DAVID KENNEDY (1825-1887)
First and foremost was the famous Scottish folksinger
whose memorial stands on Calton Hill overlooking the city of Edinburgh.
His family of children numbered eleven and on his many world tours
he was always accompanied by two, three, four or five of them. They
organised the billposting, the tickets, and got ready the hall,
the piano, the stage and the candles. They also joined in choruses
and accompanied their father on piano. One of his daughters, Marjory,
went on to collect "The Songs of the Hebrides", using an
Edison-Bell phonograph or what she called her "graphophone" and
pioneered, as accompaniment, the use of the "Clarsach" or minstrel
harp. After performing in all the major towns and cities of England,
Scotland and Ireland, and also making a name in America and Canada,
in 1872, David Kennedy embarked on his first World family tour lasting
three years. Practising on board during the three months passage,
they sailed to Australia on a record-breaking clipper ship, "The
Ben Ledi", from Glasgow to Melbourne, round the Cape of Good
Hope, not stopping at any port and, for increased speed, skirting
the ice-floes of the Antarctic. Their amazing experiences in Australia,
Tasmania and both islands of New Zealand, were followed by further
adventures as they journeyed across the Pacific to San Francisco
and then across America to Canada and Newfoundland. David had the
honour to sing the American National Anthem at the opening of the
Pacific Railway. He had as much time for the Aboriginals, the Maoris
and other native peoples as for the other emigrant families from
Europe, Africa and, of course, for his "ain folk". David Junior
kept diaries and wrote up accounts of some of their World Tours
and his sister, Marjory Kennedy-Fraser, added to these with her
own account of these and the other tours to Australasia, America,
South Africa and India. After her father's death she herself spent
the rest of her life recording and publishing the Gaelic traditions
of the Scottish Isles as well as performing world-wide with her
daughter, Patuffa. Here are some of the traditional songs in David Kennedy's
family repertoire for which he will be specially remembered -
Alister McAlister; An thou wert
my ain thing; The Auld man's mare's deid; The Bailiff's Daughter
of Islington; Bessy Bell & Mary Gray; The Bonny Hoose o' Airlie;
The Brisk Young Lad; Burns and his Highland Mary; Ca the Ewes to
the Knowes ; Come under my plaidie; The De'il's awa wi' the Exciseman;
The Dowie Dens o Yarrow; Earlistoun; The Flowers of the Forest Get
up and bar the door-o (he wrote an extra verse (see "Reminiscences"
p46); The Golden Vanitie (also sung by his grandson, Douglas,
FTX-041); Hame cam oor gudeman at een (The Cuckold
Ballad, also sung by Douglas on FTX-041); Helen of Kirkconnel;
Holland, Green Holland; Jenny come down to Jock; Jenny dang the
weaver (for which he wrote 2 extra verses see "Reminiscences"
p47); John Grumlie; The Jolly Beggar; The Laird o' Cockpen; The
Land o' the Leal; Lizzie Lindsay; My wife has ta'en the gee; The
Rinawa' bride; Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch; Saw ye my father?; Tak'
your auld cloak aboot ye; Tibby, fowler of the glen; Wae's me for
Prince Charlie (original words & introduction); Waly Waly;
The Weary pund o' tow; The Wee wee German lairdie; Woo'd and married
an a
DOUGLAS KENNEDY (1893-1975) - 3rd generation
Douglas's father was the youngest of David Kennedy Senior's family
and, although trained and practising as a lawyer, eventually through
the family connection with Tobias Matthay's piano teaching method,
became well-known as a singing teacher. He died visiting a pupil
in Bristol in 1912. While nursing his wife, Helen, Douglas recorded
his life story from his early days in Edinburgh, coming to London
with his singing father, his own involvement with the folk collector
Cecil Sharp. He recorded his own adventures until the time Helen
died. The story finishes in 1935 at the time of the unique International
Folk Festival in London in 1935 and the beginning of the massed
nazi stadium rallies in Germany. (His own telling of the tale is
available on 13 CDs and the Kennedy Family songs and dance music
can be heard on Folktrax CD 041)
PETER KENNEDY (1922-)
Peter could perhaps be described
as a kind of behind-the-scenes "boffin", a researcher-cum-entrepreneur,
somebody who has combined mobile recording with being a catalyst and prosletysing
- so much of this work, covering over fifty years, like that of other
field workers has remained sight unseen and yet the effects and extent
may have reached into some very odd corners.
As a youngster his own special interest was the technical
side of Theatre and Film. When at Stratford-on-Avon before the war, the
Stage Manager of the Memorial Theatre, Barbara Curtis, allowed him to
operate the lighting and moving stages and to be present behind-the-scenes
diring the Shakespeare matinees.
At the Film Studios in London he also went to meet Alexander
Korda in order to get his advice on a suitable training. In thosedays
there were no Theatre Schools teaching the technical side of Film or Theatre
and Korda advised a three-dimensional training at The Architectural Association
School of Architecture.
A few weeks before war broke out Peter had a unique introduction
to Documentary Film-making when he and his family sailed in a Galway turf-boat
from the Connemara coast to the Isle of Aran. Looked after by Pat Mullen
and Maggie Dirrane, they stayed in the cottage built specially by Robert
Flaherty for the making of his famous local documentary, "Man
of Aran".(FTX-421).
