Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?

Subject: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: Joybell
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 11:13 PM

Was singing "Schoolday's End" the other day and True-love said, "Listen to this". He hummed the tune and suddenly I heard it, as he did, as a Japanese sounding tune. Never noticed before and I've sung it since the 60s.
Has anyone else noticed this? What makes it sound like a Japanese tune or are we mistaken?
It's a pentatonic tune (except for one passing note) and it ends on the fifth. For what that's worth.
I realize that it's a problem discussing a tune without giving it but I guess it's quite well known.
                                                    Joy

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Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 11:59 PM

G'day Joy,

I guess that the modern "classical" music view that modes are thing of the distant past ... or foreign climes ... has robbed us of memories of the vast range of modality in traditional singing. Ewan certainly worked hard to utilise older traditional forms and modes (even when his song was a reworking of what he described as Australian Traditional, eg, The Fitter's Song, which he reshaped from Travelling Down the Castlereagh!).

I still can't quite get my ears to shift to hearing it a "Japanese" ... and I'm sure it was as much a traditional "British" modes as any. The song itself is interesting, in that it has to do duty for all the different coalmining regions of Britain ... acheiving that mainly by changes of accent and intonation. Maybe Ewan , in deliberately skirting around the "cliché" modes for those regions has produced a song that is slightly beside all the regions ... and easily seen in terms of more distant tradions.

( ... Oh! ... I seem to remember starting to re-assemble an illustrated description of a mèlophone for you - but various realities have interfered! I must finish that ... and send it off to you as a PDF document.)

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 10:50 PM

Oh! Bob,

Please don't hide such a good document! Please let us all know about it sooner or later, perhaps in a more directly relevant thread?

Robin

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: Jim McLean
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 02:22 PM

I think the Japanes 'feel' is because it's pentatonic... can be played on the black keys of a piano. You can also easily slide from it into Dirty Old Town!

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 06:15 PM

I see that the tune doesn't work in the version in the Digital Tradition (click). I'll see if I can transcribe and post a MIDI later. It's in The Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook, and on the radio-ballad CD, The Big Hewer. Yes, it does sound Japanese to me.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: Joybell
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 06:49 PM

So it's not just us. I've just been listening to the radio program, "The Big Hewer" on an old tape and they way it's sung there doesn't give you the same Japanese sound. It's sung in fairly fast tempo and with a bit of a swing.
We tried other songs using the pentatonic scale and they don't feel as Japanese as this one, but I think that might be part of the reason, thanks Jim. Must try "Dirty Old Town" on the black keys.
Thanks Joe for the offer of a MIDI.
It's a good song.
About the melophone, Bob, Thank you. Whenever you can come up with the info. it will be gratefully received. Robin, I started a thread about melophones a while back - should be in here somewhere under that name.
Thank you all. Joy

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Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: Joybell
Date: 12 Sep 04 - 12:46 AM

Well we tried all sorts of English songs using just the black keys and it's really only "Schooldays End" that sounds Japanese. Yes Jim's right you can easily slide into "Dirty Old Town" and possibly even "Sweet Thames Flow Softly" from "Schooldays End", but the Japanese feel goes away when you do. Joy

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: masato sakurai
Date: 12 Sep 04 - 01:27 AM

To my ear (am I too Westernized?), it sounds like a shape-note tune rather than a Japanese one.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: Marje
Date: 12 Sep 04 - 02:20 PM

Now that you say that, it's like "Down to the River to Pray", isn't it? But before I thought of that I was going to say it sounds American, maybe Appalachian, rather than British (or oriental).

Marje

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: John Routledge
Date: 12 Sep 04 - 05:06 PM

About a year ago I had a terrible job trying to learn this tune and gave up.

Will now try to get my head in Japanese mode and have another go. :0)

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: Joybell
Date: 12 Sep 04 - 09:00 PM

Good luck John. Just might work. Joy

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's the big hewer
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Jan 05 - 05:21 PM

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 10:50 AM

Sorry, the Pentatonic scale is closer to what we think of Chinese music.

Japanese traditional music (not Okinawan, though) is closer to minor key.



For what it is worth.

Paul Arenson in Japan. Be happy to send a sound file of me singing some Japanese stuff..


paul AT arenson DOT org

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: GUEST,mick burke
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 11:11 AM

For some reason ,it always reminds me of Cliff Richards' Summer Holiday.

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: Joybell
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 04:21 PM

Summer Holiday fits well. Hmmm. Must give it a go on the black keys.

The tune used for Schooldays End, and also the tempo, is far more like a few of the well known Japanese tunes than any Chinese tune I've heard. Not that I've been exposed to many.
Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: LukeKellylives (Chris)
Date: 07 Feb 07 - 07:25 PM

Schoolday's Over sounds more like an old Western song to me...

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Feb 07 - 03:38 AM

Never noticed the 'Japanese' nature of Schoolday's End, though MacColl did take his inspiration for tunes from all over the place; his 'Joy of Living' for instance, is a straight lift from a Sicilian song.
While I don't think he chose a specific tune, I know his 'Ballad of Ho Chi Mhin was deliberately composed to suit the subject.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Feb 07 - 06:51 PM

Anybody got an ABC for it?

Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's Japanese tune?
From: Naemanson
Date: 14 Feb 07 - 07:04 PM

It doesn't sound Japanese to me. I'll have my wife listen to it and tell me what she thinks. She's Japanese.

Paul Arenson, where in Japan are you? Maybe we can get together some one of these days with Masato.