[... cont.]

I also find it helpful to identify the song with its source if it is a song I have collected. I sing many of the songs I taped from Cyril Duncan, Joe Watson, and Susan Colley etc and can't help thinking of their original performance when I commence singing. This is a sort of channelling however it would be more appropriate to describe it as an experience. These singers certainly had characteristics of performance that cannot be dismissed. Cyril Duncan, when singing 'My Name Is Edward Kelly', became emotionally charged and, for emphasis, spoke two of the lines in two of the verses and, at the end of the song, slipped into a two-verse ditty about the police and the Kelly gang. Cyril had not sung the anti-police ditty for over twenty years and did so because of his emotional attachment with delivering the song at the time of recording. This was, understandably, a real lesson for me, and something that has stayed with me for the past 35 years or so, especially when I sing the ballad. Now, I don't recite those spoken lines but I sometimes do slip into the 'Farewell Dan and Edward Kelly' ditty providing an ongoing strong bind with the song and Cyril's performance of it. Joe Watson was a major influence on me since he sang so many songs that he had learnt when travelling as a 'picture show man' around the 1900-1920 period. Joe never considered himself a singer. A 'singer' for Joe was someone who could powerfully belt out 'Jerusalem' or 'Bless This House', although he never sang these songs himself. His repertoire, and it was large, was learnt from his 'picture show' partner, Paddy Doolin, who sang the songs to accompany the magic lantern slides. Joe had learnt them by osmosis and they were a natural part of his time in the bush. This isn't to say he didn't enjoy them, he treasured them as stories and to hear him sing 'A Bushman's Song' (aka Travelling Down The Castlereagh' or 'Tommy Corrigan' was a treat. He had a glint in his eye when he sang and that is the trigger I think about whenever I sing one of his songs.

It is interesting how a repertoire evolves. I was certainly fortunate in having a close relationship with ABC radio for so many decades in as much as I was in a position to have a reason for learning, or at least styling, so many songs that one simply would not normally take on board. Some of my program subjects like 'Animal Songs' and 'Australian Sporting Songs' provided song-learning opportunities and, of course, there were the extended series like the 16 programs 'The Australian Legend' (1970s) which demanded a mass of material.

The preparation of books also provides an opportunity to add new songs to one's repertoire. I have two new publications being published by ABC Books this year: 'Old Bush Songs' (the centenary edition co-edited with Graham Seal) and 'Tucker Track' (the curious history and folklore of food). 'Old Bush Songs' has about 80 songs and I can sing just about all of them however not all from memory. 'Tucker Track', like my previous book related to this subject, 'How Mabel Laid The Table' (State Library of NSW Press), has several songs, most of which I sing. Singing songs in a new book has proven to be a great promotional tool and I also structure performances around the book. For example, this year I am presenting a six-week course on A.B.Paterson's work on Old Bush Songs for the School of Continuing Education (Sydney University) and this will require the performance of a wide range of songs.

My current program to survey the folklore associated with the city of Sydney has also provided an incentive to learn particular songs. I am working under grants from the City of Sydney and the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts. Both have 'outcome requirements' that further encourage me to take on new songs. The City grant specifies that I provide three public performances of the material and the Music Board is particularly interested in the music component of the survey. In undertaking this work I have become aware of a large number of songs that could loosely be described as comic song, music hall and early popular song. I am particularly interested in the large number of songs that were influenced by visiting American minstrel troupes like Christy's – there are some interesting local parodies. I already know several 'city songs' about Sydney like 'Take Me Up The Harbour' and will be learning more. Admittedly with so many new songs in my collection this is becoming a daunting task.

Special events also provide an opportunity to learn new material. This year is the 150th anniversary of rail in New South Wales and I have been involved in assembling a group to perform rail-related material. The Rattling Navvies sing songs from 'Navvy on the Line' plus other train songs and I link the programs together with railway folklore, especially humour and curious history. I am delighted to acknowledge the support of the Rail, Tram & Bus Union (NSW) in this program.

There are some songs I would dearly love to learn but as always, there are time restraints. In particular I would like to learn more of the early broadside ballads in the collections published by Hugh Anderson and Ron Edwards. I am steadily chipping away but they are hard work. One major obstacle is the fact I no longer do ABC series. This is simply because the ABC has no space for such programs – more a comment on their continuing shift to so called 'popular music'. They find space for overseas productions like 'The History of Popular Music' but not for Australian music. Without such a platform there is no real incentive to learn these wonderful ballads. If they are to be learnt they should be recorded for posterity. They are usually lengthy beasts and that is another consideration for a performer. I have recently learnt 'I've Been To Australia-o' and now I will have to find somewhere to sing it!

