Kenneth Peacock's Songs of the Newfoundland Outports
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Kenneth Peacock's Songs of the Newfoundland Outports David Gregory. Athabasca University representative picture of the collection, except that, for reasons of space, I will concentrate only on Eng- lish-language song. Books are more convenient than a laptop com- puter to sit with in an armchair or on a bed, but the way they organize information is essentially linear. Stick this CD-ROM in your computer's external disk- drive and you are faced immediately with the option of exploring the Peacock collection in different ways. The main menu gives you six options, but one of them ("Help") did not work in our review copy, one is "Exit", and one of them ("Bookmarked") starts off blank, although it is a useful tool that allows you to store items you have selected in an easily-accessible place. That leaves three buttons. "About" contains a TIle harbour at Notre Dame Bay (photo Kenneth Peacock) text fIle of notes by the producers, describing some of The largest and most varied of the various collections CD-RaM's features, such as MIDI wave fIles as well as audio-clips. It acknowledges some of the space of Newfoundland vernacular songs, Kenneth Pea- constraints that they were faced with, and also points cock's three-volume Songs of the Newfoundland Outports, was fIrst published in book form in 1965.t out some controversial characteristics of Kenneth At a price of $15.00 for all three volumes, it was a Peacock's approach to collecting and editing. It is bargain, but unfortunately it has long been out of worth quoting for this reason: print and available only occasionally as a very expen- There is a midi file for every song to demonstrate sive second-hand item.2 This long-awaited CD-ROM the melody according to Mr. Peacock's transcrip- version of the work will therefore be greeted with a tion of the music. For 268 of the 517 songs, there very warm welcome by aficionados of Canadian folk are Wave files featuring the singers from whom music who have previously found it difficult to be- Mr. Peacock collected the songs. Due to space re- come acquainted in detail with the treasures that Pea- strictions, only 58 of these include a full song; in cock noted and/or recorded in Newfoundland in the rest you will hear a verse and chorus (where 1950-52 and 1958-62. It is, to put it bluntly, a "must the melody differs from the verse) to demonstrate how the song was sung by Mr. Peacock's infor- buy" for all lovers of Newfoundland song and for mant For the most part we have reproduced the anyone interested in the spread of English and Irish collection exactly as it appeared in print. The ex- folksong outside the countries of origin. The aim of ceptions are places where there were obvious ty- this review is to do two things: to explain and evalu- pographical errors (very few for such a large col- ate how Jim Payne and Don Walsh have adapted lection) and a couple of misspelled place Peacock's print publication to this digital format (and names... There are also instances in the collection how they have gone beyond print), and to provide as where the Wave file will be of a different singer many examples as we have space for of Peacock's than the one credited in the Info Box. This is be- collecting, as a taster to induce anyone who does not cause Mr. Peacock often collected versions of the same song from different singers. Sometimes the know the collection to explore it further. Since the version he printed in the collection was a com- CD-ROM contains over forty photographs, numerous posite version that he compiles from his various .sound-clips, and over fIve hundred songs obtained sources. While he usually credited the singer who from nearly one hundred informants, what we print was his chief informant or whose version formed here can only be a small sampling. But, as far as pos- the basis of his composite version, he sometimes sible, our chosen musical examples will provide a had a recorded version from another singer.3 In short, most of the song-texts that you will find Sargent, no other individual had ever been hired reproduced in the CD-ROM (as in the books) are specifically to do musical transcriptions. At Bar- Peacock's composites rather than the actual texts beau's suggestion Peacock spent the next several sung by individual informants. The fifty-eight au- months collecting materials from the Plains Indi- dio-files of Peacock's tape-recordings of entire ans in western Canada. In late 1954, in an attempt to re-activate his songs, on the other hand, necessarily reproduce music and composing career, Peacock resigned what that particular informant sang. So in most of from the