Australia Day Archives - New York Harbor Channel https://newyorkharborchannel.com/tag/australia-day/ Everything Going On In New York's Harbors Wed, 12 Jan 2022 18:25:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2 NYHC PRESENTS “BEHIND THE SCENES MAKING OF BROOKLYN BARDS’ NEW ALBUM” https://newyorkharborchannel.com/nyhc-presents-behind-the-scenes-making-of-brooklyn-bards-new-album/ Wed, 03 Feb 2021 01:12:24 +0000 https://newyorkharborchannel.com/?p=3723 New York Harbor Channel is proud to present the journey Behind The Scenes Making of Brooklyn Bards' New Album. 

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New York Harbor Channel is proud to present the journey Behind The Scenes Making of Brooklyn Bards’ New Album.  Our production features the players who collaborated to produce one of their songs on the new release, Botany Bay.  Each artist offers a tasty slice of the tune’s backstory, unraveling the musical composition and recording techniques.
Our ten minute video gives viewers clear meaning to the song lyrics through images and narration with unprecedented access to the studio.  The Brooklyn Bards and audio engineer, Vinny Pedulla, layer their tracks and piece together the finished product.
Kiernan Hamilton and Donal Nolan, the founding members and the original duo, explain how Robert Montemarano and Joseph Mayer eventually joined the band.
The band members all hailing from Irish roots on the shores of New York harbor in Brooklyn as first generation offspring, all have diverse musical tastes outside of this genre.  However, it is clear there is a driving need and desire to experiment and deliver the Brooklyn Bard sound.  Like American blues, Irish folk music has a genealogy that can be traced back to its origins as well as applauding its present and future.
Something old is something new!  The recent explosion of the Sea Shanty craze on Tik-Tok couldn’t be more timely.  It serves as a great way to share, communicate, and create on a classic platform that is centuries old.  As Kiernan Hamilton explains, sea shanties are a fundamental element of their sound. Irish drinking songs and ballads are equally important to round out their repertoire.
The history of Botany Bay as an important homage to Sydney, Australia explains the emigration of the Irish as a result of the potato famine.  It is no secret the region was first a penal colony dating back to 1788.  We can see it here referenced in the song lyrics “For to take old Pat, with a shovel on his back, to the shores of Botany Bay”.  Find the story here in our previous article, Local Brooklyn Band Tied To History Of Australia Day.
At the 7 minute mark into the video, Robert Montemarano says “It’s a song about moving to Australia, and a lot of Irish Immigrants moved to Australia, also a lot of Irish prisoners and slaves were shipped off to Australia and it has a lot to do with this port that we’re coming into.”
The album is a collection of traditional British Isle tunes.  Allow yourself to harken back to the past for a few minutes.  Donal Nolan’s tin whistle playfully invites you to follow him deep into the mystical landscape with a hypnotic capture.  In time, he gently releases you with a hand-off to the other voices offered in the tune.  Harmonies are beautifully delivered and could be a singular reason to give the album an ear.
Musically, Joe Mayer’s brilliant mastery of an array of string instruments displays an obvious intimate knowledge.  As a professional luthier, his mandolin, fiddle, and banjo sing out with a clever voice of their own.  His offerings are well distributed across the album.
Rob’s percussion lays a rhythmic melody of its own that offers a choice blend centered by his djembe, the African drum.  Such a taste of nontraditional approaches can be gleaned from the recordings that offer a window for the listener to embrace.
Cross-culture is celebrated as it is easy to understand where immigration and migration has driven its song.  In a perfect utopia, the Immigration issue would not be considered an issue at all.  We would all be happy sharing diverse opinions and cultures.  We cannot forget about our own ancestries and our own journeys.  Let us not forget that if we are not indigenous people to our land, all of us arrived as strangers at some point.  
In relation to this presentation, the Irish emigration story is no exception.  Over two centuries, it populated both Australia and North America.   Reaching out a hand across physical or ethereal barriers, there are several examples of artists participating in cross-cultural experiments.
One that comes to mind is Odetta, the famous black American female blues artist who celebrated and internalized Irish Folk Music with the Clancy Brothers.  Such cross-cultural steps expanded new interpretations.  You owe it to yourself to give the Brooklyn Bards sound a listen.  You won’t be disappointed.
The album is slated for release just in time for Saint Patty’s Day on March 17th.    New York Harbor Channel will keep you posted on our Current Events Calendar.  Hopefully, the Brooklyn Bards will prelude the release with a series of live broadcasts that will appear on this channel.
Keep tuned as we are already working on our next Docusensory presentation as we feature a new artist offering every month.  Want to share your songs’ backstory or even need help recording a song?  Look no further because NYHC is here to help.  Reach out to our Content Department at [email protected] Of course, the musical themes should be marine related to appeal to our water-loving audience but we are always open to creating content for any musician.

