Santa Claus, Thor and a 'whiff of sulphur'

Seen up at the farm today in Don Wooten's Christmas Eve column in The Rock Island Argus ... this take, typically thoughtful, on Santa Claus and his Christian, and not-so-Christian, antecedents:

Santa Claus is coming to town.

Tonight the jolly old elf will tour the world in his sleigh and personally distribute presents to children everywhere -- at least, everywhere in what might be called the Christian dispensation.

That's because Santa is a curious distillation of Christian traditions which were overlaid on ancient, pagan customs. Most of what people know of this familiar figure dates from only about 200 years. The precise origins of Santa's journey have been lost in time.

Wooten, who I believe was a seminarian at St. Ambrose in Davenport before he got into politics and radio, tells the story of St. Nicholas of Myra and adds a couple of wrinkles about he came to be the "patron saint of unmarried girls, children, and sailors," as well as pawnbrokers, perfumers, druggists and sailors, that I didn't know before ...

And he adds this, which came as a complete surprise:

It's fairly obvious that part of Santa resides in the pagan past. One of the reasons why many fundamentalists want to downgrade the man in the red suit is precisely because of the whiff of sulphur associated with this image of Christmas.

Some see traces of the Roman god Saturn in Santa. This was the god who devoured his own children and dolls given out at the old Roman Saturnalia hint at this. Other scholars find dark associations with the Carthaginian god Baal-Hammon to whom children were sacrificed.

If we look further north, we find the Norse god Thor, a likeable, if rather loutish divinity, who wore a red suit and drove through the skies in a sled pulled by two goats, Cracker and Gnasher. He visited early hearths by coming down to earth in one of his elements, smoke.

Note to self. Wooten also has a book out. It's called "And Another Thing," and it can be ordered on line from the Argus and The Moline Dispatch. It's described as "... .. a personal narrative shaped from 21 years of columns in the Dispatch/Argus. Wooten draws on a lifetime spent in the Quad-Cities radio and television, with side trips into politics, education, classical theatre and journalism."

Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash playing "Blue Yodel No. 9" on TV

An article by Charles Wolfe in the "Web Extras" section of Oxford American magazine's website at
on the time Louis Armstrong appeared on the Johnny Cash Show televised at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium.

It also features a brief video clip of Armstrong and Cash improvising on Jimmie Rodgers' "Blue Yodel No. 9."

Like just about everything else Wolfe ever wrote, it's full of little insights about American music ... in this case, the commonality between black and white musical traditions in the South. Like this:

The Armstrongs were escorted to a room where a press conference had been set up. The first few questions involved Armstrong’s health, and whether he was planning on retiring.

“I told somebody not long ago that I’m going on one more world tour before I call it quits,” he said. “They said, ‘Okay, we’ve got you booked somewhere in East Siberia and see how that turns out.’ I said, ‘That’s all right, man, I hear they got a lotta babes up there, so go ahead and book me.’ But I’ll tell you this: If I do retire, I won’t go back to driving a mule.”

When the laughter died down, talk turned to the new album, Armstrong’s first to feature country songs and a country back-up band. Produced by Jack Clement, Johnny Cash’s longtime friend and producer, the album was due to be released in a few months; instead of the classic Hank Williams/Eddy Arnold repertoire, it included a strange mixture of Nashville products like Claude King’s recent hit “Wolverton Mountain,” the David Houston cheatin’ song “Almost Persuaded,” and the innocuous “Running Bear” by J.P. Richardson (a.k.a. the Big Bopper). Was Armstrong making a statement by recording white, working-class music? “There’s no such thing as black man’s music and white man’s music, as far as I’m concerned. It’s all music, daddy. Now that’s putting it in black and white. It’s all music. It’s all about love.”

Wolfe also mentions the 1957 incident when the White Citizens Council (or someone) set off a bomb when Armstrong played at Chilhowee Park in Knoxville.

"Road to Boston" (and learning fiddle tunes by ear)

On YouTube, a fiddle player named Hillar Bergman plays it through twice.

A nice PDF file at http://calfolk.ca/tunes1/on-the-road-to-boston.pdf ... on the Calgary Folk Music website featuring "Information about Folk, Fiddle and Celtic music in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and nearby communities." It has a link to an awfully good handout on "Picking Up Fiddle Tunes By Ear At Jam Sessions" by Joel Mabus. Both websites worth checking out further.

There's information about the tune on The Session traditional Irish music website, in the comments section on "Road to Boston." It's in 2/4 time (a polka).

Andrew Kunz' "Fiddler's Companion" has this on "Road to Boston":

ROAD TO BOSTON. AKA and see "On the Road to Boston," "Boston March," "Road to London." American, Reel. USA; New England, Pennsylvania. D Major. Standard tuning. AB (Silberberg): AABB (most versions): AA'BB' (Phillips). "This old fifers' march is known by the above name in the Northeast as well as in Pennsylvania. A New England game song beginning:

***

It's a long road to Boston, boys, (ter)

Oh when shall we get there?

