I’m working on a follow-on book to Jazz Chords for Baritone Ukulele which will be called, surprisingly, something like Jazz Chords for Guitar. (This story is only going to be about that for a little while, major digression coming.)
The chapter I’m working on is about chord progressions, of which a fundamental one involves the I, IV and V chords. (Doesn’t matter if you know what that means or not.).
So I came up with a simple progression using those chords that sounds like a lot of songs. This is it:
I IV I V I IV V I
Seeing as how I was going to use this progression to illustrate different ways of playing it, I decided it needed a name. I came up with the clever name 1415-1451.
But that’s kind of boring. What if I considered those numbers as dates? And used some historical context for the name? Enter Wikipedia.
1415
The Battle of Agincourt, that’s the battle where Henry V lead the heavily out-numbered English to beat the French and made St. Crispin’s day a memorable one for the British.
It was the center piece of Shakespeare’s Henry V, and Henry’s speech before the battle was considered some of Shakespeare’s best writing. Here’s Kenneth Branagh’s version:
1451
A Mohawk prophet, whose name means Two Rivers Flowing Together had a vision of peace between the warring tribes in the area. He’s also called The Great Peacemaker. Some didn’t agree with his vision, but he formed an alliance with Hiawatha, a great orator, and a woman, The Mother of Nations, who offered her home up as a meeting place for the leaders of the five warring tribes.
(How do they know it was 1451? Legend has it there was a solar eclipse at the time. Hmmm, that means it could have been in the 1100s as well, but never mind that.)
They created the Iroquois Confederacy with a tribal council made of the leaders of all the tribes. This might have been one of the first, if not the first confederacy. That is, a government where there are a number of independent political entities that join together just for those things that benefit all, such as for the common defense.
Defense was, of course, the big one, and by joining together for that they could better deal with the other tribes in surrounding areas. Other non-defense issues, such as marriages, property disputes, etc. were all handled on a tribe by tribe basis.
This was state of the Indian Nation when the French and English, still fighting after all those centuries, arrived in North America. And why it was so important to get the Iroquois on your side. The French got the Iroquois on their side, whereas the English had other tribes on theirs.
300 Years Later
It is said that our Founding Fathers were well aware of the Iroquois Confederacy and used it as a model for our own Constitution. The rules of that confederacy are all written down and were widely known at the time. Just like the Iroquois tribes, each state wanted to run its own business, but they wanted to join together mostly for the common defense. (Against who? well Canada was one of their big fears, territorially very similar to the Iroquois situation.)
Background of French and English
The French and English fighting all had to do with 1066, when the French conquered England and English royalty was French, and so let them claim rights to land in what we now call France. As did the French, who happened to live in the land we now call France.
Key to the legal battles was one of the nobles on one side or the other didn’t have a male heir, and the claims of the other side that the female heir counted were disputed, and, well a lot of people died. And how did the English win at Agincourt? It appears it was a superior weapon.
The English long bow delivered an arrow with such force that it could penetrate the cheaper armor worn by the French infantry. (The nobles were better protected.) One move in the eternal arms race.
But the French wound up, in the end, coming out on top of the war, in large part due to the efforts of Joan D’Arc. She’s in this story too!
Well clearly I needed to write some lyrics to go in this song, 1415-1451. Here they are.
Two Rivers Flowing Together
I – In fourteen fifteen
IV – On St. Crispin’s Day
I – At the Battle of Agin-
V – Court,
I – The English destroyed all
IV – French hope of victory
V – And ended the Hundred Year
I – War.
—
I – In fourteen hundred and
IV – Fifty one in a
I – Land across the
V – sea,
I – Warring Iroquois tribes
IV – Made a lasting peace
V – In a new born confedera-
I – cy.
—
I – Three Hundred years later
IV – The French and the English brought
I – Their strife to the American
V – Shore.
I – The Iroquois Nation
IV – Allied with the French in
V – The French and Indian
I – War.
—
I – Defeated again the
IV – French then supported the
I – Colonist’s revolu-
V – tion.
I – Who on winning then used
IV – That Iroquois model
I – In framing their new
V – Constitution.
Abbot Cutler and Diana Merritt helped get to the final verses, and Nancy Shinn then wrote a melody line. I then performed three parts in a video. Now, I don’t really have any ego in my musical or reading ability, but I did have fun putting this together while in Cancun getting my teeth fixed.
