Monday, May 28, 2018

BULLOCK HORNS, BEER BOTTLES AND A BANJO



Here’s another in our Verandah Music  posts on home-made music. The family band described in this article from 1943 is similar to one we featured a few years ago under the title 'The Music of Strange Bands'.

MADE ON THE PREMISES 

A SOUTH COAST (NSW) family has a strange collection of home-made musical instruments. There are several whistles made from bush timber; a violin made from a cigar-box, bits of bush timber and kangaroo sinews; some unnamed instruments made from bullocks' horns; an instrument which they call a bottlephone because it consists of beer bottles mounted on a frame and struck with a little mallet to produce the music; a drum made from two goat skins; and a banjo made from a sheep-skin and wallaby tail sinews. Several of the girls learnt to play tunes on gumleaves and one of the boys can play tunes on a set of old bullock bells which he has altered and timed. Altogether quite a novel jazz band.

"Wongarbon." Sydney.(Smith’s Weekly, 3 July 1943, p. 8).

Wondering what a bottlephone is? 

‘a "bottle-phone," Is, as Its name Indicates, made from bottles, which are made
to supply the various notes of the musical scale. You will find It easy to build, and
It will give you and your friends lots of entertainment.’

You can make and play your own!

‘… You will need 22 bottles of varying size to get a range of notes from B flat, below middle C to G, above high C, with the intervening half tones. Each bottle is suspended on a string, and the pitch is checked with a piano, adding water as necessary to obtain the right pitch….’

Go to https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/204005642and follow the illustrated instructions for making and playing a bottlephone (1940). Easier than Ikea!

The bottlephone seems to have been around for a while. Rob found mention of one in a concert at Kadina in 1900 and even advertisements from the early 1890s.


Thursday, May 24, 2018

And now for the ‘Ethiopian Serenaders’…!


Songster of the Ethiopian Serenaders (USA)

Here’s an interesting snippet from 1850, indicating the early presence of blackface minstrel shows in Australia, even before the gold rushes. Minstrelsy, deriving from the ‘Jump Jim Crow’ comic song fad, was in Australia shortly after it first appeared in the early 1830s and was amazingly popular up to the end of the nineteenth century, and beyond. (Offence alert: racist language).

Ethiopian Serenaders

A company, of performers, calling themselves Ethiopian serenaders, have recently arrived in the colony, and are giving entertainments at the Royal Hotel. This description of amusement had a great run when first introduced into England a few years since. The singing consists of what are generally termed " nigger songs," which are accompanied by an accordeon, a banjo, (which much resembles a guitar,) a tambourine, and the " bones," or castanets, and from the excellent time kept by the instruments, the effect is most pleasing. One of the company, Mr. Howard, has a most sweet voice, and his singing of several plaintive airs, accompanied by himself on the accordean [sic], from which he elicits most delightful tones, was much admired, as was also the solo of Hark the Merry Christ Church Bells on the banjo. The performance on Wednesday evening appeared to give much satisfaction to a numerous and respectable audience.

The Sydney Morning HeraldApril 5 1850, 3.

One of the intriguing aspects of Australian folksong is the extent to which it used American tunes, even well before the era of recorded music. The minstrel shows from America and Britain, as well as other touring entertainments, are the prime suspects for the spread of these imported tunes and songs. 

This English band was probably the first minstrel group known to have appeared in Sydney. ‘Blythe Waterland’s Serenaders’ performed at the Royal Hotel on 1 April, 1850, and at other venues. Their leader was Henry Burton (stage name ‘Blythe Waterland’, also a founder of Australian circus). The band, which included two members named ‘Howard’, toured country centres as well as Melbourne, Launceston and Hobart and returned to Sydney as ‘The Ethiopian Serenaders’. 

Their repertoire included ‘Lynchburg Town’, ‘Walk Along John’, ‘Johnny Boker’, ‘Dandy Jim’, ‘Old Grey Goose’, ’Ole Dan Tucker’, ’Boatman's Dance’, ’Jenny get your hoecake done’, as well as that show-stopping church bells number. For sea song tragics (me included), it’s interesting how many of these were shanties. It was not unusual for minstrel shows to include a wide variety of other styles, not excepting sacred music. These travelling entertainers quickly generated local imitators who continued to spread the repertoire and aided its adaptation into the folk tradition

The instruments mentioned have also been influential in the tradition here. Certainly the accordeon, banjo and ‘bones’, here referred to as ‘castanets’, became popular. But what happened to the tambourine? Did it become the ‘jingling Johnny’, said to have been a possible precursor of the bush band lagerphone? 

