Music offers Civil War experiences, humor
The Daily Mail
Aug. 3, 2009

WINDHAM—Visitors to the Centre Church Civic Center this weekend were transported to the world of the Civil War through music and the work of dozens of re-enactors at the Civil War Heritage Music Gathering and Encampment.

John Quinn, a gathering organizer who co-founded the 77th New York Regimental Balladeers, said the music offered at the event represents the popular culture of the antebellum and Civil War period.

Sheet music was mass produced, he said, pianos were becoming affordable and a family might gather around in a parlor to sing in the evenings.

“This is the way that people would entertain themselves,” he said.

The weekend began Friday evening with an ice cream social, an historical walk through Windham Centre, led by Joan Coster-Morales, who was aided by residents who portrayed home-owners as they were in 1865, and an organ recital.

A new CD recorded by more than a dozen Windham performers, entitled “Mountain Thyme: Songs and Melodies of the Civil War,” was officially released Friday, as well.

The event also featured discussions about weaponry, crafts and influential figures.

This year, while communities in New York celebrate Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial, the Balladeers are recognizing the bicentennial of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln by playing songs about Lincoln or that were once enjoyed by him.

Although some groups perform only music sung or played during the time of the Civil War, Quinn’s is one group that performs contemporary pieces that may be be written about character or event from the war.

“There is room for contemporary musicians to add to the wealth of Civil War music,” he said.

Last week, Celtic composer Jed Marum performed some original titles with the Balladeers in Oak Hill.

He explained that tunes from different regions of the Union and Confederacy had their own distinctive sounds. Opinions about policies and battles came to play in different pieces.

For example, he said, Confederates would have enjoyed a song about the death of abolitionist John Brown, but Brown was a hero to many Union soldiers in civilians in the North.

Marum’s song, “John Brown’s Dance,” a parody that describes Brown’s hanging, drew chuckles from an audience of Daughters of the Confederacy, he said.

Marum wrote the lyrics for the song to the tune of the traditional “John Brown’s March,” for the PBS film Bloody Dawn.

Marum also played during Windham’s Saturday lineup.

Music sung aboard ships during the war showed the unique subculture of Naval men, said David Dziewulski, who portrays a ship’s cook with the group Iron Jacks.

The Iron Jacks perform strictly shanties, or working songs, and ballads.

Dziewulski, and group member Bob DeLisle, explained that a ship’s crew would have been made up of veteran seamen, new recruits, or ‘landsmen,’ and freed slaves. So men would have sung songs about returning home and songs that poked fun of those lower down the ship’s chain of command.

DeLisle said officers aboard the vessels did not sing or play instruments, but some purchased instruments to have on hand.

Bob Keough, another member of the Iron Jacks, explained that some men joined the service solely to be ensured to receive rum twice a day and were upset when the rum was banned, on September 1, 1862. Songs reflected those sentiments, too, he said.

Dziequlski said seamen lived their lives in a ship’s cabin or working on the deck, and music became both part of the working routine, as a fiddler might set a pace for doing chores or hauling lines, and a morale booster.

“Music was the way of escaping,” DeLisle said.