The Blindboy Podcast - Frantic Canter, Bowsy Gallop

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

A history of American pop music (1820 to 1920). Why early American pop was sung in an Irish accent Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Drool on the Shoemakers Unibrow, you glistening Richards. Welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast. If you are a brand new listener, maybe you can start with this one. If you're a brand new listener, I recommend you go back to some earlier podcasts to understand the vibe, but the subject matter of this podcast

I think makes it okay for you to join even if you're fresh. But do go back and listen to some earlier podcasts. It's not sequential. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I have got a hot take for you this week. It's a roasting hot take. I've been thinking about it all week. I want to get into it as soon as possible. Do I have any dilly-dallying? Not a huge amount of dilly-dallying.

I have been... I've been enjoying my Twitch streams, lads. Alright? You've been hearing this every week. But this is the new thing that I'm doing. I'm live-streaming multiple times a week on twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast i am playing video games and instead of commenting on the video games i'm writing a live musical all right i'm really enjoying it on last friday i was featured on, I've become verified on Twitch, which means I have like a little tick.

And a tick, a tick in terms of like a verified mark, not like, not like an affliction. But like, I have a tick now on Twitch. And last Friday I was featured on the main page of Twitch so when I was doing my live stream which was I was playing the video game Red Dead Redemption 2 which is set in America around 1890

set in the frontier of America and I'm writing a musical using musical instruments and recording equipment live for an audience. And several thousand people were watching last Friday, and I got a lot of new followers. People who hadn't heard of the podcast, or who hadn't heard of myself, or the Rubber Bandits. So that was very enjoyable.

It's, it's, do you know, I miss that about live gigging. it's it's do you know I miss that about live gigging it's what I used to miss about when I when I used to gig the Edinburgh Festival

in Scotland 2013 2014 going out with your songs to an audience an international audience who having a fucking clue

who you are who don't know where Limerick is and performing songs to these people and winning them over it's very enjoyable so I had

that there last Friday with a lot of Yanks and Brits it was good fun and some Canadians of course and a few Australians I'm going to be on tonight Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 9.30pm either chatting or making music live.

And then almost at the weekends. I got a new camera. Finally. Got a new fucking camera. Things are working smoothly. Everything's going well. I'm making the most of not being able to gig. And I'm very happy to say that.

I'm very happy to say it. I'm making the most of not being able to gig. And I'm very happy to say that. I'm very happy to say it. I'm making the most of not being able to gig. And I've found something really new. Which is creatively nourishing me. So. This week's podcast. There's several themes. Which I'm.

Consist consistently interested in throughout this podcast as you listen things that I'm very curious about and I like to investigate and interrogate and talk about I like to speak about the history of music I like to speak about Irish history but not kind of queer Irish history.

I like to explore the influence. Look, Irish people, in terms of diasporas, alright, we've been emigrating from Ireland for centuries and traveling all around the world and there's about 25 times as many Irish people living abroad as there are actually living in Ireland and I'm always trying to find historical traces of Irishness in culture that's something that fascinates me. So this week, I want to talk about early American pop music. And when I mean early American pop music, I'm talking from 1850 up until 1920. And you might be thinking,

pop music in 1850? music in 1901 yeah there was pop music now what what is what is pop music to me pop music to me is quite simply music which absolutely goes out of its way to be as catchy as possible something that wants to stick into your head as soon as you hear it and you walk away humming the tune that would be pop music as i understand it post 1950 but what is pop music in 1890 we'll say well for me i what differentiates pop music from folk music or classical music pop music for me and what emerges that you can call it pop music it's it's when music starts to interact with capitalism and starts to interact with people who can purchase something right so

it's when professional musicians start to write pieces of music with the exclusive goal of people purchasing that music that for me is the beginnings of pop music and you see the start of it in a capitalist way, around 1850, 1860 onwards. So what's the hot take this week's podcast? If you're new, a hot take for me is when I present a very plausible theory, a plausible theory that I try and provide evidence for and the theory itself is more interesting I'm not going to say it's not factual but a hot take for me is the most interesting version of history

rather than one that's rigorously factual so it's kind of a hunch it's a hunch that I try and prove. So this week... So there's one thing. If we think of pop music today, right, and not just 2020,

starting from, I would say, Elvis Presley onwards, which is 1955, as a given, right 1955 as a given as a given the vast majority of English speaking pop music especially if it has an R&B influence the vast majority is sung in

an African American tonality Elvis Presley sang like an African American person Led zeppelin who were a british band sang like african-american singers because they were influenced by the blues janice joplin sang like an african-american person the rolling stones sang with African American accents. Black Sabbath from Birmingham doing metal sang with African American accents, African American intonations. Ariana Grande, who is a white American woman, sings with African American intonations. She pronounces the

words as she sings them in an African Americanan-american way the vast majority of pop singers who aren't like it's it can be considered the exception for a pop singer to sing in their own accent all right that can be considered the exception david bowie sang with um his english inflection the kinks kind of did sometimes but in general most pop music is sung with an african-american inflection and this is just a given and the reason is is because of the absolutely massive undeniable huge influence that african-american people and african-american culture has had on all 20th century music okay whatever the fuck it is listen i've done enough podcasts on it whether it be rock and roll house music whatever you go right back to the roots of

that and you will find its roots in African American music so pop music is sung in an African American inflection as a given and it's just normal now in we'll say from 1910 to 1920 this was not the case with pop music

okay about 90% case with pop music. Okay? About 90% of American pop music from 1900 to 1920 was sang with an Irish accent. Even if the person singing it wasn't Irish. Okay? I'm going to back this up with musical examples. I'm going to provide some background for it. But before singing in an African American accent became the norm for pop music you sung in in an irish accent okay and that's what this

