Help: How's It Done?

Subject: How's It Done?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 05:53 PM

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

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: Jim the Bart
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 06:26 PM

I also love back stories, and have often heard or read quite contradictory versions of how a song came about.I would suppose that you'd have to treat a song like any historical document, making sure to approach this process with a certain amount of caution.

Facts are such slippery things and hard to be sure of. It's imperative that you cross check all of your sources, even when there are few source documents available. A lot of "subtexts" and back stories, which seem to shed such a wonderful light, are self-serving bits of revisionist history. If we were to believe Jerry Lee Lewis' accounts, we'd believe he invented rock 'n'roll practically single handed. Inaccuracies get repeated, transliterated, and referenced to the point where one bad commentary is used to prove another, which was in reality it's source. "Lore" can be nothing more than "word dancing" (as in, "boy, could he make those words dance"), whether it's done in reference to the origin of a song or of anything else. But I'm just an amateur student of history; I hope some of the heavy-hitting musicologists weigh in on your question.

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: Big Mick
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 06:38 PM

I am anxious to see where this thread goes. I would hope that Sandy Paton and Art Thieme would jump in and get us started down the path. I am very interested in this subject. thanks for starting this thread.

Mick

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: GUEST,Joerg
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 09:47 PM

Mhm, very good thread. It's a pity that I haven't got he time to add my own thoughts at the moment but I'm interested in yours, so I think a simple refresh won't hurt.

Joerg

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: GUEST,Lyle
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 10:49 PM

There are, I suppose, as many ways of doing research on music as there are music researchers. I think what you have discovered, Praise, is the form or format that you would like to persue or peruse. That, to me is what makes this whole business of music so interesting. I have a couple areas that I'm interested in, and if I ever get the time, I hope to do a lot with it; I'm still in the collecting stage now. One of the things that interests me is the small changes (that sometimes lead to major changes) that are made in songs according to the REGION where they were collected.

For me, the exciting part is that someone like myself with absolutly no musical talent can still do more than just listen to music.

Lyle

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: Jim the Bart
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 10:50 PM

I've been very interested in Gene Clark (ex-Byrd) lately and have read a few differing accounts of why he quit the band. The official story was a fear of flying, but there is also speculation that the dough he was getting from songwriter royalties gave him an income that the others didn't have, which led to jealousy, which led to a reduction in his role in the band (No, David will play rhythm guitar, you just hold the tambourine), which led to his exit. As I was trying to get at in my last post, the truth is hard to pin down.

I tend to think there's at least a little bit of truth in both stories. This leads me to re-read Gene Clark's song "Set You Free This Time".
"It wasn't how it was set up to be, but I'll set you free this time" All the lyrics describe a man facing what he sees to be a painful (and unnecessary) breakup. Maybe it's more than just a very sad, beautiful love song.

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: Sorcha
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 11:47 PM

Sooz, look at this thread, it will give you some clues. Also, Malcolm D is really good at this, and so is Bruce O. You might want to PM Malcolm, or e mail Bruce from his website .

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: Les B
Date: 25 Aug 00 - 12:47 AM

My, you can learn a new word every week here on the 'Cat ! (Exi-whatsis)

I've found in basic research on older songs that the intent and meanings have sometimes shifted in odd ways. I tend to go for the simplest, most straightforward explanations, and always think of somebody's quote "History is the lie we all agree to!"

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: Anglo
Date: 25 Aug 00 - 02:41 AM

Pardon the pedantry, but let's not add to the far-too-rampant verbifying of the language. "Exegesis" is a noun. So is "exegete," a person who practices the above. You don't exegete a text any more than you genete something (trying a parallel back-formation from genesis).

And as far as songs are concerned, you can try to analyse what the text is about on any number of different levels. So when someone says of, say, "I am stretched on your grave" as ugh, necrophilia, I say let's remember this is poetry, and think of the notion of metaphor. You can't read everything literally.

(Dismounts from bandwagon and goes to the kitchen for a beer, exit stage left).

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: SeanM
Date: 25 Aug 00 - 02:45 AM

Back to the original...

I'm an amateur researcher. Well, prob'ly almost all of those who do are amateurs, but I'm REALLY amateur.

I'll hazard a guess that what I do is the smaller version of what the real pros do - if you want background, you research your background sources. Then, you contact your real sources. Due to the blurring of time, memory, and print, more often than not between the two lies the truth.

