For this week’s ‘Recording of the Week’ the Library’s Schools Team celebrates Windrush Day.

Windrush Day is this week on June 22^nd, the date in 1948 when the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury.  This week, and all year round, the British Library Schools Team run a session that looks at the some of the personal stories of the Windrush Generation.  ‘Windrush Voices’ engages GCSE and A-Level students with oral history recordings and written sources to offer a different perspective to that found in textbooks.  Our session uses testimony from a wide range of the Library’s oral history collections.  Learners can hear the voices of people including educator and writer Beryl Gilroy, novelist Andrea Levy and photographer Vanley Burke.

My favourite recording though comes from, appropriately enough, An Oral History of Oral Histories.  It is a 2012 recording of Donald Hinds by Robert Wilkinson, and all 38 parts of it are available in the Sounds Collection.

A photograph of a London bus.

Donald, who died in March this year aged 89, was a writer, journalist, historian and teacher.  Listening to his recordings you get the impression of an incredibly clever man, sharp, interested in everything and with a very wry sense of humour.  Even when describing some very difficult subjects you feel an amused laugh is not far away.

Listen to Donald Hinds talking about being a bus conductor

Download Donald Hinds (bus conductor) transcript

Listen to Donald Hinds talking about being a history teacher

Download Donald Hinds (teacher) transcript

We use two clips of Donald, which you can listen to here, one about his experiences as a Bus Conductor and one about his experiences as a History Teacher.  So what do we get our learners to do with these recordings?  If you’d like, why not try yourself?

Read the transcript of each clip and think about what stands out for you from what Donald is saying.  Then listen, ideally twice, to the clips.  Think about whether something different stands out now and why?  With learners we delve into the power of the voice and the layers of understanding this can add to what is being said.

Did something different stand out for you?  It certainly does for us.  We find learners are often surprised by Donald’s wry detachment when recounting his stories, and a sense he is self-editing his account.  I’d really like to question Donald more about Sid Norris.  There seems so much more there he is not telling us.  As with many of the clips we use, racism is ever present in Donald’s experiences.  You do get the sense of a man who refused to be cowed by it at any point.

As an amazing History teacher himself, we think that it is fitting that Donald Hinds voice continues to be heard by young people studying the history of the Windrush Generation.

Today's post was written by Kate Fowler, Learning Facilitator.

An illustration of a person hanging from the gallows; a witch burning a sleeping couple while a demon carries off a child. Woodcut, 1790.

Death and murder are hardly rare events in British folksong, but there’s something uniquely disturbing about the implacable way in which the bogeyman Lamkin goes about his deadly business in this old ballad; sung here by Arthur ‘Hockey’ Feltwell of Southery, Norfolk to Russell Wortley on 22 April 1960 in the Nag’s Head, Southery.

Listen to False Lamkin

Download False Lamkin transcript

The song tells how the eponymous villain sneaks into a castle and murders the Lady inside, before being hanged by the returning Lord.

In some versions, Lamkin is a mason exacting revenge for unpaid work, helped by the false nurse inside the castle. There is also a theory that the name ‘Lamkin’ refers to a leper’s pallor (lambkin) and that the character seeks a cure by bathing in the blood of an innocent.

Whatever the origins of the song, my first encounter with the tale was in the form of Steeleye Span’s version - ‘Long Lankin’ - which appears on their 1975 album ‘Commoner’s Crown’. A sort of prog-folk  mini-epic with tempo changes galore, it begins with an eerie scene-setting vocal by Maddy Prior, building up to a rockingly melodramatic denouement.

Despite the anthemic climax of the Steeleye Span version, I’ve always been haunted by the song’s underlying bleakness: there’s not much in the way of redemption in this story and the hanging of the antagonist offers little in the way of catharsis.

When I came to catalogue Arthur ‘Hockey’ Feldwell’s version of the ballad (part of the Russell Wortley Collection (C777)), I was therefore struck by the compressed drama which Feldwell’s unaccompanied singing delivers and how his unadorned version shows that no embellishment is needed to convey the central horror of the story.

