Music of Black Sails

[ulkis]

Thought it would be fun to have a thread for music like in the Outlander forum.

My only complaint about the music is why the heck haven't they come out with season 2's music yet?

Youtube recommended me the soundtrack to 1990's Treasure Island movie by the Chieftans, I would recommend it in turn, it's pretty good.

A folk band I really like, Le vent du nord, came out with a new album three days after last season's finale and I was highly amused by one of the songs in light of the finale. Here are the lyrics (badly translated):

Toronto, Good God what a pretty town

Yes she is beautiful and perfect in beauty

Papineau can not enter

Ah! go tell Papineau I fear not the man

Go tell him that I do not care about him

Papineau when he saw that, he started in battle

All at once the cannon fired

The pretty town trembled

Courage Courage friends, the city is being looted

they cry out, cheering for Papineau

If anyone wants to see the original lyrics (the song is called Papineau):

C’est dans la ville de Toronto, grand Dieu quelle jolie ville

Oui elle est belle et parfaite en beauté

Que Papineau ne peut y entrer

Ah! allez dire à Papineau que je ne crains pas l’homme

Allez lui dire que j’me moque de lui

Autant le jour comme la nuit

Quand Papineau il a vu ça, il s’est mis en bataille

Tout aussitôt du canon a tiré

Que la jolie ville a tremblé

Courage amis courage, la ville est en pillage

S’sont écriés, hourra pour Papineau

Anyone else have any favorite tracks from the show or have any favorite sea shanties/folk songs/related songs to share?

Edited February 4, 2016 by ulkis

[WatchrTina]

Good article about Black Sails' composer, Bear  McCreary, with a couple of nice embedded videos with behind-the-scene looks at the music of Black Sails and especially the hurdy-gurdy.

 

https://www.inverse.com/article/12338-bear-mccreary-composes-for-pirates-scottish-time-travelers-and-zombies

[ulkis]

that reminds me, I really liked the music in tonight's episode when they were sailing the Walrus into shallow waters.

 

Someone had an interesting comment on the youtube video for "The Ballad of Captain Kidd/Wondrous Love" from the season 1 soundtrack. The two tunes sound the very similar but the commentator said,

 

Wondrous Love was created after Captain Kidd's Ballad. The lyrics blend folklore and the bastardization of history in order to prove to the English that pirates were evil personified and therefore subject to dehumanization. The ballad is written as a confession from the gallows, but what it accomplishes is to create a haunting tale from the British point of view.

 

I looked it up and wikipedia and it goes on,

 

"Most sources attribute the hymn's [Wondrous Love] melody to the 1701 English song "The Ballad of Captain Kidd", which describes the exploits of pirate William Kidd (misnamed "Robert" in American versions of the ballad). The melody itself predates the Kidd usage, however, possibly by more than a century. (In addition, at least a dozen popular songs were set to the same melody after 1701.) In the early 1800s, when the lyrics to "What Wondrous Love Is This" were first published, hymnals typically lacked any musical notation. Camp meeting attendees during the Second Great Awakening would sing the hymns printed in these hymnals to a variety of popular melodies, including "The Ballad of Captain Kidd", which was well known at the time; this is likely how the text and melody came to be paired."

 

And back to Captain Kidd, more info about it here:

 

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2920762?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

 

"the ballad flourished. It was so popular in the colonies where Kidd had established his home, and it was so changed through myriad renditions that it became a definite part of American balladry and folklore. It thus became one of America's first ballads, as the larger legend of his exploits may be considered our first folk legend."

Edited March 20, 2016 by ulkis

[ulkis]

Some sea shanties

 

 

another version by Great Big Sea (I'd say about half of their songs qualify as sea shanties actually)

 

 

The Legend of Davy Jones . . . not from one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, although the album it comes from seems to be associated with Disney

 

 

"quinze marins" This seems to be about Treasure Island, or at least, names the characters from it, but I haven't bothered to run it through google translate

 

 

this one has the lyrics in the video

 

 

from the 1990 Treasure Island film by the Chieftans

 

 

The name of the album this song is from is called "the Miraculous Crossing" which I guess is a reference to how any of these ships were lucky to complete a sailing.

 

 

the whole album is here

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002WX6MBE?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

[ulkis]

 

"Fifteen Men". The English version of "quinze marins", although the tune is different, but the lyrics are the same and the title is the same so I assume they have something to do with each other. This is the info in the summary:

 

This is from the Roger Wagner Chorale recording of Sea Chantys. Capitol record number P3462 of 1959. Harve Presnell is the soloist. 

 

As you will know, the song is based on the lyrics by R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island, one of the greatest novels ever written. I think this version captures its essence, and because of it I say it's the most realistic and accurate version (for me).

[Irlandesa]

I've seen Great Big Sea in concert a few times and have purchased a few of their CDs.  They'er around...somewhere. And I remember that they didn't put lyrics to all their songs in the CD pamphlet.  They were usually the lyrics to the traditional sea shanty songs that had been passed down over the years.  I vaguely remember their explanation for this being that they had to learn the lyrics orally and that's how it should be passed so everyone's version is a little different.  I imagine it's similar when it comes to written lyrics but no tune.