We had Lankum in The Parlour for our recording of Episode 1. They played this bonus track - Rosie Reilly - for our studio audience. Find out more about The Parlour at www.theparlour.tv / theparlourtv / parlourtv
A couple weeks ago I randomly clicked on one of their songs simply because I was curious about the title of one of their videos. Man these guys made me fall in love with them.
This is the very first song I’ve heard from them on youtube. The day this pandemic is over, the very first thing I wanna do is go to a gig of theirs. I swear.
Bloody hell - yet another from the band with no comparison. I'm left speechless - thank you so much for what you've done with this beautiful tune. Comparisons with the original tread on the profane but I reckon this version of Lankum's is without equal.
Saw these guys at their 1st Sidmouth gig. It took me an hour to fetch my jaw from the floor. Best original/authentic sounding Irish music I'd heard in years.
That accordion (a Russian "bayan") has wonderful deep basses. Dunno if she playw with the right hand, but if she wants to, it only takes 3 fingers to cover it all. Interesting that the internals have all the reed tongues on one massive reed plate, which makes the accordion particularly robust. They are often assembled without wax, just using leather gaskets. Lovely setting of this tune.
That particular bayan looks like it had “totally broken” going for it too. 😸 The bass chord buttons seem all sunken under the keyboard. Happens if they get dropped. But it’s the massive bass notes that are still there that just shake you. 🪗
my mom would sing a song similar to this one, but the refrain ended with "we all belong to a happy family." it also had more verses with different animals, too. and the names of the family members were different. can't find a rendition of it anywhere, though, if anyone can help!
I was just looking these lyrics up the other day and found what appears to be an older version of the lyrics, matching your description, here: www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/folk-song-lyrics/Happy_Family.htm
From the band's old bandcamp page, might be helpful: We first heard this cheerful semi-nonsense song from a recording of the singer, poet, storyteller and Gypsy-rights activist, Jasper Derby Smith (1921-2003), who sings it on the Topic LP The Travelling Songster (12TS304). At the time of recording Jasper lived on the side of the road in Sevenoaks, Kent, along with his brother Levi and sister Minty, who also appear on the LP. Jasper, of Anglo-Romani descent, was a founder member of the Gypsy liaison council in the sixties, and attended the first World Romany Congress in London 1971. He found short-lived media fame when, under threat of eviction, he built a 25-foot-high cardboard rocket to take him and his family to a new home in the sky, explaining ‘The council won’t leave us anywhere to live down here!’. Versions of the song are known to have been in print as ‘My Father Kept a Horse’ as early as the 1830s and in later ballad sheets it commonly appears as ‘The Happy Family’ and ‘The Irish Familie’. The word ‘jub’ in the third verse is Anglo-Romani, stemming from the Sanskrit ‘yuka’, and meaning ‘flea’.
@@FireDrawNear thank you! very interesting. i've sinced asked my mom about where she learned it, and she doesn't quite recall...though she says that she's known it since childhood; she had a pretty chaotic upbringing, with lots of people coming and going, so i imagine that one of them taught her the verses