Mary-Ann Constantine and Gerald Porter
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197262887
- eISBN:
- 9780191734441
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197262887.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This book is about traditional songs. Folk song scholarship was originally obsessed with notions of completeness and narrative coherence; yet field notebooks and recordings (and, increasingly, ...
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This book is about traditional songs. Folk song scholarship was originally obsessed with notions of completeness and narrative coherence; yet field notebooks and recordings (and, increasingly, publications) overwhelmingly suggest that apparently ‘broken’ and drastically shortened versions of songs are not perceived as incomplete by those who sing them. This study turns the focus on these ‘dog-ends’ of oral tradition, and looks closely at how very short texts convey meaning in performance by working the audience's knowledge of a highly allusive idiom. What emerges is the tenacity of meaning in the connotative and metaphorical language of traditional song, and the extraordinary adaptability of songs in different cultural contexts. Such pieces have a strong metonymic force: they should not be seen as residual ‘last leaves’ of a once complete tradition, but as dynamic elements in the process of oral transmission. Not all song fragments remain in their natural environment, and this book also explores relocations and dislocations as songs are adapted to new contexts: a ballad of love and death is used to count pins in lace-making, song-snippets trail subversive meanings in the novels of Charles Dickens. Because they are variable and elusive to dating, songs have had little attention from the literary establishment: the authors of this book show both how certain critical approaches can be fruitfully applied to song texts, and how concepts from studies in oral traditions prefigure aspects of contemporary critical theory. Coverage includes English, Welsh, Breton, American, and Finnish songs.Less
This book is about traditional songs. Folk song scholarship was originally obsessed with notions of completeness and narrative coherence; yet field notebooks and recordings (and, increasingly, publications) overwhelmingly suggest that apparently ‘broken’ and drastically shortened versions of songs are not perceived as incomplete by those who sing them. This study turns the focus on these ‘dog-ends’ of oral tradition, and looks closely at how very short texts convey meaning in performance by working the audience's knowledge of a highly allusive idiom. What emerges is the tenacity of meaning in the connotative and metaphorical language of traditional song, and the extraordinary adaptability of songs in different cultural contexts. Such pieces have a strong metonymic force: they should not be seen as residual ‘last leaves’ of a once complete tradition, but as dynamic elements in the process of oral transmission. Not all song fragments remain in their natural environment, and this book also explores relocations and dislocations as songs are adapted to new contexts: a ballad of love and death is used to count pins in lace-making, song-snippets trail subversive meanings in the novels of Charles Dickens. Because they are variable and elusive to dating, songs have had little attention from the literary establishment: the authors of this book show both how certain critical approaches can be fruitfully applied to song texts, and how concepts from studies in oral traditions prefigure aspects of contemporary critical theory. Coverage includes English, Welsh, Breton, American, and Finnish songs.
David Manning
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195182392
- eISBN:
- 9780199851485
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195182392.003.0044
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
From Frank Kidson's point of view, all traditional deviations from a printed copy are “corruptions.” Kidson's great knowledge of printed sources enabled him to dispose of such spurious “folk songs” ...
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From Frank Kidson's point of view, all traditional deviations from a printed copy are “corruptions.” Kidson's great knowledge of printed sources enabled him to dispose of such spurious “folk songs” as “Caller Herrin,” and to restore to their true traditional origins tunes such as “The Arethusa,” long supposed to be the compositions of eighteenth-century musicians. It must be remembered that Kidson's collection of 84 traditional tunes was published in 1891, when folk song was an unknown quantity except to a few experts and enthusiasts, and when “educated” musicians, at all events in England, despised everything which could not show its trademark. In his introduction to his collection, Kidson thinks it necessary to apologize to the profession for his “homely ditties.” Nevertheless, we realize all through his preface that he was one of the first to recognize the beauty inherent in our traditional song.Less
From Frank Kidson's point of view, all traditional deviations from a printed copy are “corruptions.” Kidson's great knowledge of printed sources enabled him to dispose of such spurious “folk songs” as “Caller Herrin,” and to restore to their true traditional origins tunes such as “The Arethusa,” long supposed to be the compositions of eighteenth-century musicians. It must be remembered that Kidson's collection of 84 traditional tunes was published in 1891, when folk song was an unknown quantity except to a few experts and enthusiasts, and when “educated” musicians, at all events in England, despised everything which could not show its trademark. In his introduction to his collection, Kidson thinks it necessary to apologize to the profession for his “homely ditties.” Nevertheless, we realize all through his preface that he was one of the first to recognize the beauty inherent in our traditional song.