(1) SCENE FROM ABOVE - As a teenager, during the
war, he was one of a group of RAF pioneers using aerial photography, viewed
in stereo, to identifty enemy activities and prepare topographical models,
or 3-D maps, for use by the tactical planners as well as for the fighters
actively involved in "going in to take them out". Any disturbance
of topsoil or change in levels are immediately located when seen in stereo,
so unarmed planes carrying aerial cameras, such as the laminated wood
"Mosquitoes" were used to to take "spaced-out" pictures.
For some operations, such as the well-known Dambusters, flying aerial
cover beforehand might well have "given the game away", so the
wartime modelmakers supplemented their source information with pre-war
"holiday snaps. Too often they found that somebodys grandma had been
photographed obscuring important details of the objective dam". These
holiday snaps had been gathered at the start of the war from members of
the public by the Admiralty.
Having had several years experience before the USA came
into the war, Peter and the rest of his Photo-Interpretors Team took on
the job of training an American Modelmaking Unit, many of whose personnel
were made up of craftsmen from the Walt Disney Studios. (Some of the
photographic models can be viewed in the Duxford branch of the Imperial
War Museum).
(2) WORLD FOLK - Before joining the RAF Peter
trained at the A.A. as an architect, but, after demobilisation, decided
to give up model-making, and his previously intended vocation of theatre
design, and help his parents, Douglas and Helen, in order to revitalise
a number of national and international organisations concerned with traditional
heritage. So Peter helped organise National and International Conferences
and Festivals. He edited The International Folk Directory and The International
Folk Film Catalogue for Unesco and started regular broadcasts on radio.
In particular he made known the folk traditions of Britain and Ireland,
the Basque Country, Italy and Yugoslavia. (A double-album CD set
of the 1951 recordings of the Republics of Yugoslavia have now been released
as Volume V in the Alan Lomax "World Library series" by Rounder
Records 11661-1745 - A condensed version is available on FTX-601-605
inclusive).
(3) THE BARNSTORMERS -- His first piece of single-handed
work was in the revival of village dancing as it had survived in the more
remote communities, first in the North-East, in Northumberland, Durham
and Yorkshire and then in the West Country. Leading the dances and using
his own one-man band of squeeze-box, (melodeon) and foot-operated bass
drum, he visited hundred of young farmer's, youth clubs and village halls,
introducing what he chose to call "Village Barn Dance", incorporating
whatever locals could remember of the pre-war country dances, quadrilles,
four-hand reels, polkas, schottisches, waltzes and varsovianas. Although
many of these old-time traditional dances are still much enjoyed today
by parent-teacher groups and others, they seem now to have lost their
elemental basic rhythmical effectiveness. The American style "calling"
has been introduced by leaders controlling the dance-floor, usually for
their own self-egrandisement, and making new composed dances (what was
wrong with the traditional?) and adding new tunes played from music-stands
instead of using those that were familiar. (Some of the musicians
Peter recorded in Northumberland can be heard in a "Barn Dance"
programme on FTX-121)
(4) MORRIS MAIDENS. While working in the North he
managed to bring about the revival of a number of local "morris"
including Plough Stot teams using long swords notably at Loftus and Skelton
Green in Cleveland and rapper at villages like High Spen and Winlaton.
Next Peter directed his attention to the decline in popularity of morris
in the Cotswolds. He prepared a Manual for new dances based on but differing
from existing surviving teams. This was rejected in favour of "a
standardisation of the tradition" by members of the Morris Ring.
He also rekindled the pre-war team, "The Beaux of London City" which had
been formed by his brother, John, and musician, Patrick Shuldham-Shaw.
However the inclusion of a women's side, "The Belles", again challenged
the convention, and led to a number of the revival morris teams adopting
an male "We're virile beer-drinkers" campaign to discourage
women from starting their own Morris sides. (Traditional Morris
musicians, William Kimber on FTX-383
& Billy Wells on FTX-384)
(5) THE BALLET CLOGGIES - In Durham he noted and
revived dance teams in several villages and then turned his attention
to step-dancing. An article in a Newcastle evening newspaper produced
loads of addresses of performers who had competed before the war. Outstanding
were Jim Ellwood, his son, Johnson, and Tiny Allison and Tiny's young
collier apprentice, Jackie Toaduff. Peter put up a silver belt and Jackie
won the first post-war Northumberland and Durham championship. When Peter
returned to London he started teaching folkdance at the Royal Ballet Schools
(Senior & Junior) and got Jackie out of the mines in Durham and down to
London to demonstrate at the two schools. Strange to say one outcome of
these visits was a French ballet, "La Fille Mal Gardee", incorporating
some of the elements of the North country garland and the clog dance steps.
More recently, and several generations later, the North-East style of
clog-dancing, which Jackie introduced to the Royal Ballet, has manifest
itself, with all Jackie's rhythmical skill and vitality too, in the recent
movie "Billy Elliott".
