MERZBARN / HUMAN ORGANS / CAROLYN FRANCIS / LAKELAND FIDDLERS / REPETITION

The Merzbarn was Kurt Schwitters' last workplace, and was the site of the last of his monumental Merz works. The piece,assembled from cement and found objects. was built onto and into the wall of a barn on the Cylinders Estate at Elterwater, a few miles from Ambleside.

The Merzwall itself is in the Hatton Gallery at Newcastle but under the stewardship of Littoral's Ian Hunter and Celia Larner the barn and the land around it continue to hum.

The site hosts a variety of arts practice, regular conferences, symposia and celebrations attracting artists, students, schools groups and academics. On June 24^th and 25^th the Merzbarn held a celebration of Schwitters' arrival in the Langdale valley, and The Human Organs played after poet Jill Rock's reading of Anna Blume.

This is the first appearance of the Four Person line up, so left to right you'll see Neil Wade, Jo Wade, me, and Jamie McPhie..these two videos from Alex record two chunks of what may evolve into some sort of offgrid ritual trance thing, in which we were joined by Trombonist Carolyn Francis and the Lakeland Fiddlers, who played some great tunes outside the Merzbarn earlier in the day and at the church in the morning. . We've been wondering about wether / how to augment the organs, and this points a way or two.. there are some great moments here, thank you Carolyn and co, and thank you Ian and Celia..

https://vimeo.com/223425494       for the first number, and Carolyn's first intervention.

https://vimeo.com/223438261       with Carolyn and the Lakes Fiddlers.

https://vimeo.com/227594576       in the woods on the Cylinders Estate. 

On the way up I was talking to my pal traditional musician Mike Willoughby about  ritual / social music  and how repetition is a key element in both the music and the cycle of movements made by the dancers, Mike pointed me at his Melodeon hero John Kirkpatrick and a piece he wrote called Medley Mania. Kirkpatrick makes the case against medleys of tunes. Dont fear repetition, he says...

 "...Its traditional!  In a longways set, for example, it used to be the custom to perform the dance until each couple had been in every position up and down the set and ended up where they started. And they only played one tune for all of that time, which must sometimes have been half an hour or more. If they knew the proper set tune, they would play that. If not, they'd have something else up their sleeves which would do perfectly well. But from Playford's time onwards country dances were published with just one tune, no question about it."

 He goes further..

  "In some societies less "sophisticated" than ours, a trance - like state is achieved after dancing for a long time to a constantly repetitive accompaniment. Dancers and musicians unite in building up the hypnotic effect to eventually transcend the usual limitations of the five senses. They don't plod around to endless medleys. They throw themselves into it as though their life depended on it. For them it is a profound spiritual experience. Their life probably does depend on it."

More of John Kirkpatrick and the Merzbarn here and here...

http://www.johnkirkpatrick.co.uk/wr_MedleyMania.asp  

https://merzbarnlangdale.wordpress.com/

DOC ROWE ARCHIVE COMES TO ULVERSTON

There is a real treat on offer for lovers of folk music at the Hope And Anchor in Ulverston on Tuesday July 4^th, when Doc Rowe presents his film "Departed Friends" before the pub's weekly traditional music session. The film presents a sample from Docs' film library, and includes unique performances from many legendary performers including Mike Waterson, Dave Swarbrick, Louis Killen, and Lancaster's Sam Sherry.

British traditional culture holds some bizzarre secrets, and Film maker, writer, broadcaster and activist Doc Rowe is one of its great chroniclers . For over half a century Doc has been recording traditional singers, dancers, Mayday celebrations and local rituals, amassing an enormous archive of film, tape, photography and print.

    The Doc Rowe Archive is a treasure trove for anyone interested in folk song, vernacular arts and social history. An hour in Docs company is time well spent; he can take you from a Mob Football match in Derbyshire to a Sea Shanty session in Sidmouth via the Aldermaston Marches and the Horn Dance at Abbots Bromley. This is a great chance to meet Doc, see some of the giants of the folk scene on film, and then listen to the best of our local musicians as part of the build up to the weekend and the Furness Tradition Folk Festival.

The Film begins at 7.30, the music session follows, and admission is free of charge.

NEWTON SCHOOL:ART, CARNIVAL AND PROCESSION

Surrounded by fields, hedgerows and gentle hills, Newton School sits on a winding lane between Dalton and Barrow in Furness.
Every year the school takes part in Dalton Carnival, the children make models or banners or decorate a float and parade through town .
These videos by Elizabeth Sampson from the Twitchers band give a real flavour of the day..




https://youtu.be/c3UX-ZJlZho

https://youtu.be/tb4o59n9S0c

These pictures show some of the work we've made with the school for carnival. The theme was flags and banners, and the boys and girls made stencil images of the beasts that roam their gardens and playing 
fields. 

