Seasongs - - - from Sunrise to Sunrise

 

Stephen & Susan Sanfilippo’s Newsletter of Songs of the Sea

Dedicated to Researching, Performing and Reviving

Traditional Music of the Maritime Trades

 

SEPTEMBER 2022                        Vol. 14, no. 9

© 2022 Stephen Sanfilippo and Susan Sanfilippo

 

seasonghistory@gmail.com

 

 

145 Hope Lane       Southold NY 11971-2507     631-765-9257

 

51 Ox Cove Road   Pembroke ME 04666-4647   207-726-4747

 

from Suffolk County, New York, “the Sunrise County,”

to Washington County, Maine, “the Sunrise County,”

and places between and beyond

 

There are 9 pages in this edition. Graphics might open slowly.

 

Please Forward SEASONGS to Interested Individuals & Organizations.

     Please submit articles, information or photos as Word Document or JPG attachments to seasonghistory@gmail.com

 

PEMBROKE LIBRARY CHANTEY SING

Community Sing-along of Songs of the Sea

Hither, Thither & Yon

Captain James Cook’s World Map, late 1700s

Songs of Nearby Waters & Far Away Seas

led byStephen Sanfilippo, chanteyman and balladeer, with concertina, banjo, and guitar

 

6:00 PM – WEDNESDAY - September 14th

Pembroke Library  - - - 221 Old County Road, Pembroke, Maine

opposite the fair grounds

full handicap access - - - admission by donation

^{207-726-4747 or 207-726-4745   seasonghistory@gmail.com}

 

"COCKLES and MUSSELS: Songs of Shellfish Harvesting” CD includes performers from many parts of the United States and Canada, compiled by Mary Garvey. Information at maryogarvey@yahoo.com "Cockles" CDs $10 each (including shipping) Mail orders to: Mary Garvey 1310 Washington Avenue S #1  Long Beach WA 98631

 

"As Long As the Seas Do Roll,” Stephen’s compactdisc of traditional sea songs, includes vocals, 5-string banjo, guitar, harmonica, and Anglo concertina. To order, send $12 for the first disc, $6 for each additional disc, [cash or check/U.S. -Currency] to: Stephen Sanfilippo    145 Hope Lane Southold NY   11971-2507   Please Include Your Mailing Address.

 

 

“CASTLEBAY” - Julia Lane & Fred Gosbee, vocal, harp, guitar and fiddle    Information on concerts and on placing orders for CDs and Bygone Ballads of Maine book of traditional Maine songs of the sea    www.castlebay.net

 

     

Songs of Woodsmen & River Drivers

Performed by Kris Paprocki & Stephen Sanfilippo

Saturday, October 1^st & Sunday, October 2^nd - - Noon to 3:00 PM

Maine Forest & Lumbering Museum   Bradley, Maine

www.maineforestandloggingmuseum.org  207-974-6278

We suggest you call prior to the event to make certain of events, which might be changed due to weather or COVID restrictions.

 

BATTLE of the RIM commemoration at Machias, Maine

Many Thanks to the Hannah Weston Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Machias Revolutionary War Reenactors, for an excellent commemoration of the August, 1777 Defense of Machias. Jim Sherman and Stephen were honored to perform.  Jim led a rousing sing-along rendition of “Yankee Doodle.” Stephen sang “The Brave Town of Machias,” a ballad composed by Betsey Scott, a witness to the 1777 battle.

“Chief Joseph Neptune,” in yellow deerskin, fires on a boatload of “British Redcoats.”

 

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL HISTORIC SINGERS

   Please consider contacting your local museums, historical societies, libraries and historic sites to encouraging the presentation historic and traditional music appropriate to the location, the time period, and the organizations’ missions. Such music is important for preservation, education, and yes, entertainment. Far too many otherwise excellent organizations go awry when it comes to music, failing to see its historic value and seeing it solely as “entertainment.” Your voice makes a difference.