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BROOKLYN MUSIC: LOCAL BAND TIED TO ‘HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA DAY’ https://newyorkharborchannel.com/local-brooklyn-band-tied-to-history-of-australia-day/ Tue, 26 Jan 2021 01:17:26 +0000 https://newyorkharborchannel.com/?p=3692 In honor of History of Australia Day, The Brooklyn Bards share their folk rendition of "The Shores of Botany Bay" which is located in Sydney Australia.

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TODAY IS ‘HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA’ DAY’

January 26th is known throughout the Land Down Under as ‘History of Australia Day’.  Here in New York, the significance of Sydney’s Botany Bay is celebrated from the shores of New York Harbor and Brooklyn’s Lower Bay.  The back-story of Australia’s colonization is a central theme of the traditional folk song lyrics of ‘Botany Bay’.

The Brooklyn Bards: [from left to right] Kiernan Hamilton, Robert Montemarano, Donal Nolan, Joseph Mayer,

 

The standard is forcefully yet lovingly performed by The Brooklyn Bards at their fair weather haunt at the Shore Road Gazebo in Bay Ridge Brooklyn that welcomes the breeze off the Lower Bay.  But today, in the chill of the winter, the Bards chose to take their chops and harmonies into the studio to record an album containing their favorite British Isles tunes.

A MESSAGE FROM NEW YORKERS OFFER SYDNEY OUR  OUTSTRETCHED HANDS

As the recording session evolved on the eve of History of Australia Day, American football fans watched two bay city teams compete in the playoffs for the upcoming Super Bowl.  The Green Bay Packers challenged the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  Under the aura of modern day sport spectacles, these host cities should be recognized for their historical significance in the pantheon of coastal port centers.  In this light, New York Harbor’s Lower Bay offers a welcome to its distant equal across the planet.

New York and Sydney share a lot in common, especially in times of climate change and the pandemic.  We share the pain that has affected all countries as quarantines are mandatory for all professional sports, music, and social gatherings.  In advance of the Australian Open in nearby Melbourne, the players have all arrived in Australian two weeks before the start of the Grand Slam tennis tournament.  New York’s U.S. Open tournament will follow this August in our summer season.  The global health protocols in large venues will obviously remain the same.  Meanwhile, Climate Change has ravaged Australia recently.  Flora and fauna slowly returns from the devastating fires along the Australian East Coast in 2019.  Both port cities have architectural plans to battle the rising sea levels that threaten their infrastructures.

AUSTRALIA’S COLONIZATION HISTORY

Historically, both New York and Sydney have their modern origins thanks in large part to colonization of the eighteenth century.  Native American Indians and Australian Aborigines alike witnessed the sudden in-habitation of strange new cultures on their native lands.  Emigration from one region to another is a constant global movement.  There isn’t a single continent that hasn’t experienced mass relocation.  Cultural integration is planet Earth’s story.   The harmony sung by the Brooklyn Bards is nothing short of a historical celebration.  The song lyrics cry, ‘For to take a trip on an immigrant ship to the shores of Botany Bay’.

