Folklore: Chin Music

Subject: Folklore: Chin Music
From: Beer
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 12:25 PM

As a child from the Maritimes I remember my Aunt Susan doing what was called Chin Music. Anyone want to venture what it is (not was) because it still takes place in remote areas. You can cheat by looking it up but I would prefer if there are members who know something about it to share their stories.
Beer (adrien)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: irishenglish
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 12:30 PM

Hmmm....I'm sure I have no idea!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 01:40 PM

Chin music = mouth music. Known in Gaelic speaking Scotland as Port-a-beul, and in Ireland as lilting, jigging, gob-music or puss-music.
It is the singing of dance tune tunes using vocables.
Used as a memory aid for musicians, but has become an art in itself and has been used for dancing to, especially when there were no instruments available. This was particularly useful during the times in Ireland when the church took against traditional music and dancing and broke up house and crossroads dances, often smashing or confiscating the instruments.
Possibly the highest form of mouth music in Scotland was canntaireachd, used for remembering pipe tunes
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 02:04 PM

PS
Where do I collect my prize?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: Ernest
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 02:13 PM

A few examples

here

and here is a cd

Also gets mentioned in E. Annie Proulx`s "Shipping News".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: GEST
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 02:27 PM

Kenneth Peacock collected five examples of chin music which were published in his Songs Of The Newfoundland Outports. Here is the URL for one which has links to the other four in the notes near the end of the page: I Got A Bonnet Trimmed With Blue

GEST Songs Of Newfoundland And Labrador

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: PoppaGator
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 02:51 PM

I have long been familiar with the phrase "chin music" as an American baseball expression, referring to the intimidation of batters by pitching high hard fastballs in the vicinity of the chin.

Sorry about the drift; you may now resume the serious discussion of Celtic mouth music...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: Beer
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 03:21 PM

You win the prize Jim which is a sincere "Thank You". And Ernest those are great sites. I find it truly amazing that this has found it's way in the far reaches of Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island where I'm originally from. I would Imagen it is also found in New Brunswick, the Gaspe area and Nova Scotia as these Provinces all have Irish ans Scottish blood mixed with the French and a little Native as well.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 04:36 PM

Comhaltas Ceoltóir Eíreann (CCE) holds regular competitions in lilting, but then again, they'd race cockroaches if they thought they could get away with it.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 05:04 PM

Thanks for the links. They were fun.

I marvel at people who can sing so fast and not get all tangled up.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 07:17 PM

There is a superp piece of port a buel entitled Tail Toddle (with a marvelous story concerning Hamish Henderson and an American visitor to Edinburgh - unfortunately it is visual rather than verbal).
Anyway, one of the voice exercises we used for breath control in the Critics Group was to sing 2 choruses and 1 verse of 'Tail Toddle' in one breath.
Good fun, and does the job superbly
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: meself
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 08:50 PM

(I submitted an earlier post; it seems to have disappeared, so I'll try again ... )

In my mother's part of P.E.I., this practice was known as 'giving a jig'. Her father and uncles would do it in unison to provide dance music if no instruments were available.

The master of this art was of course the great Popeye the Sailorman ...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 03:27 PM

Will venture my Hamish Henderson story - if it doesn't translate I won't send it, so you won't be any the wiser - will you.
Hamish was once performing on stage in Edinburgh, wearing a kilt.
During the show he sang Tail Toddle, and after it was over he was accosted backstage by a blue-rinse American lady.
"Mr Henderson, can you explain to me what 'Tail Toddle' means".
"I certainly can madam", Hamish boomed, and towering over her (she was somewhat diminutive and he was rather tall) he said, "The tail is the female pudendum, and toddling is the movement in and out; so there you have it madam, in and out, in and out" accompanying this with the appropriate movement of his be-kilted hips.
The lady beat a hasty retreat and was not seen again.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: trevek
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 03:31 PM

Could we say Saami Joik or Alpine Yodel is a form of mouth music?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: Beer
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 04:11 PM

Great story Jim.
Lol.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 05:22 PM

Another good CD of mouth music is "Diddling" on the Folktrax label.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: meself
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 10:58 PM

There's a short but wonderful bit of 'chin music' here. Scroll down to #112 Chin Music, to hear it from the splendid Angelo Dornan, of Elgin, New Brunswick. He was one of Helen Creighton's most important sources.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 11:32 PM

trevek, I would think so...they certainly sound so, to me.

Ernest, thanks for the wonderful links!

There's a CD I keep meaning to get called Deep Forest by Deep Forest. I don't know what the rest of it is like, but Hober radio plays it a lot and it sounds like a type of mouth music, to me, not pure, but derivative at least. It's overproduced for most Mudcatters, I am sure, but you can hear a bit of what I mean on THIS PAGE if you scroll down to "Night bird."