museum. Nevertheless, as the Canadian these instances there is a discrepancy, often folk revival movement began to take shape over marked, between printed text and sung text. And the next several years, he was drawn into projects this problem can occasionally have bizarre results. which enabled him to disseminate some of the For example, if you try to listen to the audio-file materials from his Newfoundland and native- listed for Mrs. Wallace Kinslow's rendition of "The Indian field collections to the general public. In 'Union' from St. John's" (a ballad of maritime dis- addition to a series of radio programs prepared aster), you hear another version of the same ballad for the CBC, at the encouragement of Folkways Records of New York's Canadian representative, sung by an unidentified man. Sam Gesser, he also compiled materials from his While we are on the subject of the "About" but- Newfoundland and native research into two re- ton in the main menu, I should point out that this is cordings, Indian Music of the Canadian Plains also where you will find five additional text files: (FE 4464, 1955) and Songs and Ballads of New- "Kenneth Peacock's Introduction", "Kenneth Pea- foundland (FG 3505, 1956). He also collaborated cock's Acknowledgements", "Kenneth Peacock's with Canadian folksinger and revivalist Alan Bio", "Resume" and "CD Rom Producers Bios". Mills, providing both songs and piano accompa- The first of these provides the text of Peacock's niments for Favourite Songs of Newfoundland (1958), a publication stilI in print today. seven-page introduction to volume 1 of the original Material from Peacock's first two years of publication, and the second does the same for the collection quickly ended up in the public domain acknowledgements page. The fourth provides a as well. Several numbers from his Newfoundland brief statement in French about the subject matter of collection appeared on Canadian Folksongs, Vol- the collection, and the fifth gives some information ume 8 edited by Marius Barbeau for American about Jim Payne and Don Walsh. The third-most Alan Lomax's World Collection of Recorded important for our purposes-consists of a brief bi- Folk Music (Columbia SL-211, 1954). Peacock's ography of Kenneth Peacock by Anna Guigne. Al- ability to convert the folksongs he collected into though shorter than I would have liked, this is very transcripts also meant that this material could be quickly incorporated into such publications as useful, and the paragraphs from it that bear directly Gerald S. Doyle's 1955 songster Old Time Songs on Peacock's two periods of collecting in New- of Newfoundland, and Edith Fowke and Richard foundland are worth quoting to provide some neces- Johnston's Folksongs of Canada (1954). Addi- sary background information on the collector him- tionally, professional singers such as Tom Kines self in the 1950s: and Joyce Sullivan quickly drew upon his New- foundland collection for their own repertoire of In 1951 [Marius] Barbeau asked Peacock to take Canadian folk music. over the [National Museum of Canada's] New- In the late 1950s Peacock decided to publish foundland folksong field research first initiated his own definitive work, one which was broader by Margaret Sargent in 1950. Between 1951 and and more inclusive than any publication to date. 1952, largely learning on the job, Peacock con- Each summer between 1958 and 1961 he subse- centrated mainly on the eastern region of the quently returned to Newfoundland to expand his province, where he acquired an enormous arnount collection. By 196[2] Peacock had accumulated a of material. In such areas as Fogo and King's total of 766 songs and melodies; 638 on tape and Cove which had no electricityat the time, Pea- an additional 128 transcribed by hand, from over cock had the singers repeat songs while he ap- 118 informants dispersed throughout 38 commu- plied his training as a musician and transcribed nities across the island.4 melodies and texts, eventually taking down over 120 songs by hand. Anna Guigne is the Canadian scholar who has spent Initially Peacock viewed folksong collecting the most time exploring and analyzing the original as a break from teaching and composing. How- materials of Peacock's Newfoundland collection, so ever, Barbeau was so impressed with his work she knows whereof she speaks. Her general conclu- that in 1953 Peacock was offered the position of musicologist. With the exception of Margaret sions regarding Peacock's approach to collecting and 2 what he achieved in his field-work and his publica- thumbnails but can be made larger at the click of a tions are therefore also worth quoting. mouse. Unfortunately they do not enlarge to full screen size, but they are quite a bit bigger.