Homespun lyrics and hummable tunes
Go back in time before YouTube, before MP3s, before CDs, 8-tracks, LPs, and yes, before 78s. Way back in time when everyday people across Canada made up their own songs. Nothin’ highfalutin. Just homespun lyrics and hummable tunes that most folks could easily memorize, and then pass down orally from generation to generation. Songs learned on a grandmother’s knee in a northern Ontario hamlet, or on Dad’s fishing trawler off of St. John’s, or around the stovepipe in the family home in rural Québec. This was true folk music.
Times sure have changed, huh? But some of these Canadian folk songs are still alive and kicking. And irony of ironies, they’re being passed down, or rather, circulated via choral arrangements by classically trained arrangers and composers.
This Saturday, Nov. 19 at Melrose United, 86 Homewood Ave., at a family-with-kids and seniors-friendly time of 4 p.m., you can hear Alex Cann and his 55-voice Bach Elgar Choir in a coast-to-coast survey of Canadian folk songs from the distant past to the present.
Among the 19 settings on tap are “Feller from Fortune,” a Newfoundland outport song arranged years back by Harry Somers, Mark Sirett’s arrangement of “Un canadien errant,” Ruth Watson Henderson’s take on “Come All You Bold Canadians,” a song about the War of 1812, plus from the late 20th century folkie boom, Ron Smail’s version of Wade Hemsworth’s “The Log Driver’s Waltz,” Gilles Vigneault’s “Mon pays” and Bruce Cockburn’s “All the Diamonds in the World ” as set by Larry Nickel, as well as Paul Jay’s nine-part a cappella setting of Stan Rogers’ “Northwest Passage.”
Though the BEC presented a set of Canadian Christmas carols a few seasons ago, you’d
have to go back to the early 1990s when the BEC last sang a full slate of Canadian folk, Wayne Strongman leading them in a tribute to the late Stan Rogers.
And just how are the current folks in the BEC getting along with these artsy settings of folk songs? After all, they’re usually up to their larynges in some Mass or other by Mozart or Haydn, or freshening up yet another Messiah (yup, Dec. 10, mark your calendar), or slogging it out in similarly challenging choral repertoire. So, to find out, The Spec drew up a short questionnaire to which a bunch of BEC choristers responded via email.
As for their rehearsals, BEC alto Maribeth Wright-Curry wrote, “This has been, in some ways, more satisfying as we’re doing short songs and get them polished up quite quickly. The longer works, we prepare in sections before putting them all together to get the feel of the whole work. Often that takes most of the season. And it’s just the last week before the performance before we get a feel for the work in its entirety.”
Now, you’d think that a program of folk songs would be easy, right? Sure, easy on the ears and fun for the audience, but not exactly a cakewalk for community choristers. As BEC bass John Baxter wrote, “Imagining something is easy is the first step toward screwing it up.”
Almost to a person, the choristers found something challenging in the music, be it tricky rhythms or regional pronunciations.
“One unusual focus has been on regional accents,” wrote Baxter.
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“Alex (Cann) always coaches us on the pronunciation of foreign words, but now instead of practicing ‘correct’ Russian or Spanish or Czech, we are working on regional pronunciations that fit the rhythm and spirit of the music. It is a bit of a balancing act because we do not want to seem to be mocking regional accents.”
Quite a few of the choristers commented that they had learned something new about Canada from the music. BEC soprano Allana Stevenson succinctly summed it up this way: “I had no idea Canada had such treasures in its folk music repertoire.”
The last word shall be given to the above quoted Mr. Baxter, who, from the sounds of it, has given himself a little extra incentive.
“I, personally, am rhythmically challenged,” wrote Baxter. “If I can actually get ‘Feller from Fortune’ right on November 19, that evening I will reward myself with a great, big whisky.”