The Clancy Brothers, my childhood, and Australia

[rm]

Last night Mirbabai gave me a mix CD she made for me. Aside from being obsessed with what is presumeably some random Norwegian song, and it containing a long-time favourite Pogues song of mine, it also has a song from The Clancy Brothers on it.

Now, that name is probably going to be met with a blank stare by everyone younger than me, and a bit of a groan from most everyone older than me as I think to most Gen-x'ers The Clancy Brothers are embedded somewhere in the back of their minds as the Lawrence Welk of Irish music.

But the fact is, I grew up on things like The Clancy Brothers to such an extent, that when I was eight, my father had to clarify for me that I was not, in fact, Irish, and I was, in fact, disappointed for a long time afterwards.

We went to a lot of Clany Brothers shows, and I remember a free one outside at Lincoln Center particularly well. I was probably about 7, and it was the first time I realized my mother probably hated this music, because I was having such a good time, and she kept telling me how like my father I was, and while her tone was never unkind, it seemed clear this wasn't a very good thing for a very small girl.

The song on mix CD Mirabai made is "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda," which, before you are inclined to get confused, is _not_ Waltzing Matilda but a song about World War I. I've, of course, heard it a bazillion times, as it lives on vinyl somewhere in my parents' house, but to say the least, it's been a long time; certainly, I'd not heard it since I could understand the content, and certainly I never realized then that Circular Quay was a place and one I would have been and could picture.

One of the things that I suspect is peculiar about Sydney to most Americans, and as far as I can gather Australia in general, is its relationship with WWI. We never really think or talk about it, but there it is so ever-present. There are memorials for it everywhere, and the Anzac biscuits I so love originated out of that conflict. The memorials, I should also note, are small and personal, but have a ubiquity that I found emotionally bludgeoning and on par with, oddly, the missing posters that are now a hallmark of all tradgedy thanks to ink jet printers.

The memorials are in front of high schools and community centers, listing people who died, went missing, and were injured from these places. There are also plaques in the rail stations, in honor of dead members of various trade unions and guilds. It seems quaint, I hate to say. It's personal in a way I'm not used to memorials being, and I remember having an odd, wary, curious relationship with them, never feeling sure if I was supposed to look for some reason.

The point of all of this is multiple and varied. It's about crying to a song about war, and thinking about Australia, sure. But it's also about my childhood, which wasn't a time in my life I particularly enjoyed. I was not a happy child, and things that brought me joy almost always led to unpleasant ridicule, always at school, and often at home. I learned not to speak or to express my passions unless I wanted my intellect ridiculed by those who could not keep up. Even so, I do hold a weird fondness for many things from my childhood that most people I know would only dig with a kitschy, ironic stance. And so one of the reasons I fell in love with Australia is because it let me, because people do dig all sorts of things there without being kitschy or ironic about it -- things that we could never feel that way about here.

Perhaps all this makes sense: America as Tina the Troubled Teen, and Australia still a child, and this song by this ridiculous band about a particularly awful version of innocence lost.

Comments

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

What I've always found interesing about that song (by Eric Bogle) is that it's an Irish song (Bogle was Irish) about Aussies in The Great War.

Amusing. I wonder what, if any, Australian songs there are about the War. Perhaps the Irish (my kin) have spent so long fighting British wars (and fighting in general, as Chesterton said, "The Irish are the race that God made mad. All their wars are happy, and all their songs are sad), that they can identify with others who are taken advantage of in the cause.

TK

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

Australia is a nation of immigrants. You come here, you live here, you are Australian and the history of the nation belongs to you.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Yes, but (as I understand it) Bogle was living in Ireland when he wrote it.

The Clancy Bros. and Tommy Makem, as well as the Pogues, are Irish, born, bred and residing. They are the ones who made the song famous.

Go figure.

TK

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

Point of order: Scottish apparently (http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/bogle.html).

He'd been here for three years when he wrote it.

We are of course, pleased that such a great Australian cultural product has proven popular overseas. ;)

I just had a bit of a think and a browse for Australian war songs - it's the only one I can think of specifically about World War One. And certainly as a protest song that would have relevance to other nations who were screwed for that particular cause it probably stands above some more recent ones.

And in the brief search I just did, the ones that came out the time appear(and I couldn't find any lyrics, only a few titles courtesy of the Australian War Memorial) to be blandly patriotic (as in pro-British) and the more recent ones appear to focus on 'the Anzac spirit' and our coming of age as a nation, rather than protest/social commentary songs. Although I'd need lyric sheets to be sure.

Now I'm puzzling about songs that were written during the war. There was plenty of opposition, especially from the Irish descended community, as you can imagine. And it's hard to imagine that they would not have put some of that into music.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to track down a particular Clancy Brothers and/or Tommy Makem collection of Irish war and resistance songs. While the happy folksy stuff seems to be what most of us were exposed to or remember best, the "songs of rebellion" made more of an impression as I got older - particularly the bravery, and the sadness, of having been so long at war. Far more if an insight into the Irish national character, I think, than "Paper of pins" could ever be.