In Feldwell’s version, the details about Lamkin being a mason are omitted, heightening the sense of motiveless malignity behind the killing, while also removing any obvious moral lesson (always pay your builders). The nursemaid is mentioned, but her role as an accomplice is left ambiguous: she might just be too tired or frightened to go downstairs.

I did notice a possible silver lining: in this version it’s not clear whether Lamkin kills the baby with his ‘silver pin’, or just uses it to make the infant cry so that the lady comes to see what the matter is (or maybe that’s just my wishful thinking.)

More recent recordings prove that the song continues to exert its fascination.  Alasdair Roberts’ dramatic rendition of ‘Long Lankin’ on his 2010 album ‘Too long in this condition’, emphasises the macabre elements of the ballad, while Shirley Collins’ version, ‘Cruel Lincoln’, which appears on her 2016 album ‘Lodestar’, seems to get to the tragedy at the song’s core.

In the album’s notes, Collins describes how during the song’s recording, the sound of birds singing from the bank at the back of her garden outside was also captured on tape.  It was decided to leave the birdsong on the finished record, to act as a kind of hopeful counterweight to the grim events inside the castle walls.

In a similar way with Feldwell’s version, you feel that you need to hear the laughter and applause at the end. The listeners’ cheers and shouts of ‘Hockey!’ express not just an appreciation of the power and clarity of his singing but relief that the tale is over.

This week’s selection comes from Andrew Ormsby, Metadata Support Officer at the British Library.

A northern gannet, a seabird with a white body, beige head and blue eyes, sits on a pile of blue and red fishing rope and holds a clump of it in its beak. Photo credit: Thomas Haeusler. 

Today is World Environment Day 2023. This year, it is hosted by Côte d'Ivoire, and the theme is focussing on tackling plastic pollution. By now, we should all be aware of the dangers around plastics entering the environment. The 2017 series Blue Planet II, brought our attention to the plight of our oceans due to the amount of plastic being introduced. We saw disturbing footage of albatross chicks perishing after being fed small pieces of sharp plastic. Since then, hard hitting assessments have regularly been in the headlines like “more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050”, “humans ingest the equivalent of a credit card worth of plastic every week”, and “microplastics found in human blood”. World Environment Day in 2018 also had the same theme and tagline: “Beat Plastic Pollution”. Yet despite this awareness, frustratingly little progress has been made in reducing plastic production and consumption. Worse still, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge in plastic waste in the form of PPE.

Plastic affects all life on all parts of the planet, but some more than others. This recording of the week selection (British Library reference WA 1999/058/075 S1 C1) comes from a group of animals especially affected by human actions; seabirds. The northern gannet (Morus bassanus) is an iconic seabird, famous for their incredible fishing technique. As seen in the recent Wild Isles series, gannets catch their food by diving at high speed in to schools of fish, leaving trails of bubbles in their path like avian torpedoes.

Like most seabirds, gannets nest on cliff sides in large and often very noisy colonies, typically alongside other species such as kittiwakes, fulmars and guillemots. As such, getting a clean recording of an individual calling can be very challenging. The recordist responsible for this recording, Victor Lewis, used a long cable and careful field-craft to get his microphone as close as possible to the subject with minimal disturbance. The raucous calls of a pair at the nest is easily lost to our ears in the cacophony of other bird calls and sea sounds, but this is how they communicate with one another, so to hear it from the birds’ perspective gives better context to the sounds.

Listen to Gannets calling

A pair of northern gannets face each other with their necks extended and beaks touching. Photo credit: Marco Federmann.

Gannets mate for life, and they have a unique mating ritual which they perform each season to re-affirm their bonds. They face each other, extend their necks, touch bills and shake their heads. If you are lucky enough to see this display when watching a colony, you may just hear the subtle clattering of their bills.

