NEW YORK—The Folk Music Society of New York brought the songs and traditions that have made merry holiday celebrations for centuries in Western Europe to a stage in Midtown Manhattan on Sunday afternoon.
English folk band, Nowell Sing We Clear, entertained and educated the audience at Norman Thomas High School at 33rd Street and Park Avenue. They sang “Over the Hill, Over the Dale,” one of the oldest known carols, left to posterity by 16th century Finnish scholar, Theodoricus Petri, who included it in his compilation of hymns, “Piae Cantiones.”
“I suspect probably almost as many songs take form in the pub [as in the church],” joked lead vocalist Tony Barrand. Many pubs in England keep the old songs alive and their patrons continue to create new carols. Particular pubs have their own songs that folklorists can only learn by going there, says Barrand.
Nowell Sing We Clear sang one, “Hail, Smiling Morn,” that they learned from a field recording. Barrand noted that doing “field research” in the folk music discipline is a scholarly euphemism for going to the pub to listen to some tunes.
The band members left the stage under various pretenses and returned in various costumes as mummers.
Mummer plays were common during medieval times, a variation on a Roman ritual procession to greet the new year. In the Middle Ages, performers in disguise would visit peoples’ homes to entertain with silent plays. The tradition evolved and came to include words, often comical and rhyming as they were in the play performed by Nowell Sing We Clear.
Their script was adapted from a 1920s mummer play from Kentucky. The plays always include a death and resurrection, and this time the protagonist was Kim Kardashian—the troupe certainly made some modern edits to the old script.
Friends Read Free