Stories to Sing to: Exploring Newfoundland Song with Anita Best and company

CANADA LIVE! presents
THE NEWFOUNDLAND SONGBOOK VOL 1 & 2

Featuring an all-star cast of traditional music makers including: Anita Best, Pamela Morgan, Kelly Russell, Billy Sutton, George Morgan and Graham Wells.

VOLUME 1 - The Early Days
Friday, November 2
LSPU Hall

Lords and ladies, pirates and sailors, villains and cruel parents, the Newfoundland Songbook has it all.
In part one of the two part concert series Pamela Morgan, Anita Best and an all-star cast of Newfoundland’s traditional music makers explore the songs of our ancestors.
The show presents material from the British, French, Irish and Scottish cultures that formed the foundation of the Newfoundland oral tradition since the earliest days. These classic and broadside ballads, ditties and tunes comprise the heart of the cannon that is the Newfoundland Songbook.
Love, betrayal, murder, revenge, trickery - the themes are universal; the scene historic; with a narrative that ties the songs into world events and local history of the era.

VOLUME 2 - 1850-1949
Saturday, November 3
LSPU Hall

Songs and tunes that were made up about life in the new world, in the New-founde-lande.
They tell of disasters at sea, sly politicians, soup suppers in the parish hall, life under the "cruel rogues of merchants", work in the lumber woods or on the boats. They speak of a world of community values and virtues, of hard work and simple fun. They give us a picture of a young country making its way in a new world.
Some of them make sport of local characters and the small world of scattered coastal communities. Names are named and real people come to life in historical events.
The selections for this show include songs from Johnny Burke, Mark Walker and Peter Leonard and tunes by fiddlers Emile Benoit and Rufus Guinchard.
For more details click here.

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Anita Best and George Morgan have both performed on Rattling Books recordings.

Anita Best narrated two of the stories in Susan Rendell's collection In the Chambers of the Sea as well as narrating Merrybegot by Mary Dalton. Together with Robert Joy and Rick Boland Anita is also heard on Coasting Trade by Robin McGrath.

George Morgan played pump organ and Fisher-Price Roly Poly on In the Old Country of My Heart by Agnes Walsh.