No regional songs of the northern US ??

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: M.Ted
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 02:35 PM

I think the answer that makes the most sense is the idea that Michael Morris mentions, relating to sentiment and nostalgia--

The "South" mentioned in songs is a sentimental place, kind of a place in the heart, not a real place, which represents home to everyone who feels displaced--

"Back East" tends to be used for home in songs in the same way, but "Out West" tend to represent aspirations and dreams, both realized and unrealized--"Up North" is used like "Out West"--

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: moongoddess
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 02:55 PM

Try looking at Wickford Express and their many original songs about Rhode Island in particular, and sea songs in general. The late Jody gibson wrote one about HMS Rose when it was docked in RI. My favorite Jon Campbell song is Fredericks of Galilee. He has many others that are worth looking at.

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: PoppaGator
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 03:32 PM

Well, one thing about the South is that there have always been black people there, and the African element in American music is definitely a positive trait that made American music unique from the earliest days of colonization.

The merging of African and European musical elements that took place in the American South created genres and subgenres that are now popular all over the world (blues, gospel, jazz, soul, rock, and even to a certain extent country-and-western).

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: Goose Gander
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 07:45 PM

"What 'warts' are you referring to and why are you inferring that the North does not have them?"

I was alluding to the fact that many of the nineteenth century popular songs that celebrate the South take a romanticized view of the plantation system and chattel slavery. The North obviously had some severe social problems during the nineteenth century (particularly in urban areas), but they weren't the type of problems that generally inspired sentimental songs.

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 07:54 PM

Does Yankee Doodle count?

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: Charley Noble
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 10:32 PM

Glad to hear Craig Johnston's songs of the U.P. of Michigan mentioned.

"Maine" gets frequently mentioned in songs such as "John Henry" but probably because we're in one corner of this great country and we're an easy rhyme!

I don't think that anyone has mentioned Bill Morrisey's New England mill town songs such as "Snow Outside the Mill." One of my all time favorite songs was composed by a California young woman who hitch-hiked into Bar Harbor one summer, worked as a waitress, and came up with "Winter & I" in memory of her landlord. What a haunting song, celebrating the Maine that's left after the summer folks have gone south!

Gosh, there are so many lumberjack songs I could mention, ice cutting songs, songs from the Grand Banks fisheries, even a few that I've composed such as "Bailey's Mistake."

Say, Wesley, were you just trying to provoke some response? What part of this country are you from?

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: GUEST,julia
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 11:43 PM

Land of the silver birch, home of the beaver
Where still the mighty moose wanders at will
Blue Lake and Rocky Shore
I will return once more.................

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 12:44 AM

All things considered, your title for this thread is WAY off the mark. --- There are thousands of songs from the northern latitudes!!

First, though, it's sad we've lost much of our feel for the regionalism that use to be a huge part of the reality of life in the USA.

The Northern areas produced songs about that area and the people that lived there---and how they made their livings. Great Lakes songs were and are a part of the big historical panorama. LEE MURDOCK does at least a couple hundred (maybe three or four hundred) of those maritime ballads and work songs. The LUMBERJACK ballads can still be heard at northen folk festivals. Farmers songs--Canal songs---river songs. All sorts of work related ballads.

BUT with a music business that sells the same basic product to the East coast and the West coast---the northern tier of states and the southern too----it is just easier to produce a packaged-for-sale uniform music everywhere. One size fits all. -- So that's what they do. Pretty soon nobody remembers the native home-grown songs.

We ALL know that the American west produced hundreds of songs---real western folk songs---and real western fake songs.

Yep, you have got a great treasure hunt for the northern songs ahead of you, if you'll take the challenge.

A good place to start is in the D.T. right here at Mudcat. Lurking there for the taking, between the lines of these songs, are real musical documents of people who lived, loved and worked at the local jobs and industries. Before they died, they took the time to put their observations into the lyrics of their vivid ballad tales.

