One thing that amazes me about the SDMB is the incredible diversity of the posters. I have often noticed an amazing number of folks from Australia. Hence, my question.
I am a middle school band teacher in Texas. One of the pieces I am working on with my students is Australian Folk Fantasy, arranged by Mark Williams, and published by Alfred Publishing. It is a collection of folk songs from Australia. Alfred’s blurb on the piece:
I am curious what our Aussie dopers might know about these folk songs. Are these songs young children might sing? Are they Aboriginal melodies, or of European origin? Have you even heard of these? Do you have fond memories of singing these songs as a youngster?
Here is a link to the publisher’s recording of the piece: Flash recording at alfred.com. No, this is not my band. This is not ANYONE’S middle school band.
The only ones I’ve heard of and sung are Click Go the Shears and Kookaburra. As far as I know they’re of European origin.
Click Go the Shears occasionally gets a run, along with Waltzing Matilda and Bound for Botany Bay, when my choir has to sing some ‘traditional’ Australian folk songs. Note that it’s not music we’d ever sing normally.
Kookaburra is usually sung by children as a round. I haven’t sung it since I was in infants’ school. But it’s still popular in schools. My six year old niece was giving me a rendition only the other day.
I agree that the only ones I’ve heard of are Click Go the Shears and Kookaburra, both of Euro origin, although the word Kookaburra is Aboriginal. This song in particular I very much remember from being a kid, sung as a round. Caveat is that I was born in Australia, but didn’t live here between the ages of 3 and 31 so may not be representational.
I’m with the others - *Click Go The Shears *and Kookaburra are the only two I’m familiar with. Cunctator mentioned Waltzing Matilda and Botany Bay, and I’d say those four along with Home Among The Gum Trees would have been the primary traditional Australian songs we covered when I was in school. I remember the teacher going through line by line to explain some of the slang to us, particularly in Click Go The Shears, Waltzing Matilda and Botany Bay.
You don’t get much “Kookaburra” in the mix, do you? About 2 bars at the end - don’t blink! Ironically, that’s probably the most often sung of the lot of them!
Haha, that kookaburra certainly gets around. At primary school (Scotland, late 1960s) it turned up in the “Singing Together” book - a little book of songs from various countries which we could all sing when the teacher brought out the enormous ancient crackly radio for the BBC schools programme that accompanied the books.
Out of curiosity, I just Googled it. Is it the one about the kookaburra that sits in the old gum tree and laughs? How tangentially funny, then, to see how language changes. At that time, we children didn’t find anything odd in the line
“Laugh, kookaburra, laugh, kookaburra, gay your life must be”.
Posters who said it was of Euro origin, does that mean it was written by someone from Europe, not from Oz, or is it does it have the meaning of “Australian but not of Aboriginal origin”?
Ah, thanks. Trivial, but worth knowing. I had visions of some fool sitting in Britain or France randomly deciding to write a song about this far-away exotic bird.
I had visions of some fool sitting in Britain or France randomly deciding to write a song about this far-away exotic bird.