Folk Singing Research Articles

Zlogovanje v ljudski pesmi

Zlogovanje v ljudski pesmi

The Neutral Tone as a Function of Folk-song Text

One of the most striking and distinctive phenomena in folk singing is the neutral tone, that note which cannot be rendered on a fretted or keyboard instrument, a note that is most at home not in art song but on the lips of an untrained traditional singer. Samuel P. Bayard gave it the place of honor on his list of six “mannerisms of performance that are profoundly instructive as to the past of the folksong art,” especially as regards “the presence of neutral and variable intervals and of quarter-tones in the folk scales.”

Persian Folksong Texts from Afghan Badakhshan

This study is based on fieldwork undertaken in Badakhshān province of Afghanistan in 1968 for the purpose of collecting musical data. A summary of the basic musical styles and instruments current in the area can be found in the,author's Instrumental Music in Northern Afghanistan.The focus of the present article is the type of Persian verse set to music by the folk singers of Badakhshān. Principally, this includes a description of the texts of the most common folksong form of the region, the felak, drawn from singers of the Faizābād (central), Darwāz (northern), Shughnān (northeastern), Wākhān (eastern) and Keshrn (western) regions of Badakhshān province.

Folk Singing in Worship

Folk Singing in Worship

Prešernova »Nezakonska mati« - ljudska pesem

Prešernova »Nezakonska mati« - ljudska pesem

Vietnam and the Traditions of American Foreign Policy

V IETNAM, like some miasma, has seeped into every corner of American life. The overseas observer is struck at every turn by the extent to which it overrides every other topic and intrudes upon seemingly most irrelevant issues. A whole Vietnam sub-culture has grown up, not merely of passionate partisanship but also of cosy alienation or rigorous questioning of every American standard and belief. Vietnam is a cross-roads at which all -the turbulent traffic of American intellectual, social and political controversy meets-and meets, it often seems, in what Americans so appropriately dub a traffic ' snarl'. Nothing escapes it. In Nassau County, in the neighbourhood of New York City, one of the most hoary of American political rituals, the selection of delegates to the presidential convention, is held up while the Democrats take a poll of their members to ascertain their attitudes on Vietnam. Poets hold Vietnam 'Read-ins', folk singers hold 'Singins for Peace.' Clergymen and child psychologists organise protests against the conscription laws. Every publicly supported activityeducation, health, slum clearance, state action of any kind on behalf of the Negro-one and all claim that the demands of Vietnam have cut its budget and crippled its operation. And of course into every living room the Box brings its nightly ration of instant war by your fireside. If one thinks back to Korea the Vietnam obsession seems at first slightly disproportionate. So far, at any rate, Vietnam has not directly affected so large an area of the American experience. Its 15,000 fatalities, heavy though they are, are less than half the 33,000 claimed by the Korean fighting, apart from the 30,000 more who died away from the battlefields. The number of families with a member on active service, past or present, would seem so far to be fewer. (There are now 5,700,000 U.S. 'veterans ' of Korea.) The controversy over the conduct of the Vietnam war has, as yet, brought forth no single confrontation as shocking and dramatic as that between President Truman and the insubordinate General MacArthur. Yet there can be no doubt that the festering concern goes deeper. The commitment may have been longer, may have been accepted by diverse administrations and administrators, from Eisenhower to Johnson and John Foster Dulles to Walt Rostow.

Some Style Characteristics of Tatar-Mishar Musical Folklore

The musical folklore of the Tatars still abounds in unclear and sometimes discussed elements. Up to now there is no monographic work on Tatar folk music. It is only in the last few years that some attempts have been undertaken at getting familiar with the peculiarities of the art of the different ethnographic groups of this folk. This explains also the preliminary and incomplete character of the present article. Its single aim is to utter some considerations on the characteristics of Tatar-Mishar music, on basis of a material gained by expeditions to the regions of Gorki, Penza, and Saratov. In such a short communication there is, as a matter of course, no possibility of speaking about the local peculiarities of the melodies of the given regions. We shall be concerned, first of all, with those general features of Tatar-Mishar music by which it is distinguished from the music of the other Tatars. This is to be taken into account all the more because the music (and even the language) of the Mishars themselves of different regions (and sometimes even of villages of the same district) does not remain unchanged. In the repertory of Tatar-Mishar folk singers there are found (especially nowadays) folksongs of the Kazan Tatars and music of Tatar Soviet composers as well. Our particular Mishar material has been collected from the older generation; young people often ignore it. In such a way, a tendency towards the obliteration of the ethnographic peculiarities of the different folk groups is to be observed. I intentionally do not refer to the historic and ethnographic works generally known about the Tatar-Mishars as, firstly, they have no concern with music, secondly, I think it more expedient to obtain general conclu-