Many will equate tambourines with the Salvation Army. But, from this and other accounts, it seems that the tambourine was quite commonly played as percussion in a variety of bush and other more or less spontaneous ensembles, as well as by professionals. All this was long before the Salvation Army was formed in 1865.

Maybe those Sally Annie timbrel troupes just frightened everyone else off?

Graham Seal


Monday, May 14, 2018

THE EARLIEST BUSH BANDS

A 'bush band' c. 1905, SLQ


The first mention of a ‘bush band’ seems to be in the surprising context of a visit by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1868. The Sydney Mailof 15 February that reported a reception for his Royal Highness at which a Volunteer band – a military style brass band – played in the usual manner for such events. After the Duke had departed, guests danced quadrilles to the music of this band, but a ‘bush band’ was also playing, quite a lot, it seems:

‘There was another band upon the ground - what was called "The bush band" - which also favoured the public with much melody. Its harmonies, however, were more of a lugubrious and sentimental character than those of its rival, and it was consequently less popular. It was, however, the centre of a small knot of applauding amateurs de musique who seemed to appreciate "Ah che la morte" and "The heart bowed down," &c. ’

The following year, His Excellency Governor Weld was received at the Roman Catholic Mission at Victoria Plains, Western Australia.

‘While His Excellency was at supper, a bush band was got up consisting of a violin, concertina, triangle, and a large tin dish which answered instead of a drum; several popular airs were played; and His Excellency was very much pleased, for he knew that every one was doing their very best, and with the best intentions.’ (The Perth Gazette and West Australian Times, 19 November 1869, 2-3).

It is likely that some, or all, of the members of this bush band were Aboriginal inmates of the Mission.

By the 1880s, bush bands seem to have been an accepted element of the colonial music scene. As reported in the 18 January edition of the Warwick Argusin 1886:

‘The new year was ushered in in this part of the world in the usual fashion. The stirring strains of the bush band - composed of first and second kerosene tins, an asthmatic concertina, a wheezy comb, and a couple of broken-voiced tin whistles - burst upon the stilly night as the clock struck 12. The atmospheric disturbance was something terrific - and the wonder is that we have had a day's fine weather since. The roisterers made the usual round of the pubs. At the first - host Holmes' - the 'cute landlord warned his visitors that it being after midnight, and consequently 1886, the new Licensing Act was in force and he dare not open his house or sell liquor between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. "We don't want you to sell it, shouted the tin whistle. But the landlord was obdurate, and the thirsty ones had at last to go empty away. They were more successful elsewhere. Having gathered plenty of eatables and drinkables, they returned to the Royal and made things lively for a short time; then, leaving their instruments in pledge for what they did not get, adjourned to the recreation reserve and disposed of the "wine and wittles." Most of them have quite recovered.’

The essential connection between bush music and booze seems to have been well established by this time and spontaneous ensembles of this kind remained a small but important element of community music-making. When the folk revival produced the original Bushwhackers band of the Sydney Bush Music Club in the 1950s, the only changes were the addition of the bush bass, probably derived from the brief skiffle craze of that era, and the lagerphone. 

The spirit of handmade music remained the same. From the 1970s, the ‘second’ Bushwackers [sic] band (originally Bushwackers and Bullockies), took the style to a new level of electrified volume and professional performance standards. Many other ‘bush bands’ also formed in this period and one or two remain today, though the bush dance fad that largely supported these groups has long gone. 

Time for a revival, perhaps?

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The historical research on which this article is based was mostly undertaken by Dr Graeme Skinner of the University of Sydney, used with his kind permission - see his excellent site, Australharmony.

Graham Seal

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Recording Verandah Music

Recovering from three days recording songs and tunes at the National Library of Australia. Great sessions. Thanks to NLA staff and especially to our engineer Greg Downton for the clever stuff.

The results will be edited and turn up on the NLA digital site in one form or another. We’ll post a few tracks as well in various places, so watch out for notifications.