(6) SQUARE CIRCLES - Overnight, when Princess Elizabeth
was seen enjoying herself dancing in a country quadrille in Canada, Peter,
because of his father's research in America, suddenly became someone in
widespread demand. This was, incidentally, the first introduction of "jeans"
to Britain. Everyday Peter and Pat ran lunch-time classes for the ballroom
dancing instructors. Mecca Halls and Butlin's Camps all had to know how
to run and call square dances. Every evening at the Lyceum, Peter and
Pat were calling for two bands on a revolving stage and a weekly BBC radio
programme produced by Charles Chilton, "Square Dance Revels," unearthed
pistol-packing cowboys and cowgirls across the land. The practice of "calling
the dances", gave rhythmical warnings and instructions during the dance.
HRH Princess Margaret showed great interest in both the
dances and the music, and, being an admirer of Jimmy Shand, asked Peter
to teach her the melodeon. The dance which Peter composed and danced with
her on many occasions, "Princess Margagaret's Fancy", encapsulated
the many different figures of country dances he had encountered at the
village barn dances. Recently we have witnessed the re-enactment of American
ranch culture with leather boots. In the States known as "Country
and Western Dancing" but over here in Britain as "line-dancing".
(Peter plays melodeon for "Princess Margaret's Fancy" on
FTX-323)
((7) STEAMBOAT SKIFFLE - In the fifties, there were
literally only a few dozen guitars in the whole of Britain. That was,
of course, until John Hasted, a boffin friend at London University, came
to Peter's "London Reel Club" and re-introduced the guitar as
a ship-board percussion instrument alongside tea-chest bass and washboard.
In fact it was because of the swish-swashing sound, that, without thought,
we called it "Skiffle", a word that occurs in folksongs like
"Knickerbocker Line" and "Maggie May"and the name
not only stuck but spread like wildfire. (You can hear Peter's recording
of the Steve Benbow Folk Four, "Dirty Old Town", made at The
Skiffle Cellar in Soho, in 1958, on FTX-091).
(8) CROSSING THE TRACKS - At that time Peter was
working with George Martin, who had been hired to develop the Parlophone
catalogue at Abbey Road Studios, producing the first folk records with
songs like "Wild Mountain Thyme", "Will you go, lassie, go?
And we'll all go together" sung by the McPeake family of Belfast and contemporary
songs like Ewan McColl's "Space Girl". He was the first to record LPs
for groups like "The Spinners" and "The Dubliners"
and he reported to EMI on the various skiffle groups emerging in schools
and youth clubs up and down the country. Among these groups was a a one
called "The Quarrymen" from Liverpool.
At that time the Beatles were interested in traditional
music and Peter arranged with Brian Epstein at Apple for Francis McPeake
to make a set of Irish bagpipes, or Uillean Pipes, for John Lennon. So
out of Skiffle emerged "Rock and Roll" and the rest is hysterical.
(The McPeakes Bagpipes can be heard on FTX-071)
(9) MORE STEAMY SOUNDS - Peter's early research work
in Northumberland and the West Country quickly led to the BBC copying
his tapes for the archive and inviting Seamus Ennis and himself to cover
the whole of Britain and Ireland. The results of their travels, intended
only for the archive, naturally led to broadcasts. Following on the heels
of "Country Magazine", broadcast weekly on Sunday mornings,
listeners began to hear some of the great rebel folk musicians talking
about how they had held on to their musical traditions. Peter chose the
name of the programme and its signature tune, "As I roved",
and he and the Irish Uillean piper and singer, Seamus Ennis, presented
a weekly report on their travels around Britain and Ireland. These broadcasts,
which went on intermittenly over a period of 15 years stimulated interest,
particularly among young people, in the power of "The People's Music
and its Ritual". (Listen to the Radio Ballads and the "As
I roved out" and "A-Roving" series FTX-307-308-309-310).
(10) BIRDS IN BOXES - Peter's mobile recording work
using reels of tape and two-track stereo, long before either were taken
up by radio or record companies, resulted in him being asked by head of
engineering, Tim Eckersley at BBC, to work with the Austrian ornithologist,
Ludwig Koch. (In the Zoo, Ludwig asked Peter to play back recordings
of African elephants to their Indian brothers and to record their response
- in those days requiring some elaborate recording gear - we still have the historic blank tape in our archive!) Eventually
Koch was persuaded to allow the BBC to purchase his entire collection
to form the basis of a new "wild life" sound archive. At Bristol
Peter had worked under Desmond Hawkins and Frank Gillard and had helped
in field trials of the parabolic reflector microphone for spot-miking
birds and other animals. His experience and enthusiasm at Bristol in those
days led to the creation of what has now become "The BBC Natural
History Unit". When he became part of the BBC Features Dept., he
and Seamus agreed to let Eric Simms, whose job was to extend Natural History
broadcasts and archiving, share a corner of their office. On the door
it proclaimed "The Folk Music and Dialect Recording Scheme plus Birdlife".
Little did we know then that the natural history and wildlife would eventually
become even more extensive than our own humble mapping of the goings-on of
the humans, our own ethnological inheritance.
