This weekend, Apollo’s Fire is presenting a series of concerts called “Far Beyond the Sea” featuring folk ballads from beyond the sea. Joining Apollo’s Fire are three members of The Early Folk Band, an ensemble based in Europe. It’s my pleasure to welcome to the studio Gesine Bänfer, Steve Player, and Ian Harrison. Welcome.
John Mills: How did you get connected with Apollo’s Fire?
Steve: I’ve worked with Jeannette and AF for a number of years. I gave Jeannette some years ago The Early Folk Band recording of “Northlands.” She immediately fell in love with it. She says, “I’ve been thinking about it since then.” This is three or four years ago, and of course Apollo’s Fire have their own folk-inspired programs as well, so eventually there was a chance to sort of mingle the two things together and she asked whether we’d like to come across.
What sort of program can we expect this weekend?
Gesine: We thought we’d do something from “far beyond the sea,” so our theme is mainly early music, of course. From the title, we thought about ballads, which are based around the sea – no sea shanties, but sort of drama which have to do with the sea. We didn’t want to do a wild mixture, so in the first half of the program, will be Robin Hood ballads which is one of the main themes on the British Isles. The second half there will be Arthurian ballads around King Arthur and his round table.
I see that two of you are playing bagpipes. How do bagpipes fit into this folk music tradition from the English Isles?
Ian: When we say bagpipes we have to realize there are lots and lots of different types of bagpipes. One of our problems is when I say “I play the bagpipe,” people think of a Scotsman or a kilt, people playing the great “Highland” bagpipes – the one we see in tattoos, and Edinburgh Festival, and all those sorts of highland gatherings. The ones we brought this time are old Northumbrian bagpipes – that’s where I grew up, in the Northeast of England; it’s the last part of England to have its own, particular type of bagpipe. It’s distinct from the Scottish version, and these are much, much quieter than the highland pipes – more like chamber bagpipes. You can actually play them together with other instruments apart from other bagpipes and drums! You can play them with guitar, and with harp and dulcimer. You can play them with singing, with flutes and recorders and integrate them into the general sound of a folk ensemble.
This question is for you Steve, you’re listed as a dancer in this program, and with a storytelling lore of Arthur and Robin Hood, how does dance fit into those stories?
SP: Well, how does dance fit into any story, really? I was never interested in dance as a child, but I’ve become very interested in dance and traditions of dance and the universality of dance. And what do you call dance? What actually makes a dance? Is it a lot of versatile steps or is it just moving to the music? Or is it one person? Two people? How do you put it together, where does it all come from? There are medieval dances, if you want to go back to the medieval ballads you can see pictures of knights dancing with their ladies. So there’s no reason to think that even though King Arthur came before that they weren’t dancing. It’s one of the first things people do – if they can walk, they can dance. If they can talk, they can sing. Those things are very closely related. And you can sing and you can dance at the same time, which is not too complicated. It might be challenging, but you can do it.
In this program, we have some sword-fighting dances (or stick-fighting dances) because there’s a big tradition in the UK called the “Morris dance.” Morris dance comes from moreska, the “Moorish lands,” so it has a kind of exotic appeal to it as well. They dance these stick dances which are sort of military-type dances and that became the Morris dance. Myself and Ian will be hitting nineteen bells, trying to hit each other with sticks in a kind of Morris dance. Dancing for me is an expression of the music and it can be used in storytelling as well. Not like storytelling in ballet, but used as an aspect of a character maybe.
IH: Of course, “ballad” has the word “ball” or ballare in it – dancing.
Fans of early music here in the United States know that some of the folk music tradition from the English Isles made its way over in the great migration and became what we know as Appalachian Music. How much of that could we see in your program?