Over half the world’s gannets nest around the UK coast, estimated at around 220,000 pairs. That sounds like a healthy number, but it is declining due to a complex array of man-made problems. Overfishing depletes their food source and even ends with gannets caught in trawler nets as bycatch. Bird flu has been devastating to gannets in recent years, spreading through colonies very quickly and leaving thousands of dead chicks and adults. While plastic continues to be a terrible threat. In 2019, the scientists in the British Ornithologists’ Union studied 7280 gannet nests across 29 colonies, and found 46% contained plastic. A gannet colony on the island of Alderney was found by the Wildlife Trust to contain plastic in almost every single nest. Most of this is in the form of fishing gear lost or abandoned at sea. Chicks and adults can get entangled in fishing ropes or even end up ingesting plastic, and this is often fatal.

Every year people visit seabird sites like Bempton Cliffs, the Farne Islands, and Bass Rock in Scotland to marvel at the spectacle of thousands of birds breeding and feeding on the UK shores. To lose this annual festival of nature would be so devastating it doesn’t bare thinking about. As well as addressing other threats, we must stop plastic entering the ocean. Large scale solutions like new laws and legislation must come from higher up, but, in case you need a reminder, we can all play our part. Be mindful of what you are buying and throwing away. If you can afford to, always choose reusable alternatives to single-use plastics. You can also do a lot of good by helping to clean up your local spaces or joining in with a beach clean. The future lives of these beautiful birds, like so many other species, depends on all of our actions now.

Several dozen Northern Gannets and their chicks sat at the top of a cliff with the sea in the background. Photo credit: Dr. Georg Wietschorke .

You can learn all about humans’ understanding and interpretation of animals in our exhibition Animals: Art, Science and Sound, open until 28^th August 2023.

Today’s post was written by Greg Green, Metadata Support Officer.

Animals: Art, Science and Sound is the first major exhibition to explore the many different ways in which animals have been written about, visualised and recorded over time. Focusing on the British Library’s extensive natural history collections, the exhibition brings together chronologically and geographically diverse material produced over the past 2000 years, from some of the earliest encyclopaedic works on zoology to stunning high-resolution photographs of insects produced using the latest technologies.

The exhibition features over 100 objects selected from the Library's diverse collections and is divided into four main zones that cover darkness, water, land and air. As the name suggests, sound features heavily in the exhibition, both in terms of physical objects and sound recordings themselves. There are soundscapes playing in the gallery space that help create atmosphere and listening points where visitors can explore some of the more weird and wonderful recordings held by the Library. Published discs, field tapes, recording equipment and personal notebooks sit alongside historical manuscripts, paintings and printed works, and many of these items are on display for the very first time. There are objects of celebration, such as the first commercial record of an animal, but also objects of sadness, the most poignant of which is a reel of tape containing the song of a now extinct songbird.

Below are just a few highlights from this textually, visually and sonically rich exhibition.

The Holgate Mark VI bat detector which was one of the earliest portable models produced (British Library, WA 2009/018)

Greater Horseshoe Bat echolocation recorded using the Holgate MK VI by John Hooper in Devon, England, 1968 (WS7360 C10)

Illustration of the defects of a horse from Kitab al-baytarah (Book on Veterinary Medicine) by Abu Muhammad Ahmad ibn Atiq al-Azdi, 13th century (British Library, Or 1523, ff. 62v-63r)

Musical notation used to represent the songs and calls of birds, from Athanasius Kircher's Musurgia Universalis (Universal Music), Rome, 1650 (British Library, 59.e.19.) 

Second edition of Julian Huxley and Ludwig Koch's Animal Language sound book, USA, 1964 (British Library, 1SS0001840)

Bactrian Camel calls taken from disc 1 of Animal Language (1CS0070755)

An image of a 'monkfish' from Pierre Belon's De aquatilibus (Of aquatic species), Paris, 1553 (British Library, 446.a.6.)

An illustration of a fruit bat, painted at Barrackpore, India. 1804-7 (British Library, NHD3/517)

The Hip-po-pot-a-mus children's educational record published by the Talking Book Corporation, USA, 1919 (British Library, 9CS0029512)

A section in the Land zone displaying textual and visual accounts of animals appearing in countries beyond their usual geographic range.

A section in the Air zone exploring the history of recording bird voices including the first commercially released record of an animal from 1910.

