爱尔兰民谣歌手汤米-麦克姆

Tommy Makem汤米-麦克姆
Aug 9th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Tommy Makem, an Irish folk-singer, died on August 1st, aged 74爱尔兰民谣歌手汤米-麦克姆于八月一日辞世，享年74岁。

IT ALL began in the kitchen of a house in Keady, County Armagh, in Northern Ireland, where Tommy Makem's mother Sarah, as she stirred a pan on the hob or filled the kettle, would sing of morning dew and magpies' nests, Barney Mavourneen and Mary of Kilmore, ships and red roses:
Red is the rose that in yonder garden grows
Fair is the lily of the valley
Clear is the water that flows from the Boyne
But my love is fairer than any.
一切都要从北爱尔兰的阿马郡一个叫做凯迪的地方的一栋房子说起。汤米的母亲莎拉会在厨房里一边搅动着炉子上的平底锅或者给水壶里罐水，一边唱歌。歌曲的内容什么都有，清晨的露珠、喜鹊结巢、我的宝贝巴尼、基尔默的玛丽、海上的行船以及火红的玫瑰等等：
(以下歌词仅供参考)
前园的玫瑰火红火红
溪谷的百合洁白芬芳
博伊奈河的流水清澈见底
都比不上我的爱灼热纯洁

Mrs Green from along the street would join in too, until the house became a regular ceilidh at times and collectors would come, even from America, to write the songs down. Tommy said he could sing before he could speak; and not long after he could play piccolo, fiddle, tin whistle and the five-string banjo. He would stand up in the church hall, no taller than a chair, and sing “The Little Beggarman”:
I am a little beggarman, a begging I have been
For three score years in this little isle of green.

街 道另一头的格林夫人通常也会跟着一起唱，后来那间房屋里就常常有组织性地举办同乐会，搜集民歌的人则会赶来记录下所唱的歌词，其中甚至还有从美国来的。汤 米说当他还不会说话时就学会了唱歌，并且没多久，他就把短笛、六孔哨、小提琴、五弦班卓琴等乐器都学会了。那时侯他还没有椅子高，常常站在教堂的礼堂里唱 《小乞丐》：
(歌词仅供参考)
我是一个小乞丐，在这个绿茵茵的小岛上
我乞讨了整整三个难熬的年头

Music and tales filled not only his home but the rolling fields and hills of South Armagh itself. The heart of Ireland seemed to beat there beneath Slieve Gullion, the mystical mountain where the hero Cuchullain had learned his warrior skills and where the hunter Finn MacCumhail, bewitched and curious, had tracked a white doe to the summit. Tommy Makem picked up those legends too and, in 1955, took them to America, together with his bagpipes and a suitcase patched up with tape.
南阿马郡连 绵起伏的山野田间到处都和他的家里一样充满了美妙的音乐和神奇的传说。神秘的嘉里安山脉底下仿佛是爱尔兰的心脏在嘭嘭跳动着。在这里，英雄 Cuchullain练就了一身武艺，芬兰探险家麦库尔被一只成年的白色母鹿所迷惑，尾随它抵达了嘉里安山的顶峰。1955年，汤米-麦克姆把这些传奇故 事和他的风笛以及一个用胶带修补过的手提箱一并带到了美国。

In an Aran sweater
He meant to work in a cotton mill and do a bit of acting, but one St Patrick's night he was paid $30 for singing two songs in a club: “and I thought, by God, this is the land all right. Gold growing in the streets.” By 1958 he had teamed up with his friend Liam Clancy and Liam's brothers Paddy and Tom, who had come from Tipperary to America before him, and the gold continued to accrue. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, all kitted out in Aran sweaters knitted by Mrs Clancy, triumphantly rode the wave of a folk revival that was turning Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie into stars. Adapting to the new world, they added tin whistle and banjo to the old songs and quickened the pace, because, as Tommy said, “The heartbeat of America is so much faster than the old country.” They did “The Morning Show” and “The Tonight Show”, Ed Sullivan and Carnegie Hall, landed a $100,000 contract with Columbia and ended up singing “We Want no Irish Here” in front of Jack Kennedy at the White House, while Kennedy flashed his white teeth and rocked with laughter.
爱尔兰毛线衫
他做过纺织厂工人，还试着演过一些戏。有一 次在圣帕特里克狂欢夜他为一家俱乐部唱了两首歌，得到了30元的酬劳：“然后我就想，拜上天 所赐，我还算没来错地方。这儿满大街都有钞票可赚。”1958年他伙同他的朋友雷姆-克兰西(他先于汤米从蒂帕雷里来到美国)以及雷姆的兄弟派蒂和汤姆一 起成立了乐队，随后财源就滚滚而来。克兰西兄弟和汤姆-麦克姆穿着克兰西夫人手工做的爱尔兰毛线衫，趁着把皮特-西格和伍迪-格斯变为明星的民歌复兴潮 流,取得了不俗的成就.为适应美国的环境,他们把六孔笛和班卓琴加入到了老歌的曲调里，并加快了演奏节奏，就象汤米说的那样，这是因为“美国的节奏远比爱 尔兰快得多。”他们分别在埃德-苏利文的节目中和卡耐基音乐厅制作了《早间娱乐》和《娱乐在今晚》两档节目，并和哥伦比亚公司签定了十万美元的和约。他们 还被杰克-肯尼迪邀请到白宫做客，临走的时候唱的歌是《我们希望这里没有爱尔兰人》(注:意思是别把我们当作是有美国国籍的爱尔兰人，我们是美国人)，当 时肯尼迪总统露出雪白的牙齿，笑得前俯后仰。

Tommy Makem was always the key man, with a baritone sweet as buttermilk or sharp as salt, nipping effortlessly over his “hi the dithery idle lum, dithery oodle idle loos” and his “roo run rye, fa the diddle dye, hey the O the diddle derry Os”. And for a lifelong teetotaller no man had more feeling when he sang of hoppy beer or dark-frothing porter or devilish golden whiskey, or almost anything at all served up in a jug in a bar:
When I am in my grave and dead
And all my sorrows are past and fled
Transport me then into a fish
And let me swim in a jug of this.

