Rein To Reign!


The next time I do a degree in communications, it's off to the Rangeland Derby at the Calgary Stampede for my research on the sound of the chuckwagon races. Listen to the SoundCloud clip below for the horn, the crowd, the jingle, the hooves, the cheers, the Go, Wayne!



Of course, the other big sound at the chuckwagon races is the agallop voice of Les McIntyre. He calls the races from his perch, his eye in the sky, high above the racetrack. One of the memorable aspects of being at the Rangeland Derby is the relatively unimposing role played by video. Sure, there are video screens at both ends of the track and on an infield tower, but they are not signature screens. What defines the viewer's experience at the grandstand is McIntyre's voice.

Quiet on the set.
There's the horn. And the charge is underway!
As they cast their fate in the figure eight. 
The barrels are up, the outriders are in hot pursuit.
They're outta town!


A version of this is how McIntyre starts his call. Repetitive? Yes, and that's the point. As Ong stresses in Orality and Literacy, use of the redundant is a classic technique of the oral storyteller. "Redundancy, repetition of the just-said, keep both speaker and hearer surely on the track [my emphasis!]." (p. 40)

McIntyre also uses rhyme, mostly couplets, as above, but some triplets, as well, to show his daring.

On the backstretch: Calgary, it's your time to come alive!
After turn 2: Rein to rein like a runaway train!
With the finish line in view: Wire to wire with their wheels on fire!
After the final turn: The louder you cheer, the quicker they'll hear! They're southbound and down!
For a driver at the back: He's got the need, he's got the speed, he just needs the lead!
Anywhere on the track: Look at the race for second place!

McIntyre also trades heavily in the epithet. Homer gave us the wise Nestor, the clever Odysseus, grey-eyed Athena. McIntyre give us the wily veteran (Reg Johnstone), Lightning Luke Tournier, the pesky Shane Nolin.

He manufactures memory by alliteration (Kelly Sutherland, the feather flies! and too little, too late ), as well as by playing off the names of the tarp sponsors (Codey McCurrach, ATB Financial, showing some interest and Purolator, they promise you quick delivery and Spartan Control controlled the race).

More memorable McIntyre from the 2012 Rangeland Derby:

Rail advantage.
Diggin in for the win.
The backfield's in motion.
He's in a box and he'll need a hole out of it.
A chuckwagon tsunami into the lights of turn 2.
The man in black owns the track.

By the time a chuckwagon driver makes the Rangeland Derby, he is giving McIntyre about 1:16 to make his call. And make it enjoyable and memorable. That is not a lot of clock. And it also has to be performed live without the slips of tongue or concentration that betray its status as a performance. It all underlies the oral skill of Les McIntyre in not just telling you what is going on (that's simply play by play) but branding it into your memory.

In an age of video supremacy, the CBC paid the voice of Les McIntyre a high compliment, letting it run in harness with the brilliant videography in this spot.





Rein to reign!







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

:)

Image
One of the joys and dangers of studying in the MACT program is that you start to feel scared enough to feel confident enough to fool around and try simple new things with technology. The danger is that you're not good enough not to spend most of your time fiddling around doing those things. And, so, this morning I am proud to announce that, taken by the hand, I have managed to embed html vimeo code into my blog. Please, no applause. This is not much, I know. Your basic 8 year old can do more. Asleep. But it is a minor accomplishment for me, because of me. And how I get in the way with my pre-wired reaction that new things won't work. The effect of that kind of thinking (or that lack of thinking) is that I transform the machine in front of me into an antagonistic force working to undo me. But it does remind me of me when I attribute malevolence to the skies when they conspire to bring rain on a morning of golf! Either way, that's bad storytelling. On another leve...
Read more

Hello!

Image
The potential socialness of a bicycle is built right into its roofless and windshieldless and doorless frame. It is easy to say hello on a bicycle. Like this morning. These sidewalkers nodded to me in unison at the exact instant I nodded to them. I said hello to the jogger, and he waved back. Hi, I said, to the dog walkers and the dog, and they nodded a greeting back. Both joggers smiled and said hello as our lives passed. I said hello to the squirrel. I said hello to the woman walking with poles and she returned the hello. The jogger looked over and I said hello as she said hello. I said hello to this fellow egg picker upper and we talked for a couple of minutes. Her bicycle comes out April 1. She is excited. Hello, I said. Hi, she said. I said hello to the  man on the other end of this leash and he said he and his dog were enjoying the beautiful morning. I said hello to this woman and she said hello, and we laughe...
Read more

Some Late Thoughts Listening To Wheat Kings

Image
Wheat Kings in Edmonton, July , 2016 I asked a friend at work what The Tragically Hip song Wheat Kings was about, and he paused for a beat longer than he would have had he not considered the same question many times. And then said: "I don't know." I took this as a good sign both of his humility and the song's profundity. It was an honest question. I don't know much about The Hip. They were cool for the first time when I was watching my wife raise our children, and trying to help the mission where I could. Those were busy days. The 1990s are my mediated decade, preserved by photographs of my younger self. Among the art that didn't get in was The Tragically Hip's. And it was a dishonest question. I knew the song was about David Milgaard's wrongful conviction and wrongful jail time served for the murder of Saskatoon nurse Gail Miller. And it was an honest question, because song's visual shards—that weathervane, a killer's face lit ...
Read more