Yellow Bird (Traditional) Red Stripe Ebony Band The origin of many of the pieces in the world music

section of the set-works is obscure, and this is particularly true of Yellow Bird. In 1883 Oswald Durand, a famous poet from the Caribbean country of Haiti, published a poem called Choucounne, which was sent to music ten years later by Michael Mauleart Monton, an American-Haitian composer. This setting is the music we now know as Yellow Bird. Some of the material he used in the piece was assembled from exisiting works (a common practice at the time) that may have possibly come from France the country that had settled Haiti before it gained independence. In the first half of the 20th century, Choucounne (by then usually known as Ti Zwasoor Little Bird) was usually performed as a type of dance music known as a meringue, which in Haiti was usually quite slow and sentimental. The song was not widely known outside of Haiti until 1957, when the American singer Harry Belafonte released and English version of Choucounne under the title of Dont Ever Love Me. That same year, a new version of the song appeared under the title of Yellow Bird. It was given totally new words that refer to an unfaithful wife or girlfriend, that begin: Yellow bird, up high in banana tree. Yellow bird, you sit all alone like me. Did your lady friend leave the nest again? This is very bad, makes me feel so sad. You can fly away, in the sky away You more lucky than me. The music was arranged in a calypso* style by the American Norman Luboff. This is the version that has been recorded many times over the years and is now so well-known that it is often assumed to be a tradition calypso from Trinidad. It is also sometimes said to be an example of mento from Jamaica a folk style that predates ska and reggae, and that is similar to calypso. Perhaps the most accurate way to describe Yellow Bird is modern folk music which, while it once had a named composer, originated in some distant age and has continued to evolve ever since. Most calypsos are in a major key, with simple triadic melodies that can be harmonised with the common chords of I, IV and V. They are usually in duple metre (Yellow Bird is effectively in 2/2 despite its 4/4 time signature) and the rhythm often includes syncopation. All of these features can be heard in the recording. Listen to the whole piece and answer the following questions: 1. How many different chords are used in the piece? 2. What instruments can you hear that are not in the score? 3. How are the long notes sustained by the melody instruments?

The rhythm of this arrangement derives from the samba, a Latin-American dance from nearby South America. Notice that while the melody is syncopated, the bass forms a simple rhythmic ostinato in which the note values are the same in every bar. However, the structure of Yellow Bird is distinctly European with its succession of mainly four-bar phrases falling into Verse and Chorus form. Equally westernised is the harmony all chords are essentially primary triads sometimes with a 7th or a little chromatic decoration. The instrumentation sounds characteristically Trinidadian, even though steel pans have spread from Trinidad to other Caribbean countries, as well as other parts of the world such as Britain. Instrumental music at carnival time in Trinidad was originally provided by African drums, but these were banned in 1884 after which the resourceful Trinidadians developed tamboobamboo band instruments made from hollowed-out bamboo that could be tuned to different notes. The word tamboo is a local dialect version of the French tambour (a small drum) but these drums were relatively quiet and in the 1930s they were supplemented (and soon replaced) by the sound of metallic percussion in the form of homemade instruments fashioned from anything to hand that would make a noise, such as dustbin lids and care brake-drums. One of these, called the ping pong, was made from a large paint tin and struck with wooden sticks. The beaters left indentations and it was discovered that if these were pushed out to form small bumps, they could be tuned to notes of a different pitch. During the Second World War the Americans used Trinidad as an army base, leaving behind large quantities of big empty oildrums. The principle of the ping pong was extended to these much larger containers, which quickly proved to be very versatile instruments. The oildrum is turned upside down and its base is hammered into a concave curve. Individual notes are then grooved with a steel punch. There may be three or four separate notes on bass instruments but as many as 29 on a soprano pan. The steel is tempered by heating then cooled rapidly in water to give a better tone. The height of the drum is reduced as needed to give the optimum resonance for its range and the notes are then fine-tuned. Smaller pans are suspended by wire from a stand, but bass pans usually consist of entire oildrums that stand on the ground. They are played with sticks made from bamboo or other wood that have bands of rubber wound around the ends (or sponge rubber balls for bass pans). The size of a steel band can vary from just a quartet to a huge ensemble of more than 100 players. Although the names given to the various pan sizes varies between ensembles and regions, their musical functions are usually similar:

Name Soprano, Tenor. First Tenor, Ping pong Double alto, Double second, Double Tenor Cell, Guitar, Triple cello, Four-pan cello Bass, Boom

Musical Function Melody-line pans with a chromatic range of at least two octaves A pair of pans that can play an alto melody or line of chords Sets of two, three or four pans that can play a tenor part or chords Bass line (usually a set of five or six pans, each with three or four notes

The smaller pans usually have a fully chromatic range of two and a half octaves. The lowest 12 semitones are arranged in a circle of fifths, forming the outer circle of notes. Inside this is a second (higher) octave of notes and the remaining four or five notes, which are an octave higher still, are in the middle of the pan. Tuning adjacent notes in 5ths and octaves like this improves the resonance of the instrument. Traditional steel bands once included a section called the iron several people playing rhythms with metal rods on brake drums from old cars. Today it is more common for a steel band to include a drum kit. There may also be a pair of conga drums, and some steel bands include other metallic percussion instrument such as vibraphone.

Yellow Bird became popular to traditional steel-band repertory because of its memorable melody, simple harmonies and clearly defined structures. Modern steel-band playing has widened this repertory considerably with special arrangements of many different types of music.

The piece starts with the chorus of the song, which falls into four four-bar phrases that form a binary structure A bars 1-4 A bars 5-8 B bars 9-12 B bars 13-16. Notice the use of both melodic sequence (bars 9-10) and varied repetition (compare bars 10 + 11). These 16 bars are played twice, as indicated by the repeat mark at the end of bar 16. The verse of the song follows, which has just two phrases (bars 17-20 and 21-25). The second of these phrases at last breaks the periodic phrasing by including an extra bar of V7 harmony (bar 24). The whole of these 25 bars are then repeated to form the rest of the piece. Notice the harmony part that briefly rises above the tune in bars 28-29 and 32-33 to give this repeat a little variety. Each part has its own clearly-defined function, which is maintained throughout the arrangement. The basses play chordal notes in a tango rhythm that never varies. The four pan cello is a simple harmony part that moves in semibreves and minims. The double tenor plays a counter-rhythm in the first seven bars of the A sections, adding 6th to the tonic chords and 7th to the dominant chords, but it is confined to semibreves elsewhere. The melody is assigned the upper instruments throughout, and is doubled in 3rd during the approach to the perfect cadence that ends every main section of the piece. The melody is largely diatonic (C# is the only chromatic note) and its limited range (from D above middle C to E a 9th higher) reveals its origins as a song. Notice how all the long notes are sustained by the use of a tremolo on the pans. We have already noted that the harmonisation uses only 3 chords (G, D7 and C). There is no modulation, but the secondary dominant (G7) created by the passing F in bar 8 and similar places adds a touch of chromaticism to the otherwise diatonic harmony. The texture is homophonic throughout.

*Calypsos were traditionally sing at carnival time in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad. The repertoire was based on 50 tunes to which new words were constantly improvised sometimes mocking and satirical, and often topical.