Actual Bird Record Made by a Captive Nightingale (No.1), Gramophone Company, 1910

Animals: Art, Science and Sound runs until 28 August 2023. Please visit https://www.bl.uk/events/animals to book tickets and to find out more about the exhibition's accompanying events programme. Thanks go to the Getty Foundation, Ponant, the American Trust for the British Library and the B.H. Breslauer Fund of the American Trust for the British Library. Audio soundscapes were created by Greg Green with support from the Unlocking our Sound Heritage project, made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and scientific advice provided by ZSL (the Zoological Society of London). 

 

Publicity shot of Sun Ra, 1973. Distributed by Impulse! Records and ABC/Dunhill Records. Photographer uncredited. Public domain.
 
Throughout his long career the pianist, composer, bandleader and Afrofuturist pioneer Sun Ra (1914-1993) released over one hundred albums, many under his own record label Saturn Records. His sprawling recorded output is matched in extent only by the longevity of his band, the variously-named Arkestra, which formed in the 1950s and still performs to this day under the leadership of saxophonist Marshall Allen - surely one of the longest-running bands in existence.

This combination has served well to preserve the legacy of Sun Ra who passed away almost 30 years ago today on 30 May 1993. His death was mourned worldwide but not more so than by his devotees from within the Arkestra as captured by an all-day KPFA memorial programme which aired in the summer of 1993. This week’s highlighted recording is from this broadcast, which forms part of the Christ Trent Collection (C833). Chris Trent is a Sun Ra historian and founder of the archive-led, Ra-oriented record label Art Yard. The programme features interviews with several members of the Arkestra including saxophonist John Gilmore, trombonist Julian Priester and trumpeter Michael Ray as well as Evidence label founder Jerry Gordon and Jim Newman who produced the Afrofuturist sci-fi film Space is the Place (1974). Whilst the majority of the interviews are anecdotal and focus on Sun Ra’s history, saxophonist Ronald Wilson’s contribution stands apart in its pertinent reflections on the future of Sun Ra’s music.

Ronald Wilson interview excerpt

Download Ronald Wilson transcript

In this clip, soundtracked by the syncopated piano chords of ‘Somewhere in Space’, Wilson talks about the House of Ra in Philadelphia. The house functioned as a communal living & rehearsal space, the Arkestral headquarters and to this day is still lived in and used by the very same band. At the time of broadcast the house was overflowing with tapes which spilled out onto the kitchen sink, underneath tables and on top of cabinets and windowsills. According to Wilson, Sun Ra recorded everything that he did.

The Sun Ra Arkestra performing in Brecon, Wales in 1990. Photo by Peter Tea. Sourced from Flickr under CC BY-ND 2.0.

To me, it feels as if Ronald Wilson is not only addressing the KPFA listeners of 1993 but also those of us working in the British Library’s sound archive in 2023, as well as the musicologists and archivists of the future. Whilst it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the long-term importance of archives, Wilson’s clear-sighted appeal is a reminder of why audio preservation is needed in order to understand the lives of these artists as they unfolded and the music that came from them. Sun Ra must have shared this viewpoint himself. His explanation, as recounted by writer Robert Campbell, on how he chose which music to release on the Saturn label, says as much:

Whatever I think people are not going to listen to, I’ve always recorded it. When it’ll take them some time - maybe 20 years, 30 years - to really hear it.

Reference: Campbell, R. in  Omniverse: Sun Ra edited by Hartmut Geerken; Bernhard Hefele (Wartaweil: Waitawhile. 1994).

Today’s post was written by Gail Tasker, Metadata Support Officer.

Many of you will have seen a fictionalised version of comedian Lenny Bruce in the streamed comedy-drama The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Although the series has no pretensions to documentary accuracy, actor Luke Kirby has clearly done his research. He gives an impressively convincing and charismatic performance.

Working in the late 1950s to the mid-60s, the real Lenny Bruce was one of the most influential stand-up comedians in US history. His discursive style, based on semi-improvised routines, was a hip and exciting contrast to the tired format of traditional jokes with corny punchlines.