Oh yeah... and realize some songs just are. Period. No amount of research is EVER gonna dig 'em up.

M

Subject: Researching Folk Songs
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Aug 00 - 04:12 AM

My favorite threads are the ones that really tear a song apart, and trace back all the leads and the history and the related songs, as far back as they go. We've had good luck with some of them. I think the Internet is a great tool for this sort of research - and it's getting better every day.

You do have to watch your sources, though, because not all are as credible as they might seem. I have a copy of The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles. It's a lovely book, nicely laid out and quite complete in what it covers - mostly the better-known Child ballads.
Then I found out (click here). It seems that when Niles was missing information, he filled in the gaps. Apparently, he fabricated a good deal of the information he published, which makes all of his work lack credibility. Too bad. He did some good stuff, but he should have been careful to differentiate between what was authentic and what was his own work.
I think I have most of the songbooks compiled by John and Alan Lomax, god the Father and god the Son of American folk music; and I'm happy to have them and use them a lot. Sometime last year, I was using some Lomax books to research a couple of songs, and I realized that much of the explanatory material in the Lomax books doesn't explain anything. Many times, they may tell a story that is vaguely related to the song, but it actually says nothing about the song itself. I asked Sandy Paton about it, and he kind of burst my Lomax balloon. It seems the Lomaxes are at times a bit lacking in their scholarship. This thread may open your eyes a bit.

So, I figured the best way to get a start was to lean on Sandy. I asked him for suggestions, and he sent me an introductory list and keeps adding to it. It would cost me gazillions of dollars to buy every book on his list, but it would be worth it. I haven't gone that far, but I've accumulated a pretty good collection. I get the biggest kick out of the e-mails I get from Sandy and from Dale Rose and Gene Graham, telling me about this or that bargain I can get at eBay or at www.bookfinder.com. I've taken their advice many times, and I've found some real treasures. Bob Bolton also gave me a list of Australian stuff I had to have. You can find a pretty good list of folk music reference material in the thread called A Basic Folk Library. You may be surprised to find that many of these books are in your local library, but some of us have gotten to the point where we beat the local library by a long shot.

If you're going to go off on the adventure of researching a song, be careful. Keep track of your sources, and don't be too quick to believe anybody. There's a lot of sloppy scholarship out there. If you post information about a song, remember that people may actually read what you say and believe you - so maybe you'd better be a bit careful about your scholarship. If you're guessing about something or if you question something you've found, say so - don't quote it as if it were gospel truth.

There are lots of good resources listed on our links page. My favorites are the Traditonal Ballad Index, the Levy Sheet Music Site, the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress, the Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads, Mudcatter Bruce Olson's Web Site, Mudcatter Lesley N's contemplator site, Folk Music: an Index to Recorded Resources, and the UTK Song Index at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, which gives me an easy index to most of the songbooks that are taking over my living room.

Another thing you can do is just click on the name of Sandy Paton in any of his posts, and you'll find a wealth of information. Same with the posts of Art Thieme, Frank Hamilton, and several others. Sandy, though, is the real scholar. I wish he's write a book, but I guess we'll have to be happy with the wonderful booklets that come with his Folk-Legacy recordings. Sandy has done two CD's of recordings of traditional songs he collected in the field. One is called Brave Boys: New England Traditions in Folk Music. the other is a very recent release, Ballads and Songs of Tradition. Another must-have traditional music collection is Frank and Anne Warner Collection: Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still. Other very important recordings are Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music (Vol 1-3) and Volume 4. I also should mention Rounder's extensive (and expensive) Alan Lomax Collection. I suppose my Mentor Sandy would also like me to mention the 2-disc collections that are available at Yazoo Records, particularly "How Can I Keep From Singing?" and "The Story That the Crow Told Me. I imagine he'll have me buy the entire Yazoo catalogue by the time he's done.
And I won't mind a bit. I've learned an awful lot here, especially from Sandy Paton.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 25 Aug 00 - 09:39 AM

Oh my! Joe! Amazing bounty! And the time to type and link all that in!

(Pastors do use exegete as a verb, BTW, must be just shop talk, and scuse the misspelling)

So.... when one has done this research, how does it change the experience of performing or otherwise sharing the song? Can you share a story about this?

