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Folk Music from Wisconsin
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Folk Music from Wisconsin |
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Subject: Folklore: Folk Music from Wisconsin From: Goose Gander Date: 04 Mar 10 - 12:23 PM Folk Music from Wisconsin CD from the Library of Congress contains nearly entirely British-Irish material. Now, isn't the population of Wisconsin heavily German? Did no one think to record German (and Scandinavian?) songs, or does that population not sing any songs? Just wondering. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk Music from Wisconsin From: Snuffy Date: 04 Mar 10 - 01:08 PM Wisconsin recordings in a huge range of languages. I guess what they release on CD is dictated by estimated sales: not much chanceof recordings in Welsh or Icelandic or Walloon selling thousands. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk Music from Wisconsin From: Goose Gander Date: 04 Mar 10 - 01:45 PM I suppose you're right. Heck, I'm complaining, but how may German-language recordings do I own (answer: not many)? But thanks for the link, lots of music to hear, another site to devour my time. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk Music from Wisconsin From: GUEST,mg Date: 04 Mar 10 - 01:46 PM German in particular might have been a problem during and after various world wars...they were pretty discriminated against in some places...mg |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk Music from Wisconsin From: Joe Offer Date: 04 Mar 10 - 07:01 PM Please note the link Snuffy gave above, Wisconsin Folksong Collection, 1937-1946 - there's some really significant stuff there. Some years ago, Rounder issued a CD of a Library of Congress recording of Wisconsin songs. It was issued as an LP in 1960, as as a CD in 2001. The recordings were collected in the 1940s by Helene Stratman-Thomas and others. Here's the track listing:
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Subject: Index: Folk Songs Out of Wisconsin (Peters) From: Joe Offer Date: 04 Mar 10 - 07:31 PM The best Wisconsin folk song collection I've found is Folk Songs Out of Wisconsin, edited by Harry B. Peters and published by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in 1977. Most of the songs were collected during the 1940s by Professor Helene Stratman-Thomas of the University of Wisconsin. Peters added some folk songs collected by Franz Rickaby in the 1920s, and by Asher Treat and Sidney Robertson in the 1939s. Here's the index of songs in the book: Away to Wisconsin Wisconsin Again The Cranberry Song My Father Was a Dutchman Kitty Grause The Roving Irishman The Welsh Relation The Wild Irishman The Rabbi's Daughter Devonshire Cream and Cider My Name Is McNamara The Black Sheep The Donkey Song Riley and I Were Chums A Motto for Every Man One More River Rock of Ages Come and I Will Sing You Jordan's River I'm Bound to Cross The Crucifixion of Christ The Dying Christian A Cornish Christmas Carol 'Ark, 'Ark, the 'Eavenly Angels Sing We Wish You a Merry Christmas Angels from the Realms of Glory Angels Proclaim Oh Well, Oh Well (The First Noel) The Star of Bethlehem Miss Fogarty's Christmas Cake The Gypsy's Warning Mother Shipman's Prophecy Pick and Shovel The Tomahawk Hem The Shantyman's Life (1) The Shantyman's Life (2) Keep the Working Man Down A-Lumbering We Will Go Old Time Lumberjacks The Shanty Boy and the Farmer Manson's Crew Old Hazeltine The Jam on Gerry's Rock The Pinery Boy On the Banks of the Little Eau Pleine Red Iron Ore A Yankee Ship Came Down the River One Ship Drives East The Bigler's Crew Sally Brown Reuben Ranzo The Ship That Never Returned So Merry, So Merry Are We There Were Once Three Brothers A Ship Set Sail for North America Well Met, Well Met, My Old True Love A Ship Was Becalmed in a Tropical Sea The Pretty Mahmee There Was A Rich Old Farmer Sadie Rae The Dreary Black Hills Robin Ella Rae Green Mountain The Ship Carpenter The Little Log Cabin by the Stream On the Banks of the Old Mohawk Johanna Shay Kitty Wells The Very First Time I Saw My Love Rise, My True Love The White Captive Once I Courted a Pretty Little Girl The Shanty-Boy on the Big Eau Claire Polly Oliver On the Lakes of Ponchartrain I Once Knew a Little Girl The Flying Trapeze Flat River Girl Willie and Mary The Dark British Foes The Blushing Rose When She Got There The Paper of Pins Oh Yah, Ain't Dat Been Fine The Demon Lover One Morning, One Morning in Spring Three Dishes and Six Questions Sing Lay the Lily Low I'm in Love with a Tipperary Miss Last Saturday Night I Entered a House My Grandmother Lived on Yonder Green Tassels on Her Boots Awake, Arise, You Drowsy Sleeper Everybody's Got a Finger in the Pie Father Sent Me Here A-Courting Pretty Polly Forget Me Not The Lantern's Gleam The Broken Ring The Lass of Glenshee The Old Man Came Home Again Dan Doo There Was an Old Woman in London What Will I Do with the Baby-O? I Never Will