We're all jolly fellows
Sep. 1st, 2010 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaEvery year I have grand intentions of blogging about Whitby Folk Week, and every year I fail because while I'm there I'm too busy running about and dancing and drinking.
I usually then also fail to write it up proper after the fact, because it's usually a bizarre mixture of the surreal and the exactly-like-the-previous-34-festivals and I'm not sure where to start. So I don't.
Instead, this year, I think I'll attempt to write about some isolated incidents (where "some" may end up being "one"). So...
On Monday night, in the festival's main venue, I saw a small poster advertising a Speed Ploughing Contest. The rules ran as follows:
1. 2As, 2Bs, any instrument.
2. No actual ploughs.
This wasn't quite as obtuse as it might sound :)
Speed The Plough is a very well-known folk tune. If you were to stop any musician at a folk festival then I'd give you odds of about 19-1 that they'd be able to play Speed The Plough without even thinking about it. It's occasionally referred to as the national anthem. It's occasionally referred to as oh no, not that bloody tune again.
Most folk tunes are split into A music (technically called "the first bit"), and B music (called technically... oh, work it out for yourself). A is usually 8 bars, B is usually 8 bars. You play each bit twice, giving you the standard folk-issue 32 bar tune. (There are plenty of exceptions - I'm currently trying with little success to learn a lovely tune which has an 8 bar A part and a 32 bar non-repeating B part. It's also in D minor, and me and my concertina don't really do flats yet. But I digress.)
So, on Tuesday night at the specified time I wombled out into the foyer. I didn't find a ploughing competition. What I did find was Mike frantically taping together pieces of printed A4 to make a huge banner advertising the competition. And someone chopping up lengths of magnetic tape, and someone else collecting names of entrants...
I did the only sensible thing. I picked up the sellotape and joined in.
Mike and I went out to stick the banner on the door, and from behind at least three parked cars could be heard strains of break-neck renditions of Speed the Plough. Odd snatches of complicated technical discussions wafted past "No, no, I'm going to play it in D to avoid so much cross-fingering...[*]"
I figured nothing was going to start yet, and wandered back to the ceilidh. Which was my mistake, becuse when I stuck my nose out into the foyer again shortly after, the TopGear-style leader board was already filling up. The judges were seated at the table, the competition was in full swing. Disappointingly, I missed The Tig (a masked melodeon player) who apparently set the speed early on.
The competition had attracted a surprisingly large audience, all of whom were cheerfully cheering, heckling, advising, and having opinions. Obviously a melodeon player couldn't beat an accordion player[**], they said. Where were the fiddles, they said. People were trying to marry would-be contestants, who'd arrived not knowing there was a contest, with appropriate instruments. There were frequent yells of "is there a spare English concertina in the house?"
Mel, one of the instigators of the contest, had been pressed to enter due to an initial lack of competitors. Sadly, she's not a musician, so had grabbed some spoons from the bistro. I never knew she played the spoons - but apparently she does, and actually very well. Even her partner hadn't known. We agreed that that sort of thing ought to be disclosed early in a relationship, certainly not after several years co-habitation.
Brian Stone - violin-playing bad boy of the 1980s folk scene - was seen wandering about trying to scare up a fiddle. He found one to borrow, but was rapidly disqualified for playing something so fast that it wasn't even recognisable as a tune (let alone the correct one). My friend Louise was urging her Dad to compete, while he tried to escape protesting he had no instruments with him. One was rapidly borrowed and he was shoved, resisting, onto the podium. The judges looked concerned.
Y'see, Richard is left-handed. He plays a melodeon left-handed (which, by the way, also means upside down). No one does this. Even my uncle, who is best (and frequently) described as "hopelessly left-handed" never dreamed of doing such a daft thing. All looked on, open-mouthed, as he turned in a very creditable performance (beating the guy whose box he'd borrowed by a good couple of seconds).
More accordions. One of Gog Magog whistled. Another of Gog Magog arrived with his own personal ensemble of dancers. The leader board grew. Finally a guy jumped up onto the podium, clutching a homemade instrument he called a Strongbone - a trombone mouthpiece rammed into a sawn-off plastic Strongbow bottle. He played it like a bugle, and shot straight to the top of the leader board.
The last rendition came from a couple of the judges - playing a duet on air-violin and air-melodeon - and then Strongbone man was awarded the framed certificate to say he was the Speed Ploughing Champion. Someone in the audience demanded he play Flight of the Bumblebee for an encore... so he did. Clever sod. By which time the late-evening bad had set up, and everyone tidied themselves back into the main hall.
Trivia fans may be interested to know that "God speed the plough!" is the legend blazoned across the banner of the Goathland Plough Stots, one of England's five remaining traditional sword-dance teams. Goathland isn't very far away from Whitby, and they were stotting about all week.
[*] Probably only makes sense if you play the melodeon. I didn't really understand it.
[**] Both are squeezeboxes. The difference is that to play a scale on a melodeon, you have to alternate the bellows direction (ie whether you push or pull) for every note. On an accordion, direction of bellows is irrelevant. In short, a lot less physical movement is required to play an accordion: in general they are much faster instruments than their push/pull counterparts.
I usually then also fail to write it up proper after the fact, because it's usually a bizarre mixture of the surreal and the exactly-like-the-previous-34-festivals and I'm not sure where to start. So I don't.
