David, What a pleasant message. With my apologies to the list for not editing out our dialogue below (as I don't have time tonight to trim the message) I'll add a few notes that may be of interest. I started with folk in 1949 for some reason . I think it was probably part interest in my heritage and partly because I was a fourteen year old breaking the rules by listening to WWVA with the radio under my covers after my bedtime. Whatever, they played Burl Ives and Leadbelly, John Jacob Niles and Woody Guthrie - and all sorts of others. I made a mountain dulcimer recently because of old memories of Jean Ritchie.
I mentioned singing with the Clancy's and Tommy Makem in 1961 (off stage, at the local churches). I didn't mention my last gig before taking "straight" employment. I got back from SF of a Sunday afternoon and went to Gerde's Folk City (the old location) in NYC. Ed McCurdy was at the bar. The amateurs held the audience for about five to ten minutes until one Bob Zimmerman took the stage in his RR engineers cap and with his neck braced harmonica and guitar. He held them for a half hour, and McCurdy left the bar to listen. I borrowed a guitar and took the stage, also held them for a half hour and got the attendance of McCurdy. My last night, and Bob Dylan's first. McCurdy took us both out for drinks (although Zimmerman was under age). And one more, several years later as an IBM salesman I hung out in a place called Two Guitars (a Russian place, the name from the song Dve Guitare). Theo Bikel was a regular customer as well, we both loved Sashka Polinoff's balalaika. One night Sashka was a bit under the weather and Bikel and I swapped sets to cover him. It was from Theo I learned to sing in Russian and Rumanian. And (my lady says ask Murphy the time and he'll tell you how to build a watch) may I add a comment on what is traditional. There is a song called Scarborough Fair, sung by Simon and Garfunkel in a Dorian mode, and it is in many songbooks with their melody and word and attributed as Traditional English. Not so, the traditional song was in a major tonic (Ionian), and was a male/female response song (like Reuben, Rueben or Paper of Pins). Their melody is quite pretty, but not old - my point being that we can never be sure what is really old unless we see the original music. The lute list is obviously working with old texts in French Tabulature, as I'm doing in trying to learn on the retuned guitar. But I will say that when S&G's Scarborough Fair came out I made my own song by alternating the old words of the male and female, and using their Dorian for the female and the old Ionian for the male. It works well. Should anyone want the full text of the song, which gives it meaning, I'd be happy to type it out. Said more than I intended, a curse that we who had to learn to touch type in high school have. Our college papers were written on manual typewriters (which is an advantage for string players, it builds finger strength). Best, Jon > Hi Jon, > > > In my brief folk singing career (over forty years ago)... > > Lets see, I too was singing folk music forty years ago. 1963 was my > first year out of high school. I was in Southern California in those > days, and very big into the bluegrass scene: hanging out with the > likes of Douglas Dillard, John McLean and David Lindley. Unlike them, > I remained unknown... > > The folk revival at that time opened the door to a lot of very fine > folksingers who, like yourself, were skilled in the folk repertoire of > many countries. I myself was strictly an imitator: I was trying to > sound as Appalachian as I possibly could (mostly trying to copy sounds > I heard on some of the Folkways recordings that were going around at > that time), so perhaps I was inadvertantly singing Elizabethan English!? > > > ...I yet quarrel with the academic knowledge of > > the sound of the historical language. I don't think that is possible. > > But > > there is usually a general academic agreement as to how it should have > > sounded. > > Ho! There's a rascally streak in my nature that makes me think that if > ONLY the Elizabethans had had the proper academic preparation, they > would have been able to speak perfect "period" English the way it > really should sound. Unfortunately, they didn't have the benefit of > all our research on the subject, so GOODness knows WHAT they sounded > like! :-) > > > I enjoy trying to read Chaucer out loud, using my knowledge of the > > mix of French and Anglo-Saxon, using the spellings, and using the fact > > that > > he parses in relatively strict verse. One looks for the syllables to > > accent > > in order to make the rhythm as it is apparent in his form that he > > meant to > > carry a strict rhythm (unlike Shakespeare). > > I think poetry is at its best when it's read out loud. Drama too. To > me, nothing's more boring than reading a play, but to watch it unfold > on the stage is a whole different experience. > > An acquaintance of mine who lives in Leeds (UK) was involved a few > years ago in producing a complete cycle of medieval mystery plays which > she and her colleagues performed in the city of York, in exactly the > spots around the town where the plays would originally have been given. > It was all done as authentically as possible, with a great deal of > attention being paid to the way the actors spoke the lines. I had a > sense from talking to her about it that there was a very clear academic > standard against which the speakers had to measure their performance. > She told me that at one point she had to stand in for one of the > actors, and perform one of the parts herself. She said that she found > the actual performance a bit different to the academic research! I was > impressed by the way she was able to bridge the abyss that lies between > theory and performance. > > I think that that abyss does exist, and bridging it is always going to > be an issue when discussing topics such as how to sing lute songs in > "period" English. In my view, if something in music doesn't convey > well to an audience, then either it's not being done right, or it's not > worth bothering with in the first place. > > Speaking of Kevin Costner...(huh?), I think that Robin Hood film of his > suffered more from a terrible script than bad acting. > > Regards, > > David R > > >