Marry McCarthy's Widow Liza Of Late I've Been Driven Near Crazy Little Log Cabin in the Lane Uncle Joe Just Plain Folks Once I Had Two Hands Full of Gold The Homestead Strike Fond du Lac Jail Samuel Small Ramsey County Jail Stokes's Verdict Dick Turpin and Black Bess The Charming Young Widow I Met on the Train Brennen on the Moor My Father Keeps a Public House Dirandel Rowan County Trouble Shots Echoing 'Round the Mountain 'Twas on a Cold and Winter's Day Six Kings' Daughters The Farmer Had a Daughter Lord Lovell Ghost Song The Butcher Boy The Fatal Oak Young Johnny Once I Courted a Charming Beauty Bright Jim Blake Billy Vanero In the Baggage Coach Ahead Who Is That Under My Bedroom Window? The Song of Mrs. Shattuck Young Mary Grandfather's Story Young Charlotte Harry Bale The Mistletoe Bough The Dying Wisconsin Soldier James Bird Richmond on the James The Hunters of Kaintucky Two Soldiers Lying as They Fell How Are You, Conscript? I'm in Want of a Substitute 'Twas Autumn and the Leaves When Sherman Marched Down to the Sea Many Brave Boys Must Fal! Lost on the Lady Elgin Jim Bludsoe The Chatsworth Wreck The Brooklyn Theater Fire The Persia's Crew The Newhall House Fire The Little Brown Bulls The O'Kelly Brothers The Twenty Pound Dog The Noble Skew Bald The Bold Benicia Boy Hunters' Chorus Please, Mister Barkeeper Gambler's Blues Mother, Queen of My Heart Father, Dear Father, Come Home with Me Now The Gambling Man Boring for Oil Paddy Miles, the Fisherman The Little Ball of Yarn The Red Light Saloon My Old Hen's a Good Old Hen The Magpie and the Lark The Shanghai Rooster Froggie Went to Take a Ride Froggie Would A-Wooing Go The Birdies' Ball When the Circus Comes to Town Jumbo the Elephant Hannibal Hope S.D. Knowles I've Got a Motto Irish Jubilee The Pickled Jew The Irish Barber Old Willis Is Dead Paddy Doyle and Biddy O'Toole The Keyhole in the Door I'll Sell My Hat, I'll Sell My Coat Reuben Wright and Phoebe Brown Now He's Sorry that He Spoke Pat Malone Forgot That He Was Dead O, Pretty Girls, Won't You List and Come There Was an Old Lady Lived Over the Sea Whiskey Johnny The Girl with the Waterfall Dan McGinty |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk Music from Wisconsin From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 04 Mar 10 - 07:48 PM I have two copies of that book, Joe. One came out of the blue from Art Thieme when I didn't know him. It was the start of a lifetime friendship. Great book. Jerry Me being from Wisconsin and all... |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk Music from Wisconsin From: Joe Offer Date: 04 Mar 10 - 07:56 PM I forgot to mention that: for really good information on Wisconsin folk music, you can pick the consolidated brains of Art Thieme and Jerry Rasmussen. Art has told me some terrific stories. For German stuff, there's a CD called Ach Ya!: Traditional German-American Music from Wisconsin, a reissue of a recording from the Wisconsin Folklife Center. I have it around here somewhere, but can't find it just now. More info here (click). National Public Radio has a story about German in Wisconsin here (click). There are some Wisconsin recordings here (click). I may have to get that "Down Home Daryland" CD set - you can hear samples here (click). Oh, and Click here and be prepared to be absolutely amazed at the amount of folk music collecting that has gone on in Wisconsin. -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk Music from Wisconsin From: Joe Offer Date: 04 Mar 10 - 08:25 PM The PBS River of Song Website has a great article on Wisconsin Folklife:
by Richard March Wisconsin lies in the heart of a distinctive American region, the Upper Midwest. It is a place where a unique way of life has developed, little noticed elsewhere but markedly shaped by the state's diverse population and striking natural environment. Moreover, concepts concerning civic participation and land stewardship brought by the European immigrants who settled in Wisconsin during the 19th century have deeply influenced social, cultural, economic, and ecological activity in the state, making an impact on the state's folklife. The climate, geography, and economy of Wisconsin have shaped many shared regional traditions. The abundant timber of Wisconsin's forests is the basis for timber-harvesting folklife as well as vital woodworking traditions. Wisconsin's inland "seashores" on Lakes Superior and Michigan and the thousands of lakes dotting Wisconsin's glacial landscape have stimulated nautical pursuits like boatbuilding and myriad fishing traditions. The central North American climate with its hot summers and cold winters has produced an annual cycle of activities suited to the changing seasons. Wisconsinites tap maple trees, pick mushrooms, and dip smelt in the spring; cut hay, pick cherries, and welcome tourists to lakeside resorts in summer; harvest corn and cranberries and hunt geese and deer in the fall. There is an intense concentration of festive community events