Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs

Subject: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: GUEST,Dazbo at work
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 06:02 AM

By foreign I'm thinking non-Anglophone and English Tunes/Songs as originating from England.

I've got quite a lot of CDs by English "folk" groups who use foreign tunes (taranatellas, schottiches, polksas, etc etc) and quite a few CDs by foreign bands who sometimes use Irish or Scottish tunes but I can only think of one CD that's got an English tune on it. I've heard that, for example, Jump at the Sun by John Kirkpatrick is popular in Italy.

Do you know of any foriegners that have recorded English tunes or songs? What do you think of them? Do they still sound English (whatever that might mean) or have they been assimilated into their styles?

Interested of Sheffield;-)

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: Howard Jones
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 02:51 PM

I have been told that Michael Turner's Waltz is now popular in sessions around Bordeaux, having been introduced there by an ex-pat Brit, who learned it off me. But it now seems that it's actually derived from a piece by Mozart,so does that count?

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: TheSnail
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 03:27 PM

Michael Turner's Waltz is the Trio from one of the dances (No. 6?) In Mozarts suite of German dances K.536.

I remember someone (English) recently claiming that they were the one to introduce it to France. I think it was Dave something.

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 03:46 PM

There used to be some of this, but not by 'pop' singers. Nana Mouskouri recorded an album of English 'folk' songs.

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: Howard Jones
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 04:53 PM

Dave was at the Bradfield Traditional Music Weekend last year, (accompanied by an excellent French melodeon player). It was there that he told me how he'd learned Michael Turner's from me at an earlier session; when he moved to France and started playing in sessions there, the local musicians took it up. I believe over there it is now known as "Dave's Waltz"

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: TheSnail
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 05:00 PM

Dave ....?

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: Howard Jones
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 05:36 PM

Dave Something

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 07:24 PM

dave dee dozy beaky mick and tich.

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: GUEST,Dave MacKenzie
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 07:31 PM

If you want "foreigners" doing English songs, try the shanty scene. Most foreign groups use British material, sometimes in translation, such as Cztery refy's (Polish) "Zegnaj brzegu Tarwathie".

Of course there's a long history. Read the notes in Child, though I seem to remember that it wiorks both ways, and "Lord Randall", for example, was originally Italian.

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 07:42 PM

Mudcat's own Skarpi in Iceland does Irish tunes and does a bang up job of it, too!

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Jun 08 - 09:09 PM

Maori and Hawaiian music were both influenced by English hymn tunes (I can't think of specific ones, though).

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: Monique
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 03:36 AM

Angelo Branduardi used British (not specially English) material in French and/or Italian: The Trees They Do Grow High ("Gli alberi sono alti" / "Les arbres ont grandi" here sung with Alan Stivell), Mary Hamilton Ninna nanna ("Lullaby") / "L'enfant clandestin", Il Cigliegio, / "Le Cerisier" (the cherry tree) is based on a medieval Gaelic tune but I don't know which one.

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 08:53 AM

Dave's not here.

I have a CD by a band called Tramps & Hawkers. I think they are Swiss, but the album has no information about them. Anyway, on this album they do Handsome Cabin Boy, The Nightingale, The Old Maid in the Garret, Tramps & Hawkers among others.

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: Howard Jones
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 02:09 PM

About 30 years ago I visited a museum in, I think, Montreal. The room devoted to Inuit culture had a mock-up igloo with a hidden speaker playing Inuit songs. I'll swear one of them was to the tune of "What shall we do with the drunken sailor".

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: GUEST,Jonny Sunshine
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 02:20 PM

I am aware of a Chinese or Japanese group who play traditional English music, lots of Morris tunes from what I can remember, though unfortunately I haven't heard them, but I'm told they're not bad.

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 06:08 PM

I am now going to have nightmares about morris dances featuring Japanese teenage girls in those weirdly multicoloured fashions and guys in Pokemon character costumes.

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: Leadfingers
Date: 20 Jun 08 - 08:26 PM

Depending on how you define 'Foreign' , the other half of SilverSmith
sings English Ballads and DOESNT sound like the American she is !!

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jun 08 - 01:36 PM

"Non-anglophone" was the qualification for "foreign", in this case. :-)

~ Becky in Tucson (far away, but not foreign??)

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: Stringsinger
Date: 22 Jun 08 - 01:19 PM

All folk music has been assimilated from predecessors. There is no totally original music...period as there is no pure race. Songs and music descend as do phenotypes and genotypes. That's the beauty of folk music, something comes from somewhere else.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 Jun 08 - 06:20 PM

FRank is saying what in theory might happen. Dazbo was asking what actually did happen, which is a rather more interesting question.

One place to look might be India. A few years ago I saw an article in an ethnomusicology journal about a collection of Scottish tunes that had been published in Indian folk versions somewhere in South India in the late 19th century - they were just recognizable as standard Scottish songs of the middle of the century, but very drastically mutated into Indian folk style and with the titles amazingly mangled.

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: Greenacres
Date: 22 Jun 08 - 07:59 PM

Japan: There are a lot of English, Irish, Scottish song melodies in the Japanese school repertoire. They were adopted under the Meiji era (1868 - 1912) education reforms and the words were rewritten (not translated) in Japanese. The melodies can sound Japanese depending on instrumentation. The most popular are pentatonic tunes like Auld Lang Syne which follow the trad Japanese scale esp of children's songs.

Subject: RE: Foreign Takes On English Tunes/Songs
From: Greenacres
Date: 22 Jun 08 - 08:09 PM

Johnny Sunshine mentions a Chinese or Japanese group playing English morris tunes. I haven't come across them in Japan, but there are many Irish bands here (learning a lot from Altan and Lunasa CDs by the sound of it).