Songs of Travelling People [Import]

Peter Kennedy (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (December 12, 1995)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Saydisc
• ASIN: B00000453M
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #545,488 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Won't You Buy My Sweet Blooming Lavender?

2. Come A' Ye Tramps An' Hawkers

3. The Blarney Stone

4. The Berryfields of Blair

5. The Muckin' O' Geordies Byre

6. The Choring Song

7. The Beggar Wench

8. A Blacksmith Courted Me

9. Barnyard O' Delgaty/Gin I Were Where the Gadie Rins

10. On the Bonny Banks O' the Roses

11. The Bard of Armagh

12. a) Dandling Song, B) Bonny Lassie-O, C) Cuckoo's Nest

13. I Am a Romany

14. Devonshire Time and 2 Gipsy Hornpipes

15. Higher Germanie

16. The Little Beggarman

17. Kathleen

18. The Lady O' the Dainty Doon-By

19. The Tenpenny Bit/She Moves Through the Fair (Our Wedding Day)

20. The Poor Smuggler's Boy

See all 26 tracks on this disc

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars As if in amber, sounds suspended from the vanished past, September 12, 2006

By 

John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Songs of Travelling People (Audio CD)

I thought this better have a more coherent review than that done by the first person to post one here. Saydisc reissues on CD these songs recorded by Peter Kennedy 1951-68, of those largely "wagon-schooled," i.e., mainly illiterate but for that all the more "cultured and disciplined, with highly developed skills of instinct, adaptability and memory." Therefore, as Kennedy explains in the liner notes, ancient ballads and otherwise lost country songs have been preserved up to the time that they could be put on tape by collectors, and probably given "progress" and assimilation into the wider culture that swamps or swirls pools of outlying practices and traditions, just in time as well.

I had heard of the Irish fiddler Johnny Doran and the singer Margaret Barry, but the others were new to me when I heard them. Outstanding of all on this disc is Pheobe Smith, "queen among the English gipsy singers of South East England" from the Scamp family who lived among the hop-pickers who predated the machines in Kent as these people would travel about as migrant workers for the harvests. Kennedy had discovered her at Melton near his parents' home in Woodbridge, Suffolk, and the songs from 1954 "I am a Romanie" and "Higher Germanie" show her assertive, emotive, and honest delivery of these ballads. Her songs (most of all, the latter two placed dead center as tracks 13 and 15) prove the highlight for me of this well-sequenced disc. From 1958 a song made at least to me familiar by Steeleye Span, who recorded two versions of it for their first two lineups on their first two LPs, "A Blacksmith Courted Me," appears on track 8 in a powerful version. For those who have heard this tune wrapped in electric or acoustic instruments, it's a treat to have it presented raw and a capella.

The rest of the entries vary a bit of "mouth music," some simple melodies on accordion, fiddle, guitar, harmonica, and, for Barry, banjo. These tend to be sparse sounding, brief, and very much of the live moment they were played, no studio gloss. What is not explained here is why songs tend to be vocal or instrumental but without as much blending of the two as is usual for those hearing traditional or folk music as is generally the case in the 20c. Does this dichotomy symbolize an intended separation of voice from playing more prominent than in most British folk music? Also, the notes do not elaborate on a notable feature: often the instrumental and the vocal, while they may appear as the same track, follow one another but again rarely blend together, as if musicians put all of their effort into the voice and the playing each on its own without the distraction of simultaneously other form of accompaniment. I'm no musicologist, but this feature did serve to make more prominent a distinguishing element on this CD.

The other songs all have their moments, and there's probably not a weak track out of the 26. While the absence of Welsh travellers or Roma (alongside the English, Irish, and Scots ones here) is to be regretted, what is gathered here by Kennedy is quite a feat of historical reclamation. It's 76 generous minutes of a sonic glimpse into a realm that with plastics--in more ways than one--has changed the lives of those who continue on the roads today beyond recognition of those who, a couple generations ago, played and sang as Kennedy rolled the spools. It makes for a rather intense immersion; these are "field recordings" that serve as an aural documentary and not to provide (as may have been their original milieu of course) light entertainment. I wish the notes had placed them in context: I wondered which might have been sung for non-travellers, say at fairs or on the streets for money. The opening track by the last of the London sellers, a lavender merchant, Janet Penfold of Battersea, provides one such example, but surely others of the 25 other songs may have also been targeted for the wider public?

On the other hand, many songs here are insular, for "in-house consumption" only, as it were. Towards the end of the record, more verses employing "cant"-- the argot used to disguise conversations from meddlesome outsiders-- appear, and these rarely have been archived on tapes for the general public rather than scholars to hear. As one who has in my family tree Irish travellers, this album intrigues me and also offers an epitaph for a sub-culture that has now faded into other forms, still identifiably non-settled, but with no longer horse caravans parked beside the open roads of Ireland and Britain as peddlers and tinsmiths plied their trades. Technology may have made more obsolete the ways by which tinkers, gipsies, and assorted travellers made their living for so long, but it also gives us a chance to hear preserved the last echoes of this often romanticized, often persecuted, and generally little understood manner of life lived on the fringes of "settled folks" like ourselves.

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic folk album, May 2, 2011

By 

Jon Corelis - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Songs of Travelling People (Audio CD)

Songs of the Travelling People is one of the very greatest of folk song anthologies, with an interest and importance beyond what its title may indicate. It includes authentic field recording versions of several songs that became famous in folk revival covers, most notably Belle Stewart's version of She Moves Through the Fair. Margaret Barry's banjo-accompanied Irish ballads are to "stage-Oirish" folk-revival Irish music as a drop-of-the-creature is to weak tea. The Scottish presence in this anthology is particularly strong, and rightly so; in particular, the incredible Davy Stewart's stunning performances are the sort of songs you remember the rest of your life. But song after song will have you thinking, "Yes, this is the real thing." I can't think of another CD with a higher percentage of cuts guaranteed to raise goose bumps. If you're interested in folk music, or in good music, you want this one.

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Magnificient Collection, But Lacking., February 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Songs of Travelling People (Audio CD)

This collection of the tu'than's most famed music was nothing short of remarkable. Covering everything from illianer shanties to the ogier tree songs, this album was truly breathtaking. It's about time they published an album, Kudos to you, tinkers, kudos.

My one complaint was that it was missing thier greatest song: Only in dreams (which I have heard sung as I lay beneath the deep, rich branches of avendesora) simply wasn't there. Perhaps it had not yet been found as of the publishing of the album.

Four stars