Woody Guthrie was a DJ. He used the power of the social media of his time to spread the message of anti-fascism and pro-democracy. Pete Seeger had a television show. He used the power of social media to highlight outspoken advocates for social justice in song. Nina Simone used her platform to expose the abuses of power and hypocrisy in our society and our government. Paul Robeson traveled the world and spoke out at his concerts, championing anti-fascist causes in the US and abroad. Teresa Teng encoded revolutionary messages into her pop songs. Victor Jara lost his life for using his artistry to inspire people to defend democracy and resist authoritarianism.
All of these people were blacklisted, repressed, investigated, and trivialized by the systems of power they spoke and sang against. And many regular people went along with the program, belittling them as corny, or fringe, or eccentric, or out of touch with reality. Many people who look back on these figures as heroes might have ignored or laughed at them in their heyday.
Sometimes revolution is ignored in its time, only to be looked back upon with wistful reverence.
To heck with that.
Anyone who is called to inspire their people to coordinated action for the common good knows that the work is not sexy, and will not result in accolades or personal gain. Often, it seems like the people who are most responsible for igniting our spark are the least willing to engage in our efforts. Nevertheless, our passion and our recognition of the moment compels us to continue to reach out, connect, educate, and build alliances through whatever networks we have available to us. It’s a face-to-face, word-of-mouth, phone-call-in-the-middle-of-the-night kind of thing.
This is a post that I sent to my ukulele students.
Many people consider taking a music class at some point in their lives. Studying an instrument or using your voice in new ways can be a little bit challenging, and I think people think about doing these activities when things are peaceful, and they are feeling expansive, like they have some “wiggle room” in their schedule. That makes sense.
That being said, my own music practice has grown out of my tendency to focus on music at times in my life that were difficult. For me, playing music and singing is a powerful emotional regulation tool–when life is feeling chaotic or overwhelming, musical activity helps me focus on parts of myself that I can control and nurture.
I may have spent the whole day at work having to bite my tongue or not express my difficult feelings about my working atmosphere, but then I can come home and channel all of those feelings into a musical activity that helps to lower my heart rate, regulate my breathing, and stimulate my creative mind. I can learn to play a song that I then share with my friends or family, which creates a sense of shared experience, which also helps to relieve my stress and help me feel connected to my community.
So, even though taking on the challenge of learning an instrument might seem like an extra thing to have to manage in a busy schedule, that time that we spend making music can provide a welcome balance to our regular working life.
I recently worked up an arrangement of Sunny by Bobby Hebb for my uke students. I always like to do a bit of research about the songs I share with students, being that we are in a time of cultural reflection and shift. Some songs that I am initially enthusiastic about I end up shelving because of the history of the song or because of something about it that just doesn’t sit right. And sometimes, I find out some surprising information about a song that makes me want to share it even more. This was the case with Sunny.
Here’s an article about the events and feelings that led up to Bobby Hebb writing this iconic song. It’s about living through tragedy and making something uplifting out of the experience. It worked for me.
“It was dark when I started working on the song, and the sun was rising, and it was a different color, the sky was like purple. At that moment I didn’t realize how special [the song] would become. I thought that it was good, and it would help, but I did not know how much … the president had been assassinated and the very next day my brother got killed. Everybody was feeling rather negative at that time, and I think we all needed a lift.”
The Flute collection contains two songs that help illustrate the fascinating phenomenon of the folk process: The Three Ravens and The Crow Song. Taking a deeper look at the origins of these songs also allows us to make note of some of Ken Guilmartin‘s forebears in collecting and popularizing folk music and creating new compositions that suit the times.
The Three Ravens is a very old English language song. It appears in a 1611 collection by Thomas Ravenscroft (who is responsible for bringing us Hey, Ho, Nobody Home), who, like Ken Guilmartin, both collected and notated existing songs as well as writing new compositions.
In this early form, the story goes that the three ravens are conversing about the possibility of dining for breakfast on the body of a slain knight. Though enticing at first, the ravens notice that the body of the knight is guarded by hawks, hounds and the knight’s lover. The song ends with a blessing, that each of us might have such noble guardians.
The Three Ravens is also included in the important 19th-century collection of English-language music known as the Child Ballads as No. 26. Francis James Child, like Ravenscroft before him, collected and compiled the music that was being sung by people in the towns, villages and countrysides. He notated and categorized music that was being made without notation or category, for the most part, and in this way, is an important link in connecting music of the present day to music of the past.
The version known as Twa Corbies probably comes later, and is in Scottish dialect. The story begins the same, but has a different character. You can read more at the Wikipedia page.
We see many songs in the United States that have similarities to songs from the British Isles, but that are also markedly different, as the influences of African and First Nations musics were intertwined with the European forms. Case in pont: Poor Old Crow, which is included in the seminal collection American Folk Songs for Children (Doubleday, 1948) by Ruth Crawford Seeger, who, as a collector and archivist of folk music, composer in her own right of music quite modern in its time, and mother of Mike and Peggy Seeger and the step-mother of Pete Seeger, was a hugely influential person in the music of the United States. She worked closely with John and Alan Lomax (whose collection American Ballads and Folk Songs is a staple of US historical repertoire) and the Library of Congress to collect folk music of the United States and make it available to the wider public.