(11) BALLADS ON THE BOX - Peter began presenting
traditional music on television, doing children's and schools programmes
about Dance, Work Song, Ballads and Shanties for Associated Rediffusion
and then, with his American counterpart, Alan Lomax, "Song Hunter",
a series for BBC from Alexandra Palace. This was the very first TV programme
featuring traditional performers like Harry Cox, Charlie Wills, Margaret
Barry and Michael Gorman and was also a first for David Attenborough who
had just completed his training as a TV producer. After that David went
on to the Royal Zoological Gardens in Regents Park and began the long-lasting
series of "Zoo Quest". In the meantime, Peter, Seamus and Alan
with a number of other radio presentations, including some outstanding
ones on the BBC Thirds Programme, unfortunately, as was the case in those
days, not recorded, except by a few enthusiasts "off the air".
The most sensational was the 1957 "Sing Christmas" Round-up
programme which preceeded the annual "Queen's Speech", a spot
formerly reserved for coastguards and lighthouse-keepers. (FTX-950)
(12) FLICKERINGS - Peter started using 16mm to film
local customs such as
the Minehead hobby horse in 1953 (FF-1102).
Then working with George Pickow, cameraman, and Alan Lomax as director
and script-writer, Peter produced a film of the Hobby Horse ceremony at
Padstow in Cornwall called "Oss Oss Wee Oss" which blew the mind of American anthropologist, Margaret Mead. (FF-1103) His films of the Portland Stone Quarrymen in Dorset are frequently seen
on TV (FF1106) and his first film of London street games "One
Potato, Two Potato" won many awards for the British Film Institute (FF-1107).Some of these custom films are now being incorporated in a new TV production by
Peter Blow in Canada called "Masks and Mummers" (FF-4402).
Blow had already created a stir among film buffs
with his "Village of Widows" portraying the no-warning deaths
of the Uranium miners in Alaska, and now more recently filming Inuit Mummers
he decided to work with Kennedy contrasting the remote Newfoundland Mummers
and the thousand-strong annual city parade of the Philadelphia Mummers. In England
they filmed the hobby-horses at Minehead and in Ireland the seasonal
groups of Mummers around Ennikskillen and, in the South, the Strawboys and the Wrenboys.
NEXT? - So far we have neglected Peter's proposals
for ensuring that future generations respect their traditional roots.
For 15 years he was a degree lecturer at Dartington College of Arts where
his job was to try and get the Music and Theatre and Art students not
only speak to each other but also to understand the social-ritual, entertainment-educational
and communal value of traditional studies. He would like to
see more schools and colleges follow the example made in Denmark by the
ballad scholar, Grundvig, who set up "Folk Colleges" in Jutland
in the 1920s.
Peter is in favour of the "Foxfire" method of
tapping parents and grandparent power and the use of "The Dalton
Educational System", under which he benefitted at his experimental preparatory school with the use of individual assignments. In this, each classroom is itself
a specialistic reference library and archive where students "can find
out for themselves", as they will need to do later in life, rather
than employing the disastrous class-preaching and exam system which in
no way enables our youngsters to appreciate the value of community life.
HERE ARE SOME DETAILS OF THE FIRST WORLD TOURS BY "THE SINGING
KENNEDYS":-
TOUR #2 in 1872-6 with wife, Helen, Marjory, David
& James Kennedy (Robert joining the group later) Dep. Glasgow (March 1872): (By non-stop Clipper ship "Ben Ledi") Madeira (mentioned en route): 1
AUSTRALIA (Victoria & NSW): Cape Otway: 1 Port Phillip: 1, 66 Melbourne
(Victoria): 1-7, 16, 143 Geelong: 10-11,16 Sandhurst or Bendigo: 11 Echuca:
13 Castlemaine: 14 Kyneton: 15 Melbourne (Jan 1873): 16 Winchelsea: 16
Colac: 16 Camperdown: 16 Terang: 18 Mortlake: 18 Warrnambool: l9 Belfast:
19 Portland: 19 then inland into "The Bush" Branxholme: 21 Hamilton: 21,
59 Ararat: 21 Daylesford: 22 Bacchus Marsh: 22 Melbourne (March 1873):
22 Kilmore: 23, 45 Seymour: 23 Longwood: 23 Violet Town: 23 Oxley: 24
Benalla: 24 Wangaratta: 25 Beechworth: 25 Yackandandah: 25 Chiltern: 25
Wagunyah (Into NSW 23 days out): 25 Albury: 25 Billabong Creek: 26-7 Wagga
Wagga (NSW): 25,27-8 Gundagai: 28 Yass: 28 Goulburn: 28 (By train) Sydney:
29-31, 143-4 Parramatta: 31 (Steamship from Sydney NSW) Brisbane (Queensland):
33 Gympie: 33, 35-7 Maryborough: 38 Rockhampton: 39-40 Maryborough: 40