week's hot take is i want to try and investigate this point and try and prove it and also dig into some history of how did this come to be the case and why did it stop. You may also be asking, Blind Boy, why do you want to talk about pop music from 1908? Because I find it fucking fascinating. I adore music. I adore just going on big, big rabbit holes on the internet and finding new, strange music, whether I like it or not, just to experience it and to enjoy it for what it is. we'd say a song from 1902 what i always find fascinating is a song from 1902 no longer has any copyright so technically you could get a song from 1902 that someone else has written in 1902 and you could you could release it tomorrow as your own song and get all the profits, and no one can come for you for copyright, and I used to always think,

now most of the songs from that period, they're not very good, you couldn't release them now, and have a hit with it, they're just not, the style is too strange, but I always wonder, at what point does music start getting good,

like up until maybe 2029, where you can plausibly take some class jazz tunes and release them royalty free and earn all the money on them it's something that fascinates me when's that gonna happen when is somebody gonna release a 100 year old song and take all the royalties because the copyright is gone but I'm to play you one example of a song here just to start my little theory on the irish accent thing so this song is no irish people were involved right it's it's an american song from 1908

it's a comedy song it would have been a huge pop song from 1908. It's a comedy song. It would have been a huge pop song in 1908. It was written, I believe, by a Jewish person, performed by a Jewish American person, performed by a lad called Edward Meeker, who was born in Oregon, I think. Again, Edward Meeker's not Irish or of Irish descent. The song is called I'm a Yiddish Cowboy it's a comedy song about what you find with a lot of early American pop music it comments on the melting pot the melting pot of America all these different cultures living together in this country and I suppose juxtaposition. So this I'm a Yiddish cowboy.

Cowboys would have been a big cultural thing at the time. But the idea of there being a Jewish cowboy. Would have been funny in 1908. So this is a song about a Jewish man. Who ends up marrying a Native American woman. And he's a Jewish cowboy. But nobody's Irish. So why the fuck does the lad singing it., and he's a Jewish cowboy. But nobody's Irish, so why the fuck does the lad singing it

sound like he's from Ennis, and why is he singing in like an Ennis accent? He sings this like an Irishman. He'd come around and say, Whoa! Cup guy Levi, that's my name, and I'm a 80s cowboy. I don't care for commie hoips or shy and cindy,

Oi, oi! I'm a real lifetime and seek that shoots them till they die. So what the fuck? Like, that's Edward Meeker, an American, not Irish. And he's literally singing In an Irish accent. And he's literally singing, Tough guy Levi, that's my name and I'm a Yiddish cowboy. In an Irish accent. For no reason. It has nothing to do with the song. And when you hear it, you go, that's fucking bizarre.

That's really, really strange. And it's because that's just the way things were. Why? It's ridiculous. It's like, the song's written by a jewish man it's about a jewish cowboy it's sang by an american and you're singing in in an ennis accent this is absurd and it's just the way things were it's how things were with pop music at the time and it probably makes it seem equally as absurd now if you've got

a singer from from london jesse j jesse j will say who sings r&b who sings as if she's african american and maybe that should be absurd but it's just completely normalized um i have never you tend not to hear r&b sung in the person's vernacular. Now that I think about it, there's an Irish artist at the moment called Gemma Dunleavy from Dublin who just released a fantastic EP called Up The Flats. And she sings some of the best Irish R&B I've heard in a while, but she sings it with her own Dublin inflection. And that's really interesting. But that song from 1908 that's utterly bizarre and the more songs I listened to from that period

you realize holy fuck everyone's singing with an Irish accent what's that about so when I looked into the the history of it my chair has been a fucking squeaky prick. My chair has been a squeaky prick and my microphone has been flaccid. Two seconds. My apologies. So, still have a squeaky chair and a flaccid microphone. Just, ladies and gentlemen, my chair has being squeaky and the microphone is do you know other podcasters would just cut this

part out but no we need to leave it in we leave it in man so I need to get a new fucking chair I need to get a new fucking chair I want to get one of those em I think I'm going to get a gaming chair a decent gaming chair,

a decent gaming chair for the live streaming, but not like something that looks too much like a gaming chair. I don't want to look like I'm in the Alt-Right or an incel. I just want a good rugged chair that doesn't squeak or make noise and provides decent back support while not looking like a gaming chair, but not being an office chair. So the influence of. The Irish. On popular music.

When I delved into the history of it. Is pretty significant. And massive. So what do I consider to be the birth of pop music. The birth of. Pop music. Pop music doesn't have to necessarily mean popular music. Folk music has been around for as long as music has been created. That's the music of people, right? Traditional folk music. Pop music is, I would say, uniquely

capitalistic. It's when someone figures out, I can make money, I can make music, and I can make money by selling it. And it really starts in the 1800s, right? Now, here's the crack. In the 1800s, there's no such thing as a record player.