 

Sydney’s Botany Bay

 

Joseph Banks by Sir Joshua Reynolds, oil on canvas, 1771-1773

With the end of Britain’s colonization in North America at the hands of the American Revolution, Britain’s Colonization efforts shifted to lands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.  Captain James Cook’s landed on the peninsula in 1770 that eventually became known as Sydney.  The HMS Endeavor carried the naturalist, Joseph Banks, who studied and catalogued flora and fauna.  So respected was Bank’s scientific discoveries, the waters were called ‘Botanist Bay’.  Eventually, the name changed to Botany Bay in the newly claimed colony of New South Wales.

Despite Banks’ report of poor soil and no reliable water source, more than a thousand settlers arrived on January 26th, 1788.  Included were 736 ‘convicts’ who were banished from England.  As criminals could no longer be shipped off to the American colonies with the victory in 1783, Australia had the distinct honor of becoming the British Isles new ‘penal colony’.  It was a sixty year practice by the British government to transport convicts to Botany Bay.  The six month ocean journey was marked by no less than a ten percent death rate of the passenger list, most of them chained in the cargo holds for the duration of the trip.

EMIGRATION FROM THE BRITISH ISLES

The Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1855 was Britain’s most devastating natural event causing the exodus of two million people.  780 thousand emigrated to America.   Many of the Irish became Longshoremen of America’s East Coast Port cities.  The 1849 California Gold Rush attracted miners and farmers who brought their pick-axes and shovels.  Sydney Australia welcomed a good portion of the rest.   Stories abound of Irish families that worked the soil or worked the seas taking up new residence in far-away lands.

The Botany Bay folk song offers the following lines as the good ship Ragamuffin sets sail from the British Isles.  The Bards harmonize, ‘When I reach Australia I’ll go and search for gold, There’s plenty there for digging up or so I have been told.  Or maybe I’ll go back to me trade, 800 bricks I’ll lay for an 8 hour shift and an 8 bob pay on the shores of Botany Bay.’

THE TUNE’S THEATER ORIGIN IN LONDON

Botany Bay‘ became popular as a show tune first heard in a London musical burlesque in 1885.  The British composer waited thirty years to honor, with great derring-do, the men and women who took the daring yet desperate journey to foreign countries as immigrants.  ‘Botany Bay’ was considered the ultimate romantic notion in the theatre circuit district of Piccadilly and West End.  Before the turn of the nineteenth century, it was fashionable in entertainment circles to popularize folk music and integrate it into theater spectacles.  Until this time, traditional Irish Folk Music could only be found in the British Isles port-side pubs and countryside taverns.

JOIN IN AND CELEBRATE THE HARD-WORKING LYRICS OF THE SONG

In the years before Covid-19, patrons of Irish pubs and taverns would sing along to the Bards, hoisting a pint, reveling in ‘The best years of our lives we spent working on the docks building mighty wharves and quays of earth and ballast rocks.’

New York Harbor Channel’s take on Seashanty TikTok

But recently, the Sea Shanty craze on Tik-Tok caught fire.  Stephen Colbert’s nightly show occupied two consecutive monologues where he encouraged his followers to join the chorus.  Brooklyn’s answer to the Wellerman’s Irish Fair performance is also found on Tik-Tok.  We invite you to add your contributions at  LINK.

There you’ll hear….

‘Farewell to your bricks and mortar, farewell to your dirty lime,

Farewell to your gangways and gang planks and to hell with your overtime’.

 

THE RECORDING SESSION

Port-side pubs and countryside taverns are exactly the atmosphere Brooklyn Bard music breathes.   Listen to some choice takes from Botany Bay, one of the album tracks that will be available on social media music platforms later this month.  The Brooklyn Bard band members take a few minutes to express their feelings about performing the song, origins of their instruments, as well as offering their own histories.

The Brooklyn Bards Record Session

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