Joseph J. Ryan
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198217527
- eISBN:
- 9780191678240
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198217527.003.0021
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
The ten volumes of lyric verse with musical settings by Sir John Stevenson that Thomas Moore published had found wide favour in polite society on both sides of the Irish Sea. Their success in ...
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The ten volumes of lyric verse with musical settings by Sir John Stevenson that Thomas Moore published had found wide favour in polite society on both sides of the Irish Sea. Their success in focusing attention on Ireland's rich treasure of folksong was never in doubt. The fruits of Moore's labours advanced the notion of the Irish as a nation of people especially gifted in musical expression. Indeed, the excellence of the musical heritage contributed significantly to the cultural arguments in favour of Ireland's separate nationhood. The store of traditional song was adequate corroboration of the country's claim to be regarded among the most musically endowed of the western world. This was truly the art of the people; a venerable oral tradition, predominantly monophonic, small in structure, with a repository of melody of undeniable beauty.Less
The ten volumes of lyric verse with musical settings by Sir John Stevenson that Thomas Moore published had found wide favour in polite society on both sides of the Irish Sea. Their success in focusing attention on Ireland's rich treasure of folksong was never in doubt. The fruits of Moore's labours advanced the notion of the Irish as a nation of people especially gifted in musical expression. Indeed, the excellence of the musical heritage contributed significantly to the cultural arguments in favour of Ireland's separate nationhood. The store of traditional song was adequate corroboration of the country's claim to be regarded among the most musically endowed of the western world. This was truly the art of the people; a venerable oral tradition, predominantly monophonic, small in structure, with a repository of melody of undeniable beauty.
Kristina M. Jacobsen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469631868
- eISBN:
- 9781469631882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631868.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
Chapter Three focuses on the story of the first biracial, Navajo-African American “Miss Navajo Nation,” Radmilla Cody (born to Tp’ááschí’í, or Red Cheek People Clan). Fluent in Navajo and raised by ...
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Chapter Three focuses on the story of the first biracial, Navajo-African American “Miss Navajo Nation,” Radmilla Cody (born to Tp’ááschí’í, or Red Cheek People Clan). Fluent in Navajo and raised by her maternal grandmother on the Navajo Nation, I show how Radmilla’s singing voice, by performing “traditional” songs with melismatic, R & B inflection in the Navajo language, signals both inclusion and exclusion within Navajo communities. Here, sounding other than “Navajo” is a way of refusing to adhere to the ascribed status of Diné identity, including phenotype and what it means to “look Navajo.” Radmilla’s voice is a signifier of the intricacies of Diné social difference and as a meeting point of the singular and the social: as something innate and idiosyncratic to each singer and speaker, Radmilla’s voice is also something that is learned, socially acquired, and culturally inscribed.Less
Chapter Three focuses on the story of the first biracial, Navajo-African American “Miss Navajo Nation,” Radmilla Cody (born to Tp’ááschí’í, or Red Cheek People Clan). Fluent in Navajo and raised by her maternal grandmother on the Navajo Nation, I show how Radmilla’s singing voice, by performing “traditional” songs with melismatic, R & B inflection in the Navajo language, signals both inclusion and exclusion within Navajo communities. Here, sounding other than “Navajo” is a way of refusing to adhere to the ascribed status of Diné identity, including phenotype and what it means to “look Navajo.” Radmilla’s voice is a signifier of the intricacies of Diné social difference and as a meeting point of the singular and the social: as something innate and idiosyncratic to each singer and speaker, Radmilla’s voice is also something that is learned, socially acquired, and culturally inscribed.
Stephen Wade
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036880
- eISBN:
- 9780252094002
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036880.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This book presents the rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the ...
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This book presents the rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. These performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by. The book's author sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. The book reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: for example, prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on “the Library's recording machine” in a rendering of Rock Island Line. The profiles and abundant photos in the book bring to life largely unheralded individuals—domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners—whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, “amplifying tradition's gifts,” the book shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy.Less
This book presents the rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. These performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by. The book's author sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. The book reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: for example, prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on “the Library's recording machine” in a rendering of Rock Island Line. The profiles and abundant photos in the book bring to life largely unheralded individuals—domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners—whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, “amplifying tradition's gifts,” the book shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy.