In the liner notes to the LP The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce, jazz critic Ralph Gleason drew parallels between Bruce’s approach to comedy, and jazz:

He is colossally irreverent - like a jazz musician. His stock in trade is to violate all the taboos out loud and to say things on stage which would get your nose bashed in at a party. But his outrage at society is not represented by shrill screams or loud protests. He does not pose. His is a moral outrage and has about it the air of a jazz man. It is strong stuff - like jazz, and it is akin to the point of view of Nelson Algren and Lawrence Ferlinghetti as well as to Charlie Parker and Lester Young.

But Bruce’s stance did not go unnoticed. In 1960s America, the establishment was in no mood to take a challenge lightly. If provoked, it would strike back. Bruce’s nightclub act, which dealt candidly with sex, drugs, politics, religion and race relations, began to attract police attention. Throughout the first half of the 1960s, up to his premature death in 1966, Bruce faced a relentless string of arrests and subsequent court proceedings, mainly for ‘obscenity’.

The first of these court appearances occurred in 1962, in San Francisco. In his defence, Bruce played a tape of his nightclub act, demonstrating the context surrounding his use of ‘obscene’ language. The judge was asked if those in the courtroom could be allowed to ‘respond naturally', i.e., to laugh, but the judge would allow no such thing, saying, ‘This is not a theatre and it is not a show’. Bruce was acquitted nonetheless.

Bruce subsequently issued the recording played in court as a 10” disc on his own label. The cover featured Bruce dressed as a policeman, and the following notice:  

WARNING

SALE OF THIS ALBUM MAY SUBJECT SELLER TO ARREST FOR VIOLATION OF THE ENDEMIC OBSCENITY LAWS; THE SOLE EXCEPTION BEING SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA (WHERE THE COMMUNITY STANDARDS MAY BE LOWER).

Here is a short excerpt from that recording, which was made at San Fransisco Jazz Workshop on 2 October 1961.

Listen to Lenny Bruce live in 1961

Download Lenny Bruce transcript

It is a measure of how times change that the sexual swearwords or expressions that saw Bruce arrested multiple times for obscenity would pass unremarked upon today, at least in a comedy context.

In contrast, Bruce’s use of various disparaging terms for ethnic minorities, disabled people and homosexuals would be highly likely to outrage many contemporary audiences. While it is an argument unlikely to persuade many today, Bruce maintained that the casual use of these terms could deprive them of their power to wound.

For those who would like to explore further we have digitised and made available online a number of Lenny Bruce shows recorded by Cecil Spiller in 1957-58. From available evidence, the venue for most of the recordings is thought to be the Peacock Lane nightclub, Los Angeles, USA. Please bear in mind that some of the language may offend.

Today’s post was written by Steve Cleary, Lead Curator, Literary and Creative Recordings.

With thanks to Kitty Bruce for granting permission to make these recordings available online.

This week's selection comes from Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English.

Last month, while preparing for a panel discussion at the Modern Cockney Festival, I stumbled across a Guardian interview with John Cooper Clarke discussing his poem 'I Wanna Be Yours'. Reflecting on his career, Clarke notes he was ‘never on the sausage’, an intriguing use of Salford (?) rhyming slang for ‘dole’ (i.e. unemployment benefit). The convention with rhyming slang, of course, is that the final element – i.e. the component that rhymes with the target word – is invariably omitted. When people say ‘give us a butcher’s’ for ‘let me have a look’, they’re using the well-established rhyming slang form butcher’s (hook) [= ‘look’]; Clarke’s use of ‘sausage’ here implies sausage (roll) [= ‘dole’]. A quick glance at authoritative reference sources such as Cockney Rhyming Slang, Green’s Dictionary of Slang and Brewer’s Dictionary of London Phrase & Fable (Wiley, 2010) reveals numerous rhyming slang variants for ‘dole’, including:

Adrian (Mole)

Andy (Cole) / Cheryl (Cole) / George (Cole) / Nat (King Cole)

Billy (Joel)

De La Soul

Rock & Roll / Jam (roll) / Sausage (roll)