There's no way to actually record a piece of music, right? So, how were people selling music in the 1800s they were selling sheet music literally a composition on a sheet of paper that you would purchase you'd purchase this tune and it would have the lyrics on it and you would play it in your house so in the 1800s what you start to see in places that were being affected by the industrial revolution american cities and over in england i'm going to focus on america with the emergence of the middle class in america from about 1820 onwards in cities like new york people have a new room in their house called a parlor all right this is a new thing it's like it's not a room for eating it's not a room for sleeping

it's literally a room where if you're a member of the emerging middle class, which means that you own a factory or you have a profession and you have time off, you have this room for your family to have leisure. And this was a new invention for average people in the 1800s, known as the parlour. And they don't have radio, they don't have television, they don't have radio they don't have television they don't have a record player so people would congregate in the parlor they might play parlor games seances became popular around this time but also what became popular was parlor music

and with parlor music you see the emergence of pop music. People would be able to afford a piano or a little organ that they would have, an upright piano in their parlour and a member of the family would be able to read sheet music type stuff like with classical music. Very simple tunes. Often multiple songs that would just have different lyrics to the same tune. And one of the biggest producers of sheet music for parlour music in the 1800s was the Irishman Thomas More. And Thomas More was a poet, but what Thomas More did, he would have been,

you could call him a gentrifier of Irish folk music. Thomas More would have taken centuries-old Irish folk tunes that would have been played on the harp and the folk tunes, which is Irish folk music, Irish folk melodies, would have been transferred to piano, put onto sheet music and then Thomas More, who was a poet, would put lyrics to this sheet music and then Thomas More who was a poet would put lyrics to this sheet music Thomas More was born in Dublin and he started to publish

sheet music in the early 1800s now to give scale as to how many people were buying sheets of Thomas More's music, he published, Jesus, about 12 books of music I think it was in the 1800s. He had a song called The Last Rose of Summer, for which he wrote the lyrics, and then, like I said, the melody would have been a gentrified Irish folk song. A melody and chord structure that existed for could be a thousand years in Irish music on the harp and Moore would have taken this melody and added his own lyrics to it and then put it on a

sheet 1.5 million Americans bought the last rose of summer in the 1800s so that's huge now they're not buying it there's no record of it they can't listen to it but they're playing this in their homes the music that's being played in middle class 1800s America so you can be fairly sure that not a lot of those people are Irish people. The Irish in America in the 1800s overwhelmingly utter poverty, absolute and utter poverty, the lowest of society. But the middle class parlors of New York would have been Americans first generation, second generation Americans playing these Irish songs that Thomas More put on sheet music now the thing is More's songs

some of the songs were fun, some of them were like drinking songs they were popular in London as well but Moore himself was also an Irish radical he was he went to Trinity College and he would have been friends with Robert Emmett who was a United Irishman he would have been Thomas Moore would have been very supportive of the United Irishmen movement, Wolftone 1798, which was one of many failed Irish rebellions against British oppression and British colonisation. The United Irishmen rebellion,

that's the birth of Irish republicanism. It was... What makes it unique is it was inspired by the french revolution it was a real attempt at forming a sense of irishness and irish identity that transcended sectarianism and it was like it doesn't matter if you're a protestant It doesn't matter if you're a Catholic. We can have a democratic Irish Republic where we are the united Irishmen. And Thomas More was 100% behind that. So a lot of his songs were politically very radical for Ireland's cause.

One in particular, The Minstrel Boy. So Thomas More wrote a song called The Minstrel Boy, which, and when you hear, Thomas More was using the term minstrel boy so thomas moore wrote a song called the minstrel boy which and when you hear thomas moore was using the term minstrel not in the the racist context which is something i'm going to get onto but thomas moore's the minstrel boy was a minstrel was like a musician a musician i think like a musician who went to war or sung songs to the drummer who would go alongside soldiers i think that's what a minstrel was but the minstrel boy was about it was a very it was about when thomas moore studied in trinity college a huge amount of his friends who he studied with in Trinity College were members of the United Irishmen movement he was friends with Robert Emmett and a lot of his friends died in the 1798

rebellion against Britain so the Minstrel Boy was in remembrance of them but also an Irish Republican song an anti-British Irish republican song that's what the minstrel boy was and this became hugely popular in america in the 1800s because people had parlors in their houses people had pianos and this is what they were buying they couldn't go out and buy singles or records they bought thomas mo More's fucking sheet music. And the minstrel boy, he wrote the lyrics, but the melody of it, again, was from a very old Irish song called Maureen,

which no one knows who wrote it. It's a traditional Irish song that could be a thousand years old. We don't know. Because we are an oral musical culture.'s what irish that's that's that's irish culture pre-cononization we're in an oral musical culture that's always valued and celebrated art and music and literature as part of who we are so what you have there in America in the 1800s pop music as it is in the form of sheet music is overwhelmingly dominated by Thomas More an Irish person that's the music that's being played

the other huge impact that the Irish had on American pop music. Now here's the thing with anything to do with Irish America. I intended this podcast to be celebratory, to celebrate the Irish influence. But as you can tell from many podcasts I've done about the history of Irish America, as soon as you start reading about the history of the Irish in America, it starts to get really dark really quickly. It starts to get really racist. And the main musical and performance expression of this is in minstrel shows.

And performance expression of this. Is. In minstrel shows. And. Minstrel shows. Are a particularly. Shitty part of American history. Where.

Think of it as. So if. The upper classes. Or middle classes were listening. To sheet music. In their parlors and their homes. The poorer people of America, mostly white audiences, well no, multiple ethnic mixes, were going to minstrel shows which were a type of variety, a live variety performance. But in general, the kind of themes of what was happening on a minstrel stage

it was a mockery of black people now earlier minstrel shows earlier minstrel shows that then they didn't just mock black people they mocked irish people as well there were irish stock characters that conveyed you have to remember in the 1800s when the Irish were arriving from the famine to America the Irish, New York in particular

and I've dealt with this and spoken about this in podcasts before the Irish who arrived in were considered not you just look at the cartoons from the time Irish people were being portrayed as as apes as not human violent people who couldn't mix with American society who came from a violent country who brought disease and the Irish were considered the bottom of society and the Irish lived in the poorest slums of New York with and alongside African-American people

who would have been slaves who were freed or had managed to run away from their slave plantations and make it to New York where they were free and they lived alongside irish people in the 1800s and to the power structure of early american 1800s american society that power the power structure would have been the power holders were the descendants of Dutch and mostly British people who held whiteness, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who held whiteness in very high esteem. The Irish wouldn't have been viewed as white. The Irish and African-Americans were seen in the eyes of these people as being the same.

