The Barren Rocks Of Aden

This is a famous Scottish pipe march which I am playing as a slow air in four parts based on a transcription by Alf Warnock. Octave mandolin with a simple tenor guitar and mandocello backing.

Mid-Missouri M-111 octave mandolin
Vintage Viaten tenor guitar
Suzuki MC-815 mandocello


https://youtu.be/SoAzZnAGEHU

We do already have this tune in the index, but the link points to a genric thread with the title "Scottish Tunes", so I thought it more appropriate to start a new thread. Nice version by ptarmi of the tune in that thread, though, played much faster as a reel.

Martin

This is a strangely tame and comforting tune for a march, almost like a Christmas song (can hardly imagine the drums to go with that). I always wondered what it would sound like ever since I saw it mentioned in Neil Munro's Vital Spark stories. Thanks for clearing that up.

Thanks, Bertram. I think the "tame" character is mainly because I have slowed the tune down and am not playing it as a march. Not entirely sure how well this works -- I quite like the effect of this accompaniment even though it does change the character of the tune. I might record another version at marching speed and stronger pulse (possibly without the last variation which might be too busy if played faster).

Martin

I have a sudden impulse to buy me a banana.
(Anyone who's raised kids or been a kid in Scotland in the 1980s or 1990s will understand)

https://youtu.be/ZWth8SFPxt8

Bertram and Bren, you are taking me back through the years with the memories you are conjuring up. I used the Para Handy stories regularly when I was teaching, Bertram. Bren, my two daughters, born in 1976 qnd 1980 and very fine pipers, loved the Singing Kettle with Cilla and Artie. The Barren Rocks is such a fine pipe march dating back to the 1880s, I believe - not as has been claimed elsewhere as coming from the 1960s when the 1st Battalion of The Argyll And Sutherland Highlanders was stationed in Aden and saw some fierce action in the Crater district under Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mitchell.

Bren, to me, who used to listen to Cilla Fisher and Artie Tresize as serious Folk Singers in the 80s, this is slightly disturbing. I always wondered if Tresize is French for "extra big", and now this banana song... This is like William Wallace drinking a can of IRN-BRU before battle for strength.

John, Para Handy was practically pressed on me during my first visit to Scotland. I wandered into a small exhibition of Hamish Haswell-Smith's watercolour illustrations of the book in Lochgilphead only minutes after a psychic experience in an empty pub and a few days later saw the real Vital Spark moored in a tiny port in Crinan on a wet day, the air being filled with raindrops and midges. I ended up buying the illustrated book and have been reading it again and again on summer afternoons in the backyard.

Martin, you have inspired me with your current Scottish postings to have a go at this one. I also decided to follow you and go in closer with the camera (as we used to do a few years back on our videos before we started including our faces). I notice that the focus is slightly out with the limited depth of field the dull day was providing indoors.

Very nice, John -- yes, that is more like marching tempo! I slowed it down because of that busy final variation which I see you (wisely) didn't play.

Martin

That sounds livelier, John.
Both versions with their own rights.

Thanks, Martin and Frithjof. There has been discussion over the years about just how many parts this tune has, Martin. I have always played it as a three part tune and I know some dance bands only play the first two parts in dance sets. A grand tune, however it is performed.

Nice tune, Martin and John K…and it’s the differing versions that creates much of the pleasure for us.

John, now the tune conveys a modestly merry marching mood. This way, the tune indeed sounds like it should have words - not the banana thing, though; I thought of something more historically significant:

The barren rocks of Aden
can't slow us down, never slow us down
let's go and chase Bin Laden
let's go and make him frown...

Bertram, there very much are words to The Barren Rocks Of Aden. Here is the late great Andy Stewart (not to be confused with Andy M. Stewart):

https://youtu.be/ex4J6X8kIts

He doesn't even need instruments for a march feel!

Martin

Andy Stewart was a stalwart on the Scottish entertainment scene particularly in the 1960s when he was the host of the very popular BBC television programme The White Heather Club. This presented a nostalgic view of Scotland with kilted dancers and folk musicians performing their stuff and generally having a great time with the studio audience. I think of Andy as coming from that long line of Scottish entertainers which goes back to the likes of Sir Harry Lauder. The image they presented was of a Scotland such as was portrayed in the Holywood film Brigadoon starring Gene Kelly.

Andy had several big hits during this time by taking popular pipe marches and adding lyrics to them, his most famous probably being A Scottish Soldier which took the march The Green Hills of Tyrol and added suitably sentimental lyrics. It was one of the first singles I ever bought! As Robert Burns had done about 200 years before, Andy helped to preserve some great tunes and bring them to a much wider audience by adding lyrics to them.

In The Barren Rocks video that Martin links to you will notice that Andy uses only the 1st and 2nd parts of the tune - what else can you do when you have a verse and chorus format!

There's often confusion at a session about whether the third part will be played at all or the variations are being included in the second part, if at all.
Not that it gets played much at sessions these days, but common enough at ceilidhs.

Martin, you're right, Andy Stewart doesn't need pipes for a pipe march - this calls for a male choir, though, enhancing the chorus in the style of a sea shanty.

Two fine versions, each in its own style.

My take on this. I hope what I wrote on YT isn't too political for these parts.

I have a bit of a problem with the title of this, written by a Scottish piper posted to Aden in the nineteenth century - not only do we go and stick flags in remote parts of the globe, but then we complain about their topography and climate as well. Well, I suppose the squaddies didn't choose to go there. My illustrations are mainly from the National Army Museum, which seems to have done an honest job of documenting the British presence in Yemen up to the 1960s (a presence that continues to resonate to this day).

