Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)

Subject: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 27 Aug 07 - 08:12 PM

Hello, my friends. Once again I'm looking for suggestions. My fourth graders (9 and 10 year olds) are about to begin a service learning project that involves learning about hunger in the community and the world, volunteering at the local community kitchen, etc. I would like to teach a song or two that specifically addresses awareness of hunger in our world. We already know songs like "What can one little person do?" and "Somos el barco", but I feel like there's a song out there that would be age-appropriate and musically wonderful.

I know I can count on you-all!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 27 Aug 07 - 10:32 PM

Regarding potato famine: praties they grow small, not too depressing
Dan Ohara, pretty depressing but nice tune
Just give me three grains of corn mother, really depressing.

Praties they grow small, nice tune, and musically wonderful, and not too graphic. mg

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: Susan of DT
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 08:23 AM

a search for hunger in the DT yields 4 pages of songs. There is also hard times. Some possibilities:
   One Meatball
   By the Hush (left Ireland for hunger)
   Divers and Lazarus
   Dreadful Memories (strike)
   Homeless Wassail
   Hunger in the Air
   See How the Land Yields Up Her Treasure (Migrant Song)
   The Potato
   Hard Times Come Again No More
   Women of Dundee
   No More Fish, No Fishermen
I'm not sure about age appropriateness - you judge that.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 08:47 AM

That Seth Lakeperson precursor Judith Piepe wrote Procrastination Song which the Young Tradition promptly renamed The Hungry Child and recorded on So Cheerfully Round.

What's really funny about it is that Judith wrote it in response to a F*lk Bore who knew All About The English Tradition and could tell a trad song at 100 paces. On hearing this he declared it 'a rural gem from the 1700s'. On being told the truth he went away and hasn't been heard of since.

Damien Barber does it sometimes these days but hasn't yet (a.f.a.i.k.) recorded it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: Sorcha
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 08:54 AM

Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Grow

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: Sorcha
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 09:01 AM

Or, you could write 'new' verses to This Is The Way We...

sow our corn, water our corn, hoe our corn, grind our corn, eat our corn.

Or, use a different food in each verse. Grind our corn, mash our taties, snap our beans, etc.

At the end of the project have a banquet/meal using stuff they've learned about? Make tortillas, etc. Invite parents, family.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: SINSULL
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 09:31 AM

One Meatball. They will enjoy singing the song and get some perspective on the homeless.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 01:17 PM

"One Meatball" also gives an opportunity to show how a song can last, and change with changing eating habits. It started out as "Lone Fish Ball" in the 1860s, which the copyright holder, R. Storrs Willis, insisted was "Founder on a Boston Fact."

There are parallel stories, one about the learned New York Professor who frequented a place where buckwheat cakes were served. The price, three cakes for sixpence, six cakes for 12 1/2 pence, but the latter stretched his finances. The professor ordered five and offered ten pence. The establishment put up with his order but they had no checks for tenpence. Finally they got fed up with his odd order, and tell him he must either go the six buckwheats or three buckwheats or none at all. "This upsets the Professor's pecuniary calculations, sours the buckwheats and his temper, and drives him away entirely."

[Currency running to sixpence, shillings, etc. indicates the story dated to early days in North America, 1800 or before in the U. S., or was borrowed from Canada or England].

This story is appended to "The Lone Fish-Ball" in the college songbook, "Carmina Collegensia," 1868, p. 15; Oliver Ditson Co.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: Jon Bartlett
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 01:44 PM

I remember the same story in the liner notes on the Young Tradition's first LP, but I'm afraid that Judith was economical with the truth.

The song is in fact a translation (and a very good one) of "Verspatung" in Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Alte deutsche Lieder, collected by L. Achim von Arnim & Clemens Brentano (1806/8). Von Arnim describes it as "Mundlich" i.e. in oral circulation. [Sorry, I can't get the umlaut to work]

The German first verse and translation is as follows:

"Mutter, ach Mutter! es hungert mich,
Gib mir Brot, sonst sterbe ich."
Warte nur, mein liebes Kind,
Morgen wollen wir saen geschwind."

"Mother, O mother, I'm hungry
Give me bread or I'll die."
"Just wait, my dear child,
Tomorrow we will quickly be sowing."

The song develops in the same fashion, changing from (sown) to (reaped) to (threshed) to (ground) to (baked); the final couplet runs

Und als das Brot gebacken war,
Lag das Kind schon auf der Bahr.
(And when the bread was baked,
The child was already lying on the bier.)

The first English stanza (ploughing), though logical, is not in the German text.

A fine song: is it still known and sung in Germany these days?

Jon Bartlett

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 01:54 PM

Wow- this is a treasure trove!
(would you believe I've never heard One Meatball- I've heard OF it, but never heard it...)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 04:44 PM

The "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" song is known in Scots tradition as "Jenny jo" - the words were first notes in the early 19th century (I think) but the tune was notated at the beginning of the 18th century. It's a children's game song. At a guess it refers to one of the great famines of the seventeenth century.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 05:22 PM

You know, I'd completely forgotten hearing this accusation that Judith Piepe had just translated a poem called Verspätung.
I now remember asking Heather Wood (the only surviving YT member) quite a few years ago and she said Judith was quite adamant that it was her own work.
Anyway, we'll never know because Ms Piepe died in New Zealand some years ago.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 05:22 PM

And the well-known Francis James Child (yes, that one) composed a mock-opera based on The Lone Fishball called "Il Pescobello"

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: Azizi
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 06:36 PM

The song "Shortnin Bread" is about children living on a diet that was insufficient for their nurishment.

SHORT'NIN' BREAD
(Traditional Plantation Song)

Two little babies, lying in bed
One was sick and the other 'most dead
Sent for the doctor and the doctor said
"Give those children some shortnin' bread."

-snip-

Though if you teach it to children, you might consider changing the "mammy's little baby" to "mama's little baby"...

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: GUEST,effsee away from home
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 06:45 PM

How about this one of Eric Bogle's? http://www.ericbogle.net/lyrics/lyricspdf/feedthechildren.pdf

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 08:54 PM

There are the hunger protest songs that came out of the 1930's, verses like this one:

Hungry, hungry are we,
Just as hungry as hungry can be;
We don't get nothing for our labor,
So hungry, hungry are we!

And then "shoeless," "homeless," "etc-less."

There is also "Chicken Cordon Blues" by Steve Goodman.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 09:42 PM

One meat ball- thread 9179: One Meat Ball
and 13508: Meat ball fish ball

And the "Big Rock Candy Mountain," which has older forms.

Of the protest songs, one of the best was by Joe Hill, "The Preacher and the Slave," in the DT here at Mudcat, with its great chorus:

You will eat (you will eat), bye and bye (bye and bye),
In that glorious land in the sky (way up high).
Work and pray (work and pray), live on hay (live on hay),
You'll get pie in the sky when you die (that's a lie!).

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 11:43 PM

I just remembered, in some minds Joe Hill is still a dirty word, although those times are history now.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: songs about hunger (for kids)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 01:27 AM

Well, there's Little Jimmy Dickens' TAKE AN OLD COLD 'TATER AND WAIT.

And there's Lead belly's TAKE THIS HAMMER, which (according to the DT) contains the verse:

They wanna feed me cornbread and molasses, (3x)
But I got my pride, well, I got my pride.

However, that's not the way I remember it. I remember it more like:

I don't want no corn bread and molasses (3x)
It hurts my pride, it hurts my pride.