Accents

Subject: RE: Accents
From: Senoufou
Date: 17 Jun 16 - 02:46 PM

If anyone wants to listen to the Youtube lad, he's called Truseneye92.

Subject: RE: Accents
From: BobL
Date: 18 Jun 16 - 02:34 AM

SatNavs ought to give directions in a regional accent appropriate to where they find themselves - it should be technically possible, and so humanizing. Although it might get out of hand on a journey across Europe....

Subject: RE: Accents
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jun 16 - 03:04 AM

"Some people are just born with the gift of mimicry"
True, but mimicry is not interpretation, which I believe is essential to the full enjoyment of folk songs
If mimicry was what we were after, we'd fill our guest-lists with minah-birds and parrots.
I used to enjoy listening to Ronnie Ronalde, bot I can't see him making a decent job of The Flying Cloud.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Accents
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Jun 16 - 03:29 AM

i believe singers should try and sing in their own accents.
I noticed recently a couple of English singers, singing songs about their area but in an American accent,I was puzzled as to what was the reason for this.
Mimicry is not interpretation, at one time their were a lot of people who mimiced Martin Carthys guitar style, in my opinion mimicry is only alright if it is a stepping stone to developing ones own style, part of a learning curve, to develop a style it is necessary to have influences. mimicry reminds me of the difference between a photograph and a painting, a photograph gives an exact copy but a painting should have a degree of interpretation

Subject: RE: Accents
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jun 16 - 04:06 AM

Imitation is an excellent way of finding the limitations of your own voice and extending those limitations, but only, in my opinion, while working on your voice.
One of the basic exercises we did in the Critics group was to listen to recordings of singers, attempt to reproduce the sound made than analyse how that sound was being produced, it's component parts, which part of the part of the body is was coming from....etc.
Not only was this useful for your own singing, but it provided a vocabulary that could be used to assist others - a common language for passing on suggestions.
Dick's comment about singers singing songs from their areas in false alien reminds me of the time we booked a superb instrumentalist who had helped provide accompaniment for Ewan and Peggy's album of Radio Ballad songs, but who also sang and wrote his own songs.
He introduced one of his songs:
"I was working in Butlins in Pwllhli and I met a girl there and we hooked up for the season.
At the end of the season we went our separate ways and, as I was travelling home on the train through all the different stations I was thinking of how each one was another milestone between us, so I decided to write a song using the station names.
When I finished it I though all the Welsh names sounded phony, so I changed them to American ones, like Memphis, and Nashville and Clarkesdale".
He then proceeded to sing the song in an incredibly false American accent.   
It seemed sad that someone should take an obviously important and moving experience and place it at arms length.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Accents
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 18 Jun 16 - 05:06 AM

I don't think there IS a protocol. I'm from Eire yet I usually in fluent merican/anglo/Irish accent as thh vast m ajoriy of singers do. Probably because as someone explained to years ao, mot Country or Irush songs rely quite heavily on a strong R sound and in fct that R o ER                        sound forms the basis of most song. So when as is often the case onMudcat peopl criricuse singers for 'adopting' a fake American accent Yes just a few do. They are in fact simply adopting the international accent of song. As for Scottish trad, yes almost uniquely Scottich trad s usually sung om shok, horror, a SCOTTISH accent. But do not try copying i, it'l probabky just sound offensive unless you are a tkented mimic. Try trear it instead as an adaptation and do your own interpretation

Subject: RE: Accents
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Jun 16 - 08:30 AM

Sorry Desi, as an Irish resident I find Country and Irish songs sung in an American accent cringe-making.
It is compounded on the country scene by all those cowboy outfits.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Accents
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Jun 16 - 11:52 AM

2 comments - 1) some songs (e.g., Molly Malone's "she died of a fever/and noone could save her") only rhyme in the original accent, and 2) I have not a molecule of musical creativity, I copy, so I sing all songs in the accent in which I heard them. I could sing along to Dalmatian folk songs I didn't understand a word of, and mom, who did, could tell that I wasn't breaking the sounds up right, singing, for instance, svep ticsice instead of sve pticsice izgore, or however you spell what was apparently 2 little birds. Who knew.
So my response to the original poster is, if you hear songs in an accent but sing in your own voice, bully for you, I can't do that. I guess I would go for a compromise that would allow me to sing the rhymes right... and not choose those particular songs in venues where that accent is local.

