Festival Singing - Og needs help

[oggbashan]

I am helping to organise our town's festival which I have done for the last 15 years.

All the festival events are free. We have street processions with workshops for costume making and band performance. We have band contests with the local kids trying to be selected to perform on the main stage in the finale. We have sandcastle competitions, a crab-catching contest and many of the local clubs provide taster sessions for potential members.

I'm trying to increase the adult participation. We are always oversubscribed for the children's events.

My idea for next year is to introduce or re-introduce singing in our local public houses during the festival. The suggested requirements are there are to be no auditions and that no one is to be excluded because they sing badly. I thought that we could try to sing the traditional UK songs such as:

Early One Morning
What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor
London Bridge Is Falling Down
On Ilkley Moor Ba'ht Hat
Clementine
The Lass Of Richmond Hill
I have a News Chronicle Song Book of the 1930s which includes songs I probably can't use such as "Plantation Songs" and "Negro Spirituals" e.g. Dixie Land and Marching Through Georgia "How the Darkies shouted when they heard the joyful sound..."

My idea is that we could get each establishment to practise a selection of songs early on weekday evenings and come together during the festival for massed community singing. (The other benefit is that it might increase alcohol sales during a quiet time in the pubs. More alcohol might mean more spirited singing!)

The songs have to be traditional (so that we don't have to pay royalties), easily sung in unison by very mixed voices.

Has the AH got any suggested songs?

Og

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

The only one I know of, I know of starts out with "Four and twenty virgins came down from Inverness, and when it was all over there were four and twenty less". We always used it as a launching point to make up verses about out professors and fellow students, and its rather bawdy. Not sure if that helps at all but know that there is one Yank who would love to be there see all of this.

 

[Guest]

Ogg, I wish I could help. Not really my forte, you Brits and all.

I did find this - is this helpful in any way?

http://www.musicweb-international.com/garlands/48.htm

A FORTY-EIGHTH GARLAND OF BRITISH MUSIC COMPOSERS

We begin with our by now fairly customary reference to the purveyors of Victorian dance music. One HOBSON (no Christian name known yet) had his Sun Flower Schottische appear in an 1873 Doncaster ballroom programme, sharing the bill with more famous practitioners like Coote, Godfrey and Jullien, all featured in these Garlands, It is worth remembering that dance music at that period, and of course since, could readily become music, even when its composer/arranger was British; we take for granted this happening with foreigners like Johann Strauss and perhaps others like Waldteufel, Gung'l and Lumbye.

Moving on a generation or so we come to the figure of AMY ELISE HORROCKS, of Anglo-Brazilian descent, the peak of whose career may well come with the premiere of an orchestral ballade, The Romaunt of the Page at the Henry Wood Proms in 1899. It is not quite clear how "light" a composition this was and Horrocks is also credited with Eight Variations on an Original Theme for piano quartet; but undoubtedly in the "light" category were her ballads The Bird and the Rose, Forget me Not, An Idle Poet, The Nightingale To Althea From Prison ands, possibly a piano piece originally, but, published in arrangements for viola and piano and cello and piano, Twilight (a Reverie).

RICHARD D'OYLY CARTE (1844-1901) is remembered, indeed famed, as agent, manager and impresario, primarily for the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, though his activities extended beyond G & S. But it is a much less well-known fact that he was also a composer. His father ran a musical instrument business (Rudall, Carte & Co) in London's Charing Cross Road and Richard, who was educated at University College, London was originally intended for a musical career. He was responsible for a number of songs and at least three one-act stage works. The first was Dr. Ambrose, His Secret, given a private staging with piano accompaniment at St. George's Opera House on 8 August 1868. Three years later the operetta Marie received five performances (and a panning from the critics) at the Opera Comique. Finally and most successfully (though "success" is a relative term) there was the "musical pastoral" Happy Hampstead of 1876, by which time d'Oyly Carte was beginning to make his mark as an impresario which may account for his employing (as composer) the pseudonym MARK LYNNE. It was produced by the d'Oyly Carte Opera Company on 3 July 1876, toured a repertoire and had its first London performance in 1877 at the Royalty Theatre but was dropped after about a month.

