an upstairs/downstairs style of love story between a wealthy man and the woman forced into his embrace through her station. A bit of knowledge has caused me to re-think the meaning of the song, and wonder about the way that a little bit of context can change the meaning of a folk song so much.

You can listen to my own recording here, or the Steelye Span version here. It is a great disappointment that there is no version of Alistair’s up on YouTube.

Recently I was sent a book about the history of the linen trade in Ireland. I come from a branch of the Clark family that has been manufacturing linen in the Upperlands area of Northern Ireland since the mid 1700s. The book, Linen on the Green, was written by Wallace Clark (my great-great-uncle) and first published in 1983. Reading this book and doing a bit of research on weaving has given me cause to rethink my understanding of the song.

The song is written from the perspective of a hand-weaver and speaks of his love for a factory girl. If you are already familiar with hand weaving and the various technological advances that started in 1733 with the invention (or maybe just patenting of an Asian invention dating back 500 years) of the flying shuttle by John Kay, then these next paragraphs will be a bit dull.

The handloom appeared in Europe in the 11th century and by the likely time of this song (the 1800s), there were around 250,000 hand-weavers in the UK [1], from a population of around 10 million[2]. Hand weaving was a skilled task and a good weaver could make a reasonable living for themselves. These hand-weavers would most likely have been young men (25-35), and the male subject of our song was probably one of them.

Industrialisation of the loom meant that the skills of the hand-weaver were no longer required and a young, unskilled, girl or woman could now do seven times the work for lower pay in a factory with steam driven looms.

One of the perks of being a hand-weaver was that young male weavers would travel from farm to farm with their loom to weave the flax or cotton thread spun by local farmers. This would give the weaver easy access to many a young lass, being the daughters of the farmer or land owner (the Jolly Beggar comes to mind). A young weaver who had a regular seasonal trip between farms could have had the weaver’s equivalent of a sailor’s girl in every port.

With the advent of the factory, these women now went to work early in the morning for their own money and had no time or need of a hand-weaver. This might account for the verse where the protagonist goes to the girl’s bedroom door but cannot find his way into her pleasant bed, without a job he would have had no access to the property.

I should add that it wasn’t all money and status for the women in the factories. With the guaranteed deafness, loss of finger in machinery and eyes from loose shuttles it was a miserable life. Carcinogenic chemicals on the cotton that they would thread after wetting in their mouth meant and early grave for the factory workers.

So is this song really a lament for a firm breasted young girl, or a lament for the job and the status that the hand-weaver had before the arrival of the factory? Or is the author instead longing to be let into the factory and continue to ply his trade, is his actual lament for the loom and her charms?

I may be drawing a long bow with the last suggestion, but I know I will never think of the song in the same way given this small amount of context. I wonder how many other songs are similarly misunderstood for want of a little knowledge?

[1] Guest, R, 1823, A Compendious History of Cotton-Manufacture.

[2] http://chartsbin.com/view/28k