***

may possibly account for this title; if so, the fact emphasizes the close connection between playparty and dance tunes to which we have already referred (see Introduction). Mr. Devan stated that there were words known to the tune in Fayette County, but he could not recall them. They may or may not have included those just quoted" (Bayard, 1944). In his 1981 collection Bayard calls the tune international, at least the first strain, and probably quite old. Close variants from the Continent appear in Bouillet, Album Auvergnat, pg. 30, as "Bourree d'Aigueperse," and in Quellien, "Chansons et Danses des Bretons," (p. 287, No. 9) {Ed.--This bourree also appears in Stevens Massif collection, collected in the Auvergne region of Central France); while the second part of an Irish tune described as a 'quadrille' corresponds to the first part of "Road to Boston" (see Joyce 1909, No. 277). A southern variant appears in Ford, p. 174, as "Exhibition March No. 2."./ One of the tunes identified by 93 yr. old Benjamin Smith of Needham, Mass., in 1853 as the most popular American army tunes of the Revolutionary War; until their musicians learned "Yankee Doodle" and "The White Cockade" from hearing the British playing them in the distance (Winstock, 1970; pg. 71). 

Southwest Indian Foundation

Found while cleaning out the upstairs office, a catalog from the Southwest Indian Foundation, of Gallup, N.M. A student gave it to me a couple of years ago, and I promptly took it home and put it in a safe place. They have onyx bolo ties for $45 and the profits go to aid various ministries in New Mexico.

From the catalog, I got a web address at http://www.southwestindian.com/ ... from the About Us page:

When Fr. Dunstan Schmidlin started the Southwest Indian Foundation back in 1968, he felt a sense of urgency. With a true Franciscan's love for the land and the harmony for creation, he was deeply troubled by the plight of his Native American brothers and sisters.

Where once these noble Americans had lived close to the earth, they now seemed displaced in their own land and disillusioned with their own dreams. In the relentless march of progress, they had somehow been left behind. They were the forgotten Americans.

We have always strived to maintain the original intentions of our Franciscan founder. First, to recognize the great human potential of each individual; and second, to offer those in need a hand - not a handout.

To our way of thinking, a mere handout destroys a person's dignity and self-initiative. We believe that true charity must emphasize self-help in order to restore pride and independence. SWIF is a non-profit, charitable organization that relies solely on private donations. We receive no federal dollars. Our primary sources of funding are not huge corporate gifts or impersonal grants. Instead, they are individuals like you. Americans helping Americans.

SWIF assistance is strictly limited to Native Americans - with priority given to the elderly, handicapped, and families with dependent children. Along with the Navajo people, we also serve the Zuni, Hopi, and other pueblo tribes of the area.

Our services include: Substantial school grants and individual tuition assistance, homes for battered women and children, home repair and wood stove installation, Christmas food baskets for needy families, alcohol counseling, and emergency assistance in the areas of food, clothing, heating fuel, and temporary shelter. In addition, a few years ago we launched out Indian Craft Catalog to provide a national outlet for Native Americans to sell their precious handmade goods. You are currently viewing the on-line version of this catalog. The profits from this catalog go directly back to the Native Americans themselves in the form of our many philanthropic programs.

'Old Dog Blue' -- links and lyrics

Notes toward putting together a composite version of "Old Dog Blue" for the dulcimer ...

"Old Dog Blue" comes to us out of the African-American tradition, but it may have originated in the old-time medicine shows. It was recorded by black songster Jim Jackson, who wrote "Kansas City Blues" but got his start in medicine shows (and later the Rabbit Foot Minstrels), and it was collected by Vance Randolph in the Ozarks and by John and Alan Lomax in their travels.

The seminal African-American scholar Sterling A. Brown had this to say about "Old Blue" in Negro Folk Expression: Spirituals, Seculars, Ballads and Work Songs (1953), excerpted on the University of Illinois' Modern American Poetry website.

... Such folk delights as hunting with the yipping and baying of the hounds and the yells and cheering of the hunters are vividly recreated. "Old Dog Blue" has been memorialized over all of his lop-eared kindred. The greatest trailer on earth, Old Blue keeps his unerring sense in heaven; there he treed a possum in Noah's ark. When Old Dog Blue died,

I dug his grave wid a silver spade
I let him down wid a golden chain
And every link I called his name;
Go on Blue, you good dog, you!

The above lines illustrate a feature of Negro folksong worth remarking. Corning from an old sea-chantey "Stormalong," their presence in a song about a hunting dog shows the folk habit of lifting what they want and using it how they will. ...