African-Americans in the 1800s, in the early 1800s, were referred to as smoked Irish. So that's the landscape in New York at the time. And you're talking millions of Irish people, a lot of them who can't speak English. Irish people would have been deeply looked down upon and as a result of that in the earliest minstrel shows

you would have had who would have referred to themselves as Native Americans now when I say Native American I don't mean indigenous American people who have lived in America thousands of years I mean British settlers

who came to America, who colonized America in the 16-1700s, who then became what they referred to as Americans and these were nativists, they were nativist Americans. Second, third generation white British people who referred to themselves as American and not all of them were middle class. Some of them were poor and working class, and this would have been a huge portion of the audience in the earliest minstrel shows, laughing at and mocking stock Irish characters, stock African-American characters,

who portrayed the most negative stereotypes of those people. Now, because Irish people in America lived alongside African American people, they often were the first to put on blackface, as in to put makeup on so they would appear to be a black person and go up on stage and pretend to be black to entertain

the nativist white American audience. And the history of Irish America is incredibly racist. I mentioned before the book How the America is incredibly racist. I mentioned before the book How the Irish Became White. Irish people weren't considered white in the 1800s in America. Race is a social construct. Skin colour didn't necessarily at first allow Irish people to be considered white by nativist Americans. And Irish people gained their whiteness in two ways, through either literal acts of extreme violence and

lynching towards the black community, or by mocking them. And it's a terrible tragedy because Frederick Douglass who was an African-American former slave an abolitionist um who wanted to rid America of slavery Frederick Douglass was friends with Daniel O'Connell the Irishman who emancipated Catholics and Frederick Douglass came to Ireland to do a speaking tour in the 1840s, I believe. Daniel O'Connell brought Frederick Douglass all around Ireland with the express purpose of Frederick Douglass saying to the Irish people in Ireland, I know loads of ye are emigrating now. Like, two million, was it like, I think like two million are emigrating now. Like, two million, what was it?

I think like two million Irish people went to America. Two million Irish people went to America in like 15 years in the 1840s. That's mostly to New York. And Frederick Douglass went to Ireland to say to them, I am an African American man. When you get to America, there's going to be people like me. And when you go to America, you will be treated by Yanks as, you will be treated very poorly. And you need to realize that when you go to America, the people who look like me,rican americans you need to join up with them because

there's a common struggle and the same people that are oppressing you here in ireland their grandchildren are in america oppressing african americans and when you go to america you must join with african americans in common understanding and solidarity because you're going to be living in the same neighborhoods and you need to understand who your people are because your people are not the yanks because they're going to look down upon you when you arrive and Frederick Douglass tried his best but as soon as the Irish got to America the Irish soon realized that they could achieve soon realize that they could achieve whiteness and privilege within american society by aggressive aggressively distancing themselves from black people and figuratively and metaphorically distancing themselves from black people by things like becoming involved in minstrelry donning

themselves up as black people and mocking them and the heartbreaker is is frederick douglas himself when describing minstrel shows in america said it's the filthy scum of white society who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature in which to make money and pander to the corrupt taste of their fellow white citizens. And who Frederick Douglass is talking about there is most likely Irish people. The filthy scum of white society. You think of the Five Pints district of New York, which is famously one of the worst slums that the world has ever seen, York which is famously one of the worst slums that the world has ever seen in from about 1810 up until 1870 where Irish people lived with African Americans in the middle of Manhattan in a kind of common understanding and intermarriage and then the New York draft riots happen where

the Irish are suddenly asked to fight in the Civil War and they don't want to do it so they start lynching black people in New York because the Irish believe that the reason they're being asked to go to the Civil War is to free African-American slaves but there's a huge tradition of Irish Americans in the minstrel scene because it was the Irish who were living alongside the blacks and it was would have been the Irish who would have had who would have been living in close enough proximity to black people to be able to do an accurate and offensive portrayal of them and you look at the biggest Irish-American minstrels,

they've all got fucking Irish names. One fella in particular, his name was Thomas Rice. He, Rice, of course, is an Irish name. I don't think he was born in Ireland. His parents would have been Irish. Thomas Rice invented a character called Jim Crow, which was the quintessential minstrel caricature of an African American. Thomas Rice, the Irishman, created Jim Crow. There

was a song called Jump Jim Crow written by a fella called Riley. What was his name? E. Riley. Edward Riley I think his name was. Two Irish men or Irish American men. Jim Crowe was such a racist representation of African American people in the minstrel show and I'm talking Thomas Riley he would have dressed up as a black person performing a stereotype of black people a really offensive stereotype for the laughter of an audience there was laws brought in in the south the southern states of america post um civil war called the jim crow laws which they themselves i believe drew inspiration from the irish penal laws the laws in ire Ireland that took the rights away from Irish Catholics to own property to escape, very similar structures were brought in against African-American people.

When slavery was abolished in the southern states of America, the southerners didn't really want to give African-American people freedom, so what they did is they introduced the Jim Crow laws, which lasted until the 1960s in America, which were incredibly racist laws it's where segregation comes from it limited the civil liberties and freedoms and rights of African-American people to be equal to white people and these were called the Jim Crow laws

they were named after a racist minstrel act performed by an irish american man called thomas rice so that's how bad the irish participation in minstrel shows was and again the earliest fucking minstrel shows they were taking the piss out of irish people too they had irish characters who looked like apes who were stupid thick paddies looking for starving from potatoes from the lack of potatoes and then the irish get involved in this as a way to seek the approval of who referred to themselves as the nativist Americans, the second, third generation British people in America, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, WASPs. These people were laughing at Irish people.