Brisbane: 40 (then inland by train) Ipswich: 41 Dalby: 42 Toowoomba: 42
Warwick: 42 Stanthorpe: 42 Tenterfield (NSW): 44 Deepwater: 44 Glen Innes:
44 Armidale: 45-6 Tamworth: 50 Murrurundi: 50 (by train) Scone: 50 Musclebrook:
50 Singleton: 50 Maitland: 51 Newcastle (seaport): 50-1 Musclebrook: 51
Denman: 51 Merriwa: 52 Cassilis: 52 Gulgong: 51-2 Mudgee: 53 Hill End:
55 Bathurst: 55 (by rail) Sydney: 56 (by steamship) Hobart (Tasmania):
56-7 New Norfolk: 58 Hamilton: 58-9 Bothwell: 59 Launceston: 61 (480m
by steamship) Adelaide (S.Aus.): 62-3 Gawler: 64 Strathalbyn: 64 Tanunda:
64 Burra Burra: 65 Kadina: 65 Port Wallaroo: 65 Moonta: 65 Adelaide: 65
(steamship back) Melbourne: 66 (Steamship "Albion") Dunedin (Otago NZ-SI)
: 66-9, 70-2 Waihola Gorge: 73 Milton: 74-5 Tuapeka: 74-5 Balclutha: 75-6
Te Whetu (NZ): 108-112 Tokomairiro: 76 Popotunoa: 76-7 Mataura: 78 Invercargill:
78 Riverton: 79 Winton: 79-80 Kingston: 81 (sailed) Lake Wakatip: 81-3
Queenstown: 83-4 Arrowtown: 85 Cromwell: 85 Clyde: 86 Otepopo: 87 Oamaru
(seaport): 87 Waimate: 90 Timaru (Canterbury): 90 ("Cobb's coach") Temuka:
91 Ashburton: 92 Christchurch: 90-5 Port Lyttleton: 75 (Steamship of 286
tons) Port Nicholson: 96 Wellington (NZ-NI): 96-8 Hutt Valley &Ngahauranga:
99 (Steamer through Cook's Straits) Picton: 100 Nelson: 99 (sailed past
Cape Egmont) Taranaki: 101 Auckland - party divided (part Steamer & part
Overland) Napier: 106, 132-5 (coach ?) Drury: 107 Point Russel or Mercer:
107 Rangariri: 107 Cambridge: 108 Te Whetu: 108-112 Rotorua: 113-4 Ohinemutu:
113-121 Whaka-rewa-rewa: 120 Tiki Tapu: 122 Taupo (NZ-NI): 132 Wairoa:
122 (by canoe) Rotomahana: 122-3 (150m by coach) Taupo: 132 Napier: 135
(south by coach) Pohui: 134 Waipawa: 135-6 Manawatu Gorge: 138-9 Palmerston:
140 Wanganui: 140 (by steamer "Manawatu") Wellington: 141-2 (steamer)
Melbourne: 142-3 (steamer) Sydney: 143 (June 1875 by steamer "Macgregor")
Auckland: 144 Sandwich Islands (after 16 days): Honolulu: 146-9 San Francisco
(Ca. USA): 150-4 Stockton: 155 Sacramento: 155-6 (east by train) Nevada:
156-7 Salt Lake City: 157-163 Ogden: 163 (after 3 days through Nebraska
& Wyoming) Omaha: 164 Chicago: 164-6 Detroit: 166 Windsor (CANADA): 167
Toronto: 167, 176 Hamilton: 168 Clifton: 168 Niagara: 168-70 Simcoe: 171
London: 171 Stratford: 171 Galt: 172 Guelph: 172 Berlin: 172 (first sleigh
ride) Ayr: 172 Listowel: 173 Wingham: 173 Barrie: 175 Mount Forest: 176
Southampton: 176 Toronto (Grand Trunk Railway) Belleville 176 (Sleigh
ride) Picton: 176-7 Kingston: 178 Ottawa: 178 Montreal (Jan 1876): 179-183
Quebec: 184-5 Island Pond: 187 St John (NB): 187-9 Fundy, Bay of: 188
Newcastle: 189 (by steamer) Chatham: 189 Moncton: 190 Amherst (NS): 190
Truro: 190 Cape Breton Island: 190 Halifax: 190-1 (by steamer) St John's
(NFL) 192-8 (by liner) Liverpool: 198
SOUTH AFRICA dep Jan 1879 David Jnr (2 weeks ahead)
Senr, Marjory & Lizzie, Robert & James Dartmouth (Donald Currie steamer
"Dublin Castle") Cape Town arr. March 1879: 201-9 (by sail & surf-boat)
Port Elizabeth: 206 Grahamstown: 208 King William's Town: 210-214 Alice
(Stutterheim): 215 Fort Beaufort: 218 Katberg: 219 Queenstown: 220 Molteno:
222 Burgersdorp: 222-3 AliwaL Norh: 223 Smithfield (Orange FS): 224 Bloemfontein:
227-8 Kimberley: 228-37 Fauresmith: 238 Phillippolis; 238 Colesberg (Cape
Prov.): 239 Cradock: 239-240 Somerset East: 240 Port Elizabeth: 241 (3
days by steamer) Durban (Natal): 242 (by train) Botha's Hill (by Murray's
bus) (Pieter) Maritzburg: 244 Durban: 249 (by steamer) Mossel Bay: 248
Cape Town: 249 (by steamer) England (port not stated)
INDIA Oct 1879 dep Southampton on Steamer "Khedive"
Father, mother, Helen, Lizzie while Marjory went ahead to make arrangements
(via Dieppe, Paris, Brindisi, Alexandria, Aden, Bombay arriving 2 weeks
ahead of the others) Calcutta: 250 (by railway 130 miles) Assenhole: 273-4
Jammalpore: 274 Dinapore: 274-5 Benares: 275-281 Allabad: 284 Jubbulpore:
288 Bombay: 289-92 Jubbulpore: 292 Lucknow: 292-6 Cawnpore: 296-9 Agra:
300 Delhi: 306 Lahore: 307-8 Dinapore: 312 Calcutta: 312 By Steamer "Mirzapore"
Madras: 313-4 Ceylon: 314 Suez: 316-7 (Here father, mother & two sisters
took ship to join Robert, James & Marjory in Italy) Valetta (MALTA); 317
Gibraltar: 319 Southampton: 319
Here now is a brief extract of the start of Tour #2 of
Great Grandfather Kennedy's World Tours as told by his son, David (Peter,
is presently preparing "The Full Story" for publication):-
CHAPTER 1. About the middle of March, 1872,
we sailed from Glasgow to Melbourne in the clipper ship "Ben Ledi" Its