In Folk Song U.S.A. (1947, rpt. Signet 1966), the Lomaxes say:

Americans in buckskin, linsey-woolsey, and blue jeans have forever loved and lied about their dogs. ... The ballad of Old Blue, certainly the best song about a dog to come out of this country, we have heard in Mississippi and Texas. It is a quiet song, very serious, intensely and genuinely sentimental, in complete contrast to the hundreds of lies we have told about hunting dogs." (30)

The earliest version is by Memphis songster Jim Jackson, recorded in Chicago in January 1928 and released on the Vocalion label. Jackson, according to the National Park Service's website Trail of the Hellhound: Delta Blues in the Lower Mississippi Valley," Jackson can be considered more a forerunner of artists like Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson than a bluesman himself:

Around 1905, Jackson gained employment as a singer, dancer, and musician in medicine shows. The medicine show was a time-honored American tradition that employed entertainers to draw a crowd to a tent or wagon where vendors hawked alcohol-based patent medicines. By 1912, Jackson was playing local dances, parties, and fish fries, often pairing with Gus Cannon of Cannon's Jug Stompers or fellow Hernando [Miss.] native Robert Wilkins.

Jackson began traveling with minstrel shows in 1915, performing with the Silas Green Minstrels, the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, and the Abbey Sutton show intermittently until 1930. Minstrel shows, which had been popular during the nineteenth century, featured dancers, musicians, magicians, and comedians under a tent. Jackson was a favorite; his large stage presence, stentorian voice, and friendly demeanor drew substantial crowds whether from a stool, soapbox, or flatbed truck. Like Leadbelly, Jackson had command of hundreds of songs including blues, ballads, vaudeville numbers, and traditional tunes of the nineteenth century. He has been called the greatest repository of pre-blues songs among all recorded musicians.

My guess, and a guess is all it is, "Old Dog Blue" started out as a medicine show song. Jackson's is the earliest and bluesiest version, but, as Sterling Brown suggested, it borrows from sea chanteys. And, as John and Alan Lomax said, it's of a piece with other children's songs about animals from "All the Pretty Little Horses" to "Springfield Mountain." After Jim Jackon's "Old Dog Blue" was included on the influential Anthology of American Folk Music edited edited by Harry Smith in the 1960s, it has been widely covered -- and usually heavily rearranged -- in both the folk and bluegrass repertories. The online Folk Music Index lists 34 print and recorded versions by collectors and artists including the Lomaxes, Vance Randolph's "Ozark Folksongs," Burl Ives, Joan Baez and Tennessee Ernie Ford.

Other notes culled from the web:

• Lyrics and a link to an mp3 file of Jim Jackson's "Old Dog Blue" on an old-time country blues blog called "done gone" ... Lyrics and links also on Mudcat Cafe. Jackson's "Old Dog Blue" is also on YouTube with a still picture of a blue tick hound for the video.
  
• Linked to it is a clip of a blue tick coon hound treeing an animal. Listen to it. When you hear a singer calling, "here, Blu-uuu-oo" and going up half an octave or more, this is where it came from, people. Another guess, but one I'd bet the farm on (if I had a farm).
  
• Lyrics of Tom Russell's "Old Blue" ... and the 30-second clip on Amazon.com ... which is what got me started on singing it again, along with Richard and Mimi Farina's instrumental version on dulcimer and guitar. I think I first heard it years ago by Joan Baez, maybe Burl Ives too. But Tom Russell's version is the one that got under my skin.
  
• A beguileingly (is that a word?) folked-up version by the Byrds is on Roger McGuinn's Folk Den website ... an mp3 of McGuinn playing it and lyrics with guitar chords. Dulcimer players note: He plays it in D! (Available for non-commerical use, with restrictions, under a Creative Commons license.)
  
• Lyrics of a much longer version, recorded several by Cisco Houston, has the verse about treeing a possum on Noah's Ark ... or part of the verse ...
  
• A short bluegrass version of the lyrics on the Bluegrass.net website.
  
• A YouTube clip of James Tayor playing "Old Blue" at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 1991.
  
• A vintage black-and-white video clip of Ian and Silvia singing it on the '60s Hootenany TV show.
  
• And a clip of Brooks Williams for those who like what he does to a song.
  
• Also on YouTube, a folkie who calls himself spikethegreat sings Ramblin' Jack Elliot's "Ol' Blue" to his dog, who sleeps blissfully through the entire 4:05-minute performance.
  
• Some imaginative literary analysis of Jackon's "Old Dog Blue," some of which I think is pretty sensitive and convincing, on a blog called The Celestial Monochord" apparently out of Minnesota.
  
• Also on the web: Lyrics of a version by Lacy J. Dalton ...

There's even an Old Blue record label, but I don't know if anyone recorded "Old Blue" on it.

Thrivent: 500 Years of Lutheran Music (links)

Thrivent Financial for Lutherans has a website on the "Celebrating the Musical Heritage of the Lutheran Church" multimedia package it made available to Lutheran congregations several years ago.

