I was hunting down folk who sing with a Northern Irish accent for #ThePlaylist and was disappointed to find a lot of singers from here seem to suppress or downplay their accent. So, for St Patrick’s Day, here’s Foy Vance in the Bushmills Distillery with some very County Down vowels.
Wow, great performance, but amazing to me how the accent sounds just like a certain variety of stuff from the US, doesn't sound unusual or "foreign accent" to me at all.
@dlakelan That’s interesting, because to me that’s a very strong local accent. The way he sings “down” in the second line and “now” in the chorus are very characteristic of a specific area.
But then, I’ve spoken to Americans who think Liam Neeson’s American accent is great so now I suspect you lot just can’t tell the difference 😉
Foy Vance is good though. He’s like if Van Morrison wasn’t a massive twat.
Yeah, I can hear the "down" (sounds like "deern"). But I think you may also be underestimating the effect that Irish immigrants had on American music particularly in bluegrass. I'm definitely a bluegrass fan so that may play into it.
Here's like some random recent bluegrass that's not at all a good comparison but I definitely hear altered pronunciation vs american common english
@dlakelan would be very happy to listen and learn if you get a moment!
In return I’d be interested to know if the below video also sounds familiar to you. To me, Duke Special has a very similar accent to Foy’s, but the singing style is maybe a little different here.
(Also, an absolutely chronic case of white man dreadlocks, but we’ll disregard that for now.)
I think this song sounds EVEN MORE "normal" to me than Foy.
@astronomerritt
https://youtu.be/5rDrPBzJo5o?si=Yo1awOrhRWMndQpv
here's Abigail Washburn singing and playing banjo in an alley 😅.
Undoubtedly you'll hear the difference more than the similarity. She certainly isnt going to pronounce "down" like "deern" but as you say the exaggerated vowels are also not normal modern american pronunciation. If I went back and played some 1950s bluegrass with old school Appalachian players it'd sound even less modern american.
So, let's go back to OLD school bluegrass, here, and these vowel sounds are very nasal and more similar to the ones you're talking about I think?
Ok, so my wife agrees with me about the songs. So we decided to look up an interview with Foy Vance, and listened to that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwEK6MafFEo
And my wife said basically that it sounds very much like a slightly different cadence to an Appalachian accent (which to be fair shouldn't be unexpected as the Appalachian area has heavy irish influence).
So now I gotta find you an appalachian person interview to compare.
So here are some absolutely strong Appalachian accents on display in interviews. (if you talk like this in the US you will be pegged for Appalachian immediately and people may have a hard time understanding you)
And while this seems much more extreme than the accent Foy has in his interview, I think there are clear similarities, and when you put these into song, they meld to something similar.
It absolutely is wild, and wonderful. Power to our cultural heritages. To hell with people deriding anyone for their accent. Send me links to more North Irish musicians!
Ok, so I looked up Juliet Turner and found her doing "Still haven't found what I'm looking for" and listened to that a bit. Now I'm gonna send this Sarah Jarosz version side by side
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbDURtHFynk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAcu5g8AMEs
Jarosz is from Texas but musically she's from Appalachia
@astronomerritt
OK, so for fun listen to her do this version of When Doves Cry with a super cool bassist as a duo... make sure to stay for when they trade solos, heavily Jazz influenced.
@astronomerritt
OK, so for fun (not so much for accent similarity) listen to her do this version of When Doves Cry with a super cool bassist as a duo... make sure to stay for when they trade solos, heavily Jazz influenced.
Another bit of trivia I guess is that my grandfather on my mother's side had a father who was born in County Down in 1865 and then immigrated to the US in the late 1800's. It's entirely plausibly my grandfather's accent was influenced by his father's, and I knew my grandfather very well until he died in the early 90's so some of the familiarity may come from that.
I don't. I only have American marriage records for when he married stating that he was born 1865 in County Down, Ire.
YES! ok, so I'm not just imagining things. And then, this is the same group of people who inhabit Memphis Tennessee and that's been one of the hearts of the american recording industry... which then influenced american "country" music, Rockabilly, bluegrass, blues, soul... and then travels again over the Atlantic to port towns like Liverpool, gets melded into the minds of the Beatles, and comes BACK to the US... So you can blame the North Irish for the Beatles ;-)
It's also critically important in all that cultural mixing, that the African people also contribute hugely. The Banjo is basically an African instrument, and we wouldn't have the drum kit without African slave influences.
But the Irish part is definitely there and shouldn't be left out by any means.
@dlakelan Jesus, isn’t enough we get blamed for terrorism?
(A joke. I respect the impact the Beatles had on music and popular culture but I find them completely unlistenable and I also hate pretty much everything Paul McCartney has ever touched. I think Mull of Kintyre is one of the worst songs in the world. I have gotten SO many people’s backs up with this opinion and it never stops being funny.)
@onorio It’s a national holiday in both the North and the South and there’s big parades in Belfast and Dublin and smaller ones in other towns. Catholics might go to a special mass. Some people go out on the piss, some don’t: the bars and pubs are usually pretty bunged, and the student residential area by QUB goes absolutely mental. I’ve not been out for St Paddy’s since I was in my early twenties myself, too much of a hassle.
I mean, you wouldn’t catch us at some nonsense like dying the river or the beer green, but it’s a decently big deal here. Tourists definitely power a lot of it but locals might celebrate as well.
@onorio Here’s an example of St Patrick’s Day in 2010 at the student area by QUB, the Holylands, featuring a street-long Rock The Boat. Every year the university begs the students to NOT get up to the usual shenanigans and every year they are ignored. I used to live down there before I was ever a student and you couldn’t chuck a beer tin without hitting a lad in a GAA top even outside of St Paddy’s.
@astronomerritt Ah! Gotcha! Sounds like many of the celebrations after a sports championship over here--mostly peaceful and harmless but some people take it as an excuse to destroy stuff and cause mayhem. And, yep, most adults I know wouldn't be cause dead around any of it.
Anyway, thanks for setting me straight on that Steph!
@astronomerritt I tried looking for some Ken Haddock to thank you for sharing this fab performance.
Sadly I couldn’t find any videos of Ken doing his own stuff, just covers. I will keep looking though.
Steph (crisis version)
Daniel Lakeland
Jonathan McDowell
PalmAndNeedle
TheGoodbyeGirl 🇬🇧🇮🇪
OldDutchCap
@shezza_t