London has a bit of that with the war memorials, both WWI and WWII. I remember taking some random walk, crossing under a rail bridge, and there was a plaque on that bridge proclaiming that this was the site of the last bomb dropped on London by the Luftwaffe.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It's a mixed bag. The entirety of the corpus makes up the national character.

I was putting in a CB and TM tape, "Songs of Drinking and Rebellion" (which is probably the album you are thinking of). My companion asked if that wasn't redundant, weren't all Irish Songs one of those two. I said, "no, we also have laments."

TK

[rm.livejournal.com]

My ex, whose family was Irish, _hated_ Irish music, and whenever I'd bring it up or something of the sort came on in whatever bar we were in, he'd scowl and mutter, "songs of the drunken potato rebellion!"

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

I love both the Clancy Brothers and that song.

The Clancy Brothers actually got played at our wedding due to the mysterious misplacing of the intended music. Uncle Frank was so happy.

As to "And the band played Waltzing Matilda," Mr. Shannon, the beloved, Irish substitute teacher, had our (AP World History) class on a day we had a WWI class, and he sang it to us. Ah, I miss Mr. Shannon,

[labellerose.livejournal.com]

The Clancy Brothers were part of my childhood, as well- one day I found myself singing "The October Winds' to my baby and was THAT ever a deja vu moment. My favorite song of theirs was the 'Raggle Taggle Gypsies' I think it's because I desperately longed for someone to show up at my door and take me somewhere else.

[ozfille]

The memorials, I should also note, are small and personal, but have a ubiquity that I found emotionally bludgeoning and on par with, oddly, the missing posters that are now a hallmark of all tradgedy thanks to ink jet printers.

I think the memorials were so ubiquitous because the losses of men of that war for a relatively new country with a tiny population created such a psychic scar within the whole nation it became for the nation as a whole the first 'big' event in our history as a nation separate from the UK. We didn't have a revolution to gain independence and the only warfare on home soil was carefully hidden or submerged into the subconcious. We never admitted being at war with the aboriginal population preferring to believe they just magically faded away, not that we murdered them and stole their land. So we had to create myths or stories about bravery and mateship and Australian defiance of rules (all the ANZAC myths - see Peter Weir's film, Gallipoli that encapsulates it perfectly).

Every community from small country towns to big cities have lists of men who died in that war or were permanently scarred for life. In my place of work there is a board listing all the men from the Dept of Education killed and I can only imagine how it must have felt for that first generation to see their workmates' names listed on those boards, a reminder every day of their losses. I gather many women never married or had the chance to marry after their fiances were killed. There was also much controversy with the Prime Minister of the time trying to enforce conscription and calling a referendum on it (which he lost, thank God). There was also much cruelty inflicted on men who did not volunteer for whatever reason. The public presentation of a white feather to such a man, usually by a woman to indicate that he was a coward, I gather happened relatively frequently.

The combination of the myth-making and the high emotions that swirled around the war and the deep divisions between Catholic Irishmen (who still had not gained equal rights with Protestants at that time) and the Protestant Establishment was extremely bitter and carried through till the early 1960's. I can remember one of the older public servants telling me that our Dept, the Ed Dept was a Catholic Dept as was the Police Dept and Health meaning that Catholics were favoured for employment while the Treasury, the Premiers Dept and other Departments were controlled by the Masons and the Protestants were favoured for promotion or employment. This sectarianism was a by-product of the English system but made more bitter and perhaps maintained for much longer than it was in England merely due to the bitter divides created by the feelings surrounding WW1.

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

I was hoping you'd grok the reason I put that on. I didn't know any of your childhood stuff (though Kate looked at the tracklisting before I gave it to you and mentioned that you liked the Clancy brothers), but it was the song I built the mix around, and the one I worried the most about in terms of tone and placement.

I'm sorry to say there aren't any random Norwegian songs on there. I'd be happy to supply you with some, 'cause Lord knows I've got plenty, but on that particular album it's Danish (Sorten Muld), Swedish (Garmarna, though they're singing in Latin), and Swedish/Finnish (Hedningarna).

[rm.livejournal.com]

What's the second track? I am _obsessed_.

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

Lyrics here, though for some reason they substitute Swedish for the Finnish chorus, which is the "rise now lust" bit:

Nouse kirki kiimalle
perähyöry höngylle
Nouse ilman nojumata
kihko ilman kirromata

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

The lyrics for "Ramund" and "2 Sisters" are here, the Hildegard von Bingen one is here, Kaahe Chhed is here, and La Confession is here. I'd also be happy to dig up lyrics for any of the English ones, if you think they'd be helpful.

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry. 2 Sisters is actually here.

Right, that's the last out of me.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

The Clancy Brothers are one of the very very few good memories I have of growing up and doing things with my parents.