From the start page:

Within this site you will find:

• Key remarks from respected music experts
  
• Dozens of audio samples from the most famous composers from each century
  
• Background and detail information to provide perspective and context
  
• Photographs and/or artwork from each time period

Although not all resources from the compact-disc set are duplicated here, you will find musical samples, historical information and expert commentary valuable as you learn more about Lutheran Heritage and Lutheran music's role over the past 500 years.

I got there from a page of links and resources on a personal website put up by Gary Urban, an information technology specialist at Mankato State University and an active member of a LC-MS church in Mankato. Looks like a very useful website.

New York Times -- Lincoln exhibition review

Some interesting thoughts on Abraham Lincoln in a review of an Abraham Lincoln exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. It''s in the Dec. 12 issue of The New York Times, and it's by Edward Rothstein, cultural critic for The Times. A couple of key passages:

This modest exhibition of 30 images of Lincoln at the Portrait Gallery — “One Life: The Mask of Lincoln” — may turn out to be an understated highlight of Lincoln’s coming bicentennial year, which promises a full harvest of academic conferences, exhibitions, the reopening of Ford’s Theater and scores of new books, many offering revelations from freshly plumbed archives and analyses of figures major and minor. But the juxtaposition of these masks may remain one of the most potent, graphic images of the effects of the crucial years they frame.

They suggest, too, how closely our conceptions of Lincoln’s public greatness are connected with our conception of his inner life, his empathy, his personal suffering. It is as if, in resuscitating the Union after the grievous bloodshed of the Civil War, Lincoln had bodily absorbed the nation’s suffering — prefiguring the posthumous Christian iconography that developed after Lincoln’s assassination on Good Friday.

Rothstein notes the upcoming Lincoln bicentennial and President-elect Barack Obama's appropriation of Lincoln:

Mr. Obama has so identified himself with Lincoln that he invoked him while announcing his candidacy in Lincoln’s onetime political base, Springfield, Ill. He has suggested that his political career has been an extension of the arc of racial progress begun by Lincoln. In Mr. Obama’s victory speech he quoted Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address. The theme of Mr. Obama’s own inauguration will be “A New Birth of Freedom,” an allusion to the Gettysburg Address. And the president-elect has admiringly cited Ms. Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals,” saying he has been influenced by the way Lincoln composed his cabinet.

He doesn't evaluate this, but suggests, "All of this heightens the relevance of the coming flood of Lincolniana. ..." After summarizing several recent books, Rothstein launches into his own evaluation of Lincoln:

Yet for all the detail, the probing and the analysis, something remains uncanny. If Lincoln had died in 1860, we probably wouldn’t remember him. He had failed to gain much political power during his one term in Congress beginning in 1847; he lost the 1858 election to the Senate; and while he was a diligent party man and lawyer, his legislative track record was not terribly distinguished. He was last out of four Republicans in line to get the party’s nomination in 1860.

He would have a legacy of a few good speeches and some powerful argument in the debates with his rival, Stephen A. Douglas, but it would have been a career far less influential than that of the antislavery politician of the previous generation whom Lincoln most admired, Henry Clay.

So how is it that, within five years, Lincoln ended up worthy of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton’s comment on his death, “Now he belongs to the ages”? The closer you look, combing through these mountains of material, the more ambiguities appear.

An assessment of Lincoln's overall career, starting with a recitation of his career as a politician and a railroad lawyer up to the 1850s:

... It is almost as if there were no connections between the lawyer in Springfield and the president in Washington.

Of course, that is an exaggeration. Continuities abound. But what happened is still remarkable. Lincoln had a tragic vision of the world; he grew up surrounded by familial death and disregard; his marriage was difficult; two children died; his career was pockmarked by failures. He suffered greatly but acted as if he had a right not to happiness itself, but only to its pursuit.

As in life, so in government. He believed that political compromise was the motor of democratic life. And the biggest compromises at America’s founding were those involving slavery. It was only by allowing slavery into the Constitution that the Constitution was made possible; it was only by settling for containment rather than elimination that the better angels of early America could even create a United States.

Lincoln, though, rose to the presidency at the very moment when that tragic compromise failed. So in this respect, the flexible politician became an absolutist. There was, in his mind, a fundamental principle that could not be abandoned: the Union. He cleaved fiercely — almost fanatically — to it because it already was a compromise, though one generated out of an ideal toward which the nation would have to move.

That conviction forced him to refine his thinking and discipline his actions. In a debate with Douglas, Lincoln referred to an “eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world.” The wrong, he said, was “the divine right of kings.” The right was “the common right of humanity.” The notion of “divine right” left a stain in the form of American slavery; the notion of “common right” was America’s founding principle.

