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Tony Gillam
on mountain dulcimer
Photo courtesy of
Ross Gooding
|
I’ve just returned from a long weekend in
Dorset where I took part in the first Dorchester Dulcimer Weekend. What’s
Dorchester like? Well, Daniel Defoe, in A tour thro' the whole island
of Great Britain (1724–26), described the place thus: “The town is
populous, tho' not large, the streets broad, but the buildings old, and low;
however, there is good company and a good deal of it; and a man that coveted a
retreat in this world might as agreeably spend his time, and as well in
Dorchester, as in any town I know in England...” This still seems an apt
description, based on my recent visit.Since Defoe passed through, Dorchester has
also become famed as the place where the Tolpuddle Martyrs – early advocates
for workers’ rights - were arrested and tried in 1834. The town is also, of
course, synonymous with the great novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, who based his
fictional town of Casterbridge on Dorchester.
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Damian Clarke on hammered dulcimer
Photo courtesy of Ross Gooding |
Sadly I didn’t get to meet The Mayor
of Casterbridge nor, regrettably, did I have time to visit Hardy’s
house, but I did find the streets broad, as Defoe had found – broad enough, in
fact, to busk in, alongside the organiser of the Dulcimer Weekend, the
irrepressible Damian Clarke. Damian (artist, writer and consummate
player of both the hurdy-gurdy and the hammered dulcimer) kindly invited
me to join him busking in South Street on Saturday morning. I hadn’t been
busking since about 1986 – and never before with the mountain dulcimer - so I
was a bit apprehensive, but the public seemed to like it and I soon remembered
how enjoyable it is to busk. In the afternoon we regrouped to the comfortable
surroundings of the Shire Hall’s Café. It transpires this is in the very building
(now the Shire Hall Museum) where the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ trial took place; (I’m
told beneath it are the cells where prisoners were held while awaiting trial.) Nowadays, it’s a beautiful airy building with a welcoming mezzanine café which proved an ideal venue for our series of workshops and concerts featuring the two distinct types of instrument known as a dulcimer.
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Magdalena Atkinson
on hammered dulcimer and guitar
Photo courtesy of Ross Gooding |
Damian had invited me - and
multi-instrumentalist Graham Hood - as ambassadors of the mountain dulcimer
while Damian himself represented the hammered dulcimer, along with fellow
composer/performers Dizzi Dulcimer and Magdalena Atkinson. Between all of us,
we provided workshops for both instruments plus concerts on Saturday evening
and Sunday afternoon. And, just when we thought the music was over, we were
invited along to join the regular Sunday evening folk music session at local
micropub, The Convivial Rabbit. The unusually-named pub has nothing to do with
the long-eared mammal but is a place where one can have a “convivial rabbit”
(i.e. a friendly chat.) Sunday also happened to be St Patrick’s Night so
Damian, Graham and our mountain dulcimer friend Paul Crocker (who had joined
and supported us throughout the weekend,) endeavoured to summon up some
suitably Irish tunes. For my part, I became acutely aware of a huge
shamrock-shaped gap in my own dulcimer repertoire. It didn’t matter. Just as in
Defoe’s day, at The Convivial Rabbit there was “good company and a good deal of
it.”
Many thanks to everyone who made me feel so
welcome in Dorset. Let’s do it again next year!
All photos (c) Ross Gooding (Diffraction Image Ltd.)