Instead, this year, I think I'll attempt to write about some isolated incidents (where "some" may end up being "one"). So...
On Monday night, in the festival's main venue, I saw a small poster advertising a Speed Ploughing Contest. The rules ran as follows:
1. 2As, 2Bs, any instrument.
2. No actual ploughs.
This wasn't quite as obtuse as it might sound :)
Speed The Plough is a very well-known folk tune. If you were to stop any musician at a folk festival then I'd give you odds of about 19-1 that they'd be able to play Speed The Plough without even thinking about it. It's occasionally referred to as the national anthem. It's occasionally referred to as oh no, not that bloody tune again.
Most folk tunes are split into A music (technically called "the first bit"), and B music (called technically... oh, work it out for yourself). A is usually 8 bars, B is usually 8 bars. You play each bit twice, giving you the standard folk-issue 32 bar tune. (There are plenty of exceptions - I'm currently trying with little success to learn a lovely tune which has an 8 bar A part and a 32 bar non-repeating B part. It's also in D minor, and me and my concertina don't really do flats yet. But I digress.)
So, on Tuesday night at the specified time I wombled out into the foyer. I didn't find a ploughing competition. What I did find was Mike frantically taping together pieces of printed A4 to make a huge banner advertising the competition. And someone chopping up lengths of magnetic tape, and someone else collecting names of entrants...
I did the only sensible thing. I picked up the sellotape and joined in.
Mike and I went out to stick the banner on the door, and from behind at least three parked cars could be heard strains of break-neck renditions of Speed the Plough. Odd snatches of complicated technical discussions wafted past "No, no, I'm going to play it in D to avoid so much cross-fingering...[*]"
I figured nothing was going to start yet, and wandered back to the ceilidh. Which was my mistake, becuse when I stuck my nose out into the foyer again shortly after, the TopGear-style leader board was already filling up. The judges were seated at the table, the competition was in full swing. Disappointingly, I missed The Tig (a masked melodeon player) who apparently set the speed early on.
The competition had attracted a surprisingly large audience, all of whom were cheerfully cheering, heckling, advising, and having opinions. Obviously a melodeon player couldn't beat an accordion player[**], they said. Where were the fiddles, they said. People were trying to marry would-be contestants, who'd arrived not knowing there was a contest, with appropriate instruments. There were frequent yells of "is there a spare English concertina in the house?"
Mel, one of the instigators of the contest, had been pressed to enter due to an initial lack of competitors. Sadly, she's not a musician, so had grabbed some spoons from the bistro. I never knew she played the spoons - but apparently she does, and actually very well. Even her partner hadn't known. We agreed that that sort of thing ought to be disclosed early in a relationship, certainly not after several years co-habitation.
Brian Stone - violin-playing bad boy of the 1980s folk scene - was seen wandering about trying to scare up a fiddle. He found one to borrow, but was rapidly disqualified for playing something so fast that it wasn't even recognisable as a tune (let alone the correct one). My friend Louise was urging her Dad to compete, while he tried to escape protesting he had no instruments with him. One was rapidly borrowed and he was shoved, resisting, onto the podium. The judges looked concerned.
Y'see, Richard is left-handed. He plays a melodeon left-handed (which, by the way, also means upside down). No one does this. Even my uncle, who is best (and frequently) described as "hopelessly left-handed" never dreamed of doing such a daft thing. All looked on, open-mouthed, as he turned in a very creditable performance (beating the guy whose box he'd borrowed by a good couple of seconds).
More accordions. One of Gog Magog whistled. Another of Gog Magog arrived with his own personal ensemble of dancers. The leader board grew. Finally a guy jumped up onto the podium, clutching a homemade instrument he called a Strongbone - a trombone mouthpiece rammed into a sawn-off plastic Strongbow bottle. He played it like a bugle, and shot straight to the top of the leader board.
The last rendition came from a couple of the judges - playing a duet on air-violin and air-melodeon - and then Strongbone man was awarded the framed certificate to say he was the Speed Ploughing Champion. Someone in the audience demanded he play Flight of the Bumblebee for an encore... so he did. Clever sod. By which time the late-evening bad had set up, and everyone tidied themselves back into the main hall.
Trivia fans may be interested to know that "God speed the plough!" is the legend blazoned across the banner of the Goathland Plough Stots, one of England's five remaining traditional sword-dance teams. Goathland isn't very far away from Whitby, and they were stotting about all week.
[*] Probably only makes sense if you play the melodeon. I didn't really understand it.
[**] Both are squeezeboxes. The difference is that to play a scale on a melodeon, you have to alternate the bellows direction (ie whether you push or pull) for every note. On an accordion, direction of bellows is irrelevant. In short, a lot less physical movement is required to play an accordion: in general they are much faster instruments than their push/pull counterparts.
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 08:31 am (UTC)Sounds brilliant!
no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 10:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 10:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 11:43 am (UTC)Great write-up!
no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 11:54 am (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl3fgPdvlEQ
It seems there's also a much more complicated reel called Speed The Plough, also available on youtube, which is not it.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 12:03 pm (UTC)Unsurprisingly, there is a whole family of derivative works.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 12:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 02:06 pm (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl3fgPdvlEQ
Spliced together from more than one attempt from the sounds of it! (I've been editing video this week, so am more than usually sensitive to the discontinuity.)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-01 01:04 pm (UTC)