Those inalienable rights of humanity could be guaranteed only by something like the Union, so even when it came to abolishing slavery, Lincoln was cautious and protective, hewing strictly to the Constitution, knowing the wrong could be fully undone only with an amendment, but believing, finally, that he could at least, as commander in chief in time of war, free slaves in the rebellious territories. The Emancipation Proclamation is written in stolid, legalistic prose in which all of Lincoln’s rhetorical gifts are shunted aside. That too was done in service to the Union.

Then he was freed to define his larger vision. Andrew Delbanco, in Mr. Foner’s anthology, argues that the Civil War, for all its trauma, was unlike many other wars in that it did not produce a crisis that left the country without a sense of purpose. That is because, he suggests, Lincoln found “transcendent meaning in the carnage” and affirmed that meaning for both sides. He really became another founding father.

Quinn: 'would reopen parks, historic sites'

Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn held a wide-ranging availability in his Springfield office this afternoon, and The State Journal-Register reported on his views on local issues like the the Illinois Transportation Department's proposed move of the traffic safety division to southern Illinois and Gov. Rod Blagojevich's closure of state parks and historic sites including the Dana Thomas House, as well as the state's ongoing constitutional crisis. Quinn said:

Quinn, who would take over from Blagojevich if the governor resigns or is impeached in wake of his arrest on federal corruption charges, also said he would reopen parks and historic sites closed by Blagojevich to save money.

"That was one of the worst decisions the governor ever made," Quinn said at a news conference in his office. "I think they should be reopened promptly, right now, today."

Of living history, Carlyle and New Salem

The most requested story today on the Slate.com electronic magazine website was freelance witer Emily Yoffe's account of her "brief, inspiring career" as a living history interpreter at the Claude Moore Colonial Farm in northern Virginia. Yoffe, who has written a book about dogs and contributes often to Slate on a variety of topics, took on the character of "Chastity Crump" at the 1771-era farmstead. Mistress Crump, Yoffe explained, was "a middle-aged spinster from a neighboring farm who liked to visit ... and help with chores." She was put to work on a workbench called a "shaving horse" trimming tobacco sticks with a knife, among other things, and she loved it:

During my time at Claude Moore I heard many interpreters say they were drawn to the 18th century because life was simpler then. I never bought that. It didn't seem so simple to watch your arm putrefy or lose your teeth in your 20s, or bury most of your children. But as I got up to get home in time for carpool, I did feel a deep longing to stay on my wooden horse and just scrape sticks. Once humans spent most of their days doing useful things with their hands, and I realized that we were designed to get a deep satisfaction from this. As [interpreter Katherine] Hughes put it, "You have the feeling people were supposed to do this kind of work, rather than data entry, which is amazingly horrible."

And Yoffe thought she understood why:

Almost as soon as the Industrial Revolution arrived, people began mourning its efficiency. As Thomas Carlyle wrote in Signs of the Times in 1829, "[T]he living artisan is driven from his workshop, to make room for a speedier, inanimate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster … nothing is left to be accomplished by old natural methods." The children who came to visit Claude Moore understood this loss. Several interpreters warned me that when I set children to various tasks they could do on the farm, from hoeing, to carding wool, to dipping candles, I would have a hard time getting them to stop. At a farm-skills training day, we all took turns learning how to crack dried corn on the hominy block, smashing a 3-foot-long wooden pestle against a hollowed-out log. One mother could not pull her 10-year-old son away and finally pleaded, "You have done a great job. So please stop pounding!" I had a vision of a new approach to our modern psychological problems. Psychiatrists would throw away children's Ritalin and their parents' Lexapro and prescribe a few hours a day of tobacco stick making or hominy cracking.

That makes a lot of sense to me, both from volunteering in the 1830s living history village at New Salem and from my research into 19th-century popular culture. In another context I once quoted an old settler who noticed a great change about the time the industrial revolution came to Illinois:

Speaking to the Sangamon County Old Settlers' Society in 1879, Judge Milton Hay spoke of the "[o]ld habits and old industries" that "disappeared on the appearance of the locomotive" in the mid-1840s. Along with public schools, servants and a market-oriented agricultural economy, he recalled the introduction of choirs, "fiddles" and sermons "The [much shorter] 'forty-minute' sermon began to be preached,' he said, as "men and women no longer divided off on each side of the church; the minister ceased to line off the hymn for the congregation, and the congregation quit singing."

Judge Hay, clearly, was motivated by nostalgia. And the county histories I've consulted in the State Historical Library are full of nostalgia for spinning wheels, leather britches, log houses and all the accoutrements of frontier, i.e. pre-industrial, life.

The other part rings true, as well. The craft I demonstrate at New Salem is music, playing fiddle tunes or folk hymns on an old-style dulcimer, but I've felt what Yoffe felt when she was whittling tobacco sticks. I think all of us who volunteer at New Salem have felt it at one time or another, in one way or another. And even on hot August afternoons, I've been reluctant to hop in the car, turn on the air conditioner and head back to Springfield and the 21st century.

