Taizé links on YouTube

My --- and my Joy" -- Bant: Choral "Meine Hoffnung und meine Freude" (Taizé) at Ev. Luth. church in Wilhelmshaven Germany

"Meine Hoffnung ..." Kirchentag 2007 Köln

"Jesus the Christ" Taizé Geneve - Jesus le Christ

"The Kingdom of God" Taizé Genève - "The kingdom of God" live in the train -- w/ bongos

"The Lord is My Life and My Salvation" Episcopal church in St. Louis (?)

"Ubi Caritas" Taizé Prayer in the Holy Land, Nazareth, West Bank

Heard on KKR, folk singer from Nordmøre

Unni Boksasp, "På Gulevei" (Golden roads)

home page http://www.boksasp.no/boksasp.php

MySpace (w/ audio clips) http://www.myspace.com/unniboksasp

YouTube (concert at Frei Kirke in Kristiansund N and interviews on Norwegian TV) -- 9 min. at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fBwIx6Gk_s and 2nd part 9 min. at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgV260yoGog ... she played at the Kirke Kunst og Kulturfestival in Kristiansund

Blurb on http://www.folkogdans.no/index.php?cat=74513&view=1072

Folksinger, composer and arranger, born in Tingvoll, Nordmøre in 1972, living in Tinn, Telemark

Unni Boksasp is a versatile musician with voice as her instrument. Her core repertoire derives from the vocal tradition of Nordmøre, with Magnhild Almhjell (1894-1985) serving as the most comprehensive source. She has also studied the singing traditions of Tinn and Telemark with Hanne Kjersti Yndestad. She has qualified for the elite Category A in traditional singing in the National Contest for Traditional Music. Boksasp studied folk music at Telemark College Institute of Folk Culture, folk dance in Trondheim, and folk music at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. She is currently working as a full-time musician in addition to teaching at the Telemark College Institute of Folk Culture. She is also involved in a number of school projects aimed at teaching children and young people the art of singing. Boksasp performs both as a soloist and in various ensembles such as the Nordmøre group Brann i blått and the children’s concert group Æppel pæppel, which has presented around 250 concerts for Concerts Norway in the county of Møre og Romsdal. In autumn 2007 she recorded her first solo CD, Songar frå Havdal, featuring her interpretations of folk music from northwestern Norway. Jorun Marie Kvernberg, Magne Vestrum, Ånon Egeland and Henning Sommerro accompanied her on the record. Unni Boksasp has performed at festivals in Norway and abroad, and has presented concerts throughout Norway. For the past few years she has worked with arranging folk music pieces for different ensembles and composing material based on traditional music. She has also worked with recently composed pieces by Henning Sommerro, Henrik Ødegård and others.

HUM 223: Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Black Snake Moan"

A recording is available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3yd-c91ww8

Lyrics at http://www.lyricstime.com/blind-lemon-jefferson-that-black-snake-moan-lyrics.html ... open a window to follow them as I play the song.

There's a good biography of Jefferson in the "Handbook of Texas" at http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/JJ/fje1.html

HUM 223: Term paper (which I will also hand out in hard copy)

HUM 223: Ethnic Music

Springfield College in Illinois

Fall Semester 2008

http://www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/humanities/hum223syllabus.html

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art. -- Charlie Parker

Term Paper – Fall 2008

One of your requirements in Humanities 223 is to write a documented term paper (at least 2,000 words or eight pages in 12pt type) on some aspect of cultural and artistic expression in traditional music or a commercial genre derived from traditional music. This handout tells you how to do it. The instructions, and updates, will be posted to my teaching blog at http://www.hogfiddle.blogspot.com/ -- Pete Ellertsen, instructor

Your overall assignment. Choose a musician, band or group whose work you enjoy or whom you want to know more about, and write a paper about their artistic influences; how their culture and/or artistic shaped their life and career; how they dealt with issues of commercial and artistic success; and their place in the history of American popular music. You may choose your own topic. But since this is a roots music class, you will do best if you choose a historical figure or a contemporary musician whose art has been influenced by traditional music and who seeks to modify those traditions in today’s world. Be sure to clear your topic with me before you begin researching it; I must approve the topic ahead of time. Your opinions and your response to the artist’s music are an important part of the paper, but you need to research your artists’ career and respond to their music in order to support your opinion. In other words, it is a documented research paper. A “Citation Machine” is available on my faculty page.