These people were creating racist caricatures of Irish people. And then the Irish got involved in that system to gain the approval, to gain their whiteness, to gain their privilege and to be seen as equal to second, third generation British people. black people would put on blacker makeup in minstrel shows and perform again a caricatured version of blackness even though they themselves were african-american but the thing is with minstrel shows and the music that was being performed and the dances so before minstrel shows were even a thing that the type of dancing that would have happened on stage it has its roots to before minstrel shows and it's an amalgamation of both Irish and African dance one example this occurred in the five points neighborhood of New York in the 1840s

I believe, there was this huge dance competition between an Irish American man and an African American man the Irish man's name was John Diamond and the African American man's name was Master Juba

his real name was William Henry Lane they think and they both would have been considered the best dancers in the five points and they were to dance a competitive dance now the interesting thing with the dance that they would were doing which at the time probably would have been called a jig around 1840 the dance would have been called a jig and you can this type of dance is you can trace it to both it's an amalgamation of irish and african dancing which now i'm getting this information from the official american library of congress website so we have to assume

that this is historically rigorous if it's here so this this type of dancing that Jim Diamond and Master Juba would have been competing with each other in the type of dancing being traced to the 1600s in the Caribbean with a common dance between Irish

indentured servant and African slave. The Irish were never slaves. I'll say it again. Anyone who says it is bullshitting. There were a lot of Irish people taken from Ireland and forced to work on plantations in the Caribbean. They could achieve their freedom, but they worked alongside African slaves who were chattel slaves and could never achieve their freedom. But this dancing can trace

its roots to the caribbean in the 1600s where you had irish jig dancing and then a form of african dancing which i don't the name that's that i found for it is juba which is comes from the african uh juba or jube which is d-g-o-u-b-a but in america it became juba and both this the john diamond's dance and master juba's dance they're both competing in this similar artistic conversation which is about 200 years old and is a mix of both African and Irish dance. And this went on to become tap dancing. This was the type of dancing that was to, again, a mixture of Irish fiddle music, folk fiddle music, accompanied by African drum patterns. Do you know what I mean?

So you've got this lovely amalgamation amongst the horrors of what the fucking Irish Americans were doing. the horrors of what the fucking Irish Americans were doing. And Master Juba, the great irony with Master Juba is Jim Diamond was a minstrel. Jim Diamond performed in minstrel shows in blackface. Master Juba is the first ever African-American person to perform in front of a white audience as a minstrel. So Master Juba himself became a minstrel. He didn't wear a black face. He was a black person performing stereotypes of black people to white audiences. He performed for the Queen of England in 1848, Victoria I assume, as a minstrel. And Master Juba is considered to be the father of tap dancing.

As tap dancing went on to progress in its importance in jazz music and became more percussive, Master Juba is considered to be the one who kept that tradition and kept it rooted more in African dance rather than the Irish style of dance. And the reason I'm mentioning this is this podcast is about, like I said, it's about early 20th century

American pop music and 1800s American pop music and the huge role of the Irish within it. But I'm not going to whitewash anything. I don't want to do a podcast celebrating irish art in america without acknowledging the the racism also involved in it i'm not gonna do that um one example of why that's fucking harmful the five pints district if you've seen the film gangs of new york that's about the five pints that's if you've seen the film Gangs of New York, that's about

the Five Pints, that's what it is, it's that neighbourhood in New York, but you've probably heard my podcast that I did with Spike Lee, Gangs of New York did not portray the brutality that the Irish performed against African Americans, it didn't portray it at all. It didn't portray the New York draft riots. Spike Lee told me that Scorsese recorded that footage but it didn't go into the final scene. Probably because the Irish Americans are a very powerful lobby in America and you don't like pissing them off

by reminding them of their racist history because Irish Americans they're the ones who like to believe that the Irish were slaves, you know. And it's a fucking shame that Gangs of New York didn't portray that and that instead it was whitewashed. It's a fucking shame because you're denying the many decent Irish Americans the opportunity to learn about and understand the darkness of their history in America. Before we move on to part two, I'm probably fucking 50 minutes in now before I go near any part two, am I? Let's check. Good lord, 46 minutes. So it's time for the Ocarina Pause.

Ocarina Pause is where a digital advert is going to be inserted in this podcast. If you're new to the podcast, I play an instrument called an ocarina so that you don't get surprised by a surprise advert. I don't know what advert gets played in the Ocarina Pause. It depends on your algorithm and your search history. Here we go. Shit ocarina. got shit I can

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via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindbuypodcast. This is now my sole source of income as a result of a global pandemic i can't do gigs don't know when i can do gigs but the patreon is paying my way this it does it does two things lads most importantly the patreon allows me to have full editorial control over the podcast i I'm beholden to no advertiser. I speak about what I want. I get to do podcasts on what I'm passionate about. And if I can do a podcast on what I actually care about

and what I actually am interested in, then that's a good, enjoyable podcast, right? As soon as some advertiser starts telling me what to do podcasts about, then that's difficult for me to make an entertaining podcast the patreon support means that that's not going to happen fully independent full editorial control um which is an utter pleasure right secondly it's this is my full-time job it It's a lot of work. It's a lot of research to put these podcasts together.