Ballads are the big guns of traditional music. I am referring to the older ballads as collected and edited by (notably) Francis Child and Cecil Sharp. I learnt several ballads when I first started singing and whilst most have slipped from mind I still sing 'Robin Hood and the Bishop of Hereford', 'Long Lamkin', 'Six Dukes Went a Fishing' and some others. This will probably sound crazy but I rarely sing them in public. I certainly sing them whenever I am on a car trip and enjoy them very much. I stopped singing these ballads somewhere around 1970, when I stopped singing most British songs in my repertoire. It's odd but I made the decision to concentrate my energy on Australian songs to the exclusion of all others. Maybe I was trying to make a point. Maybe Meredith and some of the other BMC zealots had verbally mauled me for my support of Bert Lloyd? I certainly knew a lot of his songs at the time. Anyway, a few evenings with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger gave me a new perception regarding the place of the great ballads in the Australian tradition. They believed that singers had a responsibility to propagate the ballads – stating adamantly that the ballads are the great works of people's literature. They belong to all English-speaking communities. The fact that so few of these ballads survived in the Australian tradition was more of a reason to reintroduce them. I rather like this theory and, had I more opportunities to sing them, I would enthusiastically do so.

I have been playing the English concertina for a few years but have only recently started to perform with this fascinating instrument. I am not a great musician but I am getting better and can belt out a decent accompaniment for a good slab of my songs. I love this instrument and it has a noble history in Australia. I have found references to it dating back to the 1850s (earliest being in Gulgong) and it seems to suit the bush songs. I intend to write a lengthy article on its history in Australia and would be interested in hearing from any reader with thoughts on the instrument's role here. In playing the instrument it has made me more aware of the family of tunes surrounding the Australian tradition, particularly the so-called bush music tradition.

When I started singing all those years ago I would regularly hear the same question asked: "But aren't they all Irish tunes?" The answer is a very short, 'No!" If anything they are a solid mix of British and Celtic but then so are the roots of our language. I then explain how the transmission of songs and tunes works, and how they were 'adopted and adapted' to suit our more 'rough and tumble' physical and social environment. My point here is that we should acknowledge our musical heritage but not fall into the trap of performing with too much of a tip to either side. Far too many 'bush bands' sing 'Irish style' and, for that matter, too bloody fast!

I think I have just diverted so it's back to the matter of tune families. In playing the concertina I have become more aware of the shared tunes used for songs. Somehow this shared use is not so obvious for a singer. For example the tune 'Bow Wow Wow' is common to over 20 bush songs including 'Jog Along Till Shearing'. 'Carrier's Song' and 'Squatting In Queensland' however, when I sing them, the song takes its own form regardless of the tune and, I suggest, the tune is so secondary to the story that it is not that recognisable. The same applies to another frequently used tune, 'The Little Low Log Cabin in the Lane', where it is used for 'Freehold on the Plain' and 'Another Fall of Rain'.

I do sing what are loosely described as 'contemporary' songs. These are most probably better described as contemporary songs written in a folk style. I know several Harry Robertson songs like 'Wee Pot Stove' and 'Homeless Man' and, of course, I know many of the songs I included in 'The Balls of Bob Menzies' (Angus & Robertson) and its later revision 'Ratbags & Rabblerousers' (Currency Press). The same applies to wartime songs featured in my book, 'Diggers' Songs' (Australian Military History Press). When I had The Larrikins we regularly introduced new political satires, especially from the pens of Clem Parkinson, Lyell Sayer and John Dengate, however most of these had a 'use by date' and have passed from my repertoire (although not forgotten). There are some exceptions and I still drag out 'F111', 'Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken' and 'Across The Western Suburbs I Must Wander'. I was fortunate the ABC released two retrospectives of my songs in 2004 including a number of these contemporary political songs.

Readers might be interested in how I approach learning a new work. It is hard work and the older I get, I'm just about to clock up 60 years, the more difficult it becomes. Sometimes it seems to come fairly natural and at other times it is torturously slow, sometimes taking weeks before the song is entrenched in my memory bank. I also find I have to refresh my old repertoire before I sing at a concert. I suspect the hundreds of songs and ditties are swirling around in my head screaming: "Why doesn't this bloke give up!" I usually carry a written version of a song around with me for a few weeks and sing it whenever possible, especially in the car or when I am at the gym. I do the same when I learn poetry and, last year, when I decided to tackle Frank Macnamara's somewhat epic and brilliant 'A Convict's Tour of Hell' I found myself waking up at around 4am to run the verses over and over in my head.

There is also the matter of song styling. Most singers of traditional song tend to fashion their songs either consciously or unconsciously. I know I am continually changing the way I sing songs including changes in the words. I can't help it and it is an integral part of the way I learn and perform such songs. I have also been known to forget songs and make them up as I go along! Sometimes the words need to be changed to make more sense to twenty-first century audiences. Sometimes I sing a song like 'Widgegowera Joe' and realise that so many of the references have disappeared from every day use and the younger the audience the less sense such songs make. I find this is happening more and more as I get older and if it keeps going along that road I envisage audiences saying: "Is he interesting or just senile?"

© Warren Fahey

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