The tradition of Whit Walks and May Day events is still alive, as Doc Rowe's work makes clear. In many areas the symbolism of the old fair days is less evident, although the impetus to gather and show off another version of local -and 
personal- identity survives in the present parades and carnivals. Barrow, Dalton and Ulverston all have their own

events. Dalton was once the centre of trade in the area, it's market days  would itself have developed from seasonal gatherings and attracted a fringe of traders and sideshows. In Ulverston the Hiring Fair on the Gill was the focus,  this space eventually came to be the site of a larger evening event, following a parade of costumes and floats from local businesses, totemic builds and elaborate costumes that  imbued spectacle with an echo of former ceremony and celebration. 

Many of the uncertainties that were fostered by the old hiring systems have returned, and their effects are apparent. The size and energy of these local events is often affected by economics. There have been some muted years, some gloriously defiant splashes of bravado, and sometimes there have been doubts that the events will go ahead at all but the tradition continues.  
  Dalton Carnival is enjoying a revival, the whole town gets involved and the gathering is again one of the big days in the calendar. With the help of their teachers, parents and friends of the school, Newton's boys and girls come down the hill into  and walk with Dalton's schools, traders, church and community groups to show off their skills and take their place in the public life of the town.The streets are lined with people who wave and applaud and then follow the procession to its conclusion, a gathering of floats and banners in a field in the centre of town. At this point, the sense of continuity is tangible.


Unless it absolutely hoys it down. Sometimes the weather changes unexpectedly and the event is pulled. Newton then roll up their flags and floats and whatever till the clouds clear, and the schoolchildren parade through their village. There is something intimate and appropriate about this; it emphasises the place the school occupies within this small village, and sends its' energy, colour and laughter to circulate through the streets and lanes.
This year we went along in support, bringing up the rear with a  pair of Backpack organists. 
Rain may have stopped play in Dalton, but there was a parade in 2017, just up the hill at Newton.

https://vimeo.com/227590950

We are very proud of our continuing relationship with Newton School.. 
There's more from a previous project here with writer Kate Davies at Dalton Castle here..

http://www.bifocals2013.com/education/4589880525

..and more pictures below...our thanks to the
 Sir John Fisher Foundation for their valuable support for our schools projects.

42 MINUTES IN THE DOCK MUSEUM

We had the usual warm welcome and a great audience at the Barrow Dock Museum on April 20 for the Sound Collage show. 
Comments  and suggestions so far include: 

 ..it was something entirely unique and totally mesmerising..

 (we enjoyed) particularly the simplicity of it, which spoke for itself; each sound or track being really ‘clean.’

 (we) thought that using different speakers for different sounds would have been interesting and I’d have quite liked to have sound from other directions as well. I think the material was simple and clear enough to take a little bit of shifting and shuffling about.

 ..really enjoyable and varied show and we both loved it.

Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes jolly and sometimes mysterious..

Nice to meet another Joe Meek fan in the audience too.

From our point of view the show seemed to go very quickly, but it was only 4 minutes short of what we think of as the optimum length. When you are working with largely finite clips of sound, and (apart from the locked groove at the start) no looping  it should be possible to keep things pretty tight so I'm glad we managed that. We had a good sound too...the Dock Museum has a good acoustic, and Damo provided a nicely balanced mix.

I did an interview on Radio Cumbria to promote the show, and Paul Braithwait the presenter asked about how we go about putting the piece together..do we have a big sheet of paper with blocks of sound arranged on it? Yes we do...here it is..     

And here's an MP3 from the desk recording of the show...

https://soundcloud.com/user-628037322/hall-tyson-rose-barrow-dock-museum

Thanks again to Victoria (who also took the photos), Sarah, Simon, Graham, Anita and Nicole from the Dock Museum for their support on the day/night and to our audience, it was great to be able to present this piece  in this unique venue.

 Find out more about 

 Barrow In Furness Dock Museum here:

  http://www.dockmuseum.org.uk/

REHEARSALS AND PUBLICITY FOR DOCK MUSEUM SHOW

Met up with Ste Tyson and Damo Rose yesterday to rehearse next week's show at Barrow Dock Museum. It's shaping up nicely, we made a few additions including a lot of spoken word / advertising vinyl, voices from the Cross Keys in Barrow and some musical surprises.

You can read a bit more on the Cumbria Live pages..
http://www.cumbrialive.co.uk/Sound-effects-feature-in-free-Dock-Museum-evening-event-ff5c227e-e98e-4815-92b3-1a39886a1ae1-ds

and there's another feature on the Dock Museum's site..

http://www.dockmuseum.org.uk/Whats-on?MonthID=9&EV_Type=0

A lot of people have had nice things 
to say about this.
It all helps, and hopefully we'll see you at the Museum for a chat.

