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
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!
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.
Steph (crisis version)
Daniel Lakeland