When I visited with Joe Offer at the SF airport, I gained a new perspective on folk song research and how much it means to people who like to do it. We were rattling away gabbing when all of a sudden it hit me, and it relates to what some Mudcatters have tried real hard to explain about how some members feel about the importance of music topics hereabouts.

See, we were looking over a song he had brought along-- what was it, Joe? Um, oh, yeah, SHENANDOAH. Joe had some verses I had certainly never seen that changed the whole song into something else, darker, very interesting. We started talking about how one goes about digging up the lore of a song. I exclaimed, because of our shared background in churches, "Oh Joe! That's just like when a preacher exigetes the Bible text to get a sermon ready!" [pron. ex'-ih-jeet]

This research process, knowns as "exigeting the text," involves going back to original sources and translations as far one is able, incorporating research into the things and ideas of the times in which the passage was written or which it describes, and then once that is all done, you bring all that fresh understanding, and apply all that breadth of knowledge, to craft a message on a situation of today. (And it often includes prayer, asking God to give a guiding message on what it is the people are in need of hearing.)

I got all excited-- it must be like it is when you know the back story on the song, and choose it for the right audience at the right time, and-- just like good preaching-- something brand new and yet timeless happens, making a conection from now all the way back to the beginningness of a thing.

Yes?????

So all of a sudden I could see how deeply and completely painful it would be to lose that.... like I would feel, hurt deeper than words, if someone tried to blast the Bible out of existence, even if they didn;t mean to, and my love for all I have seen through using it, by broadcasting [your choice of violent unacceptable music] all over the available airspace.

Yes? Is that how it feels? Oh my. Awful!

SO HOW DO YOU DO IT FOR SONGS? How do you exigete a song????? I know how it is done for the Bible... let's look at how folk scholars do what they love to do.

C'mon guys! No foolin'! I wanna know!

~Susan