More Appalachia + Songster

With this project, I aimed to illustrate the essence of murder ballads (but didn’t necessarily mean for it to look like a murder scene – shouldn’t have used so much red!). Barbry Allen was my main influence, with its Romeo and Juliet-like storyline. The song stands out initially due to its length, but is compelling and provocative in its classic tale of unrequited love culminating in death. The way Jean Ritchie sings it is quite eerie and effective, similar to her treatment of The Cuckoo. To quote Cecil Sharp:

“how far from that gentle tune was this - so strange, so remote, so thrilling.”

One passage of the Cecil Sharp article in particular caught my attention…

“Folk music is the product of an unselfconscious peasantry; a peasantry which refuses to transmit the eccentricities of any individual; which simply omits and forgets what does not belong to the spirit of the people...  But this is a doleful theory to propound to Americans who feel the urge of nationality.  How can we have any folk music?  We are in the clutches of compulsory education.”

What does Sharp mean by this? What is “unselfconscious peasantry”? Does this mean a peasantry in which one’s societal rank is not questioned, in which no attempt is made to improve one’s condition? Culture is not monolithic, and I contest his claim that folk music stems from such a culture… and what exactly is the role of compulsory education in discounting folk music? Does education not contribute to the “spirit of the people”? Is an educated population unable to produce songs of a quality comparable to those created by the peasantry?

So many questions, very little answers…

On a brighter note, this week also included one of my favorite S&P songs to sing: Down by the Sally Gardens. J

Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor is my favorite Mississippi John Hurt song. Funnily, I always imagine a wooden pallet on the floor even though I know he is singing of a bed… MJH is described to have a gentle, guileless voice - the word guileless describes his ingenuity perfectly, and I would characterize Ollie Gilbert in the same way, though her voice is raw rather than gentle. It’s interesting that John Hurt adopted the nickname Mississippi, given that his musical roots and style are distinguished as “un-Mississippi”. The fact that his greatest influence was himself and his own musical insights reveals his innate musicality.

Candy Man is unembellished in the way that it can be taken at face value just as a fun song to sing and listen to. Realistically, its myriad of versions with drastically different lyrics suggests some sort of meaning within the song. As for me, I love the way it takes me back to New Orleans, with its imagery of jolliness, beer, and salty alligator hot dogs.

P.S. San Francisco Bay Blues is also one of my favorites. So many great songs!