Nynorsk folk hymns by Dvergmål

Heard on NRK at 3 o'clock this afternoon (CST), a song titled "Kyrkjekval" by the Norwegian folk group Dvergmål. It's from the album Song i hummelsalar (Songs in heavenly rooms). Here's a blurb:

Dvergmål is an ensemble of Norwegian traditional folk musicians. Its four members all contribute vocally -- the tradition to which they belong is a predominantly vocal one -- and on select traditional instruments such as the Hardanger fiddle, the harmonium and the langaleik. Their previous release, already eight years old, was nominated to the “Norwegian Grammy award” Spellemannsprisen. The current Song i himmelsalar (song in heavenly halls) is a collection of “holy songs” by Elias Blix, Norway’s perhaps most revered psalm composer and the first to write psalms in the alternative ”new Norwegian” which was created on the basis of rural dialects and forbidden in churches until 1892.

Dvergmål had been working on and off with Blix’s material for a long time, but only after a they received a special commission that seemed tailored to the project, was it completed and performed live. Subsequently the material was recorded and became the record here presented.

Audio clips (30-second samples) at musikkonline.no.

O'Bama go bragh!

Irish singer Shay Black sings "There's No one as Irish as Barack Obama" at Berkeley's Starry Plough Irish Session
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EADUQWKoVek

Irish television report on Obama's ancestery in Moneygall, County Offlay
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcQiiLpNf2Q

German television service ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen) has a nice report, with lots of good visi=uals at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yixqi1nRm14. Unfortunately (for most of us), it's in German. But the pictures are nice.

And a story in The Irish Times at http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/1105/breaking1.htm

Ronan McGreevy in Moneygall, where It was already Wednesday, Nov. 5, when the returns from California put Obama over the top. He set the scene:

The cup nestled under an American flag and the walls of the pub, one of only two in the village, were plastered with Obama posters.

For many the celebrations were simply a continuation from the all night Sunday and all day Monday routine which follows a historic county final win.

The Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys made an appearance singing that song There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama. If you haven't heard it yet, you may hear nothing else for the next four years.

Cup? What's this about a cup. McGreevy explained the local folks had two victories to celebrate, Obama's and a junior hurling (Irish football) team that won a championship match in neighboring Co. Tipperary:

Ever since diligent research by local Church of Ireland priest Stephen Neill revealed the improbable link between Mr Obama and his great-great-great grandfather Fulmouth Kearney who left Moneygall in 1850, they were preparing for an epic night, and it isn't the first one they've had this week.

Moneygall might geographically be in Offaly, but spiritually and sportingly it is in Tipperary and the junior hurlers were still celebrating the club's first ever county title which they won at the death by a point on Sunday.

'Judah's Land' -- Appalachian carol

Sheet Music Plus - Judah's Land
Judah's Land at Sheet Music Plus - By Lawrence Mccoombe. Arranged by Lawrence Mccoombe. For SATB (SAATB) Chorus; Alto, and piano reduction. Christmas.wwws.sheetmusicplus.com/sheetmusic/detail/GI.G-5714.html

Tune Name: Gentle Stranger. Text Source: Appalachian Carol.

Arranged from Madeline MacNeil's version -- first three pages available on line

Guitar tab/chords - Jerry Garcia and Dawg Grisman

http://jerrygarciatabs.googlepages.com/

including "Jenny Jenkins," "The Miller's Will" and "Shenandoah" in D

Check out:

WICKED PATH OF SIN
written by Bill Monroe (in B)

"When I Can Read My Title Clear"

Humn 65 in Psalms and Hymns of Isaac Watts ... Christian Classics Etherial Library http://www.ccel.org/ccel/watts/psalmshymns.ii.ii.lxv.html

A young David Ivey leads "When I Can Read My Title Clear" at Dewey Williams Birthday singing 1990, Ozark Alabama http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4BaWok9Gw0

Watts' text and MIDI file for Pisgah in CyberHymnal at http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/w/h/e/whenican.htm

Re: Porgy and Bess: 'Trouble on Catfish Row'

An article by Gary Yonge on racial stereotypes in "Porgy and Bess" published in The Guardian before a 2006 revival in London.

Excerpts:

• "There has long been a tension between the manner in which Porgy and Bess, written by George Gershwin and first performed in 1935, has been lauded by audiences in Europe even as it was loathed at home. ...
  
  "Those who have been in its cast read like a who's who of African-Americans prominent in the arts. As well as Angelou, performers have included, at one time or another, Cab Calloway, Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge and Sammy Davis Jr. The songs written for it, particularly Summertime and It Ain't Necessarily So, remain enormously popular.
  