staterooms were commodious, and just numerous enough to accommodate our
party, so that we reigned supreme in the saloon. To while away the time,
we occasionally gave concerts to the sailors. The jolly tars more than
once reciprocated by decorating the forecastle with bunting and lamps,
and inviting us to listen to their nautical lays. We of course had with
us our small travelling piano, which was securely lashed-up in one of
the hinder compartments. Here we juniors - under the paternal direction
- held daily and nightly practice of vocal scales, glees, and part-songs.
No matter whether the vessel was rolling off Madeira, or stagnant for
a week in the sweltering calm of the tropics, or wildly careering in a
ten days' gale far south of the Cape, there was the same rigid rehearsal.
On one occasion, in the height of a storm, each of us holding a candle
and swaying our bodies to the varying angles of the vessel, there was
a sudden pitch, a roll, and a crash of waters breaking upon the deck.
My father was violently lurched off his camp-stool, and all of us huddled
remorselessly into a corner amid black darkness and stench of extinguished
wicks. While thus achieving a sufficient measure of "light and shade,"
it was somewhat difficult to import these qualities into our vocal numbers,
so the rehearsal was that night abandoned in deference to the tempest.
Otherwise, our ship-board life was not more eventful than commonly befalls
the Australian voyager. We caught the usual albatross, and killed the
customary shark. The passage, however, was exceptionally protracted, as
it was not until dawn of a Sunday in June - when we had been all but a
hundred days on board - that the "Ben Ledi" rounded Cape Otway, the mountainous
promontory of the Victorian coast, and shortly afterwards entered Port
Phillip Bay, at the head of which stood Melbourne, its towers and spires
showing dimly through the dust that blew over the city. On the left lay
the port of Williamstown, our desired haven, which was reached late in
the afternoon. A short railway ride brought us to the city, and an Albert
car conveyed us to Scott's hotel.
SingingRoundTheWorld - p96 - South Island NZ Of course
there was a loud laugh at this story, which encouraged another man to
burst out with "Ha, ha, ha - talking of drinking, the ship I came out
in had a captain and mate who were continually quarrelling on the voyage.
They fought it out in the log-book. The captain wrote down one evening,
'Mate drunk to-day,' which the mate no sooner saw next morning than he
scribbled underneath, 'Captain sober to-day!' Had him there!" With stories
like these the time passed pleasantly. The shores of the South Island
became indistinct, and presently there was sighted the entrance to Port
Nicholson, the harbour of Wellington - a rugged mouth, armed on the western
shore by sharp rocky teeth, between which were sticking the bones of several
vessels wrecked during a gale. Port Nicholson is seven miles long and
five miles broad. Wellington is built on a fringe of land, backed by hills
like Dunedin. It is the capital of New Zealand, and has 10,675 inhabitants.
Imagine a timber-built metropolis! Wellington, being subject to earthquakes,
is constructed entirely of wood. Grand towers, steeples, balconies, and
shop-fronts are seen at every turn - all wooden, but having quite an "imposing"
look even when you are close to them. We lived at the Empire Hotel, a
building formerly a theatre, so there was plenty of space everywhere.
The water of the harbour came close to the hotel and lapped the stone
foundations, putting us greatly in mind of the amphibious houses of Lerwick,
in Shetland. No one who intends making Wellington his home need be frightened
at the earthquakes. The shocks at Wellington are as distinct from the
earthquakes of South America as a breeze is from a typhoon. Wellington
is the centre of atmospheric as well as terrestrial disturbances. The
blasts blow over the harbour remorselessly. As a Dunedin man it is said,
can be told by his stoop, as if climbing hills; so a Wellington man is
known abroad by the mechanical way he screws up his eyes and claps his
hand on his hat! Every night we saw about as queer a way of lighting street
lamps as could well be imagined. A rattle of hoofs was heard and a man
cantered up on horseback to a lamp-post. He drew bridle, rose up, stood
on the saddle like a circus-rider, struck a match, lit the lamp, sank
once more into the stirrups and galloped noisily off - the rapidly-increasing
lights bearing testimony to the quickness of this novel system.
