Newfoundland Traditional Music

I am looking for titles or information on traditional Newfoundland Irish music books.

Thanking you in advance

Kelly Russell collection, possibly.

Check this out: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/first-canadian-fiddle-day-kicks-off-with-tunes-in-st-john-s-1.3069275
Ed Lear may be yer man.

Bob

Mr. Gumby is right, the first volume of the Kelly Russell Collection (covering fiddlers Emile Benoit and Rufus Guinchard) is absolutely essential for Newfoundland tunes. I’m not 100% sure it’s still available, but bugging Russell about it couldn’t hurt. (Second volume has some good tunes as well.)

Christina Smith has released at least three tunebooks as well, though I’m not finding links for them at the moment. She’s very active teaching with the (Suzuki) STEP Fiddlers.

There’s also some Newfoundland tunes on thesession.org. If you dig through the list of tunes I’ve posted there are a fair number, and if you follow the album links you can find ones other people have posted. :slight_smile:

If learning from recorded music works for you, there are some really excellent albums easily available these days:

Rufus Guinchard Humouring the Tunes
The Dardanelles Eastern Light
The Freels
A Crowd of Bold Sharemen
Christina Smith and Jean Hewson August Gale
Vince Collins Lifting Out the Stove

Just like Irish music, some of the best albums of Newfoundland traditional music have never been released on CD – most notably the early albums of Guinchard and Benoit.

I’m an idjit, forgot to post two of the best solo albums:

Gerry Strong, Velvet in the Wind – primarily flute and whistle!
Daniel Payne, Chain

Not Newfoundland but in the neighborhood is “A Heritage of Songs,” by Carrie B. Grover, printed in 1973. Ms. Grover, a fiddler, lived in Nova Scotia and learned tunes from family members who hailed from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, as well as tunes from Nova Scotia. Ms. Grover’s picture in the preface shows a woman easily in her 70’s and she dates some of the tunes back to the 1800s, so the collection goes a fair piece back. The book wasn’t typeset in the conventional way but printed from a manuscript done on a typewriter. The tunes are hand-transcribed. I found my copy in a used book auction here in Texas. The Library of Congress number is ISBN 0-88305-239-3. Probably not many copies out there but it might be worth a google.

Not a book, and not exclusively Newfoundland, but GEST Songs Of Newfoundland And Labrador boasts, “3669 songs | 2462 videos | 473 midis | 300 chords | 81 scores | 61 Playlists”.

Huh, I use GEST Songs Of Newfoundland And Labrador as a reference for songs all the time, but only get there by Googling, never even knew it had a front page.

Another great one I forgot:

Aaron Collis and Emilia Bartellas

All the sheet music for the album is available from that web page, too. Though if you’re looking for specific tunes you already have heard, it might not serve so well, as many of the tunes on this album were recorded for the first time on it.