How to approach your paper. In researching and writing your paper, you’ll want to address the following points. Not all of them will be appropriate for every paper you write (for example you don’t need to spell out for me that gospel singer Mahalia Jackson didn’t use drugs), but you’ll want to touch these bases in your research:

· Some biography of your artist or band members, including musical influences, artistic vision (i.e. anything they said about music, like the quote from jazz saxophone player Charlie “Bird” Parker above), and how they made a living from their music. How did they handle the stresses of a musical career, including drug use, road trips, etc.? How successful were they? What compromises, if any, did they make between their artistic vision and commercial success? How successful were they, both artistically and commercially?

· What does your artist’s career tell you about what it means to have a career in the arts in American society? What does it tell you about American popular culture? If you do a historical figures, how did they influence later musicians? If you do contemporary musicians, how do they build on the music of the past?

· How well was your artist or band received in their time? By the public? By other musicians? Listen to some of their music, and ask yourself: (1) What about it stands out in my mind as I listen to it? (2) What in my background, values, taste and interests makes me feel that way? (3) What specifically about the music leads me to my response to it? Consult the handout linked to my faculty webpage at http://www.sci.edu/faculty/ellertsen/humanities/reflective%20response.html and my sample essay linked to it for more ideas on how to write about music. Your response to roots music is what HUM 223 is all about, and this response is an essential part of the paper.

In researching the paper, you should both read up on the musicians and listen to some of their music. You will find some sources in the library, others on the Internet. If you have trouble tracking down recordings or sound files, see me and I’ll help out.

Who to write about? Any of the artists we have talked about in class are fair game. You can find plenty on historical figures like Stephen A. Foster, the Fisk Jubilee Singers or Louie Armstrong. Blues and/or jazz vocalists like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday would be good subjects. Gospel singers like Mahalia Jackson (mentioned above) or Thomas A. Dorsey who also sang blues as “Georgia Tom,” or more recent evangelists like Kirk Franklin who have their roots in gospel music. As you read “Deep Blues” by Robert Palmer, You will learn a lot about Delta and Chicago bluesmen Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, as well as the rock artists like Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan or the Rolling Stones who emulated their music. You will get other ideas as we watch “Feel Like Going Home” and other DVDs from Martin Scorese’s PBS series “The Blues” we screen in class during the remainder of the semester. Just be sure to clear your topic with me first.

What are my deadlines? There are three. You will give me a two-page typewritten proposal by Thursday, Nov. 6, in which you tell me which performer(s) you will research and what your tentative thesis is; and list, in MLA or APA format, three to five specific sources you have consulted. Your papers will be due the week before Thanksgiving, which is the week of Nov. 17-21. I will post further directions and/or suggestions to Hogfiddle, and we can discuss paper-writing stragegies in class.

If you have questions please don’t hesitate to ask me. The quickest way to get hold of me is to email me at pellertsen@sci.edu.

HUM 223: W.C. Handy, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and the birth of the blues 'where the Southern cross the Dog'

W.C. Handy is known as the "Father of the Blues." Fair enough. But he was an accomplished, classically trained musician who taught at Alabama A&M College and played at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. He first heard the blues, when he was waiting for a train one night in Tutweiler, Miss., when a heard a street musician playing slide guitar country-style. Years later Handy recalled the moment like this:

As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of a guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who use steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly.

"Goin' where the Southern cross' the Dog"
The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard. The tune stayed in my mind. When the singer paused, I leaned over and asked him what the words meant. He rolled his eyes, showing a trace of mild amusement.

Perhaps I should have known, but he didn't mind explaining. At [the nearby town of] Moorhead, the east and west bound met and crossed the north and south bound trains four times a day. This fellow was going where the Southern railroad crossed the Yazoo Delta railroad, (nicknamed the "Yellow Dog"), and he didn't care who knew it.