Here we saw Maories for the first time in any numbers. We
met a native in velvet coat, light tweed trousers, and white hat, with
silver-headed cane and heavy gold chain, and tattooed so that you could
scarcely distinguish his eyes. He looked as if he owned thousands of acres,
as perhaps he did, or as if he were a member of Parliament, as perhaps
he was, for there are four Maories now in the Assembly - two on the Government
benches, and two on the Opposition. Maories are worldly wise and take
care of their broad acres, leasing them well or selling them at a goodly
price. Many of the natives are rich, have large farms, and bring their
crops to market as regularly as any of the settlers. The Maories are well-built
fellows with brown skin, black straight hair, sharp eyes and high cheekbones.
The older natives bear the tattoo marks. As for the women when young they
have a kind of comeliness, but they age fast and are inveterate smokers.
PETER DOUGLAS KENNEDY, born 18th November 1922, comes
of a family involved in the performance of local traditions going back
five generations. His father, Douglas Kennedy, MBE, who became Director
of The English Folk Dance Society following the death of Cecil Sharp in
1924, was the son of singing teacher, John Kennedy, and grandson of David
Kennedy, the famous singer, who travelled with members of his family on
sailing ships to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and the
USA performing Lowland Scots ballads and folksongs to emigrant audiences.
One of David's daughters was Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser, who collected, performed
and published her extensive collection, "The Songs of the Hebrides".
She was the first to sing with the Celtic minstrel harp and a founder
of the Clarsach Society. When turning out her sister Margaret's house
in Castle Street, Edinburgh, Peter discovered Aunt Marjorie's collection
of Edison-Bell phonograph cylinders with the melodies of many now well-known
Hebridean songs such as "The Road to the Isles" and "The Eriskay Love-Lilt".
Peter's mother, Helen Karpeles, was the first secretary
of The English Folk Dance Society founded by Cecil Sharp, and her sister,
Peter's aunt, Dr Maud Karpeles, OBE, worked with Sharp collecting The
Folksongs of the Southern Appalachians, and after Sharp's death, The Folk-Songs
of Newfoundland. The music and photographs of her collection were left
to Peter as her executor. Peter was born close by Abbey Road Recording
Studios, St John's Wood, London and went to Abinger Hill, an experimental
Dalton System School, near Dorking, Surrey followed by Leighton Park School
in Reading run by The Society of Friends. At the time of the fall of France
Peter left to assist his parents who were looking after refugees on the
Isle of Man, though under age, driving pharmaceutical and other essential
supplies. At first a conscientious objector he worked on farms in Herefordshire
and Cheshire, trained as a tractor driver in Hertfordshire, and then worked
on the effect of mustard gas on crops at the Rothamsted Experimental Station
at Harpenden.
His passion as a child was an interest in the technical
side of theatre, lighting, noises off, make-up, stage design and management.
Since there was then no specialist college, he was advised by film director,
Gabriel Pascal, to attend The Architectural Association School which had
been evacuated to Hadley Common, Barnet. After two years, when he had
passed the Intermediate level, at 17, he was conscripted and joined the
RAF and was selected for the Combined Services Intelligence Service as
a modelmaker, known as a "Pattern Maker Architectural". After "square-bashing"
at Blackpool during Wakes Week, he was posted to RAF Medmenham, and based
at Phyllis Court Club, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. When America entered
the war he helped train a USAF team which had been recruited from Walt
Disney Studios. Working from maps, stereo aerial photographs and pre-war
holiday snapshots, his unit prepared bombing and landing targets including
those used by the famous "Dambusters". After preparing the models for
the North African landings, Peter and his unit boarded a troopship at
Liverpool, and after being followed all the way by German U-boats, they
landed in Algiers, later moving to the Allied HQ at Sidi Bou Said near
Tunis.
Peter frequently visited Arab pipers and after one such
visit, coming out of the Casbah was held by the Army Military Police who
were unable to believe his story. During the invasion of Sicily, Peter
flew as a tail-gunner in an American Flying Fortress, afterwards, when
his unit moved to Italy, he drove a lorry-load of photographic equipment
. Landing on a beach just outside Naples, Peter tried to get details of
minefields from an Italian Major standing on the shore who called out:
"Latino a scuola?". This incident was the beginning of his, at that time,
frown-on "fraternisation with the locals" which led to him speaking
Italian and eventually teaching the other members of his unit. While stationed
at San Severo near Foggia in Puglia, after modelling the succession of
river valleys all the way up the Adriatic coast, Peter would deliver them
to the front and, though driving through country for the first time, experienced
an extraordinary sensation of "déjà vu". When hostilities came to an end
in Italy, Peter formed a Theatre Company drawing on the American and British
Army and Air Force personnel in the unit, they travelled extensively,
frequently performing with their scenery propped up on stages on top of
wine-barrels.