FRANK MUSGRAVE is an interesting figure, even if none of his music has survived into the present day, with his contributions to the Victorian musical theatre and to its sheet music industry. He was Musical Director at the Royal Strand Theatre in 1865, and up to then had produced mostly dance music (quadrilles, valses and polkas, of which more in a moment), arrangements and "nigger songs", when, in collaboration with F.C. Burnard (who was soon to collaborate with Arthur Sullivan) he brought out Windsor Castle, "in new and original historical opera burlesque", probably the first English opera bouffe. Burnard said of his collaborator that he had "no musical (or other) education and he could turn out a catchy popular tune, could score it for a small orchestra, had a keen sense of humour and was a first class stage manager. "The music - comprising solos, ensembles, concert pieces and dance sequences - was praised, but the show ran for only 43 performances. It was quickly followed, still in 1865, by another Burnard/Musgrave burlesque, L'Africaine, or The Queen of the Cannibal Islands (the musical burlesqued things as diverse as the Christy Minstrels and grand opera, a drinking song and the Indian War Song going down especially well). This did rather better than Windsor Castle, achieving 88 performances, also at the Royal Strand Theatre.

By 1873 Musgrave was the lessee of the Theatre Royal Nottingham and in that year he produced a comic opera Lothair and this managed 36 performances at the Theatre Royal Liverpool. By 1878 he was touring French operetta with his own company (this visited Doncaster in 1879) when his operetta Prisoners at the Bar, set in a railway refreshment bar and jocularly described as an "opera buffet" appeared, but it was not a great success. Musgrave's sheet music numbers included Excursion Train Galop whose cover shows the excursionists packed like sardines into open trucks of the South Eastern Railway with the wind blowing the engine smoke around them and plucking off one passenger's hat, and the Cooke's Excursion Galop, whose cover has the excursionists enthusiastically climbing Mount Vesuvius, heedless of the volcanoes erupting just above.

We come now to MAUDE CASKE DAY, born in Cambridge in 1876 and publishing songs at least as late as 1940. A teacher of piano singing, she produced ballads in profusion. The best known of them was Arise O Sun (1921) which is generally to be heard to day in choral versions, for SATB by PURCELL J. MANSFIELD and for male voices by DORIS ARNOLD Tell Me Gypsy (1924) recently, is a livelier number. Fairies figure considerably in her output; one thinks if The Fairy Shoon, Fairy Shopping, Fiddler Fairies and Pixies Picnic. Other titles included Springs a Dancer, The Bachelors of Devon, Be Thou My Light, Beyond the Stars, The Fountain, The Glory of the Dawn, The Love-Pipes of June, The Music of the Treats, Mariette, Ring Bells Ring, Spring Tapped at My Window, Old Sweetheart, The Mighty Builder and Heart of Mine.

Finally the briefest of mentions for two contemporary writers of screen music on account of their very recent (1999) scores for TV productions: MICHAEL GIBBS for Plastic Man (ITV); and JIM MEACOCK for The Planets (BBC).

© Philip L. Scowcroft



Plus I found a listing of public domain songs. http://www.pdinfo.com/list/a.htm

Good luck - this sounds like so much fun!

 

[john-the-author]

The only one I know of, I know of starts out with "Four and twenty virgins came down from Inverness, and when it was all over there were four and twenty less". We always used it as a launching point to make up verses about out professors and fellow students, and its rather bawdy. Not sure if that helps at all but know that there is one Yank who would love to be there see all of this.

That'd be "The Ball at Kerrimuir" (aka "The Ball at Ballynoor" or "The Bloody Ball"). It's a traditional filthy song. I like it.

Ogg, depending on the level of filth and depravity you're willing to shoot for, there are small paperback collections printed in England of rugby songs. I have one of them, entitled simply "More Rugby Songs." Checking on Amazon, I see several editions with that title, all of which are probably of the same ilk.

G&S is always great fun to sing and it's royalty-free, but it's probably more ambitious than the average pub singer may care for.

I'll go dig through the music library downstairs and see what I can come up with in a more general flavor.

 

[R. Richard]

Try the Roud Folk Song Index.

 

[oggbashan]

That'd be "The Ball at Kerrimuir" (aka "The Ball at Ballynoor" or "The Bloody Ball"). It's a traditional filthy song. I like it.

Ogg, depending on the level of filth and depravity you're willing to shoot for, there are small paperback collections printed in England of rugby songs. I have one of them, entitled simply "More Rugby Songs." Checking on Amazon, I see several editions with that title, all of which are probably of the same ilk.

G&S is always great fun to sing and it's royalty-free, but it's probably more ambitious than the average pub singer may care for.

I'll go dig through the music library downstairs and see what I can come up with in a more general flavor.

Thanks for this, and thanks for the other suggestions so far.

A couple of the public houses have an over-18s only rule so rugby songs would be allowed, but not for the community singing later in the Festival. I have three Rugby song books plus my own extensive repertoire. My real name features in some of the local variants

Some of Gilbert and Sullivan's songs are reasonably well known. I might have cooperation from the local amateur operatic society, yet to be confirmed, and they, after rehersals, are capable of almost any style of choral music BUT what I am aiming for is singing that everyone can do.