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jun 08 - 02:24 AM

A few years ago an American friend showed me her copy of a rather well produced CD entitled 'Celtic Mouth Music' which included 37 examples from Ireland & Scotland (mainly), Louisiana and Canada. Singers included Audrey St Coeur, John MacDonald, Dolores Keane and John Faulkner, Yann-Fanch Kemner, Benoít Benoít, Grey Larsen, André Marchand and The McPeakes..... and the beat goes on.
It contains some stunning examples of the genre.
When she went home on a visit she tried to get me a copy, but was unable to as it appeared to have disappeared from the shelves.
Somebody who had been involved in its making kindly dubbed me off a copy, but the extremely well produced booklet was incomplete so I don't have the full details. The poorly reproduced cover appears to give the company title as 'Musical Re-renditions (Does that ring a bell??)'
It is well worth looking out for.
Will try to find out who made it if anybody is interested.
If anybody wishes to hear canntaireachd at its best, do search out recordings of the elderly Hebridean singer Mary Morrison who was recorded by the BBC in the 50s and whose rendition of pipe tunes is superb.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: meself
Date: 07 Jun 08 - 02:31 AM

There is a web-page for that CD linked above in Ernest's post (05 Jun 08 - 02:13 PM).

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jun 08 - 02:56 AM

Thanks,
Missed it completely
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Jun 08 - 09:28 PM

Anyone happen to know if Chin Music was played (or is still done)in the Cheticamp and the Margaree area of Cape Breton?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: meself
Date: 08 Jun 08 - 11:11 PM

Although I have no direct evidence, I would be flabbergasted if it wasn't and isn't; it seems to have been common throughout the Maritimes, Newfoundland and Quebec - and probably anywhere else where fiddle music was/is popular. Cheticamp, as I understand, picked up radio transmissions from Quebec in the early days, and no doubt would have heard recordings by the popular La Bolduc (1920s-1940s), who incorporated a lot of lilting (chin music) in her songs. Margaree would have had the puirt-a-beul (the Gaelic version).

There is an interesting example of La Bolduc in action here. Scroll down to "Bolduc, Édouard,; Levert, Médart" - "Valse turlutée" - which would translate as "Chin Music Waltz" (to stick with the terminology we've been using). "Turlutee" is the term used in Quebec for this practice. (Notice, by the way, that the use of the name "Edouard" rather than "Mary" for La Bolduc is a bit of belated sexism, Edouard being her husband's name, she apparently is catalogued as "Madame Edouard Bolduc"). What makes this recording 'interesting' is that the 'chin music' goes far beyond reproducing what a fiddle would play to take on a life of its own.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: meself
Date: 08 Jun 08 - 11:22 PM

There is another good example in the recording listed just above Valse turlutee - "Le Bonhomme et la Bonne Femme" (to the tune known in English as "The Old Man and the Old Woman"). She diddles the B part of the tune. There is a little taste of her very good harmonica-playing as well.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: meself
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 12:41 AM

And if you scroll up six cuts above the three cuts of "Le Bonhomme ... ", you'll find "Reel turlute" - a remarkable sample of 'chin music'. The tune is an Irish one - Planxty recorded a song to it - "[Somebody] will you marry me, marry me, marry me" etc.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 03:42 AM

'Love, will you Marry Me' was performed superbly by Northern Ireland singers Len Graham and Joe Holmes (on their Topic album) and when Joe died, with Len's later musical (and storytelling) partner, John Campbell.
They were a magnificent team and people should look out for the numerous albums (cassettes) of their songs and stories. Sadly John Campbell died last year.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 05:33 AM

Forgot to say, 'Love Will You Marry Me is closely related to the bawdy Scots;

Bonny lass come ower the burn,
I'm the ld who gi'e ye a turn,
Bonny lass com ower the burn
And what the devil ails ye.

Bonny lass come down the street,
I'm the lad who faithered your geet (fathered your child)
Bonny lass come down the street
And what the devil ails ye.

We owe much of our material and knowledge of these songs to the work done by Alan Lomax and Seamus Ennis in the Hebrides in the early 1950s.
Ennis was highly respected there, not only for his musicianship, but also for his ability to grasp Scots Gaelic.
Lomax wasn't so lucky.
He tells the story of the time he was recording a group of women on Harris waulking cloth (sitting round a table and streaching the urine soaked cloth in rhythm) while improvising a song to keep time.
They sang of the handsome American who had come among them; his fine head of hair, his aquiline nose, his fine mouth, his chin, his shoulders his waist....... and down, and down, and down.... as far as you care to imagine!
The song ended up too bawdy for the BBC to broadcast.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 04:52 PM

Thanks for the background info. and the Lomax story - good one!

I was a little cavalier in calling the tune 'Irish' - I had a nagging notion that it had a Scottish connection, and - besides the song you cite - it finally came to me today: it is essentially the same as the A & B turns of the strathspey 'Braes of Mar' (which has a C turn as well). Of course, it may well have been Irish originally ... or not ... and it probably doesn't matter much ...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Chin Music
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 04:53 PM

(That was me).