Cabri: A Song History

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The waltz printed as "Cabri" appears to be the tune known as the Cabri Waltz, a piece in G major that takes its name from a small town in Saskatchewan.[1] Cabri sits roughly 65 kilometres northwest of Swift Current; settlers were coming into the district by 1908, and by 1918 nine grain elevators stood beside its railway.[2] The tune also turns up as the "Capri Waltz," and the sources consulted here name no composer.[1]

Painting of reapers resting in the shade at the edge of a golden wheat field with sheaves, tall trees behind

John Singer Sargent, Reapers Resting in a Wheat Field, oil on canvas, 1885. A harvest scene, shown for the grain-growing country the tune is named for; it has no connection to the waltz.

Its documented trail runs through the North Dakota fiddler Joe Pancerzewski (1905–1991), who said he first heard it at about eight years old, around 1913; a man named Bill Smith had brought it into Pancerzewski's part of the country from Canada.[1] Pancerzewski's family homesteaded near White Earth, North Dakota, in 1909; he later played for dances in western Canada and Washington State, and after retiring from the railroad in 1970 became a leading contest fiddler whose playing influenced many fiddlers in the Northwest.[3] The waltz was printed in the Fiddler's Fakebook (1983) and in Matthiesen's Waltz Book I (1992), and recordings include Pancerzewski's own on the Voyager label and Bill Spence's on The Hammered Dulcimer.[1] Voyager's index of Northwest fiddle field recordings also lists a version by Vivian Williams.[4]

For many years the Cabri Waltz was a favorite at contra dances in New England and other northern communities, helped along by the Albany, New York, band Fennig's All Stars.[1] Neal Walters and Heidi Cerrigione, of The Doofus, include it in Occasional Number 4 – 18 Favorite Waltzes For Autoharp, a collection of autoharp arrangements in sheet-music form.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Cabri"

Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Cabri Waltz".
  2. The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan (University of Regina): "Cabri".
  3. Traditional Tune Archive: "Joe Pancerzewski".
  4. Smithsonian Folkways / Voyager Recordings: "Northwest Fiddle Field Recordings Fiddlers Index".
  5. Neal Walters and Heidi Cerrigione: "The Doofus, Occasional Number 4 - 18 Favorite Waltzes For Autoharp".
  6. Image: John Singer Sargent, Reapers Resting in a Wheat Field, oil on canvas, 1885. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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