  And yet, in the US, Porgy and Bess has long been steeped in controversy. To many African-Americans, it was little more than a high-class minstrel show - a distant cousin to Amos and Andy. "The times are here to debunk Gershwin's lampblack Negroisms," said Duke Ellington after its premiere."
  
  
• "But while the racial values that underpinned the play never endured, the music Gershwin created only grew in its appeal - particularly Summertime and It Ain't Necessarily So. Just as the compelling narrative of Oliver Twist enabled the novel and play to persist beyond any general acceptance of the anti-semitic portrayal of Fagin, so by the 1980s African-Americans had started to believe that they could rescue the play from the anthropological cul-de-sac in which it had been parked."
  
  
• "Time has enabled many to understand Porgy and Bess as a period piece, rather than a reflection of commonly held contemporary views. Grace Bumbry, who was born the year Gershwin died and played Bess at the Metropolitan in 1985, said: "I thought it beneath me, I felt I had worked far too hard, that we had come too far to have to retrogress to 1935. My way of dealing with it was to see that it was really a piece of Americana, of American history, whether we liked it or not. Whether I sing it or not, it was still going to be there."

Doc's schedule for finals

Copied from an email message to my journalism students ...

Hi everybody --

If you're getting this message, it's because: (1) you're registered for COMM 393, the senior portfolio, this semester; (2) you're registered for COMM 297, the internship, this semester; (3) you're registered for both; and/or (4) you've been trying to track me down regarding the paperwork for spring semester internships.

Anyway, here's when I have final exams:

-- Monday, Dec. 1, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., in Dawson 220 (COMM 386).
-- Tuesday, Dec. 2, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., D220 (COMM 207).
-- Wednesday, Dec. 3, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., D220 (COMM 337).
-- Thursday, Dec. 4, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., D220 (HUM 223).

I think everybody's seen the syllabuses for COMM 297 and COMM 393. But just in case you haven't, they're linked to my faculty page at http://www.sci.edu/faculty/ellertsen/facultypage.html ... they'll answer basic questions, and you can email me for details on the others.

You can also keep up with me by checking my journalism blog at http://mackerelwrapper.blogspot.com/ ... I'll post updates and messages on my whereabouts there.

-- Doc

Final -- HUM 223

HUM 223: Ethnic Music

Springfield College in Illinois

Fall Semester 2008

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

Final Exam – Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008

Answer each of the three essay questions below; No. 1 is worth 50 points, and Nos. 2A and 2B are worth 25 points each. This is an open-book test, so in grading it I will take into account the amount of detail you use to support your answers as well as their clarity, correctness and relevance to the questions. Specific detail is very important; the more detail you cite to support your points, and the more logically you use it to prove your points, the better your grade. It’s that simple. So be specific. . Due Dec. 4. You have the option of writing it in Dawson 220 during the scheduled period, 1:30-3:30 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 4.

Essay #1 (50 points). In the TV show Godfathers and Sons, Chicago rap artist Common said, “Hip hop is definitely a child of the blues, and I think you’ve got to know the roots to really grow [as a musician]. It’s like knowing your parents, it’s like knowing your culture so you can be proud of that culture and take it to the world and say, ‘Hey, this is where we’re taking it. We’re utilizing the origins of this to take it somewhere else. We’re paying homage, and we’re taking it to a new place.’” In each of the three videos about the blues we watched this semester, we saw artists searching back to the origins of blues and reflecting them in other forms of music including jazz, rock and hip hop. How did bluesman Corey Harris’ search for musical origins in Feel Like Going Home differ from that of the English rock singers like Eric Clapton featured in Red, White and Blues and mentioned in the book Robert Palmer’s Deep Blues? How was it the same? How do Harris’ and the English rockers’ quests compare to the hip hop artists featured in Godfathers and Sons? How have the music and the cultural values of musicians from Africa, rural Mississippi and the Chicago of Muddy Waters’ day been reflected in the blues and contemporary popular music?

Short essay #2A (25 points). What have you learned in HUM 223 that surprised you? What was your overall impression of the blues before you took the course? Has that impression changed as a result of your reading, class discussion and research for the course? What specific thing (or things) surprised you the most? Why? What do you think was the most important point? As always, be specific. Cite specific evidence - in this case, while discussing what you learned in the course. Your grade on the essay will depend on the specific evidence you cite.

Short essay #2B (25 points). As you wrote your research paper, did you expect to learn when you started? What did you find out from your research that was unexpected? In other words, what surprised you? What new insights did you gain? What did you learn about the history of American popular music? Where did the musician(s) you studied fit into the development of blues, jazz, rock, hip hop or other forms of American popular music? How did your appreciation of their music change from doing the paper?

HUM 223: Final exam, blues videos

Please note correction in 2nd graf!

I haven't made out your final exam question yet, but it will heavily depend on the videos we screened this month in class and "Deep Blues" by Robert Palmer. I have made arrangements at SCI's Becker Library to have the DVDs put on reserve at the circulation desk, which I will do after class today (Thursday). In order to level the playing field, you'll have to watch it in the library so everybody gets an equal chance at it.

