11

July
2003

2:21 PM

Canadian Folk Songs

Okay, it's time for me to plug a site, this one belonging to two friends of mine, devoted to Canadian folk songs, folk singing, and their years of studying and promoting both.

They've been singing across Canada for over two decades, possibly three by now but I don't count so good, and have already written about it more eloquently and sensibly than I could, so I'll let their words stand for themselves. Recently they've re-released a two-volume album of Canadian folk songs on CD, Come To Me In Canada, and The Young Man from Canada. Nola did the design, that's what she does for a living, and they look great.

But what I expect, in my less partisan moments, is more important, they sound great. These are songs that have been collected through word of mouth, from people who learned them from their parents or others in their own communities, and were willing to sing them for people like Jon and Rika and Phil and others, sometimes in person and sometimes over the phone. They're some of them funny, some poking fun at newcomers with pretensions (Young British Rancher), and others at home-grown Canadians themselves (I'm a Young Man from Canada). Then there are the others that describe working life in times gone by, sometimes matter of factly, sometimes bitterly, and sometimes with joy and good cheer.

Many of the songs on the second volume, Young Man From Canada, were composed by working people, about their work, using tunes made popular in music halls. It's a continuation of a traditional way of making songs, reusing lyrics or well-known tunes to create something new. The most interesting of these to my mind is Taku Miners, where the tune for the verse is taken from one popular song, and that for the chorus from another, very different, song entirely. This is not as easy to sing as one might think, but the result is unexpectedly charming.

From The Greenhorn Song (by Dick Pollard, a logger from Argenta, BC), a song about the pitfalls of being an, um, inexperienced logger:

• One day, I thought I'd have some fun,
• and see how hooking chokers was done.
• since Duncan logging had begun,
• I tackled the boss that night.
• He says, "My chokerman's bit the dust,
• his head is bashed in and his legs are bust.
• And though with luck he'll live, I trust,
• of chokers he hates the sight."

• We hit the river that very next week.
• That Duncan country looked awfully bleak.
• Of that I will not even speak,
• it's just a great big bog.
• The mosquitoes are huge,
• so are the fleas,
• we only had rotten
• cedar for trees.
• And every step, it's mud to the knees,
• and that's where I learned how to log.

• They hauled me from bed at about midnight.
• Breakfast was only a sniff and a bite.
• And then began a terrible fight,
• a knockdown and drag-out deal.
• I picked up a choker,
• t'was sixteen feet long,
• it tangled my legs and it gave me a bonk.
• The boss only said, "You're doing it wrong,
• but someday you'll get the feel."

• I sure got the feel, and soon enough, too.
• My gloves were torn off, my fingers chewed through.
• My shins were all bruises, and all that I knew
• was how to buckle my belt.
• The logs were a mystery,
• how they could stay.
• Well, I worked on the same one for most of the day.
• When the boss came along, not one word could he say,
• as he tore off his hat in a rage.

• I've worked in the cities, I've worked in the mines,
• I've sat in jail a couple of times.
• If again I hook chokers, I've made up my mind,
• to put one right around my head.
• From setting chokers, you get no relief.
• You only have bruises and all kinds of grief.
• So here is my thesis, and you'll find it brief,
• I think I would rather be dead.

There's ordering info on the site, if anyone is sufficiently intrigued to want to hear it for themselves.

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