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It's fine. Someone else is paying for you to listen and i'm still earning a living it's a really it's a it's a model based on kindness and soundness all right and it works perfectly if you can't afford the patreon please do the reason i'm always plugging it people come and people go so i gotta keep it going every week reminding you the patreon is what pays for this podcast and what keeps it going um once a month i pick one patron at random and i will send you in the post a hand-drawn illustration that is a one-of-a-kind and i'll sign it as well okay as a thank you to my patrons patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast um also like the podcast subscribe to it whatever app you're

using leave a little review for this podcast and interact with it that way give it a few stars give it a follow that really helps me too the podcast environment at the moment is becoming oversaturated by big media companies with a lot of money behind them and they are taking up space and it's pushing out small independent podcasts like me so what you can do to help me is interact with the podcast by liking reviewing things like that telling your friends about it then i don't have to worry about a fucking a huge broadcaster who's got massive sponsors who i can't compete with because podcasting wasn't like that three four years ago when i started i didn't have that huge competition and it was just simply put out a good podcast and you're on a level playing field that's changing, changing big time

because of big money follow me on twitch twitch.tv forward slash the blind buy podcast that's my latest venture, alright 3-4 times a week you can see me live half 9 every night Irish time

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday yes weekends but i'm not religious about the weekends you can come and you can chat with me live you can get into the comments there's only like a thousand people watching at a time it's still starting off it's it's growing so you can get online you can chat to me live and i'll talk to you and it's it's amazing crack so twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast start yourself a twitch account and follow me thank you very much part two so the central thesis and hot take of, in the early 20th century, pop music was sang in an Irish accent. American pop music was sang in an Irish accent, regardless of whether the singer was Irish or not.

One big reason for this, I believe, is because of a singer called John McCormack. John McCormack came from Athlone. He was born in 1884. He started to become really popular around 1902. John McCormack was one of the biggest stars in the world. By about 1905, would have started off he was an operatic singer an operatic tenor singer okay and he would have been i'm talking elvis presley michael jackson biggest musician in the world from athlone about in about 1905 1906 John McCormack to give you an idea James Joyce

the Irish writer who was considered the greatest modernist writer in the English language like James Joyce was obsessed with John McCormack all James James Joyce wanted the right songs for John McCormack James Joyce there's only one known example of a song that James Joyce wrote it's called bid adieu to girlish days which is the 1906 equivalent of that song girl you'll be a, by, who wrote that? Neil Diamond, I think. Neil Diamond. James Joyce wrote that, wrote a very similar song in 1906. Bid adieu to girlish ways.

And he wrote it because he wanted John McCormack to sing it. And John McCormack was James Joyce's friend. And James Joyce always said that he would write lyrically. James Joyce would write with a song in his heart Finnegan's Wake in particular and John McCormack was fucking huge so I spoke before the break about the influence of the Irishman Thomas More on sheet music in the 1800s and how thomas moore like basically took traditional irish music traditional irish melodies and chords and gentrified it and added his own words to it and made this palatable to middle class parlors where people would buy sheet music and play pianos well by 1905

sheet music was still a thing but the parlors now instead of a piano people were able to afford record players and John McCormack was one of the first stars of recorded music where people would buy a John McCormack record and listen to his voice and one of John McCormack's biggest songs his earliest songs that was huge, would have been a Thomas More song, The Minstrel Boy. Now, like I said, Thomas More's minstrel is not the racist minstrel, it's just a coincidence. Thomas More's minstrel was a singer or a drummer who went into battle, but this Thomas More song was one of John McCormack's first recorded songs and

it was a huge huge hit in 1906 and John McCormack sang in an operatic tenor voice but his inflections and way of singing was unapologetically. It would have been bougie Irish. It would have been. How priests would have spoken. It wasn't Anglo-Irish. With a British inflection. But he would have sang. In an Irish accent that was.

Bogger. Like a Athlone bogger accent. But not. Picking spuds out of the ground accent. Aspirational bogger. Someone who might become a priest bogger. That's how John McCormack. Sounded when he sang.

And I think. John McCormack. And his recorded music. Is. He was the one who set the tone for. If you want to release a fucking pop song even if you're Jewish you've got to sound like a fucking bogger from Athlone

who wants to be a priest. So I'll play you a little bit of John McCormack. Do you know, I won't play you Minstrel Boy I'll play you When Irish Eyes Are Smiling because this really shows that bogger Irish inflection that I'm talking about. Pure as like a morning spring In the lilt of Irish laughter You can hear the angels sing When Irish hearts are happy

All the world is bright and gay And when Irish eyes are smiling Sure they steal your heart away So in 1906, when that would have been released, like, you're talking, that's Beyonce. That's fucking huge. Biggest, I say the world, but like, in 1906, the songs that are going to be getting to number one in America are not the songs that are going to be getting to number one in the UK. It would have been too different.

the songs that are going to be getting to number one in the uk it would have been too different but in america in the city chicago new york 1906 that's the biggest song fucking huge absolute superstar and with all due respect like for a song that's over 100 years old that's banging like you know you can tell that's a star his voice is incredible he sounds like a priest um he sounds like it like a a bougie irish priest where it's boggled inflection with that attempt to be kind of posh but not english and you hear that in his voice but that set the standard for what pop songs had to sound like at the turn of the last century. So another huge contributing factor to Irishness in early American pop songs is a place called Tin Pan Alley, right? Now,

as I'm saying, pop music for me, it's when music starts to intersect with capitalism. Songwriters basically going, I can make a song and if the song is really fucking popular, this will make me money. And this starts to happen with Tin Pan Alley, which started around 1885. It was an area around 26th street in manhattan where copyright started becoming a thing copyright and music publishing started becoming a thing intellectual property if you write a song you can own that song if you wrote it and if it makes money you're entitled to royalties so the beginning of that is tin pan alley and loads of songwriters were starting up these publishing houses in this one area and in their little offices they would have pianos and the place was called Tin Pan Alley

because imagine 40 different offices and in each office is a piano and someone's trying to write a pop song so it all that cacophony together wasn't very pleasant. So if you went near 26th Street in Manhattan, it sounded like people banging tin pans and pots with all the different pianos going off. A huge amount of songwriters in Tin Pan Alley were either Irish or Jewish, okay? Tin Pan Alley, they were writing sheet music, so writing

music for people to buy as sheets to take home and play on their pianos, or play in the pub if there was a piano in the pub or in the saloon, and also for early radio and people who had fucking record players. They were making songs to be pressed to record for people to buy. And you started to see the first pop songs. They were, some people call it novelty music. There would have been novelty music as in someone would, novelty for me, I don't like the fucking phrase novelty music because it's something that's used to

refer to, oh there's a fucking house alarm now what the fuck am I going to do for the love of fucking god bollocks fucking cunts right the house alarm has gone off now whoever the fuck that was.