Steve Cheseborough, program host for Mississippi Public Television, tells viewers what it must have been like that night to hear the country blues in 1903. Here's what it may have sounded like, a sound file of Charlie Patton's "Green River Blues" with the same refrain. The recording is from the 1920s, but Patton played in the old country blues style. Notice how intricate and polyrhythmic his guitar-picking is. He is simply one of the best guitar players ever.

Handy saw commercial possibilties in the blues (see the handout I give you in class about his reaction when a "rain of silver dollars becan to fall around the outlandish, stomping feet" of a country blues band in Cleveland, Miss.), and he published "St. Louis Blues" in 1914 (as played here on a 78rpm record by Louie Armstrong in 1933. It was the first huge crossover blues hit, although purists would say it doesn't really have the structure of a 12-bar country blues song.

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey was one of the most successful blues singers of the 1920s. She made the transition from minstrel shows and the TOBA circuit to movies, and perhaps more importantly she was popular as a crossover artist. But her music kept the earthy beginnings of the blues with what our textbook calls "the down-and-out [musicians] who had gravitated to the larger cities to make the street music that became their prime means of livelihood and independence" (p. 112). I couldn't find "Hustlin' Blues" (discussed on pp. 113-14) on YouTube. Instead, we'll listen to her sing "Black Bottom Blues" backed by her Georgia Jazz Band. The piano player at the far right is Thomas A. "Georgia Tom" Dorsey, who later wrote gospel songs including "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." But first, we'll watch a 1920s-era silent movie about the Black Bottom. (There's s more about the dance itself available in Wikipedia.)

Then we'll listen to Ma Rainey sing. You can -- and should -- follow the lyrics in another window. They're full of double meanings, as when she sings, "Ma Rainey's going to show you her black bottom." The double meaning is intentional:

I want to see that dance you call the black bottom
I want to learn that dance
Don't you see the dance you call your big black bottom
That'll put you in a trance.

But Ma Rainey had the last laugh. Unlike many musicians of the day (or any other), she invested her money wisely and made enough to build and manage two successful theaters in her home town of Columbus, Ga., even in the middle of the Great Depression.

Bessie Smith got her start as a street musician in Chattanooga, Tenn., and in 1912 joined Ma Rainey's minstrel show on the TOBA circuit. According to the RedHotJazz.com website, she was "the greatest of the classic Blues singers of the 1920s."

Two passages in our textbook by Candlearia and Kingman discuss the structure of the blues. They're important.

• Bessie Smith's "Lost Your Head Blues" is quoted and analyzed in our book (pp. 114-15).
  
• Ma Rainey's "Counting the Blues" is on page 116. We'll listen to it in audio.

Then we'll complete the circle, with a sophisticated musical tribute to the earliest country blues. Years after that night at the railroad station in northern Mississippi, Handy wrote a song called "Yellow Dog Blues," and he incorporated some of what he remembered of the night. In 1926 Bessie Smith recorded it with a band including Joe Smith on cornet, Charlie Green on trombone, Buster Bailey clarinet, Coleman Hawkins tenor saxaphone, Fletcher Henderson piano, Charlie Dixon banjo and Bob Escudero on brass bass. You can follow the lyrics by opening this window. Handy's treatment of the song is sophisticated, but it harkens back to the very earliest blues.

ABC Notation Sites

Courtesy of my Appalachian dulcimer-playing buddy Mike Thomas:

ABC Notation Sites

JC's ABC Tune Match at trillian.mit.edu - Just type in the song title orword in the title and you have a good chance of getting back what you'relooking for a maybe some that you're not :-).

