Well, Sylvie, or Silvy, or Silvie, may have been a real person, a slave woman on a plantation being implored by someone in the fields to bring him a drink. Or she may have been the aunt of the man who popularized the song. Let’s start with him, the great black folk and blues singer Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, who performed throughout the first half of the 20th century, making recordings, holding concerts, and hosting his own radio program for a brief time. He came to the attention of the father/son team of John and Alan Lomax, who traveled the South during the 1930’s recording folk music on “portable aluminum discs” for the Library of Congress. He also spent a fair amount of time in prison for various offenses, including a stabbing, and his nickname was apparently assigned to him there:
There are several conflicting stories about how Ledbetter acquired the nickname “Lead Belly,” but he probably acquired it while in prison. Some claim his fellow inmates called him “Lead Belly” as a play on his family name and his physical toughness. Others say he earned the name after being wounded in the stomach with buckshot. Another theory is that the name refers to his ability to drink moonshine, the homemade liquor that Southern farmers, black and white, made to supplement their incomes.
Blues singer Big Bill Broonzy thought it came from a supposed tendency to lie about as if “with a stomach weighted down by lead” in the shade when the chain gang was supposed to be working. Yet another theory is that it may be a corruption of his last name pronounced with a Southern accent. Whatever its origin, he adopted the nickname as a pseudonym while performing. (Source: Wikipedia)
Thought that was so interesting that I had to put it in. On to our selection about Sylvie and her water bucket. Ledbetter had a whole story that he’d tell about the song:
Leadbelly’s Uncle Bob Ledbetter had a wife named Silvy. When he was out plowing with his mules he would often holler for Silvie to bring him some water. After a long time this holler developed into a little song. When Leadbelly performed outside of the South, he often taught the audience the background of his songs so the audience would understand. Audiences from New York often had little concept of the rural South. (Source: FolkSongIndex.com; follow the link if you’d like to read the whole article which details how Ledbetter would present the song to Northern audiences.)
Here’s the thing, though: most sources, including something called “The Traditional Ballad Index,” list the song as anonymous, probably a work song from the slave plantations. It’s not hard to imagine that a savvy performer would think that his audience would like the song better if it had a personal story attached. I’m just a-sayin’! No copyrights were harmed in this process. (On further thought I realized that it’s perfectly possible that Huddie’s uncle did indeed sing the song to his wife even if he didn’t really make it up to being with, and that Huddie thought he was giving an accurate portrayal of its origin.)
Okay. So much for the background of the song. Now on to the currently-popular arrangements. With one exception, every single video on YouTube involves a women’s group. This makes absolutely no sense to me. The most logical arrangement would be to have a men’s group and a women’s group, with each section singing the part that applies—the men issuing the request/demand and the women answering. There’s probably such a thing out there somewhere, but it’s not showing up online. So . . . you know me. I decided to see what I could find out, and I contacted Moira Smiley, who wrote the most famous arrangement and included the “body percussion” idea, a version of which our women are performing. I asked her why the song seems to have become such a women’s anthem. Here’s what she said:
Thank you for writing with your delightful curiosity! ‘Bring Me Little Water, Silvy’ is suuuuch an appealing song, isn’t it?
I’ve actually made arrangements of it for every configuration of voices – all women, mixed choir, youth choir, all women…lots of different keys, trio or quartet.
How nice of her to answer me! But I have to say, those other arrangements aren’t nearly as popular as the ones for women’s voices. Here’s what seems to have happened (speculation alert):
Moira Smiley and a woman named Evie Ladin, a folk singer, instrumentalist, arranger, and so-called “body percussionist,” worked together at some kind of music camp in the 1990’s. Smiley liked Ladin’s ideas, came up with some choreography to go with her arrangement of “Sylvie,” and it went viral. (Smiley gives credit to Ladin on the sheet music.) Possibly because the first arrangement she did was for women, other women’s groups followed suit. No one worried too much about the actual meaning/speakers of the song. And so it has remained to this day. The arranger of a version performed by my own choir, professor emeritus at the University of Dayton Robert Jones, also was kind enough to answer the e-mail I sent to him, and here’s what he has to say about his own version:
My inspiration for the Sylvie arrangement grew out of my wife, an elementary music teacher, singing Sylvie while preparing lesson plans one evening. . . . As for ‘choosing a woman or women’s vocal texture’ to deliver this, there are a couple of reasons I’d cite. 1) I could imagine the field worker of that era depending not just on the water to keep him hydrated, but also on the emotional strength her presence gave him. 2) Ultimately, I think the singers become the narrator here, regardless of the gender, as it is a conversation between the man and woman.
So I guess I’ll have to leave it at that.
I’m going to limit myself to three videos below. We have to hear the original Lead Belly version first, of course:
Here’s the one exception to the all-women arrangements of “Sylvie,” an honors choir led by the GREAT Moira Smiley doing her own choreography:
And HERE, finally, is something from Evie Ladin, the women whose choreography inspired Moira Smiley. As I said my e-mail to her, I would never, ever have thought of staging “Ain’t No Grave” in a morgue! (Lots of e-mails were sent in the production of this post. Actually, I realized on about the fourth viewing of this video that it’s a mausoleum, not a morgue.) I love the idea that all of the women are dressed differently, even though they have white/blue clothing and dark boots, and that they’re all shapes and sizes:
© Debi Simons
