Back on Track CD Series. Various. It’s Time for Another One: Folk Songs from the South Coast of Newfoundland; Folklore of Newfoundland and Labrador: A Sampler of Songs, Narrations, and Tunes; Saturday Nite Jamboree. By Research Centre for the Study of Music, Media and Place, Memorial University of Newfoundland CDs, 2005, 2006, 2007 (available www.landwashdistribution.com)

Newfoundland and Labrador has long been recognized for its rich oral traditions, including song, music, and narrative. This province has attracted many folksong and folklore collectors, including MacEdward Leach, Maud Karpeles, Kenneth Peacock, Margaret Bennett and others. Popular books featuring the region’s folksongs, such as Gerald Doyle’s Old-Time Songs and Poetry of Newfoundland, have been the source of songs for contemporary Newfoundland bands, such as Great Big Sea, The Fables, The Navigators, and Rawlins Cross. However, it is difficult to hear the songs, tunes, and stories as first recorded by collectors — unless, that is, you are prepared to listen to them in an archive, such as the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA). But now there is a series of CDs being produced by the Research Centre for the Study of Music, Media and Place (MMaP) at Memorial University, in conjunction with MUNFLA, which aims to make rare and currently inaccessible Newfoundland music available to a broader public. The “Back on Track” archival series currently consists of three CD recordings: It’s Time for Another One: Folk Songs from the South Coast of Newfoundland (2005); Folklore of Newfoundland and Labrador: A Sampler of Songs, Narrations, and Tunes (2006); and Saturday Nite Jamboree (2007). In this review essay, I consider each recording individually as well as the series as a whole. A unique feature of this CD is the inclusion of “rearrangements” of three of the songs by local musicians and producers. Beverley Diamond, CD coproducer and author of the liner notes, writes that “the ‘new’ versions were commissioned explicitly to present several views about the meanings of tradition and modernity.” The liner notes include explanations for each performer’s interpretation. For example, well-known Newfoundland folk singer Jim Payne explains that he wanted to foreground the story of the comic smuggling song, “The First of October.” He therefore kept close to the original version, sung by Robert Langdon, except for the addition of acoustic guitar accompaniment. Unexpectedly, the liner notes also describe how and why Payne’s sound engineer modified his performance (for example, he added a bit of air and boosted mid-range frequencies to “shine and warm up the vocals”), making explicit technological processes that often remain invisible. Pamela Morgan of Figgy Duff fame chose to rearrange Robert Childs’ bawdy song, “Sal Stopped Up to Iron Some Clothes.” She adds her own voice to punctuate Childs’ original performance with harmony and also adds three accordion lines and bodhran. Although the lyrics are all very clear, Morgan’s interest was to recreate the atmosphere of a kitchen party. The most unanticipated rearrangement is the hip hop version of “A Cold December Morning” by guitarist Glen Collins, journalist Monique Tobin, and DJ Mark Power. The creators admit that it is not necessarily easy to listen to, especially the middle section, which features an extended sample of Gordon Kendall’s original performance punctuated by Power’s digital response. Tobin argues that “It suggests the two can’t really talk to each other. They speak a different language.” Rather than emphasize the lyrics and the story, these collaborators responded to the intensity of Kendall’s voice. In so doing, they sought to enlarge the theme of loss, but not the explicit loss evident in the song’s text about two brothers who fell through the ice and died while travelling to get Christmas provisions for their families. Instead, the hip hop version explores the loss of tradition and a disconnection between generations. I really enjoyed the rearrangements, although if one were to listen to the CD from beginning to end, one might find that they disrupt the “flow” …