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My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean: British Songs In The USA Nehi Records NEH3X1


This is a three-CD budget box set, produced with the full support of the English Folk Dance & Song Society and the Museum of Appalachia, which contains 75 tracks recorded in the years 1925–1945. The notes in the 36-page booklet are penned by Steve Roud,


creator of the Roud Folk Song Index, so each song can be easily traced to a multitude of vari- ants on both sides of the Atlantic.


In some cases a song appears in more than one recorded version. There are a cou- ple of opportunities to see George Collins’s corpse a-coming, while poor Pretty Polly gets done-in no fewer than five times (by John Hammond, Dock Boggs, BF Shelton, Pete Steele and the Coon Creek Girls) between 1925 and 1938. There’s much fun to be had in attempting to determine the British source just by looking at the titles. It’s hard, for instance, to conceive of any exam- ple of yer actual Olde English Folke song being called King Kong Kichie Kitchie Ki-Me- O, as Chubby Parker’s splendid 1928 version of Froggie Went A-Courting is. Not every- thing here is a folk song in the strictest sense (there are a few of known music hall origin) but it’s all fascinating and rewarding stuff. Almost all of these tracks were originally released on 78rpm records, so the sound quality is expectedly crackly, particularly on the earliest material.


Legendary figures of American roots music including Lead Belly, Clarence Ashley, Charlie Poole, Dock Boggs, Blind Willie McTell and The Carter Family feature alongside lesser- known performers like Kelly Harrell and Asa Martin, and fantastically-named groups like Wilmer Watts & His Lonely Eagles and Byrd Moore & His Hot Shots. My one minor niggle is that Uncle Dave Macon is credited with The Girl I Left Behind Me, but it doesn’t sound like him (a subsequent quick internet search leads me to the excellent Musical Traditions web- site, and the revelation that it’s Gid Tanner & His Skillet Lickers). It’s a fine track, either way!


Scholarly, affordable and hugely enter- taining, this terrific collection ticks a lot of boxes. Buy with confidence, y’all.


nehirecords.com Steve Hunt


ANOUAR BRAHEM Souvenance ECM Records 379 7776


Look here for a lesson in subtlety and restraint. Souvenance is one of those now- rare specimens: a double album of original material; over the two CDs, the album clocks in at about an hour and a half.


Although the Tunisian Anouar Brahem is classically trained in the oud, this album doesn’t immediately stand out as Arabic; instead, it feels like Western contemporary classical music, written and played by jazz musicians. Or perhaps vice versa – or more accurately, both at the same time. It seems to owe some influence to Glass and Miles Davis during his smooth period, but Bra- hem’s compositions are all his own. The Tunisian core of his writing becomes appar- ent slowly, but is indeed all-encompassing, heard in an unexpected semitone, an unfa- miliar glissando or the unmistakable swoop of an Arabic melody.


Although Souvenance is made up of eleven tracks, each piece seems to be part of one whole, both CDs of the album halves of a single work. Musical themes recur through- out – if not directly, they are hinted, similar


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