"Hootenanny": More of Its Past

ARJORIE KINNAN RAWLINGS in her delightful short story Cocks Must Crow has the Widow Tippet chastise the fat, talkative Florida cracker Quincey Dover: You was likely a good woman oncet, she said. You know what you are now? You're nothing but a big old fat hoot-nanny.' Mrs. Rawlings, whose home was in Cross Creek, an out-of-the-way village in central Florida, has left an accurate and faithful record of the people of this rural Florida scene, with their picturesque speech patterns and their colorful regionalisms. The ADD records similar radio usage dating from 1941 : horsefaced old hootenanny. An article by Tamony presents an excellent analysis of the development of the word hootenanny to its current usage.2 However, it does not include several meanings once apparently common and used in different contexts. Tamony writes: Actually, hootenanny had been an Americanism with a variety of denotations for several decades. It may be termed an Indefinite American Word .... Four or five decades ago hootenanny bore general and special meanings which varied throughout the country ... ., To many of the inhabitants of southern Ohio the word carried the meaning suggested in the two quotations from Mrs. Rawlings's fiction: 'a stupid person, a kind of clod.' The inference was uncomplimentary, suggesting a lack of urbanity. It is interesting to conjecture how the word took on this derisive meaning and how, many years later, in the West it came to have an entirely different frame of reference. The word seems to have been used in this pejorative sense in agricultural areas in and around Cincinnati. this section one former resident of a small Ohio village about forty miles from the Ohio River said: knew the word in my childhood, having been reared in a rural community. Hootenanny was a description of a person who was clumsy, 'hillbillyish,' much more rural than the rural inhabitants of our small village of Winchester. I often have wondered how the word changed from the way I remember its being used to its present usage in folk singing. An informant reared in Troy, Ohio, north of Dayton in western Ohio, explained, In my family we always referred to the Yosts next door as 'those

Some Remarks on European Folk Polyphony

The subject of this paper, “European Folk Polyphony,” is one to be approached only with the most painful scruples and not a little hesitation, and this for the following reasons:(1)It seems as though, even by hearsay, nothing like all the phenomena of European folk polyphony are known. Every year brings fresh surprises to light.(2)The material basis is as yet extremely narrow. Far too few transcriptions have up to now been published.(3)Even when comprehensive and reliable transcriptions have been published, we still lack exact studies that penetrate the material and isolate its typical characteristics or features. As is the case with all folk music, the polyphonic variety is, as we know, dependent on oral tradition, that is to say, the folk singers follow with fine instinct definite rules. But of these rules they are “theoretically,” as we understand this term, not conscious. It is thus only possible to deduce these rules in a “mediate” way, viz. through the careful analysis of transcriptions. But for this we need suitable methods of investigation and a terminology making it possible to give an unambiguous account of the phenomena with which the researcher may find himself confronted. And despite meritorious attempts, we have as yet no such methods and terminology at our disposition.

Folk Singers and Folk Songs in America: A Handbook of Biography, Bibliography, and Discography. Ray M. Lawless. (Duell, Sloane and Pearce, New York, 1960.) xiii + 662 pp. $10.00.

Biographies of about 225 singers, collections of American ballads, folklore activities, and the history and use of folk-music instruments are among the Handbook's highlights.

Sociological Symbolism of the "Adult Western"