crowding Wisconsin's warmer months, but Wisconsinites' famed propensity for partying also defies the cold. Wisconsinites celebrate winter carnivals, compete in ski races and ice fishing tournaments, and turn the parking lot of Lambeau Field into a cold-weather Mardi Gras for every Green Bay Packers home game. Nicknamed America's Dairyland, much of the southern two-thirds of Wisconsin's rolling landscape is dominated by family dairy farms. During the mid-19th century, dairy farmers from upstate New York and Central Europe established an enduring agricultural practice suited to Wisconsin's land and climate. Dairy farmers typically provide much of their own hay and corn to nourish the dairy herds. The cattle also generate other byproducts such as meat, leather, and fertilizer. A large majority of the milk produced in Wisconsin is processed into 250 varieties of cheese in the many cheese factories in small and large towns throughout the state. Wisconsin produces 30 percent of the cheese in the United States, using cheese-making skills and practices that have evolved from Old World traditions. Today even the whey is processed into valuable lactose and protein products. The land-use pattern associated with dairy farming contributes to the striking beauty of Wisconsin's landscape. Neat farmsteads dominated by huge barns and towering silos are surrounded by corn and alfalfa fields and pastures. Dairy farmers also tend to preserve some woodlands on their farms to meet timber needs and to provide habitat for the deer which are hunted in the fall for venison. It is also significant that family dairy farms have contributed to community stability and the persistence of traditions. in hundreds of Wisconsin communities, the family names in the current telephone directory match those on the old headstones in the cemetery. Descendants of 19th-century settlers make up much of the populace in Wisconsin towns, often lending them an ethnic identity. It is well known that Westby is Norwegian, Pilsen is Czech, Rosiere is Belgian, Mayville is German, Monroe is Swiss, and Little Chute is Dutch. People of Northern and Central European origins have been the most numerous, but the Wisconsin cultural mixture is enriched by immigrants from all around the world. The governance of Wisconsin towns and cities is in the hands of an active citizenry. The mid-19th-century antimonarchist revolutions in Central Europe produced ideas about a just and participatory society that were very much on the minds of many immigrants to Wisconsin, especially those from the ranks of the German "Forty-eighters." Examples of their legacy are still found in local control of infrastructure, in rural township government, and in a history of pioneering efforts toward industrial democracy. In these stable and participatory communities, the varied traditions of the people who have made the state their home have influenced one another. The Belgians of southern Door County have embraced the brass-band dance music of their Czech neighbors in Kewaunee County, while the Czech Catholic parish picnics in the area serve up the Belgians' booyah soup from 60-gallon cauldrons. Some Old World folkways like the making of Norwegian Hardanger fiddles and the weaving of Latvian sashes have been preserved or revived. Other traditions like polka music and dancing or quilting are truly American, having developed from a mixture, a creolization of the contributions of various culture groups now living side by side in Wisconsin. Cultural sharing began with what the Europeans learned from the Native peoples. European immigrants observed the fishing, hunting, and gathering practices of the Woodland Indian tribes. Native practices influenced the way European immigrants began to tap maple trees for sugar, to gather and use wild rice, fish for walleyes and muskellunge, and hunt deer. For example, 19th-century GermanAmerican farmers in the Lake Winnebago area observed indigenous Ho-Chunk fishermen spearing sturgeon through the February ice and took up the practice themselves. Today the descendants of those immigrants and other Wisconsinites assemble a temporary village of some 3,000-4,000 ice fishing shanties on Lake Winnebago. Inside the shanties, with spears at the ready, these fishermen peer into the greenish water, some listening to polkas on AM radio from nearby Chilton, others sipping homemade honey wine made from Wisconsin wild grapes and an Old World recipe, all hoping and waiting for the rare moment when a monstrous five- to eight-foot sturgeon might come nosing around their submerged decoy. At the end of the 19th and through the 20th century, arrivals of Southern and Eastern Europeans, African Americans from the South, Asians, and Latinos have enriched the cultural landscape. The most numerous Eastern Europeans are Polish Americans, who have substantial communities in Wisconsin's industrial towns. Milwaukee's south side with landmarks like the St. Josephat basilica and the shrine to St. Mary