Lyr Req: Songs about large farming

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 20 Apr 14 - 06:28 AM

I've got a Brand New Combine Harvester by The Wurzels?

It could also serve as a tribute to the Bard of Avonmouth, Adge Cutler.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Apr 14 - 05:38 AM

Given the way our bee colonies in the UK are just exploding this year because we had a great start with no colonies destroyed by Monsanto and their ruddy neonicotinoid pest-killers after they were banned last year, paired with an early spring, I'd not too happily support big farming. We should feed ourselves, sure, but should we allow the country to become one big field, with no space for anything else? No, it's insane, we need insects to pollinate and they need places to breed and overwinter. You suck the land dry and you have a dustbowl. It's the worst of short-termism, and it's probably why there's precious little in the folk repertoire on the subject, few sympathise with it.
No, I'm not preaching some kind of bucolic idealism, but of finding a middle way.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: Howard Kaplan
Date: 19 Apr 14 - 10:32 PM

Susan Werner's fairly new CD, "Hayseed", is entirely about modern day farming. On the web page where fortunate people can order the CD, located here, one finds this description: "HAYSEED is songwriter Susan Werner's 2013 celebration of her Iowa farm girl roots. You'll sing along with her wry commentary on contemporary agriculture, on subjects from farmers markets to herbicides, from global warming to drought, from sustainability to salmonella.."

Unfortunate people, those outside the U.S., will discover that the web site does not offer any shipping options to addresses outside that country. The CD tracks are on iTunes, but Canadians cannot download them -- I don't know the situation in other countries. You can get the CD from Amazon.com, and in the past that seller has shipped CDs to other countries.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Apr 14 - 01:06 PM

Try some of the work on here

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: GUEST,Julia L
Date: 18 Apr 14 - 10:00 PM

Thanks folks- Field behind the Plow is perfect- more like this.... farmer's wives?Hard working farmer guys

How about grange songs?

best- julia

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 18 Apr 14 - 05:10 PM

Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (also known as "Deportee")
Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Martin Hoffman

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Apr 14 - 03:51 PM

Surely Canada should have some prairie songs.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 18 Apr 14 - 03:29 PM

From Oklahoma! - the musical, not the state;

The farmer and the cowman should be friends.
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.
One man likes to push a plough, the other likes to chase a cow,
But that's no reason why they cain't be friends.

I'd like to say a word for the farmer,
He come out west and made a lot of changes...
He come out west and built a lot of fences,
And built 'em right across our cattle ranges.

There are lots of harvest and harvest home songs.

Then there is John Barleycorn. It was Ken Langsbury's brother who set the words to the tune of We Plough the Fields and Scatter.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Apr 14 - 09:01 AM

I doubt the existence of any American folk song in praise of large scale agricultural farming -outside of the old cotton fields that is. Perhaps ranching songs ? The Farmer is the Man doesn't praise or mention large-scale farming . Folk songs were written by the common people - small scale farmers .

But there's Lorne Green singing Bonanza's theme music put to song if you're stuck - not a bad voice actually.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLXngS0X8T4

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Apr 14 - 08:53 AM

And there I was thinking Old MacDonald...
And then there's Big Yellow Taxi

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Apr 14 - 08:22 AM

Maybe the closest you'd get in the US to those Soviet songs - i.e. songs that promoted large-scale agriculture - would be advertising jingles for big tractor makers like John Deere. Surely they exist?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 18 Apr 14 - 08:17 AM

There are hundreds of songs about milkmaids and ploughboys.

Surely one of them must be about farming.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: GUEST,Arkie
Date: 17 Apr 14 - 10:59 PM

Stan Rogers' song "Field Behind the Plow" might be suitable.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: Susan of DT
Date: 17 Apr 14 - 08:59 PM

Look for songs with the keyword farm in the database (see the sitemap to get to the keywords or use the main search for farm or @farm. The Copper family have a large number of farming songs - English, but may be relevant.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: GUEST,Julia
Date: 17 Apr 14 - 08:46 PM

Thanks Jack - I should have been more specific. These need to be songs about "American" farms I think as they are meant to celebrate the midwest / specifically Iowan experience. "Hoorah for the farmer" songs in general would work perhaps from the British Isles tradition.

Any one? thanks so much!
J

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Apr 14 - 08:00 PM

Soviet collective farm songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W92FXCRXXM

Maori kumara-planting songs (ok, not very large scale by mechanized standards, but the largest scale they could organize as a collective activity):

http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-CowYest-t1-body-d1-d15.html

Songs of rice cultivation in South-East Asia:

The Spiritual Side of Rice (PDF)

Subject: Lyr Req: Songs about large farming
From: GUEST,Julia L
Date: 17 Apr 14 - 07:36 PM

Hello - a friend needs some songs about large scale farming (in praise of)
The Farmer is the Man..
any others?