Adrian Barker & Ben Stephenson -
'Undertones'

CD from Australia - VIC

$A30.00 (plus packing & postage)
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IRISH MUSIC FROM AUSTRALIA

Something like the initial idea for this album came up in the bar of a backpackers hostel in York. England. in 2002. At the time we were both living in Ireland. Ben in Galway and Ado in Ennis- and we were reflecting on the always slightly strange situation of being Australians who. with no immediate family connections to Ireland. had nonetheless been drawn to Irish traditional music. In Ireland it was, unsurprisingly. sometimes a bit of an oddity for the locals to find an Aussie playing tunes. For our part. we were each struck by the recognition. which had somehow never been so clear before. That our understanding of the music we love to play is indelibly marked by having done most of our hard graft of learning not in Ireland but in Australia. Talking about all this over a few pints. we started to wonder a bit more about the roots of Irish music in Australia beyond our own relatively recent experience.


All that serious talk and reflection was buried under a pile of tunes for another couple of years, before we learned of the National Folk Fellowship. an annual award jointly sponsored by the National Library of Australia and the National Folk Festival. Providing a four-week residency in the Oral History arid Folklore Collection of the NLA. The Fellowship grants an insiders access to the extensive body of Australian field recordings held in the collection. Realising what an ideal opportunity the fellowship presented. we made what proved to be a successful application for 2005 06. and soon found ourselves in the depths of the NLA with a CD player. tape deck, and a pile of recordings which somehow seemed to keep growing despite our best efforts to control it!

The thousands of hours of reel-to-reel tapes. cassettes and DATs in the NLA’s Folklore Collection owe their existence to a relatively small number of dedicated collectors, beginning with the pioneering work of the likes of John Meredith in the 1950s. Merro, and those who have followed him, set out to find and document traditional music in Australia it’s many guises. as well as record something of the lives of the men and women who played and sang it. It’s interesting that though Australia is. and has long been, a highly urbanised society, much of the hunting for an authentic Australian music has taken place in the bush. As a consequence, the Folklore collection at the NLA is also to a fair extent shaped by that perspective, constituting a unique aural document of the cultural life of rural Australia reaching back into the 1800s.

An important element of our project was to attempt to link today's music with that of the older Australian players, and in doing so to distill some of the Irish ingredients in what is often referred to as Australian 'bush’ music. One thing that is immediately clear when listening to the range of recorded material in the collection is the intermingling of tunes and styles of playing from a range of distinctive traditions, transplanted into Australia in the years since European arrival - most clearly to our ears the music of the English, Irish, Scots and Germans. Among recordings of the older Aussie players. we found that most had at least a smattering of Irish tunes among a repertoire that could include anything from 'Rule Brittania’ to ‘Yankee Doodle’. So we certainly didn't discover. and nor did we expect to. that traditional music in Australia is all actually Irish music in disguise. What we did discover, however and what we really had hoped to find, were some great tunes and distinctive variations of tunes many of which we hadn't heard before.

In selecting the players whose tunes are featured on this album, we have attempted to build a repertoire which gives a taste of the diverse patterns in the playing and transmission of Irish traditional music in this country, something of a local history of Irish music in Australia as viewed through the field recordings held in the NLA collection - from the tunes of the older Australian born players. many of whom had had music passed through their families (Sally Sloane, Joe Cashmere. Joe Yates, Frank Collins. Simon McDonald and Mick McGarry). to music brought here since the 1950s by players emigrating from Ireland (Billy Moran, Jack Canny and Tim Whelan), to the tunes of the younger local musicians (Declan Affley, Jacko Kevans. Phil Butterss and Jane Copeland) who learned their tunes in an age not only of easier access to commercial recordings. but also the once unimaginable possibility of chasing the tunes back to Ireland itself.

One thing we found particularly interesting in listening to the older players in the collection was the emphasis on the tunes as dance music. With tunes as we know them these days tending to have a much more rarefied life of their own, it was quickly apparent to us that for the older players the tunes were intimately tied with their function as music for dancing. Repertoires were consequently shaped to a large extent by the demands of the dancers, who evidently insisted on great variety! The old dance players had to have a wide array tunes from jigs and reels to mazurkas, varsoviennas and schottisches. This impetus is still apparent in the tunes and styles of playing which are today thought of as constituting Australian traditional music, with close linkages maintained between music and dance.

We are, of course, far from the first musicians to take an interest in these recordings and learn some of the tunes, but with our strong backgrounds in Irish traditional music we hope to have brought something distinctive to the tunes we play here. Stylistically our aim in this recording was to strike a balance between our respective styles of playing and the different approaches of the players on the original recordings. We couldn't simply imitate what we heard, but at the same time we didn't want to render the tunes unrecognisable from the original sources. With all that in mind, we've stuck closely to the particular versions of the original players, often taking a lead from them on ornamentation and phrasing. In the end hopefully we've achieved a meeting somewhere between our music and theirs.

This recording is, in essence, a result of the meandering train of thought launched that night in York, but it most likely would never have proceeded beyond the spark of an idea were it not for the opportunity provided by the National Folk Fellowship, so our warmest thanks go to the National Library of Australia and the National Folk Festival, and all the staff in both Oral History & Folklore and Digital & Audio Preservation at the NLA. What we've achieved, hopefully, is a taste of Irish traditional music as it has found its way to Australia over the years. We chose the name 'Undertones’. apart from the obvious geographic reference, because traditional music in Australia is a living culture that, while for the most part slipping under the radar as far as mainstream consciousness goes, is out there thriving in kitchens and pubs, at festivals and gigs across the country, much of it crying out to be collected and preserved.

Adrian Barker and Ben Stephenson, March 2006.

Adrian Barker: Fiddle Ben Stephenson: Flute

1. Rolling In the Ryegrass / Julie Delaney's / the Beauties of Limerick
JACK CANNY"S reels
2. Frank Collins
FRANK COLLINS' jigs
3. the Morning Star / the Sporting Paddy / the Blackberry Blossom
SALLY SLOANE'S reels
4. the Skillet Pot / Joes Yates' Last
JOE YATES' hornpipes
5. Sliabh Na mBan
DECLAN AFFEY'S air
6. Kitty Lie Over / Mick McGarry's #2
MICK McGARRY'S jigs
7. the No 9 /Paddy Hearney's Keoghey Keogh
TIM WHELAN'S polkas
8. the Pretty Maid Milking Her Cow
BILLY MORAN'S waltz
9. Crowley's 1 & 2
BILLY MORAN'S reels
10. the Trip To The Cottage / the Spirits Of Whiskey / What Would You Do If The Billy Boiled Over?
JOE CAASMERE'S jigs
11. Mulhaire's #4 / Mary Shannon's
PHIL BUTTERSS' & JANE COPELAND'S reels
12. the Rakes Of Kildare / the Shoemaker's Fancy / the Connaughtman's Rambles
SIMON McDONALD'S jigs
13. the Cuckoo's Nest
JACKO KEVAN'S hornpipe

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