Folk songs

Does the song “Don’t Let the Rain Come Down” make any sense?

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Ersel Hickey.jpg
Ersel Hickey, image accessed via Wikipedia.

This cheerful, seemingly simple song is far from simple and not even all that cheerful. I’ll have to admit up front here that my rabbit trails petered out before any definitive conclusions were reached. But here’s what I was able to come up with:

Let’s start out with the original nursery rhyme about a crooked man and his various crooked accoutrements:

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile,
(or, in some versions, he had a crooked smile,)
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

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What Are the Main Water Images in “Wade in de Water”?

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Image by skeeze from Pixabay

Black spirituals are true folk songs that were passed down by word of mouth over many years, with various versions being developed, before they were eventually written down. The texts reflect this variety, as there’s no one “official” version. The arrangement I’m using as a reference for the spiritual “Wade in de Water” has stripped-down lyrics, so that’s what I’m using as the for this commentary. Even with the limited text used, though, there’s still a lot to say! (Betcha you couldn’t have guessed that one.) Bear in mind that a lot of commentary on any type of folk song is at least partly supposition and hypothesizing, as we don’t have access to the authors. We don’t even know their names.

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What’s the Meaning of All the Non-Christmas-y Imagery in “Cold December Flies Away”?

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I’ve done my usual going-far-afield process in trying to decipher this carol, and found that, as usual, Liberties Have Been Taken with the original text, this one from Catalonia. (That’s a region of Spain that speaks a dialect called Catalan; you may be aware that there’s a separatist movement there that seeks to have independence from Spain. The tune, by the way, is apparently Catalonian also, as I’ve seen no composer’s name anywhere.) To start off this post, then, here’s the original text and a quite literal translation:

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What’s the Historical Background of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah”?

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Song of south poster.jpgAs I often say when writing these posts: Hoo boy. There ended up being lots to say about this supposedly simple song. My purpose in writing this post, as with all that I do, is to deepen your understanding of what you’re singing (or hearing, if you’re reading this post as an audience member). Along with the lighthearted words and fun arrangement of this piece there’s a darker background arising from its source material, both immediate and historical.

So let’s see—where to begin? I guess with the fact that “Zip” won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1947; it had been performed in the 1946 Disney film Song of the South by James Haskett, a black actor who played the part of Uncle Remus. This movie is intriguing for a couple of reasons: 1) it mixes animation and live action, and 2) Disney has never released it in its entirety in the US on tape or digitally. I’m sure there are pirated versions out there, especially since the film was “re-released” several times. (You can watch the film in segments on YouTube.) And why has Disney kept this item in the vault? Here’s a good explanation:

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Thoughts on Gail Kubik (not a girl) and Polly-Wolly-Doodle (also not a girl).

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When my choir the Cherry Creek Chorale sang an arrangement of “Polly Wolly Doodle” by someone named Gail Kubik. I assumed that “Gail” indicated a woman. But Gail is a guy, and he lived in the 20th century, He wrote three operas, several violin concertos, and a number of film scores, including one for the Dr. Seuss animated film “Gerald McBoing Boing” for which he won an Oscar in 1951. But he didn’t rest on his laurels, no sir-ee. In 1952 he won the Pulitzer Prize in music for his “Sinfonia Concertante.” He kept busy throughout his life with teaching and commissions. “Polly” was commissioned by the Robert Shaw Chorale during the 1950’s. Kubik entered into the playful tone of the song, as you’ll be able to see if you watch the performance video at the bottom of this post.

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What’s the Real Story Behind “Grimsby Town”?

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c1900 Art Print Engraving Tragedy Drowned Fisherman Washed Ashore By H.Guillen – Original Magazine Print, accessed from Amazon.com.

