The WSHSO Album!

Blue Glaze Mento Band CD Launch!

Tonight, the Blue Glaze Mento Band will be in Kingston to launch its latest album, We Will Wait.  The group worked with New Orleans producer Bill Monstead on a really nice mix of mento, reggae and gospel.  However, what I think mento fans will find most compelling is that this album not only features some original songs composed by band members, but it also includes some legendary guest artistes taking over the vocal duties.  For example, Stranjah Cole sings over his own ska classic “Rough and Tough” played as a mento and  Bunny Wailer is the featured singer on Blue Glaze lead singer Vernal Morgan’s composition “We Will Wait,” while Toots Hibbert is featured on my favorite track “Great Jehovah” (another Vernal Morgan composition).  Just great stuff all around.  The guy who wrote the liner notes did a pretty good job as well (if I may say so).

This album marks the last recording my friend and original Blue Glaze banjoist Nelson Chambers made before he died just a bit over a year ago, and he’s in fine form.  I think he would have been proud to see this CD finally released to the world.

If you’re interested in buying We Will Wait, click here to head on over to CD Baby and check it out.

An Irish Christmas: A Musical Solstice Celebration

Last week, New York City’s Irish Arts Center launched a Christmas album called An Irish Christmas: A Musical Solstice Celebration.  It is the first in IAC’s “Live From Irish Arts Center” series and recorded live during last year’s series of Christmas concerts.  The album features Mick Moloney, Athena Tergis, Rhys Jones, Billy McComiskey, Liz Hanley and Brendan Dolan and it also includes a track from the Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra!  I mention it because I had a fair bit to do with it, not only with the WSHSO, but as production coordinator (being a second set of ears in mixing/mastering, organizing manufacturing, etc) and publicist (if you’ve heard it on the radio, I had something to do with it getting there).

It sets a very high musical standard for Christmas albums and has some great music on it – plus, it’s a worthwhile gift for the season!  Click here to buy it/ check it out!

Skull Banjo

Today, I was at the National Library in Kingston, reading the June 1900 issue of Winkler’s Choir Leader.  It’s a kind of boring Jamaica-based periodical about choir music (and mostly about religious choir music at that), but I came across an article about a “skull banjo” supposedly found in Paraguay that caught my eye.  Here’s the exact text, it paints a chilling picture:

Grewsome Musical Instrument

Skull banjos are the product of the small country of Paraguay.  The Indians of ancient times were constantly engaged in warfare and their primary aim when thus engaged was to capture the chief of the opposing side.  When captured this personage was carried to their camp and there cruelly murdered and it was from his body that this grewsome curious musical instrument was made.

After the skull was thoroughly dried the top was cut entirely off. Over the opening thus made a piece of skin taken from the body was tightly stretched in the manner of a drum. In the back of the skull the two femors of the legs were inserted.  These bones were so trimmed that they were of uniform thickness throughout the entire length.  The ends of these bones were joined together by one of the ribs from the body.

Then from the forehead of the skull to the rib which connected the femors strings were tightly stretched.  These strings were made from the skin of the victim, thoroughly dried and rubbed over with resin.  The instrument was played in a similar manner to the mandolin.

The skull was left so that the jaws were movable.  Therefore with each shake of the instrument the jaws wagged, and with any sharp jolt the teeth came together with a snap. So Rare a relic was this considered that a gentleman of England bid £125 for one at a recent auction In London.

Turns out, the verbatim article appears a few months earlier in the February, 1900 issue of the Hopkinsville Kentuckian.  Then, a slightly amended version of this article (with a line suggesting the existence of this instrument is proof that Paraguayan Indians are a “barbarous, uncivilized race”) shows up in 1906 in Wisconsin’s Eau Claire Sunday Leader, in May 1907 in Springfield, Kentucky’s News-Leader (where the New York Herald is its cited source), in May 1907 in the Lodi Sentinel, and then in July 1907 in the Bryan Times.  I’m sure this article showed up in other papers as well – I just haven’t looked in depth.

It’s fascinating to me that an article about a Paraguayan “skull banjo” was written in the first place.  (Particularly because I don’t believe they ever existed.)  But published in 1900 in Jamaica after the exact story ran in Hopkinsville Kentucky?  I mean, what was the connection?  How did that work?  It’s also fascinating to me that a more blatantly racist (but clearly related) version began to appear in 1906-1907?  What’s that all about?  I mean, if I didn’t know any better I’d think this was just innocent fun…but I do know better, and it’s pretty clear that this isn’t what this is.

Funny article, though!

Reggae Loves Vaudeville?

