04 July 2021

To mark Independence Day

The BIB editor writes:

Here's a YouTube link to a recording of the fiddle tune 'Liberty', played by Ray Legere from New Brunswick.

For a long time this tune has suggested to me the exuberance of freedom achieved, and it would be pleasant to imagine an origin somewhere around 1776 for it. However, according to the Traditional Tune Archive, the first recording of it was made by Bob Wills in 1947; earlier recordings under the same title are of different tunes.

Ray Legere's homeland, of course, still groans under the oppressive weight of being, in the words of a distinguished American commentator, 'a commonwealth of Britain'.

© Richard Hawkins

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