I've always felt that folksingers had to get used to living with ghosts. It comes with the territory. We owe those long gone unknown song carriers and writers a huge debt of gratitude!! The songs they left here are, to my way of thinking, their immortality.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 01:07 AM

An excellent question though, since it has stimulated a great thread!

In addition to the song types already mentioned above, there are also like a bazillion ethnic songs and tunes--think polka music just for one! It's everywhere!

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 01:11 AM

From Old Town School of Music's website comes this interesting "northern song" tidbit:

Greensleeves
Harvard University's first professor of English was Francis James Child, a specialist in early English language and literature. He wrote and lectured on the works of great masters like Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare. He is best known though, for his five volume edition The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, published in the years 1882-89.
    Child plowed through a hundred years worth of published manuscripts and narrative collections and culled 305 titles which he considered to be original source material, a Herculean task to be sure. "The Child Ballads" collection stands as a most important historical document in the world of English language folk songs.
    "Greensleeves" is one of the most beautiful and cherished melodies in the Anglo song tradition. Francis Child notes that "It's earliest mention is in September 1580 when a Richard Jones had licensed to him 'A New Northern Dittye' of the Lady Green Sleeves."
    It is widely acknowledged that Lady Green Sleeves was at the very least a promiscuous young woman and perhaps a prostitute. The reference to the color of her sleeves indicates the grass stains from a recent rendezvous with a suitor.

Sources:
• Folk Ballads of the English Speaking World, edited by Albert B. Friedman. Viking.
• Reprints from People's Songs Bulletin, edited by Irwin Silber. Oak Publications.
Recordings on file by: Frank Hamilton, Pete Seeger.

BTW, where would we locate that rather infamous Okie, north or south? I'd say Midwest, meself...

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 01:46 AM

How about suffragette songs?

Colonial songs. And more.

So much blues,jazz, bebop, etc music is from the "northern region".

And labor songs like those mentioned at the Wiki Wobblies page. And then check out their List of protest songs page!


Then there is the treasure trove at the American Memory website's California page.

This Wiki page
has samples of different Native American tribal songs from the north/midwest/west. And even more.

Wiki also has this brilliant page that not only gives an overview of American music history, but clickable links for music from all 50 states! How cool is THAT?

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 01:37 PM

For 22 years I did shows and workshops in schools. I would hand out maps of mostly just the outline of the United States. Substituted for placenames on that map, I had typed in "song titles" on general geographic areas of the country. The NORTH, SOUTH, WEST, WEST COAST, EAST COAST, CANADA too----and also the Florida Keys, Bahamas, and all the islands.

The Great Lakes were prominent---and I did notate major rivers as the emigration routes the people often used to more easily penetrate the wilderness.

The students would color in the different areas of the map which were indicated by broken lines.

And then we would travel from East to West, more or less like the migration routes, as I sang the unique songs from all these regions.

The maps were very colorful when the workshops were ended!! Nice mementos of our musical journey.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: CapriUni
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 02:10 PM

I would hand out maps of mostly just the outline of the United States. Substituted for placenames on that map, I had typed in "song titles" on general geographic areas of the country.

OOh, what a fantastic idea! Do you have any of those old maps around? And would it be possible to scan them, and put them online so we could all see them?

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: Wesley S
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 04:39 PM

Art - True - This was not a good title for this thread. If I'd had the room I would have called this thread " Why is it that songs about going back to live in the sunny south are more plentiful and better known than songs about how I can't wait to get back to my home in the north of the United States"

For the record I was born in Minnisota but currently live in Texas.

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: Charley Noble
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 05:00 PM

Wesley-

Thanks for the clarification.

Well, how about "Eight More Miles to Louisville" for coming back home to the middle of the country after "I've been down the two coastlines, I've traveled everywhere..."

Then there's "Shafted in Shaftsburg" for Michigan with its refrain of "I've been shafted in Shaftsburg, Come on and get shafted too!" That's an open invitation to "experience" a small town just north of East Lansing.