Subject: RE: Accents
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Jun 16 - 12:08 PM

Exactly. We all have different ways. Some are better at accents than others. I was once asked by a Cambridge-based drama festival invigilator if I came from the north of England when I played Harold Gorringe in Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy with a Liverpool accent; after which he awarded me the Best Actor cup. And when I played an American reporter in Noel Coward's Relative Values for the Shelford [Cambs] Drama Circle, one of my co-members who had brought American guests to watch it, told me afterwards that one of them had said "You were lucky to have a real American to play that part". In fact I come from North London [Hampstead/Hendon] originally. So I think I can claim to be good at some accents at least. See my youtube channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/mgmyer

where there are various American, Scottish &c songs, to see if you agree. And note that I only use any sort of accent other than my own when it seems to me appropriate to the song. There would for instance imo be no point in singing "I'm Bound to Follow the Longhorn Cows" in other than an American accent.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Accents
From: GUEST,Anne Neilson
Date: 18 Jun 16 - 02:04 PM

If imitation of an accent is a problem, then -- rest assured -- the audience will also have a problem.

I'm with Jim Carroll's earlier post on 14/6 which suggested that adaptation of text into local pronunciation could still produce a good version, although both he and Tattie Bogle (later) also addressed the problem of dialect words.

IMHO some are too valuable or special to be denied -- TB mentions Adam McNaughtan's song 'The Yellow on the Broom' (based on Scots traveller Betsy Whyte's volume of family reminiscence) in which he uses her traveller cant for townspeople or settled folk -- scaldies: the whole sound of the word in your mouth is an expression of the sentiment of the verse and any replacement with something like 'townsfolk' would weaken the whole verse. So I'm with Jim's suggestion of a few judicious glossary notes in advance.

Mind you, not sure where that leaves me when one of the songs that speaks most to me is in potentially impenetrable North-East Scots Doric -- 'McGinty's Meal an Ale', by George Bruce Thomson. I first came across this in Norman Buchan's Ballads Club at Rutherglen Academy somewhere between 1958 and 1960 -- we heard it on a field recording and one of the lads in the club took it up so enthusiastically that we all roared out in the choruses and gradually picked up the sense of the narrative (a pig escapes during a rural celebration and accesses the drink-- after which he creates chaos rampaging through the house before finally being carried out - drunk - upon a shutter). But there was never a notion that words, in this particular instance, could be changed.
In fact, at last January's Celtic Connections there was a concert to celebrate the re-print of Norman Buchan's '101 Scottish Songs' - originally published in 1962 - when 22 singers came together to perform songs from the book and the celebrated bothy ballad singer Hector
Riddell sang McGinty's: on the accompanying DVD put out by the TMSA, you can view participation from the onstage performers (myself from near Glasgow and Margaret Bennet from Skye) joining in delightedly on the line about Mrs McGinty's distress -- 'An she let out a skirl that wad have paralysed a teuchit', where 'skirl' is a scream and 'teuchit' is a lapwing or peewit.
But it's providential that we both have Scottish vowels and the ability to produce a 'ch' sound… and also that we understand what the dialect words mean.

Not sure how much my meanderings have helped, but I have to come back to Jim Carroll's point (made either here on on another post) that an understanding of the song is the most important starting point -- if a singer sings from the heart then neither accent nor dialect should be unsurmountable problems.

Subject: RE: Accents
From: meself
Date: 18 Jun 16 - 03:06 PM

Mrzy: if you have the time and inclination, would you care to elaborate on "some songs (e.g., Molly Malone's "she died of a fever/and noone could save her") only rhyme in the original accent"? In my own (Canadian) accent, there is no problem with any of the rhymes in Molly Malone, so I'm wondering what the challenge is in the accents with which you are familiar - in your example, would it be that one word takes a hard 'r' and the other a soft?

