manx celtic music and dance

RESEARCH ARTICLE - Mr News Band in Ramsey

18 Jan 2017

Mr New’s Band in Ramsey

The Isle of Man’s uneasy relationship with German bands has been examined in two previous articles, but whereas groups of itinerant German musicians were generally regarded as a nuisance, along with hurdy-gurdy players and minstrel troupes, Herr Simon Wurm’s Imperial Viennese Orchestra was highly successful at the Villa Marina Kursaal between 1912 and 1914 when it became a victim of anti-German feeling immediately after the start of World War I. Mr New’s band, however, enjoyed a much longer and closer relationship with the town of Ramsey and became something of a popular local institution until it, too, was forced to leave the Island in August 1914.

Mr New’s band was often referred to as a ‘string band’ in local newspapers, but this probably indicated that the ensemble included some stringed instruments along with woodwind, brass and percussion, in order to distinguish it from a traditional brass band, a military band or one of the much-maligned itinerant street bands. In fact New’s band had more in common with the small spa orchestras found in such towns as Harrogate, Bath and Buxton.

We first hear of a ‘First Class String Band’ in connection with the small pleasure grounds at Glen Helen, and extensive wooded glen sometimes referred to as ‘The Riviera of Manxland’, in 1897, the year that the Band Committee of Ramsey Commissioners received letter from a Mr Joseph Cannell stating that the local band of which he was the conductor had ‘taken steps to get instruments’. However, for whatever reason, the local band’s terms for providing music in Ramsey’s public areas during the summer season were not acceptable. Whether or not the Glen Helen band was indeed Mr New’s band a year before it was engaged in Ramsey, it nevertheless played for dancing on the ‘well-laid lawn’, and ‘discoursed music throughout Whit-week and the season’.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE by Maurice Powell

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