Type in the name (such as Snake River Reel), click on the FIND button,select PDF hyperlink, then click on the GET button, then select*.ABC to download the ABC file*.PDF to download the PDF file

Or just try just playing around with the different options

http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/cgi/abc/tunefind

Free ABC Format Music Siteshttp://www.freesheetmusic.net/abc.html

JC's ABC music collectionhttp://ecf-guest.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/

the abc musical notation language http://www2.redhawk.org:8080/irish/abc/index.html

ABC Navigator - I lost my ABC converter program when I reinstalled my operating system but I believe this is the one I was playing around with:http://abcnavigator.free.fr/abcnvgt.php?lang=eng

Music Notation Links

http://www3.telus.net/On-LineMusicWorldofWendy/Tablature.htm

HUM 223: Jazz (a quick-and-dirty summary)

Jazz was another form of American music that went from folk beginnings, a lot of them in New Orleans, to a very popular art form and eventually crossed over into something that has a lot in common with classical music ... including very complex music, highly trained musicians and a limited audience.

We don't have time to do more than look at a few video clips, but we need to do at least that because jazz strongly influenced the blues. Terms in CAPS and boldface you should know, and in quotes you can look up in Kingman's chapters on jazz and blues. At the end, I'll try to take it back around to something I think is important about roots music.

The big thing about jazz is it's IMPROVISED, like folk music is. It started in a "bounded community," the black community of New Orleans in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It went worldwide, but it always kept that focus on improvisation -- it's not played note-for-note from sheet music, so players can vary they way they play a song and build on each other's interpretations during a performance.

One of the first roots of jazz was band music of the Civil War. Hundreds of regimental bands were organized, and most of them had bands. The YouTube clip shows vintage photos with the Federal City Brass Band playing in the background. Louisiana raised at least 30 regiments for the Confederate Army, and 11 regiments of African American troops for the union. That meant a lot of surplus musical instruments after the war, and some of them found their way to street bands in New Orleans. Marches were very popular everywhere. Here's a very early movie (1889) for the Thomas A. Edison Music Video Co. showing a regimental band. And a Victorla record playing a John Philip Sousa march called "Under the Double Eagle." (Notice the picture of the dog listening to an old-fashioned record player on the label.)

Jazz has always been, and continues to be even now, band music. Religion, not surprisingly, was another deep root of jazz.

STREET BANDS combined the two. They grew up in New Orleans' black community in the late 1800s, and they developed a tradition that combined church processions with street dancing, Mardi Gras and what in time came to be called "dixieland" jazz. The band would play a solemn, dignified tune in the first line on the way to the cemetery. Often it was the old spiritual, "Just a Closer Walk with Thee." Afterward, on the SECOND LINE or way back to a celebration very similar to a wake, the band would play upbeat numbers like "When the Saints Go Marching In." The tradition survives in New Orleans, not only in the tourist sections but in the neighborhoods. The YouTube clip seen here shows a second line from New Orleans' St. Augustine Church in June 2007. Historical footage of several jazz funerals shows the progression from the church to the cemetery -- where graves are in mansoleums above ground -- and the transition to second-line music (at 2:30 min.) after interment.

Louis Armstrong was one performer whose career spanned the popularity of jazz. He started out in street bands like those linked above, and evolved into a polished "big band" performer during the 1930s and 1940s. His career lasted into the period of "modern jazz," which was more classical in tone, but he was uniquely himself. Here he plays "When the Saints Go Marching In" with what looks like a 1950s television studio band. In this clip from the 1947 movie clip, he introduces band members in a New Orleans club. And here he sings his trademark song "Wonderful World" on BBC-TV in 1968. Backing him are Tyree Glenn ontrombone, Joe Muranyi clarinet, Marty Napoleon piano, Buddy Catlett bass and Danny Barcelona drums. The BBC show was one of Armstrong's last public appearances.

Jazz evolved into what some consider a form of ART MUSIC with the advent of players like Charles "Bird" Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Here the John Coltrane Quartet plays an arrangment of "Alabama" in 1963. McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones rounded out the quartet. Their playing is improvised, but very subtle, intricate and formal like art music. It came to be known as "modern jazz," and it still has a strong market niche mostly in college towns and major metro areas.

