Accessible songs

Subject: Accessible songs
From: Stringsinger
Date: 30 Nov 12 - 01:23 PM

Looking for songs that have easy choruses for audiences to join in.

Subject: RE: Accessible songs
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Nov 12 - 01:54 PM

The first thing that pops into mind is a whole ship-load of sea chanties. Easy, singable choruses are their very nature.

I'll put my thinking cap on and see what else I can come up with.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Accessible songs
From: Stringsinger
Date: 30 Nov 12 - 02:08 PM

Don, excellent suggestion. Looking for songs that tell a story, a narrative that can have simple direct choruses even if they are nonsense syllables such as "Lolly Too Dum"
or call and response songs where the audience answers the lead singer as in chain gang song as well as sea chanteys.

Subject: RE: Accessible songs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Nov 12 - 02:10 PM

I should have thought there are too many to list that spring instantly to mind, from Greensleeves to Cosher Bailey's Engine via the infinite versions of Coming Round the Mountain & John Brown's Body.

Might help if some indication of the sort of occasion or audience these required for, SS.

~M~

Subject: RE: Accessible songs
From: Joybell
Date: 30 Nov 12 - 04:12 PM

We do "The Twelve Days of Christmas" at this time of the year. We give audience members -- in groups -- cards with their parts on them. Then I point to each group in turn. Five gold rings is sung by everyone and the introductory bits ("On the -- day of Christmas my true-love gave to me") is sung by me.
Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: Accessible songs
From: Stringsinger
Date: 01 Dec 12 - 11:32 AM

MgM, I'm looking basically for traditional folk songs with easy choruses. Pete Seeger has some because he is a master song leader but there are so many songs that are traditional that people would learn if they could sing the chorus easily.   This is specifically true to the monthly event that I attend where each participant sings one song solo and another leading the group. This method was used in the Sixties at
"Songmakers" meetings in Los Angeles and we are trying this in Georgia. I want to emphasize traditional material rather than recently complicated written songs by   contemporary folkie types.

Rounds are especially useful. It is a given that members of our monthly gathering
love to sing. I think that developing awareness of folk songs can be met by this process of accessibility bringing audiences in on choruses.

They don't have to all be trad. Tom Paxton's "Ramblin' Boy" goes over well as does
Woody Guthrie songs such as "Do Re Me". "Goodnight Irene" is another example.
Many of the songs you would think everyone knows may have more complicated choruses than realized. Woody Guthrie managed to write many songs of this nature including "So Long It's Been Good to Know You" or "This Land".

A line or two in a chorus seems to me to be ideal. "Tom Dooley" comes to mind because it was so popularized.

The songs don't have to be familiar, just easy choruses to sing.

Subject: RE: Accessible songs
From: CupOfTea
Date: 01 Dec 12 - 12:39 PM

My top three to get folks to sing with me:
The Rivers of Texas/Down By the Embrass
Drive Dull Care Away (aka Contentment)
New Harmony (Craig Johnson)

Ballads with refrains: Lay the Bent/Binnorie,
Cruel Mother
Lowlands Away
Boys of Bedlam

If I Were a Blackbird, Black Velvet Band - so many in the Irish common repertoire that have easily memorable choruses.

So many Old time & gospel songs have grand choruses: Angel Band, Never Grow Old, I'll Fly Away, Cotton Mill Girls

Songs many were exposed to as kids at camp like Waltzing Matilda & You Can't Get To Heaven

I particularly like songs that use a repeat of the last few lines of the verse to make a chorus: When I was a Fair Maid, Rose of Allendale, Rani Arbo's setting of Crossing the Bar is SUPERB for this, the version of Renardine the Armstrong family sang, Thousands or More (the song, though there may BE thousands or more songs that work like this...)

Joanne in Cleveland
(who is working hard to have people sing things that are NOT in Rise Up Singing)