It was either a house or a car. It's half three in the morning as I record this. So what was I talking about? Novelty music. So I don't like the phrase novelty music. I don't like it when the Rubber Bandits music is referred to as novelty music. Novelty music tends to be used quite lazily just because a song contains comedy or the lyrics are intended

to be funny does not mean that a song is novelty music novelty music is when the music itself doesn't matter because the theme of the song, let's just take fucking house alarm if I release a song tomorrow crazy frog

it's about a ringtone if you've released the house alarm song and the music isn't very good and it has a house alarm in it and all it is is about a house alarm that's novel that's a novelty song because all people care about is it's like ha ha yeah i i know what house alarms are ha ha that's a novelty song um a song that is well constructed pop song that just happens to be funny is not novelty that's a completely different thing but in tin pan alley they they released comedy songs but they also released novelty songs which which is, there's nothing happening musically. They're using pre-existing music, a traditional melody, and then making lyrics that are about something very current. If you listen to a lot of novelty songs from around the time,

around 1910, 1920, a lot of it was about emerging technology you'd have a song about fucking you'd have a song about telephones there was loads of songs about trams there would have been songs about the Wright Brothers flying planes songs about current events and people are buying them

because it's a novelty that this song is about something that's in the news or something you can relate to. I'll show you a good example of what was considered a novelty song at the time. No, this is unfair. The person who wrote this song intended this to be a novelty song. Right? They intended this to be a novelty song this is a tin pan alley song written by a jewish man performed by a jewish man from tin pan alley no irish people involved and the writer

was on a tram and the writer would have been in his 30s or 40s and he was aware that right who's buying these records who's listening to this stuff young people and he was on a tram and he he saw some young people 16 17 talking and there was a girl on the train on the tram a young irish girl called katie casey and she was talking about baseball and your man the writer had never heard of baseball it was obviously so young and new in america and this girl on the tram in 1906 i think it was 1907 was saying to her friend who was a fella take me out to the ball game take me out to the ball game and the songwriter a jewish man who worked in tin pan alley, ah, take me out to the ball game. I guess that's what the kids are talking about now. Baseball. I don't know what the fuck it

is, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna take some of these lyrics and I'm gonna write this into a novelty song. But I don't think this is a novelty song because it's actually a classic that still survived today called Take Me Out to the Ball Game and it's quite catchy. So he intended to write a novelty song because it's actually a classic that still survived today called take me out to the ball game and it's quite catchy so he intended to write a novelty song but he ended up writing a really catchy good pop song that just happened to have lyrics that are about baseball but here's the key thing written by a jewish person performed by a Jewish man called Harvey Windermeyer no one Irish and yet, why is he singing like a fucking bogger? He's singing like a

bogger from Ennis again, get a listen take me out to the ball game 1906 I'll tell you what you can do take me out to the ball game take me out to the ballgame Take me out with the crowd Buy me some peanuts and mackerel jacks

I don't care if I ever get back Let me root, root, root for the home team If they don't win it's a shame For it's one, two, three strikes you're out At the old ballgame So there you have it again. That's 1908, by the way, not 1906. But Harvey Hindermeyer or Windermeyer, it's written by a Jewish fella too.

Two Jewish people working in Tin Pan Alley writing a novelty song but yet he delivers it in the John McCormack style listen to the pronunciation of buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks crackerjacks sounds like a priest sounds like a fucking priest

from Cork or Ennis, singing with an Irish inflection. Cracker Jacks! That's not how Jewish American men were speaking in New York at the time. Trying to sound Irish, trying to sound like John McCormack, to appeal to most likely who the song is about, a girl called Katie Casey. You have to remember, 1906, the vast majority of people on the streets of New York are going to be Irish, who want to hear songs about what Irish people are interested in,

and Irish-American culture. And in Tin Pan Alley, it was hugely over-represented with Irish and Jewish songwriters. The Jewish people I think were looking more after the musical side of it, playing the piano side and then the Irish were the lyrics and the singing. You even had Irish lads pretending that their second names were Jewish and Jewish lads pretending that their second names were Irish like there there was a fella called Tin Pan Alley songwriter George M Cohen now you think Cohen is a Jewish name like Leonard Cohen but his name he spelt it C-O-H-A-N but his actual name was K-O-N-E made it Cian, so people would think that he was Jewish. Another massive theme of Tin Pan Alley songs, we'd say before 1920, would have been

Longing for Ireland. Longing for Ireland. Songs to appeal to the Irish diaspora, who had a rose-tinted version of what they'd left behind or what their parents had left behind and you had all these songs about Killarney and Cork and all this shit and this was dominating the pop charts in New York here's an excerpt of a song from 1910 written by Nora Bays Nora Bays was a New York Jewish woman. She has never been to Cork. She's not Irish. She has no reason to be longing for Cork. She certainly doesn't speak in an Irish accent because she's a Jewish woman from New York. But here's her song Has Anybody Seen Kelly from 1910. so there you have it Kelly loves this little girl. Of a great white way.

