Terms Which Have Disappeared

[vitanola]

Well, I wouldn't know about that...

 

[vitanola]

Well, "music of the people" is generally thought of as folk music and "real" folk music may or may not be popular and it may or may not be any good, either. The so-called folk music popularity beginning in the late 1950s had its roots far in the past but it's questionable whether or not it was really folk music. The fact that many folk musicians and groups of that era were decidedly left-wing and thus identified with "the people," some of them anyway, confuses the issue.

I happen to like European folk music, especially that of the German-speaking areas, as well as Czech and Slovenian. Even there, it has to be label "real" folk music, which I believe is written as "Echte Volksmusik."

I rather prefer the citified distillations of folk music from the early part of the last century. Stuff like this:

Love Karel Hasler, Vaclav Albrecht, Alois Ticy, Pawel Faut, Paul Humeniuk, Matt Hoyer, Josephine Lausche and Mary Udovich etc.

 

[BlueTrain]

A hackbrett band?

There is so much good music on Youtube, it's amazing. And much of it is by amateur musicians, many of whom are excellent. Of course, some (relatively) well-known musicans still have day jobs, too. It is also interesting to note that the popularity of some styles of music is sometimes due to a single musician and his band. I've mentioned Slavko Avesnik before, who died about a year and a half ago (his wife just died a few weeks ago), and who popularized a certain style of Slovenian music. Curiously, in this country, Slovenian music is known as Cleveland-style music.

Viva Volksmusik!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Which touches on a good point. You could argue that there really isn't any such thing as purely-American folk music, given our status as a nation built by immigrants, indentured servants, and slaves, all of whom brought their own influences to what's considered "American folk culture." A Yiddish swing band is just as much American folk music as Burl Ives singing "Blue Tail Fly" or Robert Johnson playing Delta blues.

A lot of what's thought of as "folk music" is just a variation of popular music. I love Woody Guthrie, but he was every bit as much an ASCAP songwriter as Irving Berlin.

 

[HudsonHawk]

And why do you disparage kazoo bands, Miss Maine?

Not to mention...what's wrong with handsome young country crooners from my hometown?

 

[BlueTrain]

Peter Schickele said, in so many words, it doesn't matter what kind of music it is as long as it's good music.

There is such a thing as American folk culture, although it certainly didn't spring forth from the earth here without any influences from anywhere else. So what? Nothing is all that pure. Likewise, many forms of music are popular in more places than you would imagine. There were Swiss music groups singing about cowboys and the Rio Grande--in German--and sounding very "authentic," meaning just like a contemporary (1940s) Western string band. The yodeling that Gene Autry and Roy Rogers were doing was descended directly from Austrian yodeling brought this country by traveling music shows. There were recordings of jazz and swing music being made in Berlin during the WWII. Go figure.

All music was written by someone, somewhere, even though we may not know by whom.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the closest things to pure American folk music are the rude little jingles kids sing in the street:

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school!
We have tortured all the teachers and have broken all the rules!
Now we're marching down the corridor to kill the principal!
Our troops are marching on!

Glory, glory hallelujah!
Teacher hit me with a rul-ah!
I hit her in the bean
With a rotten tangerine
And she sank like a German submarine!"

 

[LizzieMaine]

Not to mention...what's wrong with handsome young country crooners from my hometown?

I always regret that Cesar Romero never starred in a Slim Whitman biopic.

 

[vitanola]

Which touches on a good point. You could argue that there really isn't any such thing as purely-American folk music, given our status as a nation built by immigrants, indentured servants, and slaves, all of whom brought their own influences to what's considered "American folk culture." A Yiddish swing band is just as much American folk music as Burl Ives singing "Blue Tail Fly" or Robert Johnson playing Delta blues.

A lot of what's thought of as "folk music" is just a variation of popular music. I love Woody Guthrie, but he was every bit as much an ASCAP songwriter as Irving Berlin.

I think that young Mr. Gershwin hit the nail on the head with his first Broadway success, a number introduced in "Ladies First" away back in 1918 by the great Miss Nora Bayes: "The Real American Folk Song is a Rag". 'Tis a pity that she did not record the song.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Not to mention...what's wrong with handsome young country crooners from my hometown?