"Song for the Mira" for our friends further north in Canada.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 05:00 PM

Maybe southerners are more verbal about how much they love their home ground, for whatever reasons. I think New Englanders (for example) are just as emotionally tied to their region but don't necessarily dwell on the sentiment of it in song. In fact, after spending many a jam doing songs like the Tennessee Waltz, Kentucky Waltz, Alabama Waltz, etc. I looked for one about Connecticut (where I live) and didn't find one. So I wrote one, feeling just as much affection for my home state as anyone in the south. Also, the music I happen to love had its origins in the south, so many of the songs are by and about things southern. That's probably changing, as the music spreads around the world.

Art, what a great school program that must have been!

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: pdq
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 05:17 PM

Most people who hail from Brooklyn or the Bronx are happy they left. There may, however, be exceptions.

Here is the start to nostalgic ditty on that subject:

                            I recall stains upon the concrete

                            Where Louie Cora fell

                            And just around the corner

                            Them bullet holes sure look swell

                            The burned-out basement is still there

                            Where they took out "Snitch" Mandell

                            Oh, my home town Brooklyn

                            I remember it so well

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 05:20 PM

Is that the song Ed Norton wrote?   No wait, it was Swannee River.

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 05:26 PM

And from a central Minnesotan "of a certain age", "It's Minneapolis at Aquatennial Time!" Does anyone else alive remember that one?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 07:23 PM

I've never been to Brooklyn, but my son lives there and LOVES it. I also have ancestors who immigrated to this country, lived in the Bronx and finally did well enough to get out and move out to the "country" like Yonkers (also in NY). The next generation was really adventurous and moved to Connecticut! None of them went to the south (although some of the older ones are now moving to Florida). Some relatives moved from the west to the northeast. Hey, maybe there's a northern gene, and people who have it don't sing about it, but just quietly know what they like best... Maybe it's a superiority complex. Maybe the northern culture is not a sing-about-your-home kind of culture. Maybe we're just weird.

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 09:58 PM

Capri Uni,

I believe my TRAD Songs O The USA Workshop Map is on the web already---within my 40 Years Of Folk Scene Photos etc. website.

Go to http://rudegnu.com/art_thieme.html

Then use the word "mudcat" as the "user name" and as the "password" to get in there.

If you search there with the word "map" you can probably go right to it. Either way, I'm sure it's up there.

I was very honored when one of my mentors, SAM HINTON, liked my song map idea enough to use it for his own repertoire in his shows and workshops. So I put Sam Hinton's song map of the USA up there too!

Wesley S,

Check out Minnesotan, Charlie Maguire's song called, "I LIKE IT IN DULUTH"-- It's a winner!!! Charlie wrote many other songs about that state. He's a singing ranger up there today--even as we speak.

And Peter & Lou Berryman's Wisconsin songs. Many of those. They are wonderful, and they prompted someone to say once that "The songs of Peter and Lou Berryman can take all the credit, and most of the blame, for making Michael Cooney FUNNY!"

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 10:27 PM

As to great Minnesota musicians, there is also Larry Long, Barb Tilsen, Claudia Schmidt (OK, so I think she is a blow in), Bill Staines, Koerner Ray and Glover (well, it used to be anyway), Paul Metsa, Ross Sutter, Carrie Newcomer, Bill Hinkley and Judy Larson, Bob Bouvee and Gail Heil, Carla Vogel, Leo and Kathy Lara, and god only knows who all I've left out and that's just the Cities folks. I haven't even started in with the North Shore musicians, the rangers, the polka and mariachi players, etc.

Oh yeah, I forgot Curtis and Loretta. And those is just the folks dat sang. There is all dem udder folk wot play tunes...

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: katlaughing
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 10:35 PM

Art! Glad you came in here. I can't wait to see one of those maps...lucky kids. I'll bet they never forgot those lessons!!

Thanks!

kat

Subject: RE: No regional songs of the northern US ??
From: Wesley S
Date: 12 Aug 05 - 12:49 PM

I was in Duluth visiting my grandparents once in May and they were still chopping boats out of the ice on Lake Superior. Brrr....