Czestohowa at St. Stanislaus Church is the state's largest "Polonia" (the nickname for a compact Polish-American neighborhood). Polish traditional foods like pierogi and czarnina are prepared in homes and neighborhood restaurants. Polish religious and social customs are actively pursued in numerous Polish lodges, social clubs, soccer teams, choirs, and folk dance groups. Polish handicrafts are practiced by artisans like Bernice Jendrzejczak, a maker of wycinaki (paper-cut art). Milwaukee's large African-American community boasts a strong tradition of gospel music, and traditional crafts like quilting and doll-making persist. The Queens of Harmony sing a capella gospel in a very traditional style. Velma Seales and Blanche Shankle are active in a Milwaukee women's quilt group. George McCormick carves and dresses wooden dolls, while Mary Leazer's making of traditional rag dolls has drawn her husband, George Leazer, into the creation of dioramas comprised of his handmade clay dolls arranged to depict AfricanAmerican social customs. While earlier immigrants came to farm, cut timber, or mine ores, the industrial cities of southeastern Wisconsin increasingly attracted new arrivals to work in factories, mills, foundries, and packing houses, on the docks and shipyards of Great Lakes ports, and in railway shops and roundhouses. Today southeastern Wisconsin abounds with skilled machinists who create construction equipment, farm implements, and tools. A few, like retired millwright Roy Treder, have turned these skills to artistic pursuits. When a retirement gift is needed for a fellow worker at Milwaukee's Harley-Davidson motorcycle factory, Roy welds together an elaborate base for a clock or lamp from tools and machinery parts symbolic of the worker's career. Roy has created more than 200 retirement gift sculptures for his fellow employees. Wisconsin's industrial towns and cities are a patchwork of urban ethnic villages neighborhoods comprised of blocks of well-kept, modest frame houses with churches and taverns on the street corners. The church basement and the corner bar, much like the churches and crossroads taverns in Wisconsin's rural areas, have served their communities as twin hubs of social life. Many religious communities have an ethnic aspect to their congregation's makeup. One Lutheran church might attract primarily Norwegian parishioners, while another appeals to Germans. Catholic churches may be predominantly Polish, German, Irish, Mexican, Italian, Croatian, or Slovak. Services may be offered in the language of the old homeland as well as in English. Ethnic crafts and foodways may be practiced in women's clubs and altar societies associated with the church. Not necessarily conflicting with church life, taverns in Wisconsin serve as another venue for expressing ethnic and regional traditions. In Wisconsin, taverns have a generally positive image. Austrian-American singer Elfrieda Haese remembers the women of her community catching up on gossip while doing knitting in a booth in Schaegler's Tavern in Milwaukee while the men played cards or sang. It is a Friday-night tradition throughout Wisconsin to take the whole family to a tavern for a fish fry. Whether expressed through church, tavern, or home, the role of ethnic identity remains prominent in Wisconsin. Fourth- and fifth-generation Americans in Wisconsin are still quite cognizant of their ethnic origins, as pure or as varied as they may be. It is very common in Wisconsin to be asked when first meeting someone the ethnic provenance of one's last name. Not only are there recent immigrants who speak Spanish, Laotian, or Hmong, but German, Polish, Norwegian, and the Walloon dialect of French are still spoken in some Wisconsin homes by families whose forbears immigrated generations ago. In folk dance groups and ethnic orchestras, ethnic identity is taught to Wisconsin children, an important reason why ethnicity remains so pervasive in the state. Traditional arts are one of the most important markers of ethnic identity. Norwegian Americans have placed great emphasis upon crafts like rosemaling, acanthus-carving, and Hardanger fiddlemaking. Among the Slavic nationalities in Wisconsin, Ukrainians make pysanki Easter eggs and cross-stitch embroidery, Poles wycinanki paper-cut art, and Slovaks wheat weavings; Serbians play the one-stringed gusle, Slovenians the diatonic button accordion, and Croatians the lute-like tamburitza. In many ethnic groups, the craft item may be created primarily for display in the home, to indicate to all who see it that the owner is a proud bearer of a venerable heritage. But in other instances crafts may have retained their pragmatic purpose in a traditional pursuit as well. Wisconsinites like Mary Lou Schneider and Willi Kruschinski ponder long and hard how to design the perfect fishing lure to catch a particular type of game fish. The ice-fishing decoys in the shape of minnows made by members of the Lac du Flambeau band of Ojibwe