POST-COVID CATCH UP: MUSIC FIRST - SHALLOW BROWN

Iain and I have been grounded recently having tested positive for Covid.  We are now recovering and getting back to normal. 

The necessity of self-isolating has meant more time listening to the radio.  I discovered this sea shanty today on BBC Radio 3: Shallow Brown.  It's a 'fare-thee-well' folk song maybe about slave departing? maybe it relates to the leaving of a West Indian port as ('Challo' is the Caribbean word for a mixed race person).

Petroc Trelawny's filled in the backstory to the following recording of this "evocative farewell from a beloved".

      "Recorded at Maltings in Snape in December 1968, Britten had struggled to get a copy of the score.  Eventually he heard from the Grainger Library in New York that a photostat was being made of the score [...] It eventually arrived but it wasn't a very good photocopy.  It was a copy of a partially de-faced miniature score.  Britten's assistant, Rosalind Strode [not sure of spelling] worked it up into a form that the conductor could actually use for the recording and then gave it to Britten as a birthday gift!"

It is sung by John Shirley-Quirk and choir is The Ambrosian Singers.  The orchestra is the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Britten. He produces a wonderful 'sound picture' in this video of the above recording:

Fare-thee-well, I’m bound to leave you
Shallow, shallow brown
Fare-thee-well, I’m bound to leave you
Shallow, shallow brown

For my master, he’s bound to sell me
Shallow, shallow brown
For my master, he wants to sell me
Shallow, shallow brown

and there are more verses ......

and in the meantime here is an old and favourite photo:

Peter and friend singing sea shanties at Crinan Basin in 2006