After demobilisation Peter decided not to continue his architectural
or theatrical studies but decided to follow his parents line of business,
working as a folk music entrepreneur. He studied and became a drummer
in his parents "Folk Dance Band". After training with the Society he became
the Societies first post-war representative covering Northumberland, Durham
and Yorkshire sharing an office with The Central Council of Physical Recreation
at 16 Market Street, Durham. He was introduced to local traditional musicians
by Jack Armstrong and Lady Trevelyan at Cambo and soon discovered that
there the local villages dances seemed far removed from the English folk
dances being taught by the Folk Dance Society. Since Peter had played
squeeze-box first on sailing barges prewar and combined this music with
a bass foot drum and decided to tour the villages and clubs running his
own Village Barn Dances. He ran hundreds of such events in his area and
this led to collecting a whole new repertoire of Reels, Quadrilles and
Country Dances. After putting advertisements in local papers, receiving
letters from pre-war champions including Jim Ellwood, he organised championships,
putting up a silver belt which was won by a teenage miner called Jacky
Toaduff. (Some years later, when Peter was teaching folk dancing at the
Junior and Senior Depts of The Royal Ballet School, he brought Jackie
down to London and fifty years later his revival of clog-dancing became
the subject of the film, "Billy Elliott").
While working in the North-East organising Village Barn
Dances, Peter became involved in radio and travelled to Bristol to take
part as a drummer and a solo melodeon-player in the monthly "Everybody
Swing" broadcasts from Bristol. In 1947 he was invited by Frank Gillard
to join the BBC at Whiteladies Road in Bristol and, after training, worked
on Music and Drama programmes under Natural History producer, Desmond
Hawkins. While there he met Ludwig Koch and helped Desmond set up what
has now become The Natural History Unit. During his training he also helped
experiments using parabolic microphones to record bird-song and portable
recording gear. In the meantime a friend, who was building a reel-to-reel
tape recorder at the Scophony Baird factory near Wells in Somerset, loaned
Peter a prototype on which he recorded the local shanty-singer, Stanley
Slade, the last shellback to have sung working shanties "before the mast"
on sailing ships and later to entertain passengers on steamships. Peter
arranged for Stanley to be recorded by The Gramophone Company at Abbey
Road but Stanley died a few days before he was due to go into the studio.
The death of Slade in 1950 highlighted the importance of
tape-recording and, when Peter was further encouraged by his American
counterpart, folk collector, Alan Lomax, Peter decided to leave the studios
and go out free-lance, "in the field", recording local West Country traditions.
Recognising the importance and urgency of recording local traditions,
he set up his own mobile tape unit and equipped a small van with two car
batteries and a voltage converter powering a specially adapted recorder
and playback, with a Wearite "Ferrograph" deck. From 1949-1950 Peter arranged
a series of West Country radio programmes, Village Barn Dance going to
a different village every month. Living in a caravan, Peter unearthed
local singers and storytellers in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset and
Wiltshire. The dancing was to the music of his own eight-piece band, The
Haymakers, which included four fiddlers, flute, accordion, guitar and
drums. The MC's for the series were Ralph Wightman and Bernard Fishwick.
Extracts of some of these programmes were included on Lomax's "World Library
of Folk and Primitive Music" for Columbia Records (re-released by Rounder).
Peter's work in the North East and West Country now started
to attract National interest and, his recordings were being copied onto
discs for the BBC Sound Archive. In 1952 Lomax persuaded the BBC Recorded
Programmes Library into a special project "to record for the Archive folk
music, dialect and customs" and to employ him and Seamus Ennis of The
Irish Folklore Commission.. Using his own specialised mobile equipment,
he and Seamus travelled the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland
seeking out traditional performers. It was Peter's idea in 1953, his choice
of title and signature tune, that they should do a weekly radio magazine
providing samples of their work, so Peter and Seamus embarked on a weekly
Sunday morning series that was to continue for over ten years. In those
days asking informants irf they knew any folk songs would not have been
understood, so they used to ask for any songs that started with opening
phrases like "As I roved out" and this became the title of the series.
The signature tune made use of a recording he had made of the Irish singer,
Sarah Makem, at Keady in Co Armagh. It was on this same first trip to
Northern Ireland that he recorded Frank McPeake singing and accompanying
himself on the Irish Uillean bagpipes, including the now well-known "Wild
Mountain Thyme" or "Will you go, lassie go?" For Peter this was remarkable
because only a few days previously, at a festival in Croatia, Peter had
been recording a Serbian bard also singing to his own bagpipes. (Peter's
recordings in Yiugoslavia have now being released on two CDs by Rounder
Records)
Over the next 20 years Peter continued his fieldwork, taking
part in hundreds of broadcasts on radio and educational TV and editing
commercial and educational recordings. His films Wake up and Dance, Walk
in St George, Oss Oss Wee Oss and One Potao Two Potato all won prizes
and Peter edited The Unesco International Folk Film Catalogue. He has
many "firsts": the first to bring together and record folk-singers Ewan
McColl, Bert Lloyd, Martin Carthy; making the first LPs of groups like
the Dubliners and Liverpool Spinners; organising the first Post-war National
Folk Festival at Keele University and the first post-war Television broadcast
of ballad traditions, introduced by Alan Lomax and produced by David Attenborough
from Alexandra Palace on June 26th 1953. Over the last 25 years Peter
has put together over 400 audio and video programmes of traditional music
and customs, available on his own label.
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