In 2006 rock artist Bruce Springsteen made a "roots" album in honor of folksinger Pete Seeger. (My definition of ROOTS MUSIC is pretty simple -- just about any music that tries to capture the spirit of its roots in the folk music of a bounded community.) And Springsteen played a roots-y version of "The Saints" on the Seeger Sessions tour afterward in the U.S. and Europe. A fan who saw the concert Nov. 11, 2006, in Sheffield, England, said, "Introducing When The saints Go Marching In [Springsteen] said that this song explained what the show was all about. The slowed down arrangement worked perfectly with band members Marc Anthony Thompson and Lisa Lowell each taking a verse." Is it folk? Is it art music? Is it roots? I'd say it's all three.

HUM 223: Assignment for Tuesday

Read Candelaria and Kingman, Chapters 15-16, on ragtime and jazz.

MORE EXCITING ASSIGNMENTS TO COME.

HUM 223: Thursday -- quiz and class links

First, here's the quiz. Write a good, detailed paragraph on the following question and turn it in to me:

Stephen Foster was the first American songwriter to quit his day job and make his living writing songs. How did he deal with the problem of balancing his artistic vision -- i.e. write the kind of songs he wanted to write -- with the necessity of making money?

Be specific. (Heard that before?) Always be specific.

Today in class we will look at some more information on the ministrel shows like those that Foster wrote for. Here are links to some current resources on minstrel shows, including supporting material for the documentary on Stephen A. Foster we watched in class. There's a good overview of Blackface Minstrelsy with comments by historians and musicians linked to a directory page. Be especially sure to read how historian Eric Lott and rock music critic Ken Emerson answer the question, "What's the connection between blackface minstrelsy and rock and roll?" Several people are interviewed for this feature, and they give varied but thoughtful critiques of the racial and artistic issues it raises. Also: There's a very good history of ministrel shows and vaudeville by John Kenrick on the "Musicals101.com" website.

What were the early minstrel shows like? Joe Bethancourt performs an minstrel tune called "Juba" on a fretless banjo made of a gourd. The lyrics, in their entirety, are:

Juba this, and Juba that
Juba stole my yellow cat.

The banjo is like the instruments that were developed by African Americans from several West African antecedents. Little else about the song shows African influence. "Old Dan Tucker" was a very popular song from the minstrel shows. I've linked to several files on the Internet that suggest how widespread the song got to be, especially after it went back into oral tradition as a fiddle tune.

• Original lyrics, as they were published in 1843, played by Japher's "Original" SANDY RIVER MINSTRELS, show the typical nonsense lyrics of the ministrel shows without some of the more egregious racial stereotyping.
  
• Old-time string band musicians jam on "Old Dan Tucker" at the 2006 Early Banjo Gathering in the barn of the Pry House Field Hospital Museum at Antietam Civil War battlefield. They're in period clothes (except for the guy with the white ballcap), playing fiddle, banjo and bones -- or spoons, which jug bands often use instead of castanets.
  
• "Old Dan Tucker" was a favorite during the Civil War. Played at a slightly slower tempo, it made a good march. Here historical reenactors of the Excelsior Brigade Fife and Drum Corps play it during a Mardi Gras parade in 2007 in Brockport, N.Y.
  
• Habla español? Spanish television broadcasts Bruce Springsteen and his Seeger Sessions band playing "Old Dan Tucker" (and, later, a snippet from "John Henry") when they played in Madrid in 2006. Also Springsteen talks (in English) about the "raw democracy" he finds in American roots music. Notice his band combines the instrumentation of an oldtime string band (fiddle, banjo, guitar) with the brass instruments of a Dixieland jazz band. We've seen clips from these concerts before, and we'll see more as we go along.

How did the shows change when black people got involved with them? John Kendrick's history of ministrel shows and vaudeville on "Musicals101.com" takes them up into the 20th century. (Did you know the first popular "talking picture show," or movie with sound on film, featured a white blackface singer named Al Jolson?) Be sure to click through to Kenrick's discussion of how black vaudville performers changed the art form.

Vaudeville did much to to teach audiences of different ethnic and social backgrounds to get along. Defying the racist norm that dominated American society, vaudeville had black and white performers sharing the same stage as early as the 1890s. But managers had to deal with the legal and social realities of their time. Most southern states did not allow blacks and whites to sit in the same theatre, and even most Northern cities barred blacks from the best seats as late as the 1920s.