Subject: RE: Accents
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 18 Jun 16 - 05:21 PM

It seems to me phoney and unnecessary to assume an accent other than one's own for a song that comes from somewhere where the accent is a lot different (for example someone from England singing a song from the southern US or Ireland) if the words are generally the same in one's own sort of English. (I used to do it myself in my younger days but I like to think I am wiser now.)

However it seem to me equally phoney to sing a song that is full of Scots words in RP.

One particular bugbear of mine is to hear someone singing in an English accent but with the odd "doon", "frae", "hae" etc here and there. Either those words should be replaced by "down", "from", "have" etc OR the whole song should be sung in Scots. Even if that is a sort of generic Scots, not exactly authentic for any specific part of Scotland, it seems to me a lot better than Scots words in an English accent.

Subject: RE: Accents
From: GUEST,Eric
Date: 18 Jun 16 - 05:21 PM

I have struggled with this for years and find the topic depressing. I have been to a lot of singing classes in the folk area and have always had the folk police tell me I should sing in my own accent [Durham/Newcastle]. In fact about 10 years ago a couple of prominent musicians [one from the 50/60's generation and one more recent] insisted that I should not sing a song outside my own accent so I should not be singing some of the songs I do. However, I am an amateur who sings songs I like because I like them in the accents I first heard them in and I do not just do traditional English/Scots/Irish folk songs [and most country or americana songs sound daft in a North east accent]. I do not mimic them exactly but I have a reasonable facility with accents and can do an interpretation which the people who listen to me seem to like. So do I just give up because I can't meet the expectations of some of Ewan McColl's disciples? Luckily most of the people I sing with and to are also amateurs who just like the music.
Sorry if that sounds like a rant - good luck to anyone who wants to sing out.

Subject: RE: Accents
From: Allan Conn
Date: 18 Jun 16 - 07:05 PM

"Sometimes they are written down in a phoneticised approximation of a Scots accent, which makes them look more Scottish than they sound"

Marje there is the Tom Leonard style of poetry, like many Facebookers etc, who write phonetically - but I'd say Scottish songs rather than being written in phonetic spelling in order to make them look more Scottish - are more often than not simply written in a traditional spelling of Scots. There is not a written standard but there is a tradition of spelling. The various dialect of Scots don't just have their vocabulary and verb forms but their spelling system too! Actually it could even be argued that the written form of some of the ballads etc are possibly anglicised to make them seem closer to Standard English than they were! I'm sure Scott was accused of that.

Writers of Scots find it a problem sometimes and some words often tend to be written in a way that they maybe would be in England if pronounced that way rather than in a more traditional Scots spelling. I'm thinking 'hoose, moose, toon" etc

There have been various, not rules, but recent recommendations for writing in Scots published. First in the mid-20thC in the aftermath of the Scots Rennaissance and then more recently. People use all kinds of weird phonetic spelling on social media sometimes without realising there is a tradition of Scots spelling.

Subject: RE: Accents
From: GUEST,Anne Neilson
Date: 18 Jun 16 - 07:16 PM

Eric -- if you have an audience that likes what you do, be grateful and carry on.

But do know that there is another audience out there which would nit-pick to - probably - the nth degree about anything that is not "authentic".

There is a real argument to be had about the enjoyment of an audience which has possibly been introduced to new (and foreign) traditions, albeit in different forms: I'm thinking of my own introduction to American folk music, starting with Pete Seeger and the Weavers and progressing through Jean Ritchie, Doc Watson, Hedy West et al (with side journeys through Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston).
Should we assume that such an audience will only accept 'the authentic'? Or should we expect that the song content will be so compelling that an audience will accept what might be called translations?

I'm coming down on the side of presenting the texts in a comfortable local accent -- I think I could sing a Woody Guthrie song such as 'Tom Joad' in my own accent, though I'd have to acknowledge that that might be down to 50-odd years of exposure to the text…

But I'd probably have a difficulty with a very localised song (thinking of songs from areas with a very distinctive local pronunciation like NE England and Yorkshire -- Ilkley Moor, for example). Though I'd be very happy to be there when a chorus was required!