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Letters - Dec 2003 to Jul 2004 |
I would very much like to thank Nicholas Carolan for clarifying points which I made during my review of Seoltaí Séidte.
Nicholas is correct in asserting that the booklet could not have been any longer in terms of page length, but perhaps another designer might have trimmed some of the photographs and so created space for more of the biographical information which he would have liked to have included and I, for one, would certainly like to have read. However, then the impact of some of those glorious monochrome photographs would have been diminished!
More feasibly, perhaps, the booklet's three-and-a-half blank pages could have been used to extend the biographies and provide the missing discographical details. As I mentioned in my review, such discographical information is relatively easy to discover regarding the recordings of Seosamh Ó hÉanaí (and I should have probably included Willie Clancy, Denis Murphy, Paddy Canny and Seán 'ac Dhonncha too). However, this is certainly not the case when considering the recordings of Joe Devlin, Johnny Pickering or Seán McLaughlin. A web search will not help and, sadly, not everyone has direct access to the Irish Traditional Music Archive. I do also feel that it would have been useful to know which recordings had been issued illegally in the USA.
My thanks also go to Nicholas for clarifying that he wrote the original notes in Irish, though I hope I don't come a cropper while attempting to climb Kilimanjaro as he is skiing down.
Best wishes,
Geoff Wallis - 17.7.04
Thanks for the kind and prompt review by Geoff Wallis of Seoltaí Séidte / Setting Sail, the CD reissue that Harry Bradshaw and I produced for Gael Linn (no longer hyphenated) of their twenty 78s of 1957-61.
Geoff asks (or implies) a few questions and makes a few observations in the course of his review that I should probably respond to for the interest of Musical Traditions readers.
Answers to questions: I wrote the notes in Irish and then translated them into English (a less laborious process for me than the reverse - a bit like skiing down Kilimanjaro rather than climbing up it). The translations are literal-ish; the general information is the same in both, give or take a nuance or a hundred and two.
Geoff would have liked more information on the performers, and more on the material, and I would have liked to have given it. But that raises a practical difficulty that I'm sure engages you as a sound and print publisher (although not as an internet publisher) the constraints of the CD format. The Gael Linn allocation of space for notes was generous 96 A5 pages, far more than a CD normally has (does any Irish recording have a larger allocation?). And yet, with 17 performers and 63 items of music, I could have easily doubled the amount of information I was able to give, even without footnotes. But a bigger book wouldn't have fitted within the DVD-size case, the largest container available for sound recordings. So what to do?
Perhaps we should have risked the wrath of another of your reviewers and produced a book with CDs tucked in at the back. Or perhaps we should have put the notes and photos on a CD-ROM and risked having no one at all read them.
But at any rate we compromised with a booklet which attempted to give the essential who-when-where-why-what information on the performers and the material. References to anything but the earliest known appearances of the material were almost always out. Information that would properly belong to a footnote was out. Discography was out, unfortunately, as it would have far exceeded the space available. For instance, a discography of one of the featured performers, Willie Clancy, that I compiled for a recent publication, alone runs to two A4 pages. I would however defend the shadowy mentions of the performers having recorded commercially sometimes before but mostly after the foregrounded 78s as being essential contextual information about them, albeit information that can only be a departure point for further searching by curious readers.
Finally, a word about the DVD-case format. Not, I'm afraid, a case of homage to Musical Traditions, but a straight imitation by Gael Linn of Harry Bradshaw's John Feeney Viva Voce CD and booklet of 2003, which they distributed. The Archive's former sound engineer Glenn Cumiskey (now pursuing medical studies in London, for those who know him) was the first I ever heard recommending such a format for the publication of CDs with booklets. That was in the mid-1990s, and his inspiration was the boxes of the computer games to which he was addicted at the time. Perhaps we'll keep going until we reinvent the boxed LP?
All the best,
Nicholas Carolan - 14.7.04
If you can, do add your voice of dissent and contact , badger, or generally shake up those in a position to resist the above.
Doc Rowe - 1.7.04
David Bloxham - 16.6.04
Therefore, I would like to tell them that a Daily Telegraph on-line obituary for John can be found at http//www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/26/db2602.xml The obituary will presumably be on-line for only a limited period of time. However, I have taken a copy of the same, so if anyone has difficulty gaining access, do let me know, and I'll pass it on to them.
Fred McCormick - 27.5.04
Becky Nankivell - 13.4.04
Tucson, Arizona
Sadly, he passed away in 2001. Having moved back St Lucia, he suffered appendicitis and died not long after. But he wasn't just a violinist - he was also a great person - he was always there to offer encouragement as I learnt the violin (although I am classically trained), even when I gave up. The last thing he said to me before he returned to St Lucia from the last of his frequent holidays to England was that he'd told everyone in St Lucia how proud he was that one of his descendants played the violin and that he wanted me to have his violins when he died. A month later, he was dead.
Needless to say, I have taken up playing the violin again, though I've lost out on some vital years - but I've joined a youth orchestra we're going on tour in the summer.
Thank you for displaying the article about my grandfather on your site. It has really helped me to see him as others saw him.
Nicole Theodore - 15.3.04
Description:This book is a long way from being the most exciting I've ever come across. Nevertheless, for anyone with an interest in English language folksongs, it must consitute an interesting find.
New Zealand Folksongs. Song of A Young Country by Neil Colquhoun. Published by Bailey Brothers. Folkestone. 1973. 11x8.5". 64 pages. Text and music on each page with a b/w illustrations. No inscriptions. Contents and card covers a little edgeworn else very good.Starting bid GBP 3.99. 10-day listing. Ends Jan-30-04 001700 PST.
Fred McCormick - 26.1.04
I've not had much luck tracing this through my usual correspondents in the UK and Ireland, and would welcome any leads.
Many thanks.
Chris Smith - christopher.smith@ttu.edu
The full list of Red Lick held BACMs is as folows:
Fred McCormick - 9.12.03
The book doesn't concern itself with songs as such, but it contains a large number of sung games, many of which hark back to Britain. There is also an extensive bibliography, which includes other writings by Sutton-Smith. Since The Games of New Zealand Children was part of a series, whose overall editors included Bertand Bronson and W R Bascom, one presumes its credentials must be extremely acceptable.
I have done no more than skim through the book at present, so I cannot tell you any more than that. However, I suggest that anyone seriously interested in New Zealand folk music would be well advised to look this one out.
Fred McCormick - 2.12.03
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