The TOBA Circuit ("Theatre Owners Booking Agency," which performers re-named "Tough On Black Asses") were the only venues below the Mason-Dixon Line that welcomed "colored" customers in the early part of the 20th Century, offering all-black bills for all-black audiences. For midnight performances on Saturdays, some TOBA houses allowed whites to sneak into the balcony.

This discussion on "Musicals101.com" is much better than what we have in our textbook. You may want to bookmark it so you can consult it when you write your midterm.

Song and dance was an important part of the legacy of the minstrel shows. As early as the 1840s, William Henry Lane, a black dancer who went by the stage name of Master Juba, was an international success. He combined Irish and African American steps, and is credited as the person who invented tap dance. A London theater and dance troupe recently toured the United States with a tribute to Master Juba that told his story.

Years later, at the turn of the 20th century, a dance known as the Cakewalk became a nationwide craze. It is said to have originated with slaves mocking the "high-falutin' airs" of their masters (without the masters realizing it). A very early motion picture, filmed in 1903, shows a professional dance troupe doing the cakewalk on stage and amateurs cakewalking in the surf along a beach. Note the bathing suits!

We can gain perhaps the best feel for what these stereotypes were like and the profound influence they had on the American entertainment industry from a documentry on blacks in vaudville -- a very popular kind of variety show that lasted up to the early days of television in the 1950s -- that shows clips from old movies.

The first part of the documentary shows how lasted well into the 1900s. But they also allowed African American artists to gain a foothold and shape the entertainment industry into what it is today.

The second part of the documentary shows how Bert Williams, the Nicholas Brothers and other gifted black artists performed with style, grace and artistic integrity on the TOBA circuit. Williams has been called the "Jackie Robinson of show business." The comedian W.C. Fields once said Bert Williams was "The funniest man I ever saw and the saddest man I ever met."

HUM 223: TRANSLATION -- WHAT THE SCRIBBLES AND SQUIGGLES ON YOUR MIDTERMS MEAN

This may save you from wondering about ...

1. Checkmarks in the margin of your paper are good. When you see one, it means you said something I liked. Usually something specific that relates to the main themes of the course, your readings, etc.
2. A "bang mark" or exclamation point is good! It can mean a variety of things. Often I put a bang mark in the margin when you said something that made me laugh.
3. "Be specific" in the margin means ... (drum roll) ... be specific! I really, really like specific.

If you can't read my writing, ask me after class. If I can read it myself (which is usually, but not always, the case), I'll translate it into English for you.

ONE LAST NOTE: If you get a "C" on your midterm grade report, that does not mean you are getting a C in the class. It means I don't have a midterm for you, but you've been coming to class so I'm not going to flunk you.

Yet.

It also means: See me after class, and we'll get it straightened out.

HUM 223: In-class quiz

Sometimes in my classes, I give quizzes to encourage attendance. I try to ask questions that are not too intellectually demanding, so you get credit basically for being here that day.

So I will ask two questions below, and you will post your answers as a comment to this blogpost.

Here's how.

How to post your comment

Go to the bottom of this post, right below the next graf. On the right side of the last line, there will be a link that says "Posted by Pete at 12:34 PM ___ comments" (with a number filled in where I've left a blank, depending on how many comments have been posted). Click on that " ___ comments" link and fill in the comment field on the right. Sign in.

You'll probably have to do something to register for Blogger. Do it (they'll prompt you). Make a note of the username and password you choose. We'll keep on posting to the blog, and if you don't make a note you'll forget it. Please believe me on this. It is something we have learned by hard experience! When you've reviewed your comment, publish it by clicking on "Publish Your Comment." And that's how you publish your comment. Logical, isn't it?

And now, the questions ...

1. Irish fiddle tunes are one of the sources of 19th-century American popular music. From what European country do Irish fiddle tunes come?

a. Japan
b. New Zealand
c. Khazakistan
d. Illinois
e. Ireland

2. On what musical instrument are Irish fiddle tunes played?

a. Trombone
b. piano
c. tuba
d. chain saw
e. fiddle

Please post your answers to the blog so you will recieve proper credit for being here today.

