Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Occasional Folk Songs


This blog was inspired by Jon Boden's "Folk Song a Day" project and other similar projects that followed it. I am not going to post songs at regular intervals but rather when the mood takes me or when I have time from my other activities - hence "Occasional Folk Songs".

I want to share my enjoyment of Folk music generally so I shan't be confining myself to just songs. As well as singing I also play various instruments - tolerably I hope. It's the old adage "Jack of all trades, master of none" but I enjoy playing all my instruments so I shall carry on that way. Anyway back to the blog's theme, as well as songs I shall also post tunes.

Both the songs and tunes will be a mixture of traditional material and more recently written material by writers/composers whose origins were in folk music. Sometimes maybe even sometimes the occasional pop song or jazz number.

For a start here is a tune which is a favourite of mine: Westmoreland


Westmoreland was originally published in Playford's "Dancing Master" in 1686. The Dancing Master was a dance manual and contained instructions for dancing "country dances". Along with each dance was a tune for the dance. The original edition was published in 1651 by John Playford, a London publisher, as "The English Dancing Master". It was an immediate success and eventually ran to 18 editions over the next 80 years. After the first edition it was simply known as the "Dancing Master". John Playford published the first seven editions up to 1686 after which his son, Henry took over publishing the eighth to the twelfth editions. After his death in about 1707/8 a John Young took over publishing the thirteenth to the eighteenth editions, the eighteenth edition appearing somewhere between 1725 and John Young's death in 1732, probably in about 1728.

The original, 1651 edition contained 105 tunes and over the 80+ years the Dancing Master was in print, a further 430 tunes were included at one time or another.

Westmoreland first appeared in the seventh, 1686 edition in 6/4 time. It was published by Walsh in the eighteenth century as an untitled dance in 6/8 time. It was included in the English Folk Dance and Song Society's (EFDSS) recent tune book "Hardcore English" as a waltz.

I play it on wooden flute and I added an accompaniment using my Yamaha electronic keyboard.





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