~S~

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: Jim the Bart
Date: 25 Aug 00 - 09:53 AM

Joe - WOW - Thanks

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 25 Aug 00 - 10:11 AM

My local State library is an absolute beauty and has some uncommon features. It has a staff of fulltime specialist music librarians. It has many thousands of music titles and some hundreds of folk related titles, many of them with music scores. Best of all I can borrow quite rare books for periods of up to a month at a time.

If only I had more time to devote to research! I tend to concentrate on lost tunes, but in truth there are thousands of songs out there that are not chronicled on the DT. The task is endless. Regards, John

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 25 Aug 00 - 10:32 AM

So.. once you have those sources, Joe, whaddaya DO with them?

And how does it spill over into the people hearing you do the songs?

I have PM'd everyone mentioned thus far. Please, if you know anyone else who would be interested in this thread, go ahead and message them, OK?

I plan to check out all the links provided over the next week.

Keep the stories coming, of how you did the research, and how it changed your sense of the song(s)!

~S~

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: Big Mick
Date: 25 Aug 00 - 11:14 AM

Well, Maudy, we need to bookmark another one!!!! This thread, just as I suspected needs to go on the "must read" list for any serious folkie. Add to the long list of things that Joe Offer must be thanked for, his post above. And, of course, thanks must go to my friend, Sandy Paton for the role of teacher that he plays for all of us so very well. For those who haven't, may I strongly recommend that you follow Joe's links and read each thread entirely. If by the end of that post and those links you aren't started down the road that has no end, I am not sure what will start you.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: GUEST,Joerg
Date: 25 Aug 00 - 09:28 PM

To avoid what I'm thinking is wrong in that context...

There is music but there are also SONGS.
There is history but there are also STORIES.
There is research but there is also ... er ... INTEREST? ... too weak ... er ... FASCINATION??? ... sounds too cold ... er ... er ... love????????? ... er ...

Joerg

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 25 Aug 00 - 09:39 PM

Dedication?

Commitment?

Obsession?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 01:46 PM

How do you exegete a song? 1)know how old it is 2)know what part of the world it came from 3)learn the meaning of unusual or obsolete words 4)remember background facts that apply to it, things from history, religion, superstions - whatever. 5)use common sense.

An example of using common sense: I heard Martin Carthy start "The two sisters" with "Here's two little sisters walking along..." Now the sisters were princesses and adults, so probably it was once "two royal sisters". So that's how I sing it. This is an example of folk process. I'm a folk too, aren't I?

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: GUEST,Joerg
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 08:30 PM

Dave - thanks for your ... er ... let me say "also not understanding". Which means I think you know what I was trying to say. Is that understanding or not understanding? Understanding, of course (IMHO).

Joerg

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 28 Aug 00 - 03:04 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 29 Aug 00 - 12:32 AM

Joe and Big Mick flatter me beyond belief. I don't know a fraction of what, say, Joe Hickerson knows, or Bruce Olson (especially in reference to the Broadside ballads). Our Mudcat Irish scholars make most of us look like uninformed dunces. I've read a lot of books about folk music, and I've collected a number of songs and ballads in the field, but I am not truly a scholar. I've observed that autodidacts are often pretty well informed on the subject of their primary interest, but woefully uninformed in others. That's me, for sure.

I was just writing the note for Frank Proffitt's recording of "Tom Dooley" which is included on the CD we are about to release of his first Folk-Legacy recording. I had actually forgotten about the fanciful tale Lomax wrote concerning the "Yankee schoolteacher Grayson" in his introduction to the song in Folksong USA. Reading of the case in the Frank Brown collection, which includes extensive newspaper accounts relating to the murder of Laura Foster, the capture of Tom, the trial and the execution, I realized that the Lomax story was pure folklore. BUT (and this is important, I think) he may have misinformed us regarding the facts of the case, but he may have given us a way of thinking about the song that could enlighten our interpretation of it. The academic side of me finds it necessary to burst the romantic bubble, darn it, but the folklore in the Lomax tale is still kinda fun. D. K. Wilgus would have called it fakelore, but Wilgus was a genuine scholar. I'm just an old folkie who enjoys learning something about the songs he sings. That's why I drag Caroline up the Big Sandy river, or across the Ohio to Shawneetown, or over to Cairo, Illinois -- it's because we sing songs about those areas and we want to be able to visualize them when we sing 'em. Make sense?