Daniel Pearl Music Days

7th Annual Daniel Pearl World Music Days - October 1st - 31st, 2008

An international network of concerts using the power of music to reaffirm our commitment to tolerance and humanity.


From the website at http://www.danielpearlmusicdays.org/:

7th Annual Daniel Pearl World Music Days - October 1st - 31st, 2008

An international network of concerts using the power of music to reaffirm our commitment to tolerance and humanity.

The Daniel Pearl Foundation invites you to join us in promoting international friendship by dedicating a musical performance this October as part of Daniel Pearl World Music Days.

Inspired by the legacy of journalist and musician Daniel Pearl, World Music Days uses the universal language of music to spread a message of hope and unity across cultural divides. By simply including a dedication from the stage or in the program of your upcoming performance, you will reaffirm your commitment to international friendship and take a stand against the divisive forces that took Danny’s life. As a member of this global network of concerts, your music will inspire your audiences with a sense of unity and purpose.

World Music Days is an “awareness raiser,” not a fundraiser. There is no financial obligation to participate.

Some other links and resources below ...





http://community.beliefnet.com/forums/showthread.php?p=771656
copy of flier we got at Worship & Music Committee meeting

O Day of Peace (711 ELW), text by Carl Daw and tune by Hubert Perry

In Christ there is no East or West (359 LBW), African American spiritual arr. Harry Burleigh

Choir anthem "Instruments of Your Peace" by Kirk and Debi Dearman, arranged by Phil Perkins. Lyrics at http://www.higherpraise.com/lyrics/love/love200685.htm Dearman's MySpace page at http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=310406047

HUM 223: 'Blackface' minstrel shows

Here are links to some current resources on minstrel shows, including supporting material for the documentary on Stephen A. Foster we watched in class. There's a good overview of Blackface Minstrelsy with comments by historians and musicians linked to a directory page. Be especially sure to read how historian Eric Lott and rock music critic Ken Emerson answer the question, "What's the connection between blackface minstrelsy and rock and roll?" Several people are interviewed for this feature, and they give varied but thoughtful critiques of the racial and artistic issues it raises. A very good history of ministrel shows and vaudeville by John Kenrick on the "Musicals101.com" website

Questions to ask yourself as you read about the shows: (1) Does the music of the ministrel shows transcend boundaries of race and culture? (2) Do Stephen Foster's songs, like "My Old Kentucky Home" or "Oh Susannah" hold up 150 years later in the 21st century, or are they sentimental and dated? (3) How should we approach American works of art, like the minstrel show songs or Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," that reflect racist attitudes?

What were the early minstrel shows like? Joe Bethancourt performs an minstrel tune called "Juba" on a fretless banjo made of a gourd. The lyrics, in their entirety, are:

Juba this, and Juba that
Juba stole my yellow cat.

The banjo is like the instruments that were developed by African Americans from several West African antecedents. Little else about the song shows African influence. "Old Dan Tucker" was a very popular song from the minstrel shows. I've linked to several files on the Internet that suggest how widespread the song got to be, especially after it went back into oral tradition as a fiddle tune.

• Original lyrics, as they were published in 1843, played by Japher's "Original" SANDY RIVER MINSTRELS, show the typical nonsense lyrics of the ministrel shows without some of the more egregious racial stereotyping.
  
• Old-time string band musicians jam on "Old Dan Tucker" at the 2006 Early Banjo Gathering in the barn of the Pry House Field Hospital Museum at Antietam Civil War battlefield. They're in period clothes (except for the guy with the white ballcap), playing fiddle, banjo and bones -- or spoons, which jug bands often use instead of castanets.
  
• "Old Dan Tucker" was a favorite during the Civil War. Played at a slightly slower tempo, it made a good march. Here historical reenactors of the Excelsior Brigade Fife and Drum Corps play it during a Mardi Gras parade in 2007 in Brockport, N.Y.
  