On September 1st, NPR posted a piece called “Reggae Loves Country: A 50 Year Romance.”  It’s a very interesting program about an interesting topic because you really do run across an amazing amount of US country music in Jamaica.  However, I think the question of country’s “influence” is very interesting and a lot more detailed than NPR suggests.  For example, most of the earlier names you see in NPR’s piece relate to names that would only have become familiar once records started coming to Jamaica in the 1950s, maybe as imports but I think more likely as licensed material pressed in Jamaica for Caribbean distribution.*  The reality is that gospel music has long been important in Jamaica.  Missions in the 19th and 20th centuries would not only have brought down songbooks (published by the likes of Stamps–Baxter and Rodeheaver) that popularized the kinds of religious songs and harmonies country artists would have been familiar with, but I imagine it’s also likely that popular secular songs were passed on by missionaries as well.  Ultimately NPR’s point is correct, that a familiarity with a “country sound” grew in Jamaica, especially after records and radio became serious factors in Jamaican culture.

Another important (and often overlooked) influence on Jamaican music (and as you’ll see, on country as well) is vaudeville.  Musicians of all cultural backgrounds pretty much everywhere had exposure to vaudeville when it was an ongoing concern, and some of its songs found life is less obvious places.  I believe that sometimes these songs became identified with the style in which they were performed and would be assumed to be examples of “influence.”  To get a sense of how this worked, let’s take the “50 Cent” song.  There were tons of country versions of it.  Riley Puckett (1924), Ernest Stoneman (1925) and Peg Moreland (1930) all did versions.  Binkley Brothers Dixie Clodhoppers also did it (“When I Had But 50 Cents,” Victory, 1928):

Ashley and Foster  did it around 1933 as well (unissued, according to Juneberry).
When I Had But Fifty Cents

Based on this, one might think that this was actually a country song.  However, it actually became popular through vaudeville:

To find the 1881 printed version, click here to download the PDF from the Lester Levy collection at Johns Hopkins.

To find the 1885 printed version, go the Library of Congress American Memory website and search “The Original Fifty Cents” and “Sam Devere”

There are two versions because credit for it’s composition is disputed – a black composer (Dan Lewis) and a white composer (Sam Devere) both claim it.  (I haven’t looked into that story, but I’m sure the songs origins are contested and are related to racial struggles in American theater at the time.)  Though, this song remained popular over the years and not just in the country music community.  For example, the Irish group the Flanagan Brothers adapted it in 1933 as the “Half Crown Song” (Columbia 78, NYC 1933):
Half Crown Song

I’ve read that song made it over to Ireland and the UK where it became well known in the Music Halls and that it was also known as far away as Australia.  In 1948, Eddie Shuler’s Reveliers did a Cajun version called “Mes Cinquantes Sous” (Goldband 78):
Mes Cinquantes Sous

This song also appears to have made the rounds in New York’s West Indian community.  The earliest recorded version (it seems) was called the “West Indian Weed Woman,” recorded by Guyanese singer and vaudevillian Bill Rogers in New York in 1934:
West Indian Weed Woman

Although likely popular in other parts of the Caribbean it had particular popularity in Jamaica.  Rogers’s record was most certainly available there, but it was the itinerant street singer duo Slim and Sam who popularized the lyrics on printed tracts.  Their version (as it’s been sung to me) ended with the line “And the only weed that they didn’t have was the wicked ganga weed.” Given the popularity of Slim and Sam’s version of the song, it’s no surprise that Hubert Porter’s  text contrefacta tailored for tourist consumption followed (c. 1953):

Huber Porter, “Names of Funny Places in Jamaica”
Names of Funny Places in Jamaica

The song seems to have had a fair bit of life in Caribbean contexts – Belafonte recorded a (cannibalized) version of it in 1959 and familiarized new audiences to the melody as “Man Piaba.”  Then, in the mid-1970s, the reggae group the Meditations recorded it as “Woman Piabba.”  One might listen to this version and imagine some kind of direct “country” connection, but as we can see the the story is far more circuitous.

Anyhow, this is just a quick sketch of some things I’m thinking about, a little vignette of what is a much larger (and basically undocumented) story.

_____________

* I wrote a short piece on the very beginnings of Jamaican’s recording industry called “Calling All Singers, Musicians and Speechmakers : Mento Aesthetics and Jamaica’s Early Recording Industry” in Caribbean Quarterly (53:4, December 2007, pp. 1-15; there’s a better revised & expanded version that will appear in a forthcoming special issue of Caribbean Quarterly – I don’t know when that will be out, though.)

Jolly Boys on NPR

Banning Eyre (of Afropop Worldwide fame) put together a really nice piece about the Jolly Boys for NPR this week – it’s worth a listen.  It talks about the JB’s recently released Great Expectation album yet.  If you haven’t bought it yet, what are you waiting for?

The Sweet Set in Los Angeles

A few months ago, my Los Angeles-based fiddle playing pal Melanie Nolley asked me if I could do a couple of posters for a combined contra/ceili dance her group “The Sweet Set” was going to be doing on April 30.  After talking with her band-mate LeeAnn Gorne about what they were looking for and who was going to be involved with the dance, this is what I came up with:

Should be a very cool event!

