Search - Itinerant Band :: Jefferson and Liberty

Jefferson and Liberty is a collection of 18th century tunes and songs chosen as representative of those played and sung by working class musicians in the North American colonies. It features jigs, hornpipes, and reels from the English and American country dance repertoire, as well as a French-Canadian dance and party song, La Bastringue"; airs from Ireland and Scotland, military fife tunes from England and France, a Charles Wesley hymn and a Caribbean sea Chantey. The title cut, "Jefferson and Liberty" is an Irish jig that was adopted as Thomas Jefferson's 1800 presidential campaign song. Also included is "O! Say Bonnie Lass", a song taken from the recently discovered musical notebooks of Capt. George Bush, a soldier in Washington's continental army. The album is a sampling of colonial American and European music that would have been shared across political and social boundaries from the pubs and taverns to the dances and parlors.