Mentioned in Song: Song Traditions of the Loggers of Newfoundland and Labrador by Ursula Kelly (review)

Edith Fowke produced Lumbering Songs from the Ontario Shanties(Folkways), her seminal album of field-recorded folk songs from Ontario’s woods tradition, in 1961. Unlike the other important Canadian compilation of “lumber and river songs” from New Brunswick released by Louise Manny the following year, Fowke chose not to survey the full variety of songs sung in Ontario lumbering communities but rather to narrow the record’s focus to songs about lumbering itself. Though somewhat misleading in its portrayal of the woods repertoire, this tactic allowed Fowke to pare down a mountain of material into a single release while maximizing songs portraying the woods work experience itself.

Mentioned in Song: Song Traditions of the Loggers of Newfoundland and Labradortakes a similar approach to the underexplored woods tradition of Newfoundland and Labrador. The CD with accompanying booklet is the latest release from the Back on Track series produced by the Research Centre for the Study of Music, Media and Place (MMaP) at Memorial University of Newfoundland. According to the series’ webpage, the goal of Back on Track is to make “rare and currently inaccessible recordings of music and folklore available to a broader public” along with “photo-rich, historically detailed liner notes that exceed the normal standards of documentation” (http://www.mun.ca/mmap/back_on_track). Accordingly, the large DVD-style packaging of Mentioned in Songholds a 27-track audio CD (mostly unpublished field recordings) and a whopping 88-page booklet containing a historical introduction, dozens of photographs, song notes, lyric transcriptions, two maps, a time line, and a glossary. Employing a technique used for other MMaP releases, the CD mixes archival recordings dating from the 1950s through the 1980s with new recordings of older material arranged and performed by active musicians based in Newfoundland and Labrador. The 23 archival recordings dominate, with four new recordings interspersed throughout the track order. Altogether, there are 23 song performances, two instrumentals, and two recitations.

Mentioned in Songis guest produced for MMaP by Dr. Ursula Kelly, a member of the Faculty of Education at Memorial. With this production, Kelly sets out to “tell the story of [Newfoundland and Labrador] logging from the point of view of loggers themselves” (p. 5). To this end, she adopts Fowke’s approach, concentrating on material “that takes as its subject the work of logging, lumbering, and personal woodcutting for family fuel” (p. 6). She also favors locally composed songs in her selections, invoking the pioneering Newfoundland logging song researcher John Ashton’s reasoning that local songs tell the most “accurate stories of loggers and logging” (p. 3). Mentioned in Songtaps into the rich supply of locally composed material held in the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA). The MUNFLA collections, gathered mainly by students and faculty, supply most of the archival material on the CD.

The themes, poetic conventions, and performance practices of many of the songs and recitations connect the Newfoundland and Labrador woods tradition to that of other regions. There are songs about travelling to the job site (“The Gambo Way,” “Johnny Payne”), come-all-ye’s about poor living conditions and bad pay (“Indian Bay Song,” “Sandy Harbour Town”), moniker songs listing and poking fun at crew members (“Bert Chaffey’s Camp,” “Slaughter Cove Pond,” “The Peelwood Song”), and humorous accounts of camp antics (“Bert Chaffey’s Camp,” “Brophy’s Mill,” “North Twin Lake,” “Birch Rind Pete”). Spoken, declamandoendings appear on three songs (“Shearstown Woods Song,” “Johnny Payne,” “Chanson de Bûcherons/Lumberjack Song”). Some material demonstrates the Irish street song influence documented in other woods traditions, while other songs are in the vein of sentimental, country and western, or other popular forms. Often ignored when encountered by collectors in the past, these remakes of popular songs are valuable as a corrective to published collections that underrepresent...