THE REMARKABLE MA SEAL

Ma Seal by John Meredith

This article appeared in the Verandah Music book, now unavailable, so we thought it would be appropriate to republish it in the centenary year of John Meredith's birth, and also as a tribute to a truly remarkable traditional musician. Without the work of John Meredith, assisted in this case by Martin Fallding, Ma Seal's music would have remained completely undocumented.

You can hear the interviews here and read  a more detailed treatment in  Tunes of Ma Seal /​ collected by John Meredith and Peter Ellis ; compiled by Peter Ellis and David de Santi ; introduction by John Meredith; musical transcriptions by Harry Gardner ; arranged by David de Santi ; photographs by John Meredith.

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Catherine (Kate or 'Ma') Seal was born on 11 February 1901 at Hawker, South Australia and lived there until her marriage in 1955 when she moved 265km south-west to the township of Kimba. When Kate was 5 years old, her father brought home an accordion. He told Kate and her brother that the first one that could play a tune on it could have it. Kate tells the story of how her brother picked up the instrument, and as he worked the bellows in and out, his tongue poked out and wagged from side to side, but without producing any music. Little Kate picked up the accordion and played it straight off,and so was awarded the prize.

Three years later, at the age of eight, Kate recalls being asked to play for a dance down at the railway grain sheds. They sat the little girl up on a couple of wheat sacks and she was doing fine until the rammed earth floor began to break up, and she was smothered by the rising dust.

This is an interesting recurring phenomena in the 19th century. Olive Schreiner describes a Boer wedding in South Africa where the floor, of clay and bullocks blood, did likewise; D.H. Lawrence, in his book Twilight In Italy, tells of a similar circumstance with a group of woodcutters dancing a mazurka on a soft brick floor getting smothered in dust. In one of Steele Rudd’s, On Our Selectionbooks he describes the identical thing happening at Dave's wedding. It seems that there was a traditional global occurrence, that dirt floors just did not stand up to dancing!

Ma also recalled that when she and her brother were little they used to run outside on Easter Sunday morning to watch the sun dance as it rose, which it was supposed to do on that day.

Ma told us that her mother was Irish, so maybe that accounts for her musicality. How I came to meet this remarkable lady is an interesting story. I wrote a book about the World War 1 Cooee march titled The Coo-eeswhich had a remarkable three-day launch at Gilgandra. While I was busy signing copies, a lady came up and asked me questions about certain bushrangers of the Gulargambone district, and I told her what I knew about them. A year or so later, in company with Chris Sullivan, I was in the Toorawheenah pub, when the same lady came up to us and asked what we were doing there. I explained that we were on a field collecting trip and asked did she know of any likely performers. She referred us to Errol Rhodda of Purlewagh, who recorded a lot of German tunes for us, played in a Germanic style, and who told us he grew up during the Depression at the top of the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia.

Errol also gave me the name and address of Les Freeth of Buckleboo with whom he used to play with when a young man. When, on a field trip with Martin Falding in 1985, we called on and recorded Les Freeth, he directed us to Ma Seal, saying that she was a remarkable accordion player. And so she was!

  

Ma Seal, John Meredith and Martin Fallding

Martin Fallding and I called on Ma on 31 May 1985. At first she did not want to record for us. Then her neighbour, Connie Whitwell came in, and jollied Ma into performing for the recorder. Martin and I recorded some 36 tunes from Ma's playing, and we were entranced by her style. She had a light way of fingering, using a lot of decoration and 'embroidery' and had a habit of ending each tune with what in organ terms is called a 'grand swell'; a sort of triumphant flourish at the end of a piece.

Kate Seal learnt most of her tunes from an old man in Hawker called John Doman. She said that if you did not play one of his tunes correctly, he would take the accordion from you and play the tune himself! She played a lively set of polka tunes, and when I asked the names of them, she replied, "I've got no names for nothing!" 

Ma played a polka and said that the name of it was "The Berlin" or "The Cruet". We later found that "The Cruet" was "The Crued" which Peter Ellis translated as "The Kreutzer". In 1915, when the anti-German sentiment was at its height, this polka was renamed the "The Anzac", what else?

Included in the 36 tunes Ma played for Martin and me, were tunes for a complete set of "The Alberts Quadrille". She told us it had two set tunes and three waltzes. These were:

1st Figure - a 6/8 tune

2nd Figure - a 4/4 tune followed by the Irish Washerwoman

3rd Figure - a waltz which sounded like ‘Why Did My Master Sell Me’.

4th Figure - The Spanish Waltz and another unknown waltz

5th Figure - for the ladies chain, "Two Little Girls in Blue" and "Daisy"

My next visit was in company with Jamie Carlin on 26 August 1989 when we scored 37 tunes. And the third visit, when we wrung a recording session out of Ma by dogged persistence, was Peter Ellis and I on 19 September 1991, when we managed to squeeze 58 items from the dear old lady. At the age of 92, understandably Ma did not have the stamina of her early days, but she was still a remarkable performer with a style all of her own and is an extremely hard act to follow.

Perhaps one of her most remarkable tunes is that for the hitherto uncollected dance, "The Waltz Mazurka". It is a beautiful and strangely haunting air and a very unusual dance. The steps were worked out by Peter Ellis, in collaboration with Ma and Connie Whitehall. This is the tune by which I will always remember the remarkable Ma Seal.

John Meredith (March 1994)