Monde Marie

Folkies

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Mary Seddon

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School friends whose parents were listening to the Weavers introduced me to folk music, and it was with them that I first visited the Monde Marie around 1959.   A few years down the track I became a regular attender.  At this time there were a number of groups doing Peter, Paul & Mary/Kingston Trio covers.  I recall three groups from this era:  Rod McKinnon, Dave Hollis & Hilary Hind; Sam Simpson, Luke Taylor & Dave Lattie and Arthur Toms, Mike Burch & Bill Cater.  Other notable performers were Max Winnie, Val Murphy, Joan Prior & Jim Delahunty.

Most of the regular audience were interested in the music and many of us were trying to learn guitar, which was pretty much the only instrument being played except for the occasional banjo.  We would stay on after the Monde officially closed at weekends and sing along until 3 or 4 in the morning until Mary would finally throw us out.

A group used to meet at Max’s flat most Sunday afternoons and I was introduced here to some of the roots of the music I had been hearing – old country blues, the Carter family and early string band music.  This led me to learn Autoharp, which has remained my main instrument of choice ever since though I still play the guitar on occasion and have had a go at most other instruments.

Music was a large part of our lives.  We haunted the Monde Marie, the Balladeer and even on rare occasions The Chez Paree and the Casa Fontana.  This was before Frank Fyfe arrived in New Zealand and Don King owned the Balladeer.  We were at the coffee bars most nights of the week and jammed in people’s flats during the day at weekends.  We stayed up to listen to “Folk Song Cellar” from the UK at 1am in the morning, a good source of new songs.

As new people arrived in Wellington from other parts of New Zealand and overseas, we were exposed to a wider variety of music.  Dave Waley brought us Irish songs, Frank Scaglione Scottish, Frank Fyfe Australian bush songs and when Frank became interested in NZ songs, he and Phil Garland searched for and performed those along with Neil Colquhoun, who had been singing NZ music for some time.  The Hamilton County introduced us to bluegrass, taping stacks of tunes and sending them round the country.

Festivals also helped to spread new material with people in corners learning words and tunes and jamming.  This hasn’t changed and neither has the willingness of guests and attenders to share both ways as I witnessed Tim Van Eyken (never having played a banjo before) learn a banjo tune at the last festival.

I was more involved with writing and publishing the club magazine “Sing”, followed by the national magazine “Heritage” in the early days and various stints on Club and Festival committees than performing.  In the 1970s though, I played with a bluegrass band first called the Shamblers, then Limited Express and finally Country Store on and off for about ten years.

I still enjoy listening to a variety of music and learning the occasional new song and tune, but play mostly with friends or at festival jam sessions.  It is so easy to obtain CDs these days, not like the real effort it took to import LPs back in the 60s

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