[song-circle] FW: "The Wreck of the Crash of the Easthill Mining Disaster"

[rthurgood at sympatico.ca]

To all those people on this mailing list, who never come to Song Circle but have strong opinions about how the regulars use the list: I'm addressing an important issue here and this will be my last word on the subject, so you needn't bother telling me that you don't want to hear any more about it. Furthermore, threatening to have your name taken off the Song Circle list means nothing to me. If you want it off, take it off. My apologies for the length of this e-mail, but the issues are of great concern. If you don't want to read this communication, delete it.
Joel,I have a few points to make regarding your response:
First, your communication below only testifies to the insensitivity I was addressing in my previous e-mail. Don't listen? Leave the room? You directed all of us to "The Wreck of The Crash of The Easthill Mining Disaster." How about at the next Song Circle if I sing a few funny songs about the Holocaust, breast cancer, AIDS, rape, or the Fort Hood massacre? Anyone who doesn't like these songs can not listen or leave the room (always an easy option at Song Circles). And if you don't like my dark humour, I'll consider that to be your problem, so don't complain to me.
Second, as Maura can testify, I'm no stranger to dark humour. There's not a lot that's sacred to me -- death, disease, suffering, human misery -- I can joke about it. However, I try to gauge my setting and audience. Dark humour works best among peers dealing with the same issue. I worked in a bottling plant, where bottles exploded regularly -- I still have a scar. We workers used to laugh uproariously about how, when they get too scarred, men on the line must have been moved to other floors where they won't scare new workers. There are plenty of dark jokes told among women, minority groups, and people in dangerous occupations like sailing, mining, and the military, that they wouldn't find funny if I told them them.
Third, being urban and educated has everything to do with it when you're satirizing the song traditions of mainly rural or small-town working people with little education. I've heard educated "folkies" sneer at the unsophisticated poetics of folk song and folk poetry, but I have yet to hear anyone joking about the elite artistic responses to 9/11. You and your friends are, by and large, outsiders to the tradition you're satirizing. Brooke may, as you say, be reacting to a series of disaster songs at a Song Circle, but, as I said before, these ballads are mainly "heartfelt songs about disasters, made by the loved ones of the dead and still sung in communities where these disasters took place" (Peggie Seeger's "Springhill Mining Disaster", while a fine song, is an exception). I've heard people From Gabarus, Cape Breton and Belloram, Newfoundland sing "The Wreck of The John Harvey," about a Belloram ship that was wrecked off Gabarus. The poetry isn't great, but believe me no singer was laughing about "brave young Foote", who, in frigid waters, swam ashore with a rope, then died after saving his fellow sailors. Outsiders to a tradition might want to educate themselves as to what a genre is about before deciding to parody it. There are reasons why such people such as Neville, Rodney, and me sing the songs we do. Ask.
Third, please don't compare deaths of people to deaths of pets. I've lost pets that I loved and people that I loved  It's not the same. (To any childless people reading this: when a parent has lost a child, they don't want to hear how you felt when your cat died.)
Fourth, I'd like you to know what I was doing at five o'clock this morning. Lying in bed, thinking. Thinking about things like: how my mother, home with four children, must have felt when my father called from the mine to assure her that he wasn't one of the men killed; what it was like for her to watch her husband heading off to work in the Pugwash mine as people were searching for survivors of the latest Springhill Mine Disaster, forty miles away; what it was like for my cousin and his family when the Draeger crews from the Donkin mine, where he worked underground, were rushing off to Westray to rescue trapped miners; how the people of Gabarus must have felt when pieces of the Charles Valentine started floating ashore, and they realized that the loud sound they'd heard hours before wasn't thunder, but a ship exploding, a ship crewed by local men and coincidentally passing the coast where they lived; what life must have been like for my grandmother after her father and her mother's brother died in a fishing accident -- her father was one of seven brothers, only one of whom died in bed, five were lost at sea (a couple aboard The Valentine), and one died in the woods. My grandmother and one of her six sisters, orphans, then survived as child domestics in Boston. I'll quit here, but I assure you, I'm just getting started. That's what life and death are like in coastal and mining communities. There's a reason why these ballads exist. By the way, no straightforward disaster song, meant to comfort survivors, ever kept me awake at night.
I know that neither you nor your friend Brooke was trying to make anyone feel miserable, but that doesn't always excuse insensitivity. I'm trying to educate you, not make you feel guilty. As you choose, you can learn something about both folk song and the inappropriateness of undifferentiated humour in a public forum, or you can decide that you're right and the feelings of people affected by tragedies from which you are far removed are of no importance to you.
Ranald
> From: jpolowin at hotmail.com
> To: song-circle at lists.ifdo.pugmarks.com
> Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:36:18 +0000
> Subject: Re: [song-circle] "The Wreck of the Crash of the Easthill Mining	Disaster"
> 
> 
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> 
> Ranald wrote:
> 
> > Joel=2C thanks for the song about "The Wreck of the Crash of the
> > Easthill Mining Disaster". There's nothing like a satirical song
> > that includes both sailing and mining disasters to give a belly
> > laugh to someone like me=2C from a small community (near Springhill=2C
> > in fact)=2C many of whose men were miners or fishermen. To make it
> > even more humorous=2C I lost a number of my own relatives at sea=2C
> > and=2C although my uncles and cousin survived the mines=2C some of
> > their friends died below ground. My cousin=2C slightly older than
> > me and retired=2C is now dying from cancer caused by conditions in
> > the mines=2C and since cancer made it into the song too=2C he should
> > really enjoy "The Wreck."
> >
> > When we get together=2C there's nothing my family likes more than
> > laughing at the heartfelt songs about disasters=2C made by the loved
> > ones of the dead and still sung in communities where these disasters
> > took place. These songs are especially funny when they're real "folk
> > songs=2C" composed by uneducated rural people without the benefit of
> > a university education. Yeah=2C nothing we like more than an urban
> > folkie getting a laugh at our sorrow. By the way=2C I have a tape of
> > songs made by my Newfoundland-outport friends Jean and Michelle after
> > their father and brother died while fishing. Dealing with the emotions
> > surrounding this tragedy started Jeannie writing songs. Perhaps I
> > could send a copy to your friend Brooke to give her further fodder
> > for her wit.
> 
> Ranald=2C dark humour comes from many places.=A0 I don't know what
> inspired Brooke to write that song.=A0 You snark about her being an
> "urban folkie"=2C and yes=2C she's currently living in Vancouver=2C but I
> don't know where she grew up.=A0 As for comparing her university
> education to the "uneducated people"... what does that have to do
> with anything?
> 
> Eric Bogle has written a number of moving serious songs.=A0 He's also
> written things like "Nobody's Moggy Now"=2C an elegy to a dead cat
> that was hit by a truck and which he found by the side of the road.
> Some people enjoy that song immensely=3B others -- particularly those
> who've lost pets themselves in that way -- can't stand it.=A0 But most
> of the latter don't say that he shouldn't have written it or that
> it shouldn't be sung.=A0 They avoid listening to it.=A0 Some will leave
> the room temporarily if someone starts singing it.=A0 But they accept
> that for others=2C who do not have such a personal connection with the
> subject=2C the song is fun.
> 
> I think it's likely that Brooke's song was a reaction to her hearing
> a long series of serious disaster songs in a song circle somewhere=2C
> with nobody able to break the mood=3B that would have suggested the
> grotesque concatenation of events.=A0 As I said=2C I don't know.=A0 I am
> quite certain that it wasn't intended to poke fun at people who've
> suffered from such events.
> 
>  		 	   		 =20
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