Final exam schedule for our class (cut-and-pasted from the schedule on line) is: 1:00p.m. TR ... December 2 [at] 1:30p.m. – 3:30p.m.Thursday, December 4 [at] 1:30p.m. – 3:30p.m.

I will hand out the final exam at our last class session, at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 25. It is a take-home exam, and it is due at the scheduled time and place -- in other words, at 1:30 p.m. Tiesdau. Dec. 2, in Dawson 220, our regular classroom. You can write it ahead of time and bring it in then, or you can write the exam in D220 during the scheduled time from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

You are responsible for the three videos we watched, which are part of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) series "The Blues directed by Martin Scorsese:

• "Feel Like Going Home" directed by Martin Scorsese.
  
• "Red, White and Blues directed by Mike Figgis.
  
• "Godfathers and Sons" directed by Marc Levine.

Note: If you follow the links above, they'll take you to webpages with a short blurb on each of the videos as well as links to remarks by the directors of each. They'll also show you how to spell the singers' names, so you can check your finals for spelling errors.

If you have questions, you can reach me most easily by email ... at SCI at pellertsen@sci.edu or at home at peterellertsen@yahoo.com.

Annbjørg Lien, "Waltz with Me" CD w/ sound files

http://www.cdroots.com/sst-com4492.html

Annbjørg Lien
Waltz with Me (Compass Records)
Norwegian hardanger fiddler and composer Annbjørg Lien was commissioned last year to compose new music for the prestigious Telemark Festival in Bø, Norway. She responded with an ensemble of Bruce Molsky on violin and vocals, Christine Hanson on cello and Mikael Marin on viola, then wrote a varied set of tradition-based tunes and songs that reflect an eclectic attitude. The strong chemistry shared by members of the group is apparent on each and every track on ths lovely recording of new Nordic music.
Listen:
The Traveller
Sula Mountain
The Fiddle
Home East

Odd Nordstoga og Øyonn Groven Myhren

http://www.cdroots.com/grcd-nivelkinn.html

Odd Nordstoga og Øyonn Groven Myhren
Nivelkinn16.99
Harp and accordion are not your usual duet configuration, but this CD presents traditional and modern Norwegian folk music by an excellent duo who use these intruments and their voices in unusual combinations to create new music for the poetry of Aslaug Vaa. It's still genuinely "folky" but here and there a surprising modernity sneaks in, catches you off guard and charms the heck out of you.
Odd Nordstoga - vocal, guitar and accordionØyonn Groven Myhren - harp and vocals

HUM 223: DVD on Corey Harris and the blues

Tomorrow (Tuesday< Nov. 4) and Thursday we will screen a DVD called "Feel Like Going Home," directed by Martin Scorsese for the Public Breoadcasting System in 2003. It features blues and reggae artist Corey Harris of Charlottesville, Va., (whose MySpace page has more information) searching for the roots of blues and playing with local musicians in Mississippi and the West African nation of Mali. You'll notice I'm giving you a handout in class that lists the performers and interviewees in the video. That's the good news. Since you have the handout, you'll know how to spell their names correctly. Right? Which means you'll be expected to. That's the ... was I about to say "bad news?" No, it's good news.

We all want to spell correctly. Right?

I thought so.

Scorsese put together a whole series of seven TV shows for his series The Blues. In his introduction he says:

Corey isn't just a great player, he also knows the history of the blues very well. We filmed him in Mississippi talking to some of the old, legendary figures who were still around and visiting some of the places where the music was made. This section culminates in a meeting with the great Otha Turner, sitting on his porch in Senatobia with his family nearby and playing his cane flute. We were also fortunate to film Otha's magnificent November 2001 concert at St. Ann's in Brooklyn, which I believe was his last performance captured on film. It seemed natural to trace the music back from Mississippi to West Africa, where Corey met and played with extraordinary artists like Salif Keita, Habib Koité, and Ali Farka Toure. It's fascinating to hear the links between the African and American music, to see the influences going both ways, back and forth across time and space.

You can -- and should! -- read more on the linked page. Scorsese ends by saying:

People like to think of the great blues singers as raw, instinctive, with talent and genius flowing from their fingertips. But John Lee Hooker, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and so many other amazing talents, more names than I have space for here, are some of the greatest artists America has ever had. When you listen to Lead Belly, or Son House, or Robert Johnson, or John Lee Hooker, or Charley Patton, or Muddy Waters, you're moved, your heart is shaken, you're carried and inspired by its visceral energy, and its rock solid emotional truth. You go right to the heart of what it is to be human, the condition of being human. That's the blues.

"Some of the greatest artists America has ever had." That's pretty high praise. Think about it. You don't have to agree. Just think about it.

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.