Lillie’s, April 2

On April 2nd, my guest at Lillie’s was button accordion player James Keane.  Although having James by always makes for a great session, this Saturday was memorable because Mick Moloney was there as well.  There’s lots of history between Mick and James, so it was a great time on lots of levels.  James, who has gotten into the habit of making videos on his Flip recorder, asked me to get a few moments of them playing, and I was more than happy to oblige.  Have a look:

If you’d like to see more of what James has been up to, check out his YouTube channel “IrishMusicTherapy” by clicking here.  There’s some great stuff there to see.

WSHSO Album Available Now

Are you Irish American and do you love the music of your ethnic heritage?  And do you want to share this love with your family and friends, but you can’t seem to get your girlfriend, parents or grandparents interested in your music, bands such as the Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly or even the Pogues?

You’re in luck, because The Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra is here to help.

Featuring modern arrangements of songs and tunes popular during the early twentieth century, the WSHSO’s new CD Since Maggie Dooley Learned the Hooley Hooley is just the thing to help people to hear things your way.  Why, in just one listen, you’ll fall for it so hard that it’ll practically live in your CD player.  But this album’s appeal spans generations – it’s so full of charm that it’ll quickly become a favorite amongst your family and your friends.  Don’t believe me?  You will when your girlfriend threatens to break up with you over which track should be your favorite, while your grandparents look on, remarking to each other at your fine taste in music and in girls.

The ideal Christmas, birthday or Christening gift to impress that hard to buy for friend or relative on your list, Since Maggie Dooley Learned the Hooley Hooley has something on it for everyone.  Put it on and stand back – it’ll have everyone dancing away ’till the wee hours.

Click here to get your physical copy from CD Baby

First run limited press of 1,000 with liner notes by Mick Moloney, Don Meade and Scott Spencer!  Don’t wait and be disappointed when the pressing is sold out – order yours now! If digital downloads are more your speed, Since Maggie Dooley Learned the Hooley Hooley is also available from these and other quality online sources:

Click here to get a digital copy from iTunes
Click here to get a digital copy from Digstation

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Like a Model T with a New CD Player

On Thursday, February 24th, the Jolly Boys came to New York to debut Great Expectation at the Hiro Ballroom.  A large and extremely fashionable, culturally engaged crowd came to see the band’s new, more angsty modern mento repertory and sound.

Then, on Friday the 25th, the group performed three songs live on WNYC’s Greene Spaces.  It was an exceptional live performance to a crowd of about 60 and was broadcast online to a much, much larger listenership.  You can listen to a podcast of the full performance by clicking here, or watch them perform “Emmanuel Road” on the YouTube link below:

Splashy indeed.  Both crowds responded to the JB’s incredibly well.  On Saturday the 26th, they even received a favorable review in the New York Times from Jon Pareles, a testament to both the project’s trend-setting direction and the group’s musical execution.  Coupled with the attention they’ve received in the mainstream British press, this level of attention from major media outlets is absolutely unprecedented in mento’s history.

What I think these audiences were a part of was one of this music’s seminal moments.  While on the surface the performances reboot both the Jolly Boys and mento music, but on a deeper level they’re reminiscent of the run up to a key moment in mento’s past, the so-called “calypso” craze of 1957.  At that time “calypso” was a generic term for Caribbean “island” music and many mento artists performed and were marketed as “calypsonians.”  Many were able to use this label to achieve some measure of commercial success.

I feel that the way people are experiencing and responding to the Jolly Boys new sound and presentation is resonant with how audiences received artists like Lord Flea, Harry Belafonte and the Silver Seas band in the pre-craze moment.  Belafonte’s and Lord Flea’s fresh takes on traditional island repertory opened audiences’ eyes in 1955 and 1956 in a very mainstream and commercially successful way.  On the other hand, the Silver Seas band represented a more “authentic” sound and were something of a breakthrough act.  They came to New York in 1955 to represent the Jamaica Tourist Board. At the time the group was considered “one of the most versatile and popular native aggregations in the island” and in NYC it was showcased in a way no band from Jamaica ever had been, playing for a Brooklyn department store’s fashion show and appearing on NBC’s Home and Steve Allen television programs.  The Jolly Boys are covering all of these bases and seem to be on a very similar trajectory to their craze forbearers, with the backing and support to sustain it.

It’s fascinating and gratifying to see.  Readers of this blog will know I’ve been intimately involved with this project since November 2009. Jon Baker, the producer, brought me in as music director and banjoist for the album, and had me work with the band extensively to prepare its live show.  I’m so happy for the group’s success so far, and hope it continues!  (I understand the US release of the album will happen in May, so we’ll see–keep your eyes peeled.)