I remember Art Thieme telling me how much he liked to arrive early in a small town where he was booked to do a program. It gave him time to visit the local historical society and learn something about where he was! I thought to myself, why didn't I do that? Then I remembered that when I sang, for instance, in the school in Sundance, Wyoming, I barely had time to catch my breath before the program began and then had to split immediately following it because there was another school fifty miles down the road expecting me in an hour. Same story in Ouray, Colorado, or Lawton, Oklahoma, or Lead, South Dakota. So I read a lot of regional history, along with the folklore books. Probably don't retain as much of it as I would if I were facing a final exam at the end of the term, but I was never comfortable in a classroom. Hated 'em, in fact!

With songs, I look at or listen to as many versions of a song as I can find, and then try to learn the one that speaks most clearly to me. Lowry C. Wimberley's study of the Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads has given me some significant insights. You might want to read that, as a good starter.

Sandy

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 29 Aug 00 - 12:48 AM

Dang! Another book for me to buy...
Thanks, Sandy.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 05:01 PM

I apologize for not getting back to this thread sooner. I have been having computer problems and some threads have seemed all locked up, but I have commandeered another computer while mine defrags and I will go see ALL those links!!!!!

What if we took a song and exegeted it here? I would still like to know more about the song Cindy Mangsen sings, The Wren. What I learned in a past thread was not enough, and the song and its possible meaning still haunts me. I will try to find the past thread on it to link in as a starting point, and let's exegete all toegether so we can see how, and I can ask about the process as we go. Yes? Move that over to that thread?

~S~

~S~

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 05:10 PM

I'm sorry, I am temporarily on a computer that I can't do the blue clicky with. The Wren thread is at:

http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=17900&messages=21

~S~

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: Peter T.
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 05:32 PM

I was once at a conference on the German philosopher Heidegger and one of his ex-students talked about a conversation they had had about exegetical work on poems -- Heidegger thought that knowing the background of a poem would either drag one down if you were a pedant, or (and this was the part that became philosophically complex) it would ground the reciter in a kind of spaciousness that might not be obvious, but would appear unconsciously. The implicit surroundings of the poem would seep into the recitation. The argument that ensued was whether this could be a substitute for traditional learning that would have the same or a similar "spaciousness", or to change the metaphor, "rootedness" ("Only the rooted tree can spread its branches" was the last phrase he used). As far as I can tell, this kind of distinction (in different language) is present in folk circles.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: Jim the Bart
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 06:26 PM

This is purely me thinking "out loud": A folk song is "rooted" in an area or location and develops, incorporating elements of the environs in which it is sung, heard and passed along. It is then "uprooted" to a new locale. The folk process continues, as names and places are adjusted to reflect the new locale in which it is again sung, heard and passed along. Is it the same song? 50 years later, how does the exegesis look?

On the other hand, movement of people from place to place has undoubtedly resulted in the melding of songs, as the melody of one is attached to the premise of another. Similar song ideas from different cultures often "cross-pollinate" (I happen to know for a fact that the Polish folk tune "The Too Fat Polka" was actually written about a girl of another nationality, which will remain unmentioned. But I digress.)It seems to me that "fakelore" is probably a lot more common than documented fact, when it comes to this.IMHO, the problem in establishing a songs roots beyond question creates a different kind of spaciousness than that referred to in the Heidegger reference above. There is, for example, a mythic space that a song like Tom Dooley inhabits that may be as satisfying in its own way as the geographic or historic.

Subject: RE: Help: How's It Done?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 31 Aug 00 - 04:12 PM

I think what got me so excited about exegesis of folk songs was not to solve the question of how or when a song began-- although that is interesting and important-- but the idea that works with Bible exegesis, which is to reveal the underlying meanings of text and the situations from which it sprang or in which it was sung later.

You know. Like suddenly finding out that Mother Goose rhymes, charmimg in themselves, were all political at the time. Or that the Book of Revelation in the Bible was meant as a comment on the times as much as its other possible meanings....

So for me, I think I glimpse what Peter is saying, in that the more I understand about the songs, the more of ME is singing it. This should translate beyond me as the singer to make an experience for the listener that is driven as much by my internal, spirit-understanding as by the palpable words and tones produced.

Yes? Is that what those of you who do this research experience? Am I getting close to understanding?

~S~