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Hear My Sad Story
In 2015, Bob Dylan said, \"I learned lyrics and how to write them from listening to folk songs. And I played them, and I met other people that played them, back when nobody was doing it. Sang nothing but these folk songs, and they gave me the code for everything that's fair game, that everything belongs to everyone.\" InHear My
Sad Story, Richard Polenberg describes the historical events that led to the writing of many famous American folk songs that served as touchstones for generations of American musicians, lyricists, and folklorists.
Those events, which took place from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, often involved tragic occurrences: murders, sometimes resulting from love affairs gone wrong; desperate acts borne out of poverty and unbearable working conditions; and calamities such as railroad crashes, shipwrecks, and natural disasters. All of Polenberg's account of the songs in the book are grounded in historical fact and illuminate the social history of the times. Reading these tales of sorrow, misfortune, and regret puts us in touch with the dark but terribly familiar side of American history.
On Christmas 1895 in St. Louis, an African American man named Lee Shelton, whose nickname was \"Stack Lee,\" shot and killed William Lyons in a dispute over seventy-five cents and a hat. Shelton was sent to prison until 1911, committed another murder upon his release, and died in a prison hospital in 1912. Even during his lifetime, songs were being written about Shelton, and eventually 450 versions of his story would be recorded. As the song-you may know Shelton as Stagolee or Stagger Lee-was shared and adapted, the emotions of the time were preserved, but the fact that the songs described real people, real lives, often fell by the wayside. Polenberg returns us to the men and women who, in song, became legends. The lyrics serve as valuable historical sources, providing important information about what had happened, why, and what it all meant. More important, they reflect the character of American life and the pathos elicited by the musical memory of these common and troubled lives.
eBook
Oh, a-hunting we will go
Old and new verses for a popular folk song about hunting and capturing an animal--and then letting him go.
Book
Our Ancient National Airs: Scottish Song Collecting from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Era
One of the earliest documented Scottish song collectors actually to go 'into the field' to gather his specimens, was the Highlander Joseph Macdonald. Macdonald emigrated in 1760 - contemporaneously with the start of James Macpherson's famous but much disputed Ossian project - and it fell to the Revd. Patrick Macdonald to finish and subsequently publish his younger brother's collection. Karen McAulay traces the complex history of Scottish song collecting, and the publication of major Highland and Lowland collections, over the ensuing 130 years. Looking at sources, authenticity, collecting methodology and format, McAulay places these collections in their cultural context and traces links with contemporary attitudes towards such wide-ranging topics as the embryonic tourism and travel industry; cultural nationalism; fakery and forgery; literary and musical creativity; and the move from antiquarianism and dilettantism towards an increasingly scholarly and didactic tone in the mid-to-late Victorian collections. Attention is given to some of the performance issues raised, either in correspondence or in the paratexts of published collections; and the narrative is interlaced with references to contemporary literary, social and even political history as it affected the collectors themselves. Most significantly, this study demonstrates a resurgence of cultural nationalism in the late nineteenth century.
eBook
Reds, whites, and blues
Music, and folk music in particular, is often embraced as a form of political expression, a vehicle for bridging or reinforcing social boundaries, and a valuable tool for movements reconfiguring the social landscape.Reds, Whites, and Bluesexamines the political force of folk music, not through the meaning of its lyrics, but through the concrete social activities that make up movements. Drawing from rich archival material, William Roy shows that the People's Songs movement of the 1930s and 40s, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s implemented folk music's social relationships--specifically between those who sang and those who listened--in different ways, achieving different outcomes.
Roy explores how the People's Songsters envisioned uniting people in song, but made little headway beyond leftist activists. In contrast, the Civil Rights Movement successfully integrated music into collective action, and used music on the picket lines, at sit-ins, on freedom rides, and in jails. Roy considers how the movement's Freedom Songs never gained commercial success, yet contributed to the wider achievements of the Civil Rights struggle. Roy also traces the history of folk music, revealing the complex debates surrounding who or what qualified as \"folk\" and how the music's status as racially inclusive was not always a given.
Examining folk music's galvanizing and unifying power,Reds, Whites, and Bluescasts new light on the relationship between cultural forms and social activity.
eBook
Folk music : a Bob Dylan biography in seven songs
\"Across seven decades, Bob Dylan has been the first singer of American song. As a writer and performer, he has rewritten the national songbook in a way that comes from his own vision and yet can feel as if it belongs to anyone who might listen. In Folk Music, Greil Marcus tells Dylan's story through seven of his most transformative songs. Marcus's point of departure is Dylan's ability to \"see myself in others.\" Like Dylan's songs, this book is a work of implicit patriotism and creative skepticism. It illuminates Dylan's continuing presence and relevance through his empathy-his imaginative identification with other people. This is not only a deeply felt telling of the life and times of Bob Dylan, but a rich history of American folk songs and the new life they were given as Dylan sat down to write his own.\"-- Dust jacket.
Book
The folk music revival, 1958-1970 : biographies of fifty performers and other infuential people
\"This is the second in a series of books focusing upon the history of folk music. This volume concentrates on the period that continues to fuel popular music to the present. Included are biographies and discographies of such noted personalities as Harry Belafonte, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel, and Peter, Paul and Mary. \"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Comparing Lithuanian Folk Scales with Historical Temperament Systems in Lithuania and the USA
The novelty and relevance of the idea of this artistic research lies in the comparison of the intervals of the traditional Lithuanian unequal tunings and the European and Middle Eastern unequal temperament systems in order to identify the degree of similarities and differences of interval distances. The novelty also lies in the extent of the research object, which included Lithuanian folk music recordings from the first half of the twentieth century preserved in Lithuania and the USA. It could be argued that the twelve-tone equal temperament (12-TET) has influenced Lithuanian traditional tunings, but several studies carried out on traditional Lithuanian vocal and instrumental music show that the 12-TET is not widespread. However, the micro-intervals in Lithuanian music have retained their uniqueness and distinctiveness compared with neighbouring countries (Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and Finland), where no natural intervals and tuning of traditional scales has been detected. The project objective is the comparison of unequal tuning systems with Lithuanian folk music scales using computer technologies. The research methods used during the project were: (a) comparative method, a study of European and Asian unequal systems based on the temperaments of natural harmonic series and the traditional Lithuanian music scales; (b) the software R statistical analysis method, using a file system to process text information. It can be concluded that there are many cases of natural intervals found in Lithuanian folk songs, considering that the temperaments of previous centuries had some naturally tuned intervals.
Journal Article