• Spanish television broadcasts Bruce Springsteen and a band he assembled for a toots music albumcalled "The Seeger Sessions" playing "Old Dan Tucker" (and, later, part of "John Henry") when they played in Madrid in 2006. Also Springsteen talks (in English) about the "raw democracy" he finds in American roots music. Notice his band combines the instrumentation of an oldtime string band (fiddle, banjo, guitar) with the brass instruments of a Dixieland jazz band. We've seen clips from these concerts before, and we'll see more as we go along.

How did the shows change when black people got involved with them? John Kendrick's history of ministrel shows and vaudeville on "Musicals101.com" takes them up into the 20th century. (Did you know the first popular "talking picture show," or movie with sound on film, featured a white blackface singer named Al Jolson?) Be sure to click through to Kenrick's discussion of how black vaudville performers changed the art form.

Vaudeville did much to to teach audiences of different ethnic and social backgrounds to get along. Defying the racist norm that dominated American society, vaudeville had black and white performers sharing the same stage as early as the 1890s. But managers had to deal with the legal and social realities of their time. Most southern states did not allow blacks and whites to sit in the same theatre, and even most Northern cities barred blacks from the best seats as late as the 1920s.

The TOBA Circuit ("Theatre Owners Booking Agency," which performers re-named "Tough On Black Asses") were the only venues below the Mason-Dixon Line that welcomed "colored" customers in the early part of the 20th Century, offering all-black bills for all-black audiences. For midnight performances on Saturdays, some TOBA houses allowed whites to sneak into the balcony.

This discussion on "Musicals101.com" is much better than what we have in our textbook. You may want to bookmark it so you can consult it when you write your midterm.

Dance. Song and dance was an important part of the legacy of the minstrel shows. As early as the 1840s, William Henry Lane, a black dancer who went by the stage name of Master Juba, was an international success. He combined Irish and African American steps, and is credited as the person who invented tap dance. A London theater and dance troupe recently toured the United States with a tribute to Master Juba that told his story. Years later, at the turn of the 20th century, a dance known as the Cakewalk became a nationwide craze. It is said to have originated with slaves mocking the "high-falutin' airs" of their masters (without the masters realizing it). A very early motion picture, filmed in 1903, shows a professional dance troupe doing the cakewalk on stage and amateurs cakewalking in the surf along a beach. Note the bathing suits!

We can gain perhaps the best feel for what these stereotypes were like and the profound influence they had on the American entertainment industry from a documentry on blacks in vaudville that shows clips from old movies. As the documentary indicates, the stereotypes lasted well into the 1900s. But they also allowed African American artists to gain a foothold and shape the entertainment industry into what it is today.

Military band music -- a couple of clips

Military band music was one of the very important influences on American popular culture from colonial days to New Orleans jazz (often first played on surplus instruments from Civil War regimental bands, according to one theory) to halftime shows at today's football games.

We'll hear a couple, just to demonstrate the continuity. Do you hear anything like this today?

The Old Guard drumline plays and performs 18th-century parade ground evolutions at the Saratoga muster of Revolutionary War and other reenactors. The first tune is an old Irish air sometimes known as "Minstrel Boy," and the second is a version of "Soldier's Joy." The Old Guard Fife & Drum Corps is part of the 3rd U.S. Infantry (known as "The Old Guard"), according to Wikipedia, and is the only unit of its kind in the armed forces. They're wearing red coats, by the way, not because the original fife and drum line was British but because band members in Gen. George Washington's army wore red so they'd stand out in the smoke of battle.

This clip from the movie "Gods and Generals" reenacts a minstrel-type performance of "The Bonnie Blue Flag" in a Confederate camp early in the Civil War. It's overdone by modern standards, and the movie was was a failure both with the critics and at the box office, but 19th-century audiences routinely saw worse acting than this. The song, related to the fiddle tune "Coleman's March," has Irish antecedents going back to the 1700s.

Reenactors playing as the 7th Cavalry regimental band perform "Garry Owen" Custer State Park's annual Buffalo Round Up festivities. The song was a favorite of Gen. George Armstrong Custer, and legend has it "Garry Owen" was played as the regiment rode out to the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876.