As Punjee Guevara..

 

[kaiser]

I think the closest things to pure American folk music are the rude little jingles kids sing in the street:

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school!
We have tortured all the teachers and have broken all the rules!
Now we're marching down the corridor to kill the principal!
Our troops are marching on!

Glory, glory hallelujah!
Teacher hit me with a rul-ah!
I hit her in the bean
With a rotten tangerine
And she sank like a German submarine!"

That one got me in trouble at school when I was in the fourth grade. My Mom got a call from the school telling her that I had been caught singing a not appropriate song. Needless to say when I got home she really layed into me promising more trouble when my Dad got home from work. When my Dad came in the house my Mom said straight off that I had been caught singing this so called bad song at school. My Dad looked at me with a really mean look on his face and told me to sing the song for him, which thinking that I really had nothing to lose, I started to sing the song. After the first couple of lines I could see my Dad's face start to soften up. After that he started laughing, just about busted a gut. My Mom did not speak to either of us the rest of the day.

 

[EngProf]

I often read with amazement and amusement about what they do, say, and eat in faraway Maine, and a lot of it I have never even heard of.
However, the song about school, teachers, and tangerines is almost exactly the same as what we sang. The slight difference is that I think we had a different last line (no German submarine), but I can't remember what it was. (seems like it was something about knocking her teeth out, but that's vague, and doesn't rhyme...)
What some enterprising anthropologist needs to research is how we (1000 miles away and almost twenty years difference) sang the same kid songs.
It seems that everyone knew it, but I can't think of anyone who taught it to the others.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I often read with amazement and amusement about what they do, say, and eat in faraway Maine, and a lot of it I have never even heard of.

One of our tourist tag lines from the Boys here in Texas is "It's like a whole other country". Sometimes, it's like a whole other planet.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's the thing with real folk culture. Nobody knows where it really comes from, but once it erupts it spreads fast, and it's never particuarly respectful or respectable to those in the seats of authority.

"My mother and your mother were hanging out clothes.
My mother hit your mother right in the nose.
What color was the blood?"

 

[skydog757]

"He's got more money than King Farouk."

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

I often read with amazement and amusement about what they do, say, and eat in faraway Maine, and a lot of it I have never even heard of.
However, the song about school, teachers, and tangerines is almost exactly the same as what we sang. The slight difference is that I think we had a different last line (no German submarine), but I can't remember what it was. (seems like it was something about knocking her teeth out, but that's vague, and doesn't rhyme...)
What some enterprising anthropologist needs to research is how we (1000 miles away and almost twenty years difference) sang the same kid songs.
It seems that everyone knew it, but I can't think of anyone who taught it to the others.

The southwestern Pennsylvania version from the late 1950's varies in this way,
"We bopped her on the bean with a rotten tangerine,
And she ain't our teacher no more!"

Setting aside that this is the one I grew up with, so am inclined to like it better than Lizzie's, I find "bopped her on the bean" more musical than "hit her in the bean". Further, the non-canonical "ain't our teacher no more", exhibits a rebelliousness of speech that meshes well with the rebellious attitude of the ditty.

The battling mothers rhyme sounds like one of those pseudo-random selection methods kids use to choose who is "it" in a game of tag. Was it?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Precisely. It also did service as a jump rope rhyme -- you'd pick colors with long names and they'd speed up the rope as you spelled it out. "C-H-A-R-T-R-E-U-S-E!"

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Just remember, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi.

 

[tonyb]

Just remember, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi.

That certain Jeanne´ Saykwa? You knew her, too, eh?

 

[vitanola]

That's the thing with real folk culture. Nobody knows where it really comes from, but once it erupts it spreads fast, and it's never particuarly respectful or respectable to those in the seats of authority.

"My mother and your mother were hanging out clothes.
My mother hit your mother right in the nose.
What color was the blood?"

Your mother, was she ever wrong?
My mother made life just a song
When you were a kid h]were did you want to be?
Don't answer! I'll tell you: on your mothers knee.
Your mother and my mother too
Were angels whose hearts were a shrine
And the One up above
Sends his message of love
Through your mother and mine!