Poor Old Crow, collected in Virginia, is the basis for The Crow Song in the Flute collection. The lyrics echo the first stanza of The Three Ravens, with a clearly more ‘American’ form and melody. The recording by Seeger’s daughter Peggy portrays the 3rds (E’s) as more ‘blue’ than the MT recording, which renders them squarely in the mixolydian tonality.
I have led this American version in community contexts, and I enjoy singing it. I was, however, once approached with the concern that the reference to ‘Poor Old Crow, just as black as a crow can be,’ is racist. This concern was raised by a white person, and not by a person of color who had experienced the song in a way that they found hurtful. As a person of mixed racial heritage myself, I was careful to listen and validate the person’s concern, without sharing, in the moment, the connection to the older version of the song. I could see how the song could be presented in a tone and context that could be derogatory, and that it could also be presented in a context that was free from any negative connotations. I don’t see any hard-and-fast reason to exclude it from anyone’s repertoire, as long as it is presented with an open heart and good will. A little bit of history helps, too.
In my internet travels, I came across some more information about Bessie Jones that’s worth sharing. We’ll be doing Way Down Yonder in the Brickyard again this week.
The games, mostly from the British Isles, had been widespread among Southern black and white populations as a way to circumvent religious prohibitions against physical movement and dancing. As adapted by African-Americans they served as an important vehicle to transmit traditional African-derived dance movement and rhythmic styles that promoted group cohesion, nurtured individual virtuosity, and, as Bessie realized, helped make the players physically and mentally stronger. The songs, games, and stories of the past were a “spiritual survival kit,” in Bessie’s case, connecting her with the beloved figures of the past. To keep their memory alive she sought out young people to teach them to.
Ms. Jones befriended Pete Seeger, the folksinger and political activist, in the early 60’s. Mr. Seeger invited Ms. Jones and the group of school children she had taught her songs to to appear on his television show Rainbow Quest in 1965. In the linked episode, Ms. Jones demonstrates a number of songs from the African-American spiritual tradition, as well as some wonderful games with children. The whole episode is worth watching, but Ms. Jones contribution begins at 13:10, and the games begin at 25:50.
Note the duration of the children’s games. In music class, we usually limit songs and activities to just a few minutes. In these activities, it is noted, that the games go on as long as there is someone to dance. A wonderful counter to our busy, scheduled lives.
And a Korean mom in one of my classes graciously provided links to some of her favorite versions of Arirang. The captions are hers.
Korean traditional singing style with traditional instruments.
Not traditional singing style, but I think the singer expresses the Arirang emotion well. Personally, Arirang connotes emotions like longing, sadness regrets and sorrow. Visual footage doesn’t relate to Arirang meaning, and it’s just a music video.
It is instrumental music with korean tradition flute and piano.
I just included this video because of the way she play the guitar in the beginning of the music, similar to korean traditional instrument, gayageum.
http://youtu.be/a4OylU8NXV8
And you might know about Samulnori. It’s korean instrumental music with four different kinds of instruments. The beats are really interesting to me.
Another Samulnori version.
This is Pungmulnori video. Pungmulnori is based on Samulnori, and it is mainly for cheering people.
This song is brought to us from the Georgia Sea Islands by Bessie Jones, a great singer, teacher and popularizer of African-American culture in the 20th century. Here’s what she had to say about this song:
“My grandfather made up this song down in the brickyard out from Williamsburg, Virginia, many years ago in slavery time. They had to make bricks with their hands and roll them up and fix them up with their hands, work some kind of a hot kiln. They tell us ’bout how they used to do it. They wasn’t getting no pay for it and they just made up their mind that, they always did make up their mind that they sing song, they get the work off their mind. They got to pacify their self they would sing something and so that’s what they did. They made this up, and they said, ‘let’s go ahead and make the brick, do the work, and step it down.’ Step it down mean make yourself happy and be rejoicing anyhow. You don’t get no money for it no how, so go ahead, and be happy with it. But we do want them, when these bricks, you know they’re putting the bricks up, they’re going to build things with it, someday know that they will remember them. So that’s what it is…why it say ‘Remember me,’ after they go ‘long, right now some of them bricks and some of that stuff is still there. They can remember them, but they wasn’t gettin’ no pay for it, so they just named it ‘Step It Down.’”
This is a seasonal favorite at EBCMP socials and festivals. I haven’t been able to find a version on YouTube that shows the dance with the melody as I taught it in class, so I’ll post links to both the vocal version (the melody I led) and a dance version (with a different melody, but basically the same dance steps). Finally, I included a score if you’d like to download and print the music. Enjoy!