For 2010 we might attempt "Mamma Mia" singing. We would need to pay royalties for that so we want to try royalty-free singing in 2009 to see whether the idea of community singing will work.

As an aside, we are already considering sign-singing for the deaf. There are several sing and sign toddler groups and two organisations teaching signing for the deaf. (Perhaps being deaf might almost be preferable to listening to some of the singing I expect to produce)

Some of the songs that I know can be effectively murdered by pub singers (and Og) are:

Trees
Ramona
Indian Love Lyrics (Pale hands beside the Shalimar)
Come into the garden, Maud
The Larboard Watch
The Three Gendarmes
The Village Blacksmith

There are many English Folk Songs recorded by Cecil J Sharpe but except for a few they are for purists, not for raucous singing.

I'm aiming for volume and enthusiasm, not for quality of performance.

In a previous event, one of my most successful acts was "Ladies' Keep Fit to Music". They had never performed in public before, never on a restricted stage, and attempted formation dancing with keep fit movements. They knocked each other over, a couple fell off the stage and had to be caught by gentlemen in the front row of the audience, and their director had to halt their performance because they all started giggling. They had to perform three encores and left the stage to loud cheering.

I think an award for the Worst Performance of Community Singing will be required. Knowing our local pubs' customers, they will be likely to compete hard to be the worst.

Og

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

must...buy...plane ticket.....

 

[oggbashan]

must...buy...plane ticket.....

It would be cheaper to organise your own festival.

How many alcoholic establishments near you have karaoke sessions? Getting the karaoke singers to sing in unison might be difficult, if not impossible, but that would be part of the fun.

In the US, barbershop singing has been developed to a high art. But BAD barbershop? There's a huge untapped market of bad singers.

Get them out of their bathrooms and into cooperative singing.

In the 1930s, community singing in the UK was everywhere. The Welsh still do it. So do the Scots particularly at Hogmanay and on Robbie Burns' nights.

The English and Americans need to shed their inhibitions and raise their voices like wolves howling at the moon...

Og

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

It would be cheaper to organise your own festival.

How many alcoholic establishments near you have karaoke sessions? Getting the karaoke singers to sing in unison might be difficult, if not impossible, but that would be part of the fun.

In the US, barbershop singing has been developed to a high art. But BAD barbershop? There's a huge untapped market of bad singers.

Get them out of their bathrooms and into cooperative singing.

In the 1930s, community singing in the UK was everywhere. The Welsh still do it. So do the Scots particularly at Hogmanay and on Robbie Burns' nights.

The English and Americans need to shed their inhibitions and raise their voices like wolves howling at the moon...

Og

Sadly, the town I am in, the nearest thing to a pub is called "The Right Wing Tavern" and they don't do karaoke so much as try to sound intelligent on political issues after 4 beers.

Besides there are several other people across the pond I need to squeeze and hug and buy beers for, your highness included. :beer:

 

[john-the-author]

It would be cheaper to organise your own festival.

How many alcoholic establishments near you have karaoke sessions? Getting the karaoke singers to sing in unison might be difficult, if not impossible, but that would be part of the fun.

In the US, barbershop singing has been developed to a high art. But BAD barbershop? There's a huge untapped market of bad singers.

Get them out of their bathrooms and into cooperative singing.

In the 1930s, community singing in the UK was everywhere. The Welsh still do it. So do the Scots particularly at Hogmanay and on Robbie Burns' nights.

The English and Americans need to shed their inhibitions and raise their voices like wolves howling at the moon...

Og

Bad barbershop singing like "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" and "Alice Blue Gown" and so on? Damn straight!

Come to think of it, you might look for titles (and music) through the Barbershop Harmony Society, formerly known as SPEBSQUA. They're rich in royalty-free, well-known music from both sides of the Atlantic.

And you could always do WWII-era music hall stuff, which everyone will have grown up with. One of my personal all-time faves is "We'll Meet Again," which we all sang at my wedding when we closed down. (It was a big wedding, with a few hundred people, so singing "We'll Meet Again" was pretty neat.)

 

[oggbashan]

Bad barbershop singing like "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" and "Alice Blue Gown" and so on? Damn straight!

Come to think of it, you might look for titles (and music) through the Barbershop Harmony Society, formerly known as SPEBSQUA. They're rich in royalty-free, well-known music from both sides of the Atlantic.

And you could always do WWII-era music hall stuff, which everyone will have grown up with. One of my personal all-time faves is "We'll Meet Again," which we all sang at my wedding when we closed down. (It was a big wedding, with a few hundred people, so singing "We'll Meet Again" was pretty neat.)