So there you have it. That's Nora Bays, whose birth name is Rachel Goldberg, a Jewish-American woman, singing like every single one of my aunts at once. Because that was pop music then you sung like a paddy about Irish things

regardless of whether or not you were Irish that was pop music in 1910 another pair of Tin Pan Alley songwriters they would have been like a songwriting production team I'm trying to think of current songwriting production teams that'm trying to think of current songwriting production teams that are big

and it's nothing, the closest I can think of is Pharrell Williams he's more 10 years ago but like Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo nerd, N-E-R-D like Jerome and Schwartz but

William Jerome, his name was William Flannery, but he called himself William Jerome, so people would think that he was Jewish, and William Jerome, Irish-American, New York, born in 1865, probably came from an Irish-American slum, he himself started off as a blackface minstrel performer, then started writing with Gene Schwartz, a Jewish person, and they became huge pop songwriters. And this next song, this is pure and utter novelty song, and I'm only playing it for you because it's so fucking ridiculous. This is one of the most stupid, ridiculous songs i've ever heard in my life um the name of the

song is it it's if it wasn't for the irish and the jews and what it's about is the song is like celebrating again it's a novelty because they're going who's our audience young irish and young jews but they're going you'd have no actors you'd have no entertainers you'd have none of this if it wasn't for the Irish and the Jews and this is just a bizarre ridiculous song now this is a little bit later this is like 1913 and you start to see the disappearance of the Irish inflection and more of an American weird New York inflection which I believe is because of the success of a singer called Eddie Cantor, who became very big at the time.

And this sounds like him. He was singing in a New York accent. Eddie Cantor, again, was another minstrel performer. I often sit and think what would this country be If we hadn't men like Rosenstein and Hughes You'd surely have a kingdom, there'd be no democracy © BF-WATCH TV 2021 If it wasn't for a levy A manahan or Donahill Where would we get our policemen Why Uncle Sam would have the blues

Without the pats and Isidors You'd have no big department stores If it wasn't for the Irish and the Jews So there you go. That's pop music 100 years ago. Absolutely bizarre. But fascinating. Fucking fascinating.

And I fell down a deep, deep YouTube hole just listening to this shit and listening to the ridiculous shit that was considered pop music back then but in doing so noticing why the fuck are so many of them speaking like Irish people I need to find out this reason and that's what this podcast was about and I think I think for my hot take I think I've backed it up I think I've backed it up. I think I've backed it up with good evidence. I've never heard anyone, I've never heard that argument made, I've never heard it spoken about.

About people singing with Irish accents just as a given. In the way that right now, singing with an African American inflection is a given and it's normal and no one blinks an eyelid. Where do I think it's going to go? The biggest bands in the world today are South Korean. BTS are the biggest boy band in the world. A band like Red Velvet, South Korean band, the girl band. Not only are they huge but the pop music is really fucking good. Red Velvet in particular. They're huge. They're fucking huge. They're selling more albums than artists in the West. And I've been watching Asian pop music for, since about 2010. I went to

MTV in, just after Horse Outside Outside we were brought over to America to film some stuff with MTV and when I was working on MTV the vast majority of the people that I was working with were Asian American and they were telling me you have to watch Korea Korea is where where it's going to be and they were saying this in 2010 and they got me onto a band called 21 they were called and i was listening to 21 and i'm like yeah this is fucking banging and then of course gagnam style comes out in 2015 i think the biggest song on youtube ever and one of the reasons like asian like Asian markets, so I noticed almost around 2008, a lot of big western producers were doing quite a lot of work in places like Korea, and one explanation I heard was, now if I'm wrong on this, this is something I heard, because I don't like making generalizations about entire populations.

But one thing I heard was that Asian cultures weren't as impacted by illegal downloading as Western cultures. Because of cultural attitudes towards stealing. cultural attitudes towards stealing that circa 2000 when we were all using limewire or whatever to illegally or bit torrent to illegally download tunes because it's like fucking free albums give it here no one's going to catch me everyone was downloading music and we effectively destroyed the ability for musicians to earn music myself included i downloaded all around me and now i can't fucking earn money for music asian cultures didn't experience illegal downloading to the extremity that we did because the culture of shame around stealing that the culture of shame around stealing was much greater than us so they just didn't do it as much so a lot of

producers migrated there to go well this is where you can make money from music now and then from that you end up with in 2020 the biggest bands in the world are south korean bts are fucking huge bts are bigger than any boy band in the world um so i wonder is that going to be the next thing like i do think the next century the us is going to stop being the global power coronavirus is the first sign i mean we're really seeing it like the way that Korea, Vietnam, China are controlling

coronavirus acting responsibly as world leaders and then in you've got Britain and America and it's just this real embarrassing shambles and Europe is kind of looking over to Asia going well they seem to have their shit together over there and I think

coupled with I just wonder in 10 years time will you have western artists either singing with Korean lyrics or singing with Korean inflections and that this will be the next thing and I don't is it that is it that mad

to suggest that if at one point a hundred years ago everyone was singing like a priest from Cork do you know what I mean so that was this week's hot take, I hope you enjoyed it, I love doing music podcasts,

I adore it, it's four in the morning here, and I'm finished the podcast, I don't give a fuck, I've been up all morning researching, researching yesterday, I'm up till four in the morning to deliver, the best fucking podcast I can deliver,

because I love doing it, I don't give a shit, if I'm going to bed at 4 or 5 in the morning to get this done because I fucking love doing it I fucking love doing it I hope you enjoyed it too I'll see you next week Yart

You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishikesh Herway, the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Jimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece. Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit TSO.ca. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.