Black is the Colour of my True Love’s Hair

397,802 views•Premiered Dec 18, 20187.8K109ShareSaveChoral Scholars of University College Dublin 73.5K subscribers Appalachian Air of Scottish origin arr. Desmond Earley From the album ‘Invisible Stars – Choral Works from Ireland and Scotland’ The Choral Scholars of University College Dublin Artistic Director: Desmond Earley Solos: Mark Waters and Emily Doyle Released on Signum Records BUY IT NOW: http://hyperurl.co/invisiblestars Sheet Music: http://bit.ly/2QFhUv0 HEAR IT LIVE: http://ucdchoralscholars.ie/events.php Website: http://www.ucdchoralscholars.ie Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ucdchoralscho… Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/UCDChoral Instagram: @ChoralScholars Credits: Director & DP Ronan Fox Focus Puller Shane Caffrey Camera Assistans: Wade Enright, Sadhbh Ní Nualáin Sound Playback Trevor Cunningham Two American melodies from Kentucky are widely associated with the lyric Black is the colour of my true love’s hair. The younger melody was composed by Kentuckian John Jacob Niles, collector and performer of Appalachian folk songs, and an important influence on the American Folk revival in the 1950s. In a biography of Niles—I Wonder As I Wander—Professor Ron Pen of the University of Kentucky has observed that Niles created a completely different melody from the versions he had collected in Kentucky in 1916. The melody used for the choral arrangement on this disc is the version sung by Irish singer/songwriter Christy Moore, who learned the song from Scottish folk singer Hamish Imlach in 1968. This modern Scottish song is a rendering of an Appalachian antecedent of Niles’ version collected by Cecil Sharp in Kentucky and published in English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (1917).