We have already scheduled a 1940s evening with a professional orchestra and singers but that is for people to watch and dance to, rather than participate in as singers. Most of the 1940s music is still in copyright so royalties would be necessary.

Thanks for the link to barbershop music. We do have three or more barbershop quartets in our town but they range from good to outstanding.

Og

 

[DeeZire]

I don't know how they work royalty payments in the UK, but I lead a singalong on piano recently at the end of a Beatles tribute night. 'All You Need Is Love', 'Hey Jude', and 'With a Little Help From My Friends' brought the house down, with many in attendance wiping away tears. Lennon's 'Happy Christmas (War is Over)' is also very powerful in a live setting. It has a cool countrapuntal vocal part that is perfect for drunken singers. They did that one last night at the end of a local benefit concert. It was a magic moment.

(Link to the actual Lennon song, not the amateurs who played it last night.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBfEGETyGjs

 

[Vermilion]

Too dizzy to read whole thread. Has anyone suggested old marching/army songs? Look at soundtrack for 'Sharpe' for inspiration, there's some good ones. Slightly bawdy, but couched in 18th/19thC terminology, so too obscure for most people to realise *how* bawdy.

Lemme know when you do it and I may come and watch

x
V

 

[oggbashan]

I don't know how they work royalty payments in the UK, but I lead a singalong on piano recently at the end of a Beatles tribute night. 'All You Need Is Love', 'Hey Jude', and 'With a Little Help From My Friends' brought the house down, with many in attendance wiping away tears. Lennon's 'Happy Christmas (War is Over)' is also very powerful in a live setting. It has a cool countrapuntal vocal part that is perfect for drunken singers. They did that one last night at the end of a local benefit concert. It was a magic moment.

(Link to the actual Lennon song, not the amateurs who played it last night.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBfEGETyGjs

Because I would be organising and promoting public "performances" of copyright music I would have to seek permission for the performance and pay royalties to the owners of the copyright. The permission might be denied if the owners realised I was promoting bad singing - unless the copyright owners have a sense of humour.

If the singing was spontaneously generated on the night by the patrons of the public house there would be no liability for payments. If it was publicised by the landlord - payment has to be made.

My local council has overall responsibility for the festival so they could be billed, as well as me, by the copyright owners.

If I can, I will avoid using any music and lyrics still in copyright. One way out is to use only songs taken from my copy of the Scottish Students Song Book published by The Scottish Students' Songbook Committee Ltd in 1897, reprinted 1904. Unfortunately for me several of those songs are in broad Scots or in Latin.

Some I just can't use:
(First Lines)
Alma Mater, te canamus
A mile and a bittock
Devoid of mathematical brain
God bless our noble Czar
God preserve our gracious Emp'ror (Austro-Hungarian Empire)
Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser
Heus, fratres, ecce Lalage
I was just aboot smoor'd wi' a kittlin' cough
In South Car'lina de darkies go
My name is Solomon Levi
Say, darkies, hab you seen de massa?
The Sons of The Prophet are hardy and bold

The last one was unexceptional in 1897. The words have changed considerably over the last 111 years...

Og

 

[fifty5]

Hi Og,

What about the old boy scout stuff, like The Quartermaster's Store and You'll Never go to Heaven?

I think they'd be old enough to avoid performance rights - especially if you have a loud voiced plant to start off some improvisation

"There's a cake, a cake,
On a guy who's on the take..."

or

"You'll never go to heaven,
With a guy in a cake,
'Cos a guy in a cake..."

Knowing some of the other locals, I'm sure you could come up with far better verses, but the point is that these are response songs, so everyone can join in the responses, after the first one, even thought they've never heard the song before.

Once you've got them going, if the crowd responds, then you are likely to get the extroverts contributing their own inventions. Just make sure the plant is ready with enough scripted verses to keep the ball rolling.

There are also plenty of others (many more than I can remember off the cuff) from the old Scout sing alongs and Gang Shows, like Riding along on the Crest of a Wave, Ging Gang Goolie and so on.

 

[john-the-author]

The Sons of The Prophet are hardy and bold [/I]

The last one was unexceptional in 1897. The words have changed considerably over the last 111 years...

Og

The original was indeed unexceptional. There are a number of filthy versions of Abdul the Bulbul Emir that appeared thereafter. It's kind of like an American folk tune called Redwing. There are clean lyrics that are pretty mawkish and nobody remembers them. Everyone sings the dirty lyrics.

 

[shereads]

I will help, Og. I'll also make tea and biscuits every day and serve your guests, dressed in the cutest little maid outfit. All I ask in return is that you adopt me, move me to Britain and give me a job in your book store.