 

Regional Contacts for Sea Song performances and information

 

 

Midcoast & Southern Maine 

"Castlebay" - Julia Lane & Fred Gosbee

www.castlebay.net    castlebay@castlebay.net

 

Chesapeake Bay Area and Eastern Virginia

Bob Zentz and Jeanne McDougall

bobzentz@gmail.com     jeannemcdougall@gmail.com   www.bobzentz.com

 

Downeast Maine

Kris Paprocki                             Jim Sherman

kwpaprocki@gmail.com             folknoter@maineline.net

 

Long Island, New York

Stephen Sanfilippo       seasonghistory@gmail.com

 

Connecticut

Joseph Morneault   JosMorn@aol.com

 

Nova Scotia

Eric Ruff, of The Yarmouth Shantymen

Yarmouth, Nova Scotia    ebruff@ns.sympatico.ca

 

Great Lakes & Mid-Western Rivers

Lee & Joann Murdock        jmurdock@artistsofnote.com   

 

Florida

            Chris Kastle              chriskastle@yahoo.com

 

New Brunswick, Canada

Michelle Daigle & Don Rigley         actor@nbnet.nb.ca               

 

Oregon & Washington

Mary Garvey        maryogarvey@yahoo.com

 

San Francisco

Dick & Carol Holdstock           holdstocks@dcn.org

                     

   New York City Firemen raise the                 Blackbeard’s head on the jibboom of

   the World Trade Tower, September,            H.M.S. Pearl. Lt. Robert Maynard, off

   2001, following air piracy attack.                 Ocracoke Island, N.C., November, 1718.

 

A Tale of Two Cities: September 11, 2021

by Stephen N. Sanfilippo

     “To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations.” United States Constitution, Article I, section 8. Piracy is one of three crimes specifically identified in the Constitution, the others are treason and counterfeiting.

                                      For quarter, for quarter, this saucy pirate cried,

                                      But the quarter that we game him was to sink him in the tide.”

              We tied ‘em one by one, and we tied ‘em two by two,

              We tied ‘em three by three, and we chucked ‘em in the sea.

                               -  concluding verses of “High Barbary”

                                  traditional maritime ballad

      I wrote what follows during the second week of September, 2021. September 11^th of that year marked 20 years since the air piracy terrorist attacks on New York City and Arlington, Virginia, and the failed attempt brought down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I was quite emotional at the time. I decided not to publish it or send it to newspapers, but now, a year later, I feel an obligation to do so. Recent events have brought me to this conclusion. Increasingly, children are being told that pirates are cool and fun. Adults find pirates to be entertaining, and pirate festivals are spreading. Maritime history is assumed by many to be pirate history, and those who think so think that’s a good thing. Chanteys, seamen’s work songs of the mid-19^th century, are presented as 17^th century pirate songs. Children, and even adults, on hearing traditional Irish music, think it is pirate music. We even have an official national “Talk Like a Pirate Day,” established by Congressional resolution. (Actually, the English-speaking pirates of the 17^th century spoke Jacobean English.) Recently, for an event commemorating a battle of the American Revolution, I dressed in the costume of a seaman of the 1770s. People asked if I was a pirate. I said, “No, an American Revolutionary War patriot sailor.” They seemed confused and disappointed. I’ve also been asked to make sea music presentations for young children in historic fishing communities, but what is really being asked for are pirate songs. How can you tell if a song is a real song about piracy? Easy. The pirates are portrayed as they were, as murderous villains, and the sailors of a frigate or an armed merchant ship gain the day. Make no mistake about it. Pirates, be they 16^th century swashbuckling free-booters, or 17^th and early 18^th century pirates of the Caribbean, were plundering murderers who raped, pillaged, sodomized young children and sold them into slavery, and burned towns to the ground. Yet, people like to forget this, and somehow misguidedly transform them into romantic figures who were somehow good. When reminded that pirates were ruthless criminals, the response is that they did that “a long time ago.” Does that mean that in 300 years the murderous villains of the 19^th and 20^th centuries will be transformed into romantic anti-heroes to be loved and emulated? Here’s what I wrote a year ago. I hope that someone doesn’t have to write a similar essay 200 years from now to chastise those who have “good community fun” by “imitating” those who we condemn today as being “long ago.” To do so is to trivialize the suffering of others. Here’s what I wrote back in September, 2021.