The term ‘sausage’ itself also occurs in at least two rhyming slang forms, each with three possible meanings:

Sausage (& mash) [= 'cash/crash/smash']

Sausage (roll) [= 'dole/goal/pole']

     Cockney ATM © Bank Machine Company. Image taken from Melik, J. (2012) bbc.co.uk

The enduring appeal of rhyming slang and the fact it’s an endlessly productive process means it remains a playful source of lexical innovation for Londoners (and others). Original forms of rhyming slang are created all the time; some are adopted enthusiastically and subsequently gain wider recognition. To illustrate this, listen to these recordings submitted in 2011 to the Library’s Evolving English WordBank by three young Londoners:

Listen to Have a bubble - clip one 

'We use some rhyming slang still not an awful lot but like having a bubble you’re having a laugh'

Listen to Have a bubble - clip two

'You’re having a bubble mate I think that came from the East End of London when they spoke Cockney some years ago'

Listen to Have a bubble - clip three

'Having a bubble means to have a laugh and I think it’s Cockney rhyming slang for having a bubble bath'

Surprisingly, there’s no entry for bubble (bath) [= ‘laugh’] in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, which suggests it must be a relatively recent coinage. It does, however, merit an entry at Cockney Rhyming Slang and features in Tony Thorne’s Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (2014), where it’s classified as a modern variation on the older form TIN (Bath). Brewer’s Dictionary of London Phrase & Fable (Wiley, 2010) includes a citation from 2007 and suggests it’s most commonly heard in the ‘sarcastically rhetorical question you havin’ a bubble?’.

It’s difficult to predict why some rhyming slang forms take hold more successfully than others but bubble (bath) [= ‘laugh’] is somehow inherently suitable as it’s an item of everyday vocabulary. It’s also a slightly frivolous object in its own right and has the added attraction of alliteration. Not only that but it requires quintessentially ‘Cockney’ phonology to work: although the rhyming component ‘bath’ is seldom actually uttered, in order for it to rhyme with ‘laugh’ we implicitly accept a pronunciation with TH-fronting – i.e. it has to end with a <f> sound as in e.g. ‘staff’. I also wonder if the success of bubble [= ‘laugh’] is also maybe reinforced by a potential association for Londoners (well, West Ham United fans anyway) with the stereotypically Cockney song, 'I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles?' Perhaps that’s stretching it a bit, but nevertheless having a bubble certainly brings a smile to my face. Or should I say boat (race)?

Follow @VoicesofEnglish and @soundarchive for all the latest news.

References:

Melik, J. 2012. Cockney Cash: Lady Godivas and speckled hens. [18 April] Available from: www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17535156

Thorne, T. 2014. Dictionary of Contemporary Slang. London: Bloomsbury.
Wiley, R. 2010. Brewer’s Dictionary of London Phrase & Fable. Edinburgh: Chambers.

 

The famously successful actor and theatre manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852-1917) made this recording in March 1906. It was one of a set of five 10-inch discs recorded for release by the Gramophone Company. These were originally issued in a ‘special envelope’ (which we don’t have) which included the texts and a ‘character portrait’ of Tree.

Each single-sided shellac disc featured a soliloquy from Shakespeare. Here, Tree performs Falstaff’s speech on honour, from Henry IV, Part 1.

A soliloquy was pretty much all the technology of the time would allow. In the early years of commercial recording, playing times of more than just a few minutes were not technologically possible.

Note also that age of recording with electrical microphones was still two decades away. You are listening here to an acoustic recording. Tree would have been projecting his voice, with all the vigour he could muster, into the horn of the recording device.

Listen to Herbert Beerbohm Tree

Download Herbert Beerbohm Tree transcript

The presence of the famous HMV dog on the label indicates that this is a later reissue rather than the 1906 first pressing.

Somewhat unusually, the British Library also possesses an original copper matrix from which a new edition of the record could be pressed. This was one of a set presented to the British Museum by the Gramophone Company in 1906 and subsequently transferred to the Library in 1992.

This week’s ‘Recording of the Week’ was selected by Steve Cleary, Lead Curator, Literary and Creative Recordings.