The short answer that this folk song describes an actual event that took place on February 8 and 9, 1889. That being said, there’s an almost endless array of discussion/argument about its wording. To give you just a taste of this backing and forthing, there are whole threads on discussion forums talking about why the song says “from Yarmouth down to Scarborough” when Scarborough is clearly north of Yarmouth. (Don’t believe me? Here’s the link to Google maps.) Since I’m no sailor, I can’t pretend to understand the reasoning as to why this wording is perfectly accurate in nautical terms, but it has something to do with the direction of the winds and currents. I think. And that’s just one small point in the whole mix. If you’re of a mind to do some reading yourself, google “Grimsby Town fishing disaster” and you’ll have more than enough to keep you busy. (Don’t just google “Grimsby Town” on its own, as all you’ll get is stuff about their football club—soccer to us ignorant Americans. Very interesting in its way, of course, but not much to our point here.)

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About the lyrics to “Cailleach an airgid”–say wh-a-a-a-a-t?

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I know. This song is, like, seriously crazy. Right? Well, yes and no.

First of all, the crazy part. Or at least the let’s-not-take-this-too-seriously part. This is a get-up-and-dance, stomp-those-feet kinda tune. (Okay, I’ll try not to use any more hyphens.) The words don’t really matter all that much in the final analysis. I’ve been in a Celtic concert before in which we sang a song about a lonely fish! By comparison this one is a model of reason and logic. Still, by the time it has repeated “Si do Mhaimeoi I” about five hundred times any sense of the words is lost, whether you know the translation or not.

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“Danny Boy” and His Descendants–A Musical Journey through Time

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Where did the tune originate?

The tune used for “Danny Boy” is a true folk melody, originally called “Derry Air,” because it was first written down in County Derry, Ireland, in the town of Limavady. Once Ireland became an official part of Britain, the county was renamed “Londonderry,” with the choice of name somewhat determined by one’s political views. But whatever the name of the county, the origin story seems fairly straightforward: Jame Ross, a collector of Irish traditional folk music, heard a harpist (or a fiddler, depending on the version, and usually identified as blind) performing in the street outside her house and rushed out to copy down the tune he was playing. Unfortunately, she neglected to get the performer’s name, but she sent in her notated manuscript, along with a number of others she had collected. to the musicologist George Petrie, whose 1855 book The Ancient Music of Ireland listed the tune as an anonymous air but with a note attributing its collection to Ross. The tune was published as an instrumental piece with no lyrics but quickly became extremely popular with songwriters. The most well-known of these settings is the song “Danny Boy,” written in 1910 by an English lawyer named Frederic Weatherly. The meaning of the lyrics has been consistently misunderstood, however, leading to the next question:

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What does “hang your head over” mean in “Down in the Valley”?

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Picture​I’m sure I sang “Down in the Valley” in grade school, and I know I’ve had a picture in my mind of someone on the edge of a cliff overlooking a valley, lying face down and literally hanging her head over the edge, with her hair falling over her face and blowing in the breeze. (I guess I always thought it was “her” since I pictured long hair.) The image seemed pretty strange to me. Why would anyone do that?

So when my choir sang an arrangement of this song I decided it was time to step up and find out just what was a-goin’ on. It’s been a fascinating journey.

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Is “Oh Shenandoah” About the Shenandoah River?

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Charles Deas’ The Trapper and his Family (1845) depicts a voyageur and his Native American wife and children. Perhaps the daughter of Shenandoah and her “Yankee skipper”? Who knows? Image accessed via Wikipedia.

Hoo boy. I seem to start out a number of these articls saying, “I’ve always vaguely thought . . . “ and then explaining why I was wrong. Well, here’s another one. I’ve always vaguely thought that “Oh Shenandoah” was about the Shenandoah River and/or Valley Didn’t you? The river with that name runs through the valley in Virginia and West Virginia, although it’s not a major one but instead a tributary of the Potomac. (There’s also a Shenandoah River in New Zealand, but we won’t worry about that one.) So my vague impression was that the speaker was from the Shenandoah Valley/River and loved that part of the country but he was having to leave it to cross the wide Missouri.

Here’s an important line that gives a helpful clue: “Oh, Shenandoah, I love your daughter.” Let’s parse this out. If the Shenandoah in the song is a river, then the river’s daughter is . . . what? A stream? Doesn’t make too much sense, does it?

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