may serve both practical and ethnic display purposes. Today decoy carvers like Brooks Big John make some purely decorative decoys, attached perhaps to pieces of driftwood or to lamp bases, but Brooks also carves less decorated decoys that are carefully weighted and fitted with tin fins so that they will "swim" realistically in the water when he is ice fishing. To fishermen like Brooks, it is the whole tradition involving the decoy that matters knowing a good spot to catch walleyes or muskies in winter, making the hole through the ice, constructing the dark house tepee, and actually landing a big fish for his family's dinner table. Wisconsin folklife continues to evolve and to be enriched by new immigration. Refugees from wars and political oppression continue to find a haven in the state. Wisconsin now has America's second largest population of Hmong, Southeast Asian refugees who actively pursue their unique music, craft, and social customs in the new homeland, as well as one of the major settlements of Tibetans. Latino populations in the state have increased markedly in recent decades, the largest being of Mexican origin. The Wisconsin program at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., and its restaging in Madison as the Wisconsin Folklife Festival are auspicious events to honor the many people who preserve Wisconsin's folklife and to observe Wisconsin's sesquicentennial of statehood. it is a challenging task to represent the folklife of the five million residents of Wisconsin in a single event involving only ten or twelve dozen people. The program participants are all outstanding bearers of traditions significant in Wisconsin, all evidence of the natural, cultural, and historical forces that have molded Wisconsin's unique and vital folklife. Richard March has been the folk arts specialist for the Wisconsin Arts Board since 1983. Since 1986 be has been the producer and on-air host of "Down Home Dairyland," a program featuring the traditional and ethnic music of the Midwest on Wisconsin Public Radio. He is active as a polka musician, playing button accordion in the Down Home Dairyland Band. The Wisconsin program is made possible by and is produced in cooperation with the Wisconsin Arts Board and the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Commission on the occasion of Wisconsin's 150th anniversary of statehood Wisconsin corporate contributors include AT& T, SC Johnson Wax, and The Credit Unions of Wisconsin. Works Cited & Suggested Reading: Allen, Terese. Wisconsin Food Festivals. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press, 1995. Leary, James P., ed. Wisconsin Folklore. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998. Teske, Robert T., ed. Wisconsin Folk Art: A Sesquicentennial Celebration. Cedarburg: Cedarburg Cultural Center, 1997. Woodward, David, et al. Cultural Map of Wisconsin. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk Music from Wisconsin From: Art Thieme Date: 07 Mar 10 - 12:12 AM The guiding light and the actual collector, the one who found the songs in Folksongs Out Of Wisconsin, was, as someone might have mentioned above but I'm not certain, Ms Helene Stratman Thomas. In 1984 Judy Rose was the host of Wisconsin Public Radio's folk program called Simply Folk. She also put together an wondrous series of eleven programs that were called A WISCONSIN PATCHWORK. With Judy's expert knowledge of the collected material, these programs contained introductions for the recorded examples chosen that were absolutely mesmerizing! If you can find these shows, you will be amazed at the quantity of different ethnic song types that were a real part of the Wisconsin landscape during Helene Stratman Thomas' collecting years. Good luck!! Art Thieme |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk Music from Wisconsin From: Bat Goddess Date: 07 Mar 10 - 10:34 AM Thanks, Joe! I'm very excited to find that Ach Ya! has been re-issued on CD. I have tapes (made from the LPs) and liner notes, but can't remember who has the original LP set -- my sister in Milwaukee or my cousin from Colby. The folk music of MY youth in Wisconsin was all polkas -- my dad played in several dance bands around Colby, WI in the '40s. Linn |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk Music from Wisconsin From: Art Thieme Date: 07 Mar 10 - 02:51 PM Judy WOODWARD That was Judy Rose's name back in 1984 when she did those radio shows. Art Thieme |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk Music from Wisconsin From: Joe Offer Date: 08 Mar 10 - 02:09 AM My brother was a music promoter/booking agent in Milwaukee until he hit the age of 40 and decided he was too old for rock'n'roll. He says that even the punk rock bands in Milwaukee do polkas - it's the only way they can get wedding gigs. Now that he's almost 60, he's getting back into music (but in Florida, where half of Wisconsin moves to when they get old). -Joe- |
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