A socio-psychological analysis of the recurring ideas and emotions that inifluence and produce the adult with a theory as to why it has appeared at this time. The adult is treated as a art form that expresses the emotions, fears, inadequacies and psychoses of modern man. VERY culture has at some precise time in its growth created a folk-type art form in response to its inner turmoils and strivings to satisfy its need for expression of its character. Thus, various art forms such as the Elizabethan theatre, Grecian sculpture, Arthurian legends, impressionistic painting, classical ballet, ethnic folk singing, Flamenco dancing, and so forth, arose as the answer to a need for expression of the culture. For example, the Elizabethan theatre arose in greater part to articulate intense feelings of nationalism, to provide an outlet for the craving for romanitic adventure, to resonate the thoughts of a people just throwing off the shackles of feudalism and searching for knowledge, and to contribute to tlhe enthusiasm and passion for the newly formulated language. The Spanish Armada had been decisively defeated by an all-English navy; English explorers were planting the flag throughout the world and carrying back exotic stories of foreign lands; the Renaissance had liberated the soul and endowed it with a great questioning attitude toward its environment, and the advent of printing had stabilized and focused attention on the nascent language. In such a manner, the adult has evolved at this precise time in our culture as a new art form delineating our motivations and psychoses and permitting their vicarious catharsis. It must be understood that we are not speaking of art in the classical sense, but rather in its secondary meaning as the systematic application of knowledge or skill in effecting a desired result by the adaptation of ideas or emotions to a form of expression. What, then, are these recurring ideas or emotions that influence and produce the adult and make it so enjoyable to all segments of our society? First, the Western contains the spirit of foreign adventure, of new and exciting places; the same element which made the operettas of the twenties and thirties so popular, the locale that is foreign to ours and that gives us a chance to escape our every-day environment and visit some place exotic. Shakespeare used this element successfully in his tales of the kings and the histories which all used foreign locales in the plot. Hollywood used this element in the thirties with a raft of pictures about tropical islands in the prewar South Pacific. Remember, although the western takes place in the United States, the locale is still exotic and foreign, because this locale is not in evidence today and few people have a living memory of it. Coupled with this spirit of foreign adventure is the inherent romance of the West. As the Greeks were concerned with their Trojan Wars, and the Spaniards with their new world conquests, and the English with their colonization, so the American is preoccupied with the West of the beautiful landscapes, with the wide open spaces, the valleys, canyons, mountains, and other scenery. The very landscape breathes heroism between not men but giants. To exist in this land you need heroic will. To the average city dweller, confined to a neighborhood of row houses, a stretch of prairie or mountain range extending as far as the eye can see offers a transcending exhilaration. A second feature lending form and direction to the western format is the unique western hero; for with the western, America has developed its first universal-type hero. America has always been hero-shy; all its heroes are either modern, like movie stars or sports figures, or men of a limited locality such as Paul Bunyan or Rip Van Winkle. Americans have never made a fetish of their Navy and Army heroes as the British, or as the Russians of tlleir Cossacks. America has no mythology as the Europeans, she has no ties with the land or the past as the Israelis, she has had no kings or conquerors leading her armies. The closest America has to heroes are its frontier scout-hunter or Indian fighter and its Babe Ruth's and Lou Gehrig's. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.211 on Fri, 24 Jun 2016 06:51:59 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

The ‘Adult Western’ as an American Art Form

EVERY culture has at some precise time in its growth created a folktype art form in response to its inner turmoils and strivings to satisfy its needs for expression of its character. Thus, various art forms such as Elizabethan theatre, Grecian sculpture, Arthurian legends, impressionistic painting, classical ballet, ethnic folk singing, Flamenco dancing, and so forth, arose as the answer to a need for expression of the culture. For example, Elizabethan theatre arose in greater part to articulate intense feelings of nationalism, to provide an outlet for the craving for romantic adventure, to resonate the thoughts of a people just throwing off the shackles of feudalism and searching for knowledge, and to contribute to the enthusiasm and passion for the newly formulated language. The Spanish Armada had been decisively defeated by an all-English navy; English explorers were planting the flag throughout the world and carrying back exotic stories of foreign lands; the Renaissance had liberated the soul and endowed it with a great questioning attitude towards its environment, and the advent of printing had stabilized and focused attention on the nascent language. In such a manner, the 'adult Western' has evolved at this precise time in our culture as a new art form delineating our motivations and psychoses and permitting their vicarious catharsis. It must be understood that we are not speaking of art in the classical sense, but rather in its secondary meaning as the systematic application of knowledge or skill in effecting a desired result by the adaptation of ideas or emotions to a form of expression. What, then, are these recurring ideas or emotions that influence and produce the 'adult Western' and make it so enjoyable to all segments of our society? First, the Western contains the spirit of foreign adventure, of new and exciting places; the same element which made the operettas of the twenties and thirties so popular,

Minstrels, Musicians, and Melodeons: A Study in the Social History of Music in Vermont, 1848-1872

AT mid-century in Vermont, music as distinguished from folk singing, which had had a vigorous life since early settlement, was beginning to be made and listened to for its own sake, and to have as secure a place in secular gatherings as in the church. Traveling musical companies began to compete successfully with other kinds of shows. Occasionally one of their members would detach himself from the troupe and set himself up in a town as a musical jack-of-all-trades. He often provided the leadership for the local amateur choruses and such musical conventions as took place near by, as well as for the brass bands which developed with the martial spirit preceding the Civil War. Village jewelers and watchmakers began to deal in musical instruments, and with the booksellers, to serve as agents for the itinerants. Concert handbills and programs were prepared by the local printers, who occasionally published the teachers' efforts at dance music or sacred composition. The changes in the social history of music in this period took place in the larger towns, along the railroads which tied them to the large cities. For two bits, barnstorming companies operating out of New York and Boston offered the following attractions: plays; panoramas and dioramas of New York City, Civil War battle scenes or the Holy Land; readings; comic dialogues; ventriloquists; prestidigitators; contortionists; gymnasts; glassblowers; Wild Men of Borneo; Siamese twins-and concerts. Most of these shows had their musical interludes or accompaniments. The usual concert was a show with a large proportion of music. Audiences were more taken by the novel and comic than by the musical.