IH: This is one of the things we haven’t really been able to go right into this but we’d like to develop if this connection goes on. Because what we have surviving are basically the words of these ballads. These have been written down throughout the centuries and we’re concentrating on the sources from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – the time we’d call the Baroque or the Classical period. It really is the time of early music. The situation with the tunes is rather different. Some tunes have been written down and survived in other sources, but for a lot of the tunes, we’ve had to go the folk survivals in order to put these words to tunes. Some of the tunes were written ourselves – Gesine’s written some tunes for the ballads where none exist – and for the other ones we’ve taken the tunes that have been collected from folk singers. There was this real upsurge of collecting around 1900. This collection of songs started in England and Scotland and very soon, the collectors realized the tunes had been lost from the British Isles and they discovered they were still being sung in the Appalachians and other parts of North America. Also Central America, down to Jamaica and Barbados some of these tunes have been collected.
SP: A lot of these ballad sheets where some of the texts come from, it will say at the top “Sung to the tune of ‘the New Exchange’” or “Sung to ‘the New Tune,’” etc. A lot of those old tunes, far from being lost, have only been lost in terms of what they’ve been called. […] In some cases, the tune is where you feel it not really what it was. Very often you have to change the words anyway to fit the tune or change the tune to fit the meter. It’s a real adaptation. Especially with Amanda [Powell] with somewhat a different approach, you know. It’s not so far from an old world way of doing things. And of course that’s the thing, “Far Beyond the Sea” is that what joins us is the sea. The Atlantic Ocean joins all these countries together. Even if these tunes landed in West Virginia, they probably came from Guildford and Surrey or from somewhere else, or vice versa.
GB: The very first tune in the program comes from Ohio, actually. This is a medieval song “I have a young sister far beyond the sea,” that gave the program its title. It’s from a manuscript in East Anglia from around 1430 and it says “I have a Yong Suster.” There are no melodies in this manuscript of seventy-seven songs, mainly Christmas Carols, but some folk ballads, and five of them are in English and Latin.
What’s your favorite thing about these legends of Arthur and Robin Hood?
SP: The humor, and the bawdiness, and the reality. With Robin Hood, it’s very much about one man against the rest of the world. In modern Britain, there is this sort of “Britain against the rest of the world” and all kinds of discussion and a lot of these ballads have the same kind of fighting up against the evil so-and-so, the evil Nottingham Sheriff, which could be Brussels translated. [laughter] You can find a lot of personal meaning in these ballads. These are age-old stories of good over evil, which we’re still living out today and still not too far from everyone’s experience or understandings.
GB: When I was a child, I was given a book by my grandma with Walt Disney stories and paintings. There was the story of King Arthur and the sword Excalibur in it and of course Robin Hood. And when I was a child, I was completely fascinated, especially with Robin Hood. My father was a forester and for most people, the forest is something that is dangerous and the city is something safe, but for Robin Hood it was the other way around. When I was a teenager, we had this Saturday afternoon series of Robin Hood and I loved him. Then when we were interested in early music, when I realized that all of these Robin Hood ballads are exactly the same story, they were almost preserved, I saw they hadn’t changed. I know these stories from my childhood and when I saw these medieval, renaissance, and baroque ballads, I was completely fascinated because I have the feeling I know these stories already.
IH: I’m just amazed that no one before us (as far as I know) has had the idea to do this work of piecing together the story of Robin Hood or King Arthur from these original sources, putting tunes to them, and making them into a program. It’s very minimalistic. Hollywood has done a lot for Robin Hood and King Arthur and every year there’s a new film on these themes with enormous, expensive budgets, big stars, a cast of extras, sets, and a lot of…work. Our versions are absolutely minimal with just a few people on the stage and these old songs, but they still keep the same drama and adventure.
SP: One should remember, ballad singing is about telling the story or about telling some news. Even in Liverpool in the twentieth century, they were singing ballads about the wreck of the Titanic – to a ballad tune on street corners because not everyone could read. It was a way of sending out a message or a story – propaganda, maybe, but also to be told a story, you can be captivated at any age. It’s quite important for me that we go back and place the importance on telling the story, rather than on the notes that are written down.
We’ve been spending time with Gesine Bänfer, Steve Player, and Ian Harrison. They are members of The Early Folk Band and are joining Apollo’s Fire for a series of concerts called “Far Beyond the Sea” June 6-10. More information is at apollosfire.org
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]