汤 米-麦克姆无论在那里都是人群中的焦点，他有一幅男中音嗓音，说话时有时候温文尔雅有时候辛辣犀利.他会冷着面孔随意地哼起儿歌: “小小村庄无人烟, 小小烟囱不冒烟”或者“袋鼠追黑麦, 嘀嘟,却追成颜料, 嗨,噢,儿歌里头多”。 当他在歌里唱到啤酒时，不管是蛇麻苦味啤酒、英国的黑色冒泡啤酒还是极品金威士忌， 只要涉及到任何跟在酒吧间提供的装在罐中的东西有关，就没有人比那些经受过禁酒令的人感受更深刻了：
(歌词译文仅供参考)
当我死亡后被埋进坟墓，
一切的伤痛都消失结束,
来世我要成为鱼儿一族，
在那酒罐里游弋到天幕。

The songs he wrote himself he dismissed as “garbage altogether”, never to be compared to the old words and melodies he wanted to preserve in live performance. But a few he was proud of, and none more so than “Four Green Fields”, in which “a fine old woman”—Ireland—sang of her fourth field, Ulster, that was still “in bondage/ In strangers' hands, that tried to take it from me”. In America his audiences, largely third-generation Irish of the diaspora, would weep and sing along until, according to the New York Times man, they were “ready to go out and die for Ireland”.
他把这首他自己写的歌称为“彻头彻尾的垃圾”，并弃之不用，认为它永远无法和那些他想在现场表演中唱 出来的词句与曲调相媲美。也有少数歌曲让他为之骄傲但数量并不多,比如《四块庄稼地》这首爱尔兰歌曲。在这首歌里， “一个好心的老女人”咏唱着她位于阿尔斯特地区的四块庄稼地，那些“仍然奴役着我的土地的陌生人想要把它们从我手中夺走。” 在美国，他的听众大部分是散居在外的第三代爱尔兰人，按照纽约时报的说法，他们随时随地都在哀悼和歌唱，“时刻准备着离开美国并为爱尔兰牺牲。”

All told, Tommy Makem's choice of songs was fervently nationalistic: children's rhymes about “King Billy”, or rebel songs such as “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”, in which the hero's sweetheart is killed, as they caress in a glen, by a British bullet. And most stirring of all, in a voice with an edge like a knife, he would sing “The Patriot game”:
Come all you young rebels, and list while I sing,
For the love of one's country is a terrible thing.
It banishes fear with the speed of a flame,
And it makes us all part of the patriot game.
总 的来说，汤米-麦克姆选取的歌曲都是带有赤诚爱国主义的民歌：比如说有关"比利国王"的童谣，或者反抗歌曲如”狂风扫过麦田”，在这首歌曲中，因为男女主 人公在峡谷里拥抱在一起，男主人公的爱人被英国的枪弹所误杀.当唱到《爱国者的游戏》这首歌的时候,他激昂的声音就象锐利的刀锋：
(歌词仅供参考)
年轻的勇士们,走到一起来, 我在为你们歌唱
为热爱的祖国战斗无比崇高
它象燃烧的烈火迅速驱散了恐惧
它使我们成为了爱国者游戏的一部分.

Bob Dylan adapted this for his great anti-war song “With God on Our Side”. But Tommy Makem tried always to separate his love of country from the horrors of sectarianism. As Northern Ireland slid into the Troubles after 1969, he kept away from politics—a task made somewhat easier by staying in America, where he went on singing to the end of his days. In the dark low-ceilinged bar he bought in New York in the early 1980s, the rule of the house was tolerance and good fellowship. And the slow dawning of peace in Northern Ireland was celebrated by the founding in 2000 in South Armagh of his International Festival of Song, a deliberate declaration that singing could lead men out of darkness, just as Finn MacCumhail at the top of Slieve Gullion found the doe he was following transformed into a beautiful young woman, who smiled at him.

鲍勃-迪伦在他著名的反站歌曲<上帝在我们这边>中就引用了其中一些歌词。不过汤米-麦克姆一直尽力想把他对故土的 爱从宗派主义中独立开来。1969年当北爱尔兰逐渐地陷入动乱的时候，他远离了政治。在他有生之年继续留在美国唱歌似乎更加简单一点。1980年代早期他 在纽约买下一座光线暗淡、顶棚低矮的酒吧，进门的唯一标准就是人缘好和一颗宽容心。2000年他在南阿马郡筹备了一场国际演唱庆典，这同时也是在庆祝北爱 尔兰姗姗来迟的和平希望，庆典活动有意向人们表明歌声也能带领人们走出黑暗的阴影。恰如芬兰人麦库尔在嘉里安山之颠所发现的那样,他尾随的那只成年母鹿变 成了年轻漂亮的女人,站在那里冲着他微笑.