Anyway, I know there is some discussion about how many parts this should consist of. I play four parts, with C and D providing variations on A and B respectively (even though C is a bit of a challenge).

Very nice flow Richard, with a bright yet melancholic feel.
About the politics I’m ok with that on YouTube, it’s history after all.

Though I’m wondering if, in court, you would say ‘we’ did this, or that? -the ‘British’ are quite a mixed lot!

Nice tone, Richard, and as Simon says the tune flows very well as you pay it. Those variations are why I slowed the tune down for my version, but you do well to get all those fiddly bits into your pulse. They don't fall particularly nicely under the fingers on mandolin, nor is there any reason why they should as it's a pipe tune.

Martin

BTW in the 60’s and 70’s if anyone in the RAF was posted to Aden the first thing everyone would think was why are they being punished? Adultery? Theft? Brutality with servants? Overt gayness? Or even being too friendly with the locals.
A whole boat-load of bad rumours.
And they said that the people who returned from Aden were never the same again.

A simple but beautiful piece...and with an interesting story behind it...

Thank you, Simon, Martin, and Jairo.

Jairo, it is musically simple, but, as Martin correctly says, those variations are tricky, particularly the first one. I actually began to learn this tune when I was lurking here at the time you posted your version, Martin. I couldn't get the whole thing at all for a very long time. Now I can play it through without much difficulty, but I still managed to mess it up the first couple of times after I pressed the record button.

Simon, it is only "we" in the sense that it was done in our name. It's true that a lot of people in Britain always objected to colonialism. Interesting what you say about Aden in the 1960s - it doesn't surprise me.

correction: a simple melody but the variations make it quite complex...the variations make it even more beautiful!

I’ve been in meetings where someone has said, ‘we’ and the whole of the rest of the room - all the others, almost everyone - erupted.

Fair point, Simon.

Jairo, I assure that Aidan doesn't agree with you on those variations (though I do)!

Richard, interesting variations you have performed in your version, and ones I had not heard before, though I know the tune from the pipe score rather than standard notation.

As far as Aden is concerned, I have a good friend who served in the Parachute Regiment for several years and in 1964 was posted there during the "Emergency" situation. He was involved in serious combat in the Radfan Mountains area and he assured me that he and his fellow soldiers developed a very high regard for the men they were facing in those hostile mountains. How true this seems to be in so many conflicts where a seemingly superior power finds itself up against the locals who know and use their terrain so well.

Thank you, John. I'm not sure where I got my version from - thesession.org, I imagine. The symmetry of the parts made sense to me.

What you say is often true, John. And it always has to be remembered that the apparently inferior force is often the one fighting for its own home or its own self-determination, so there is a motivation that is not comparable to soldiers of a colonial power.

I wondered why this tune seemed so familiar then I remembered scottish country dancing in primary school. So I had to give it a shot.

Even worse was Scottish Country Dancing in secondary school, Malcolm, and in PE classes too. We had a few weeks of it in the run-up to Christmas from about fourth year upwards to get us ready for the school Christmas dances. The only problem was that PE then was in single-sex classes, so boys danced with boys, and half of us could only dance as girls when the dances finally came round. You can imagine the trauma that caused in teenage boys back in the late 1950s and early sixties.
Your playing is progressing and phrasing is coming together well.

We also had country dancing at primary school and it amazes me that I have progressed from that particular purgatory to happily playing barndances and all sorts these days. Very nice steady rhythm and phrasing, Malcolm.

I was at an all male secondary school and so we did not do dancing at all. I also now quite enjoy a lot traditional dance music - must be the onset of maturity.

Lovely recordings there already - now to spoil it for you all ......

I think I'm getting there with the timing - You were right, John, it was the latency... once I figured (thanks Youtube) how to adjust for that, it came together nicely... So I threw in the Tenor Banjo as well.....

I know this in 3 parts; from what I've experienced in sessions, it seems to be accordionistas that like to throw the extra part in, maybe because it fits in better the number of bars for dancing? And they like to play it FAST.. I've tried to keep it relaxed here



Jim

Now I like that, oooh yes! Very bouncy, fun and full of the joys of spring already. Nice one Jim!
-now where is my Keech…

Nice one, Jim. Simon, it is unfortunate that the name of your banjo, pronounced with the "ch" as in Scottish "loch" is also a Scottish vernacular word for excrement. Gives a whole new slant to your last five words above...

I thought, ‘where ‘r me foo*n keks’ meant where are my darned trousers?
That’s what I remember from the Scottish lads* that I used to know.

-it’s also very ironic John because my banjo doesn’t sound at all like excrement.

*psycopaths

I was too polite to ask any further
My banjo has been called worse..

John’s wisdom appears correct though, there is an ongoing debate about our little-but-loud instrument friends.

Thinking about the SAW thread, if we try to keep the banjo infection rate below 5% it’ll probably be tolerable for most mandolinistas, and no need for antibiotics - though in a session, then what can you do?

A happy playing, Jim. Your tenor banjo fits in nicely - no matter how it has been called.

Jim, I thought that was a great version. The banjo worked well and the tempo was perfect. And you really do seem to have conquered the technical problems.

Thanks for the feedback..
I'm really a banjo player at heart. After all, they get all the girls, don't they? At least that's what the man in the shop said when he blew the dust off it....