Friday, August 20, 2010

List of Dorian tunes for dulcimer and a video clip of Sarah McQuaid - trad Irish, Appalachian singer-songwriter - singing "Chickens They Are Crowing"

The list is in an EverythingDulcimer.com forum ... traditional songs include:
Clinch Mountain Backstep
What Do We Do With A Drunken Sailor
Star of Munster
Star of County Down
Shady Grove
Cluck Old Hen
In the Pines
Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair
Dear Companion
Little Sadie
Pretty Polly...
Over the River, Charlie
Wedding Dress a.k.a. Little Doney Gal
Bachelor's Hall
Nottamun Town
Over the River Charlie
Drowsey Maggie
Cindy, Cindy
Cripple Creek
Sovay
Swallowtail Jig
Hughie The Graeme
My Little Welsh Home
The Mist Covered Mountains of Home
Motherless Child
All The Pretty Little Horses
All Through the Night
Here's a clip of "Chickens They Are Crowing" - collected by Alan Lomax, Peggy Seeger - by English/Irish/Chicago artist Sarah McQuaid [I think Ralph Lee Smith has recorded this, too].

Sarah McQuaid - The Chickens They Are Crowing - Dunkeld, Oct 2008 from Sarah McQuaid on Vimeo.



McQuaid's notes and audio track on her website at http://sarahmcquaid.bandcamp.com/track/the-chickens-they-are-crowing ... on her 2008 album "I Won’t Go Home ’Til Morning" In the liner notes she writes:
My mother never performed professionally, but she had a lovely natural style of singing and playing guitar. She grew up in Chicago, and as a teenager she spent her summers volunteering at Quaker work camps run by the American Friends Service Committee in Kentucky and other parts of Appalachia. I believe that’s where she first became acquainted with the music of Jean Ritchie, Peggy Seeger and other folk singers and song collectors.

My mother died in January of 2004, and it’s only since then that I’ve developed the urge to revisit the songs she and I used to sing together when I was a child. When I discovered traditional Irish music at the age of 18, it had such a powerful impact on me that for many years I had no interest in singing or playing anything else. My first album, When Two Lovers Meet, consisted entirely of traditional Irish material, bar one song that I wrote myself.

I still love Irish music, but in recent years I’ve been turning more and more to the Southern Appalachian songs and tunes that I grew up with. I can’t help feeling that this is part of a cathartic process that has to do with my mother’s death, the births of my son the year before she died and my daughter the year after, and the fact that I’m now living, with my husband and children, in what was once my mother’s house.

1 comment:

Sarah McQuaid said...

Thanks for posting this, Pete!