        I was on Long Island for September 10th, 11th, and 12^th (2021). I attended two memorials on 9-11, one was outside the firehouse in Kings Park. The other, a funeral mass in Kings Park for a loved one, was framed into the day and the location and what was going on around us, the church being across the street from the firehouse. I also sang on September 12^th at a lighthouse park on the, performing songs of lifesaving and lighthouse keeping, all of which became memorials for the brave passengers on the Shanksville plane, and for the firemen, policemen and other rescue workers. One could not do anything in the New York City area at that time, the 20^th Anniversary of the terrorist attack, without it being put into conscious reference to 9-11. It was truly solemn and emotional, as most people on Long Island, as elsewhere in New York City and the Metropolitan Area know or have close relatives or neighbors who know someone who was killed in the World Trade Towers. Many of New York's firemen and police officers and World Trade Towers workers live on Long Island, so we lost quite a few on 9-11. I was teaching on 9-11 at a high school about 60 miles from the World Trade Towers. I can never forget the near panic and fear among my students and co-workers, many of whom had parents, or close relations, or neighbors who worked in or very near the Towers. The fear was multiplied when a rumor started that another air piracy plane was heading towards Brookhaven National Laboratory, a nuclear research facility only three miles from the high school. As a senior faculty member and Navy veteran, I was used to emergencies, and joined others in spending most of the day trying to calm down students and co-workers. Plans were being made to turn the high school into a blood donation center for September 12th. We awoke on the 12th to the overwhelming smell of the destroyed towers, like burning tires and burning electrical insulation, as the air traveled eastward across Long Island from Lower Manhattan. We soon learned there was no need for a blood drive. None was needed. There were no survivors in need of blood. What a terrible day and days. We will never forget being the target of these horrible acts of international piracy - terrorism. The sirens on fire station stations throughout the New York Metropolitan Area wailed six times and all the church bells tolled six times on September 11, 2021. They did this at specific times, wailing or tolling for a full minute each time. Those moments were: 1) when the first plane hit the North Tower; 2) when the second plane hit the South Tower; 3) when the 3rd plane hit the Pentagon; 4) when the 4th plane crashed to the ground at Shanksville, Pennsylvania; 5) when the South Tower collapsed; 6) when the North Tower collapsed. Church bells tolled throughout the day. There was no need to send to know "for whom the bell tolls." We all knew. We all wept.

     I was on Long Island for only a few days. I would soon be returning to Pembroke, Maine, near Eastport, where my wife and I attend church and are active with the historical society and the library’s chantey sing. Running through my mind all day on September 11, 2021, was the image of Eastport’s four-day "Pirate Festival," in which “all things pirate” are presented as good, clean, fun for the family. How grossly vulgar to celebrate the international terrorists of 300 years ago in such a mindless, crass, and juvenile manner, especially on the 20th anniversary of the attacks by air pirates on 9-11. Two photographs are seared into my mind, one from the Eastport Pirate Festival program of a few years ago shows a person in "pirate costume" who has climbed the flagpole at the harbor, and is placing a "Jolly Roger" flag under the American flag. The second is New York City firemen raising an American flag on the rubble of the World Trade Towers. If "a picture is worth a thousand words," those two pictures side-by-side are worth all the words ever spoken or written. The first flag represents arson, murder, pillage, and slaving. The second, our resolve against the horrors of international terrorists, and make no mistake about it, that's exactly what the "pirates" being celebrated in Eastport were.

     At 9:59 AM, on September 11, 2021, in Eastport, Maine, "Pirates of the Approaching Storm" were descending the stage, and at 10 AM, "Diver Ed" was looking for "treasures" in the waters beneath Eastport harbor. At 9:59 AM, on September 11, 2001, in New York City, the South Tower of the World Trade Center descended into rubble. At 10:00 AM, New Yorkers started the long wait to see what treasures our firemen and other rescue workers could find beneath the ruins of the World Trade Towers. I don't know what "Diver Ed" found, but I do know that 2,606 human treasures, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, friends and neighbors, office workers and rescue workers, were never found in amidst the wreckage.