HUMAN ORGANS FOUND IN ULVERSTON CARPARK

The latest additions to the squad of Human Organists assembled last night to try out Alex's new models (see earlier post)...here are Jo and Neil Wade, me, Amy Boud and Kirsten Taylor getting all Exploratory on the Gill. Photograph by a chap who described himself as Curious of Tunbridge Wells.

https://vimeo.com/212285022

Plan is to get another sesh together involving Jamie and Phil and thus build an Organ Gang capable of playing parpy outdoor Camberwick Green trance music in whatever combination. 

Here's some additional audio made after Alex ran some repairs on Jo's squelchbass unit...

https://soundcloud.com/user-582681044/5piece-organ-rehearsal-april-2017

The sound is at least partly dictated by the time it takes to reload the li-lo bellows with air. You can make short staccato passages too, as these don't need a full res of air. The players take a lead from one of their number, who sets up a pattern, and tentatively find a space within it.  The idea seems to be: repetition is its own reward. While small variations can  be introduced within a "piece", the pace needs to be maintained. The Clockwork Trance analogy isn't as daft as it sounds, many people are intuitively tuned into the charms of repetition  and if it's a walkabout then no-one who isn't need stand around listening long enough to get bored. 

There is talk of adding voices, bells and a harmonium, but one thing to be addressed is making sure we can hear each other..three is pretty easy, five probably requires a circle.
Some visual unity is needed too. Thanks to everyone for turning out, really good fun and plenty to think about.

And GWS Rob Cooney

RESEARCH: THE DOC ROWE ARCHIVE AND THE WHITBY PENNY HEDGE

I spent a cracking afternoon in Whitby with Doc Rowe surrounded by his archive of vernacular music, performance, ritual and social ephemera. Doc's stories of great traditional singers, of recording and filming in the field and his insights into the relationship between the arcane and the present are punctuated by delves into envelopes and boxfiles. Out come copies of Peace News, advice booklets for Conscientious Objectors, proclamations and petitions regarding Franco's war on the Spanish republic, handwritten communiques from the Aldermaston marches, 

photographs from Padstow and Abbots Bromley...Burry Men, men with horns.

Doc didn't set out to collect and seems to take neither a curatorial or an editorial role. He described a common assumption in the early 60's that the music, the dances and the ceremonies had gone with the culture that produced and sustained them. It had been caught and recorded for posterity, but it was gone. Doc knew this wasn't so; the Archive, he said, came from a need to confirm for himself the continuing existence of this culture and he has amassed the evidence in miles of tape and film, great swathes of photographs and vinyl and mountains of reading matter.

There is no sense here of vitality pinned under glass, no hammering of awkward edges into a convenient shape. The Archive demonstrates that we still live in the world of the Padstow Oss and the Burry Man; a fluid and mutable world that can inspire and nourish independent thought in a confluence of magic, radicalism, anarchic wit and energy.

Doc currently has three Fine Artists working with him, each is exploring and interpreting the Archive; more streams joining the confluence.

Here's a link, and there's more on Doc's Facebook page. http://www.docrowe.org.uk/

I enjoyed my afternoon with Doc Rowe, and I'll be visiting again with this project in mind and to help Doc sort through some of the more distant corners of the Archive. 
  Walking back into town he talked about the need to respect and maintain the integrity of certain traditions and customs, and his concern that intimacy and scale might be lost in the drive to attract visitors. In his book "Mayday. The Coming Of Spring" he writes "These events have emotional and demonstrative significance that is seriously upheld; they are, mostly, not staged as tourist attractions and have in some cases survived despite external pressures"

As I write this from the Singing Kettle Caff in the harbour I know that under the waters of the Esk, just a few yards from Doc's Archive, is the Penny Hedge. I went for a look at low tide. This fragile-seeming waist-high structure of woven stakes is built annually on the eve of Ascension day, and must withstand three tides as recompense for the wrongs of three prominent local families in the 12^th Century. No tickets are sold, no-one sponsors the event. There is no accompanying faff or ballyhoo other than a cry and a blast from a ramhorn, and then in this unassuming muddy patch of the estuary the Penny Hedge is left to stand unaided against the actions of the tides.

" Often the hedge from the previous year has to be taken down in order to build the new one, so effective is its' construction. Indeed, the hedge has never fallen and continues to be built to resist the strongest tide." ( Doc Rowe "MayDay. The Coming Of Spring" English Heritage / EFDSS)