Musicians love good instruments, and they love to play them for receptive people. Audiences love to be entertained and for the length of a performance, the musician,instrument, and audience share the same space. This is the story of some of those spaces.
Musicians
A Banjo Story
Everyone listened intently to the words and the lovely trills and his earnest expressive demeanor. There was encouragement mid-song: “Good man, yourself.” “Good man, Paddy.” There was a circle of aunts and uncles and American visitors in attendance. A few others had songs that night. Aunt Peg, from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, offered The Wild Colonial Boy. But Paddy was the real singer, with a seemingly endless store of songs, most of which I had never heard. All the same, I was delighted and moved. We drank and listened and talked. I heard about cousins in Germany and uncles in the Bronx, and I tried to piece it all together and remember who was who. As my grandmother was one of thirteen, there were many people to discuss and to hear about.
A History of the Adirondack Pipes and Drums
It is recorded that the founders of the band wanted to pay tribute to the highlanders that fought in the area during the French and Indian War. The band sought permission from the appropriate officials of the British military in Canada to wear the Royal Stuart tartan for pipers and the Black Watch tartan for drummers. A charter was obtained for the organization from a local judge. Instruction in piping and drumming was arranged through members of the Schenectady Pipe Band.
Remembering Pete Seeger 1919-2014
It is with great sadness that we mark the passing of friend and longtime New York Folklore Society member Pete Seeger. Pete contributed in many ways to the conversations and discussions of the Society.
From the Editor
What a blow to hear of
Peter Seeger’s death on
January 27, 2014 at the
age of 94.
I thought the man
would live forever.
What a champion of so
many causes over the
decades of his life, and
a master of weaving music into this activism.
I’m so glad to have joined recent
celebrations of his life’s work.
Voices in New York
Certain places grasp hold of hearts and imaginations of the people who live there. The cadence of language, the rhythms of daily life, the particular way the universal dramas of life, love, and death are played out in a place can lodge themselves under the skin, into the souls of a people. This intense experience of place is shared through the music of the Fraser family on their CD, Home of Our Hearts. For the Fraser family, two locations are “home”: Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and the foothills of the Adirondacks in upstate New York.
Raquel Z. Rivera
A portrait of an important Puerto
Rican traditional artist in New York City, Raquel
Z. Rivera, told in her own words—through a conversational
interview with folklorist Eileen Condon
and through excerpts from Raquel’s creative and
scholarly writing.
Voices in New York
This 2010 CD by the duo called Æ, comprised of Eva Salina Primack and Aurelia Shrenker, is a treasure of women’s voices…The 14 tracks feature Georgian, Albanian, Greek, and Ukrainian songs, with two old-time songs from this country, “Across the Blue Mountains,” and “Wind and Rain,” as well as a Corsican song.
Songs
Ned took to the sea as a teenager, first to Gulf
Coast ports, later to California, where he found
work as a caulker in San Francisco Bay shipyards
by day, moonlighting as a singer, accompanying
himself with the banjo. Eventually, and with
strong support from many maritime trades workers
there, he became a full-time entertainer. Back
in New York as a well-established performer,
Harrigan began to stretch vaudeville skits into
full-length plays. They were anything but static
pieces. He refined, added to, and reintroduced
them frequently.
Hilt Kelly
Hilt and Stella Kelly and the Sidekicks were long central to Roxbury’s annual Fiddlers! programs, which started in 1994. Not only during these years but long before, Hilt and his music were important to old-time square dancing and music throughout the Catskills
region.
Good Read
Finally, there is a book worthy of Caffè Lena’s rich history. This big, beautiful, oversized hardcover is a love letter to the Caffè, the many musicians who’ve graced Lena’s tiny stage, and to folk music itself.
Voices in New York
March is a busy month for Irish storytellers. I spoke with Bairbre McCarthy on the phone about her CD, The Keeper of the Crock of Gold: Irish Leprechaun Tales. Drawn from her book of Irish stories, the CD is a combination of “old retellings”and original stories by McCarthy that “stick up for the rights of Leprechauns.” Throughout the stories, McCarthy weaves in sean-nós singing by her daughter Mary Willems and fiddle playing by Maura McNamara. In our conversation, she tells me about her roots, about her activism for Leprechaun rights, and about becoming a professional storyteller in America: