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email 23/11/19
Folklore collectors and singers.
It seems to happen rather suddenly,
when one realizes that you have become ‘an elder’ in the group. That is, that
most people around you are younger. In fact, after you tell a story as if it
were last year and expect them to recognize names or understand events, some
will say: but I wasn’t born then! When you look more closely at that person it
is no spring chicken you see, but he or she was probably born after1970.
As a result of this rapid ageing process, I
have memories of people I met in my twenties, who have since died, but were
once pivotal in founding the traditional folk scene in Australia. They were
collectors and performers of song, music, dance and ballads. Some of the names
that come to mind are John Meredith, Ron Edwards, Alfred Hill, John Manifold, Margaret
Sutherland, Shirley Andrews, Wendy Lowenstein, Helen Palmer, Doreen Jacobs,
Glen Tomasetti and many more.
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| Dance in memory of Shirley Andrews, NFF 2024 Sandra Nixon photo |
However, I am going to share some memories of just two of those people and some of the people they collected in their search for the folk songs that were sung by people during the early half of the twentieth century. Ron Edwards, who I referred to in last diary entry and John Meredith, who became a special friend and mentor to John Dengate and myself when we first joined the Bush Music Club in 1961. Over the years I shared conversations with both Ron and John [or ‘Merro’ as he preferred us to call him] about their collections of songs and can recall lots of stories about the people who sang or played music they had often learnt from older generations.
Sadly around the 1950s and 1960s many
of those whose songs were collected mentioned that they no longer sang them for
the younger generation as they were not interested. This refers to black and white singers as
both Ron and John met and recorded people from indigenous traditions as well as
western, mainly British and Irish traditions. Recently, while in Wilcannia, NSW
on the banks of the Darling River, I heard
of George Dutton, a local bloke who had knocked about the bush all his working
life, who was keen to share his story. He had lived an amazing life and was ‘
one of the last initiated by black rules’ but already by 1960 he commented that
the ‘young people were making fun of the old ways’. The impact of recorded
music, much of it from USA, was having a strong impact on what was being
listening to by the youth. Sally Sloane expressed similar sentiments to Merro.
Collectors such as Edwards and
Meredith realized they were in a race against time and even death to find these
people and their songs. There was little public awareness or money to fund
these collecting and publishing ventures, but this did not deter them.
Throughout the 1960s, Ron Edwards published a magazine called ‘National Folk,
incorporating Northern Folk’. It cost 20 cents and I have referred to Ron’s
article ‘Songs and Singers’ in the November ’69 editions to refresh my
memories.
.
The ‘ownership‘ of a song is an
interesting phenomenon and is very different form the situation today. When
collecting songs in small out back communities, Ron would find himself directed
to another person, even though the person to whom he was speaking knew the words.
This was not necessarily the person who wrote the song, but the one who always
performed it if present in the group. Before singing the song, it might be
announced that ‘here is a song I will give to you.’ Indeed, an actual gift was
implied when giving the song to the collector.
.
Ron noted that he found the singers
in Torres Strait Islands also practiced this informal ‘gifting’. He had learnt
a song he particularly enjoyed so his friend said: 'This is your song now, too'.
So Ron was called upon to sing it although he felt others could sing it better.
However, they all joined in and stopped when he did.
Many bushmen carried handwritten,
yellowing pages of songs that had been gifted, so it wasn’t always straight
oral tradition that operated in passing on songs. This was particularly so with
songs printed as Broadsides. In England these sheets of the latest song were sold
for a penny. As few of the old-timers read music, they had to remember the
tunes and sometimes set another tune which seemed to fit the words or slightly
adjusted the tune.
Of course, parodies proved popular as
setting new words to familiar tunes meant some tunes did sterling service.
Edwards says the singers mostly sang to entertain themselves and listeners.
They were quite unconscious of any ethics involved with alterations or borrowings.
I recall Alan Scott (editor of many Bush Music Club ‘Singabout’ songsters}
after putting his collection into booklet form, saying that there seemed to be
three main tunes from which all others descended. This might be disputed, but
it was an interesting way of getting folklorists discussing songs.
I thought Sally Sloane was an old
lady when I first heard her singing and playing her fiddle or accordion – one
of those Mezon Grand Organ models, at Bush Music Club Singabouts. I realize I
am now older than she was then! She had
two singing voices depending whether the song might be considered an old song
which she had usually learnt from her mother, who learnt them from her mother
or a ‘stage song’. The story of Merro collecting over 150 musical items from
Sally is fascinating. Merro recalled his first meeting with Fred Sloane after
the Bushwhackers had performed at Lithgow, NSW in 1954. Fred was a cocky
fellow, who said: If you want old songs you ought to see my missus…she’ll sing
them all night once she gets going. Merro was dubious, but Fred was not joking
and Sally was able to sing and recall her repertoire over the many occasions
that Merro visited with his heavy state-of-the-art for those days tape recorder.
Sally invariably sang as she washed up. When Merro asked her: 'What was that
song? she couldn’t remember as like most women, she sang to accompany her work,
but not about the work as shearers certainly have done.
.
John Meredith wrote of Sally Sloane
and many others he recorded and got to know in his book ‘Folk Songs of
Australia and the Men and women who sang them’, and I felt privileged to hear
so many of his stories about these people and their songs which have been
gifted to us.
Keep singing,
Dale
.
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