     That’s what I wrote a year ago. I am I presenting it to you now. Eastport, Maine is not alone. Many other “pirate” festivals are held in the United States and Canada, often on September 11^th. Isn’t there a better way for communities to have real fun with street fairs? Fishermen’s festivals are still held in some places, untouched by “pirates.” In Greenport, New York, the Oyster Festival has become a Pirate Festival. In Sag Harbor, New York, the Old Whalers Festival has become a Pirate Festival. In Eastport, Maine, the once proud Salmon Festival has shrunk to a small sideshow during the Eastport Pirate Festival. Machias, Maine, celebrates its blueberry harvest and the towns defense in the American Revolution. Not a pirate is in sight. We have so much to celebrate as communities: Native Peoples, early settlers, our own real local folk culture in art, music and story-telling. Let’s do that and chuck the “Pirates.” Let’s stop telling ourselves that terrorists of a bygone time are “fun.”

    One of the greatest traditional songs of the sea is “The Flying Cloud,” which dates from the early 1800s. Among seamen and logging camp workers of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, a singer was not fully honored unless he could sing “The Flying Cloud,” a lengthy ballad in which the narrator is a young man who throws away a promising life to turn pirate, engaging in murder and slave trading. In the end, he is and his fellow pirates are captured and sentenced to death. The ballad concludes with the following verses, the final three words being spoken, rather than sung, giving them added emphasis in the traditional manner.

 

                  It’s next to Newgate we were brought, bound down in iron chains,

                  For the sinking and the plundering of ships on the Spanish main.

                  The judge he found us guilty; we were condemned to die.

                  Young men, a warning by me take and shun all piracy.

                  Then fare you well old Waterford, and the girl that I adore;      

                  I’ll never kiss your cheek again or squeeze your hand or more.

                  For whiskey and bad company first made a wretch of me.

                  Young men, a warning by me take and shun all piracy.

     It’s time for communities to face up to the facts of what they’ve been doing for several year and shun all piracy. Cease the romantic trivialization of villainy and instead celebrate those who do real and honest work. Remember, “Blackbeard” was killed in 1718. It’s now just over 150 years since the Civil War, and already those who fought to maintain slavery or took part in the post-war terrorist Klan are being romanticized for “the Lost Cause” and for trying to maintain “America.” It’s been less than 100 years since World War Two, and already we are seeing denial of the suffering of tens of millions and the perverted romanticization of those who wrought evil. How long after mass murder and enslavement and genocide does it take to deny or forget those who suffered, and to emulate those who caused the suffering because doing so is “fun?” We need to embrace reality and Shun All Piracy.

     {Stephen Sanfilippo served on active duty in the United States Navy from 1970 through 1974, receiving his honorable discharge in 1976. For three years, he was on the classified communications staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet and the Supreme Allied Commander – Atlantic. He received his Ph.D. in maritime history and taught maritime history for many years at Maine Maritime Academy. He has a great sense of humor that often gets in the way of his doing productive work. He divides his time between Pembroke, Maine and Southold, New York, spending most of the winter in Maine.}

48^th Annual FOX VALLEY FOLK FESTIVAL

Sunday & Monday, September 4^th & 5^th

Hinsdale, Illinois - - - on the beautiful Fox River

Live and In Person, or Live Online Streaming

htpps://fvfs.org    for schedule, location & streaming

       Lee Murdock, who has made a life of researching songs of the Great Lakes and the rivers of the Mid-West, will be among the performers. We received the following from Lee. Please take a minute of two to read Lee’s heartfelt tribute and reminiscence of his journey in traditional music and gratefulness for Juel Ulven, who inspired Lee and so many others through his many years of dedicated service to traditional music. Lee writes:

       “This has been a sad week for me, Joann, and everyone in our Fox Valley Folklore Society community. Today we attended the Memorial Service for our friend, founder, leader, a mentor, and one of my greatest supporters. Fox Valley Folklore Society Founder, Juel Ulven, passed over to the other side earlier this week after a short illness. I first met Juel in 1977, when I attended the first-ever Fox Valley Folk Festival. No, I did not perform. It was a small stage on the Water Street Pedestrian Mall in downtown Aurora. Mike Allen, Christine Gaylord, Drew Carson, (a.k.a. "Rosewood"), Greg Schmeisser,  Dave Conte, and probably Bonnie Yates, were some of the performers, playing together in small ensembles. Folk Music was still very popular in that era, and I was just returning to suburban Chicago after graduating from Drake University. We were delighted to find this active folk music community here in the far western suburbs. In those days, I lived in Bensenville and commuted several nights a week to open mics in Chicago, at Barbarossa and to clubs on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. And on Wednesday evenings, I traveled in the other direction, west to Aurora, Illinois, where the Fox Valley Folklore Society met weekly for song circles, also known as "the Sing-Around." That Sing Around was attended by Juel and by an ever-changing group of musicians, and soon by storytellers as well. Juel and The Fox Valley Folklore Society members welcomed everyone with open ears and open hearts. Juel Ulven had a passion for traditional music, from all parts of the world. And even at that time, he had amassed a staggering collection of traditional folk music on LP, later on cassette, CD, and electronic media. Recognizing my commitment to performing and my love for folk and acoustic music, Juel took me under his wing - as he was often known to do for any musician who was open to learn. He spoon fed me a crash course in folk music - one that is ongoing to this day - that has informed my performances and songwriting ever since. Those of us who attended the Fox Valley Folk Festival regularly were always reminded, (in tiny 9-point type)  of all the different activities of the Folk Valley Folklore Society-- weekly Sing-Arounds or open mics, monthly Barn Dances, pop-up concerts in restaurants and parks, and much more. Always generous and inclusive in his programming of events and music outreach, Juel has touched so many lives, and leaves many gifts as his legacy to the community. So it is that we mark his passing, just a week before the 46th Annual Fox Valley Folk Festival. We all know the adage, "The Show Must Go On," so we will be holding the Festival on Labor Day weekend, Saturday, Sunday & Monday. There is not a Single Human who could do everything that Juel Ulven did to build community and to educate and inspire the public around folk and traditional music. But there is a large community of people who have been working together and alongside of Juel, so together we will move forward and as a group we will keep his vision alive. This will not be the last Fox Valley Folk Festival, but this year will be a special event, dedicated to

JUEL ULVEN

     CHANTEY SING in PEMBROKE, MAINE – Sept. 14th

        On Wednesday, September 14th, starting at 6:00 PM, the Pembroke Library will ring out with the work songs and ballads of seamen who sailed "Tall Ships" Hither (the coast of Maine), Thither (other parts of the Atlantic) and Yon (far distant seas). Led by Pembroke's Stephen Sanfilippo, the audience will be encouraged to "Sing Out" with songs that will take us from the shipbuilding yards Pembroke, to winter fishing off Grand Manan Island on a schooner from Jonesport, to the tuna fishery off the west coast of Sicily, to an 1830s voyage to the Indian Ocean on the Greenport whaleship Bayard, and from the Arctic to “the Line” as we go “Rolling Down to Old Maui.” With call-and-response chanteys, and ballads played on banjo and concertina, this promises to be an enjoyable evening of authentic sea songs from the “Great Age of Sail.” The Chantey Sing is "Family Friendly." Admission is by donation to the Pembroke Library and Downeast Hospice. Due to possible crowding and audience singing, face masks are highly recommended. The Pembroke Library is located at 221 Old County Road, Pembroke, Maine, opposite the horse race track and fair grounds. The September 14th singing gets underway at 6:00 PM. Admission and refreshments are free. Donations to the Pembroke Library are appreciated. For more information call 207-726-4747 or 207-726-4745, or email seasonghistory@gmail.com.

Enjoy the Last Tides of Summer

Seasongs: from Sunrise to Sunrise September 2022 © 2022 Stephen Sanfilippo and Susan Sanfilippo