Category Archives: Musical

Rockin, Rollin, Ridin!

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/7/18
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: KK: My mom used to sing this song to us, when we were falling asleep and stuff, and for the life of me I can’t ever figure out where it came from. She went: “Tommy’s at the engine, someone rings the bell, Sarah holds the lantern, to show that all is well, rockin rollin ridin, all along the rails, heading for morning town, many miles away.” It’s about a train, if you couldn’t tell, but I have no idea where she got that song, but she used to sing it!

 

Context: This song was sung as a lullaby when KK and her sister were young.

 

Background: KK’s mother learned this from her grandmother, who probably heard the version sung by The Seekers and turned it into a lullaby, much akin to “A Bushel and a Peck”, which is often used as lullabies as well.

 

Analysis: Turns out, upon research, this song is by The Seekers, and is called Morningtown Ride! So many people I saw said that their mother used to sing this song to them as a lullaby, so somewhere along the way this song turned into a typical lullaby. It is interesting to think about this alongside the issue of Simon and Garfunkel and their “folk” music, because even though this song was authored and created by a band and publicized, the fact that culture has taken it and turned it into a lullaby has changed it into a piece of folklore.

 

A Bushel and a Peck

Nationality: American
Age: 49
Occupation: Unemployed
Residence: Temecula
Performance Date: 4/8/18
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: CR: I always sang my daughter “a bushel and a peck”. I’m not entirely sure grandma sang it to me, but I’m gonna assume she did, and we sorta ended up having to make up our own words at the end of it because I don’t think we know what the real words are, but yeah so I sang it to my daughter, and my mom sang it to her too. Our version went, “I love you, a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck, a hug around the neck and a barrel and a heap, a barrel and a heap and I’m talking in my sleep about you.” I think grandma would sing it “a pocket full of sheep.”

 

Context: This song was sung to CR as a lullaby, and CR sung it to her daughter as a lullaby.

 

Background: CR and her husband raised their daughter with lullabies sung to her every night, because that’s how they were raised as well. This was the specific song sung to her daughter by her; her husband had a different song he would sing when he took her to bed.


Analysis: This song was originally published in 1950’s, and adopted as a part of the musical Guys and Dolls. CR’s mother probably learned it from that, or heard it on the radio one day, and started singing it to CR, who then remembered it as her childhood lullaby and passed it on to her daughter. The most interesting part of this story is that CR assumes her mother sang this to her– it may not have been! CR’s mother could very easily have sung a different lullaby, but because CR sang it to her daughter she so firmly accepts that her mother also sang it to her, because why else would she know it as a lullaby? This kind of ingrained idea is so fascinating to discover.

Chinese Folksong- Unknown Title

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 18
Occupation: student
Residence: Irvine, CA
Performance Date: 04/10/2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese, Shanghai dialect
  1. The main piece: Chinese Folksong

Chinese Folksong- Unknown Title (attached)

  1. Background information about the performance from the informant: why do they know or like this piece? Where/who did they learn it from? What does it mean to them? Etc.

“Oh! When I was little, my grandma always made me sing this song about chickens! Or, it’s not about chickens. It’s about waking up in the morning and going to work. Okay, so when I was a kid, my mom was in med school, and my dad was in residency, and so I spent a lot of time w my grandparents and that’s probably why I know more about these traditions than my sister, because my parents had more time w her. I don’t know, I spent a lot of time with my grandpa and he taught me lots of songs and stuff.”

  1. The context of the performance

“No one else knows this song. My grandpa just pulled this out of nowhere. He’s the only one in my family from the countryside in China. My grandma and my other grandparents are from more urban places.”

  1. Finally, your thoughts about the piece

The fact that no one else knows this song, according to the informant at least, shows that this piece of folklore is inherent to a specific family or small group of people. It is a piece of roots music because learning the song from her grandfather allowed the informant to learn about where specifically he was from, and how he grew up—none of her other grandparents would be able to share this song because they were not rooted in the countryside like the informant’s grandfather.

  1. Informant Details

The informant is an 18-year old Chinese-American female. While she grew up in the southern California area, she spent more time with her grandparents than her parents growing up, and felt that learning their Chinese traditions and language was the main way she bonded with them, while her younger sister never had that experience because her parents were out of school by then.

Antakshari

Nationality: Indian American
Age: 50
Residence: United States
Performance Date: 04/22/2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Telugu, Hindi, Urdu
  1. The main piece: Antakshari

“Antakshari is like a song game, right? That we, it’s an Indian thing… uh… let me see. Uh, so what happens is, we sing a song. It’s a group thing, we used to play in the bus, on picnics, going somewhere, in the evenings. You start a song, let’s say it starts with the letter a.

[informant sings] “‘Aaja sanam, Madhur chandni me hum tum.’

“So tum means it ends in ‘m’. So you have to pick a song that starts with ‘m.’ These are all Bollywood songs, I guess. So it’s the Indian consonant that ends that syllable or whatever. So ‘m.’ Uh… [long pause] I can’t think of any songs. So, you can have any number of contestants or players, and typically we only sing the first verse of the song. And then whoever can sing whatever they know, and if you can’t think of it starting with their last syllable, you’re out of the game. Antakshari, it literally means last letter. Akshara means letter, anta means end.”

  1. Background information about the performance from the informant: why do they know or like this piece? Where/who did they learn it from? What does if mean to them? Etc.

“I mean, it’s—it’s—everyone plays it in India. So all my friends around me played it. It’s been there for generations. You play it with your family, you play it with friends, you play with classmates.”

  1. The context of the performance

“Anytime we went on picnics, we used to play this. Because it’s easy to play on the bus. Like kids on schoolbus, late at night during a bonfire or sitting outside, relaxing, people play this game.”

  1. Finally, your thoughts about the piece

This song game is an interesting combination of folk music and folk games. Since Bollywood songs are generally used, but are changed to fit the needs of the game, Antakshari can be seen as turning authored music into folk music—in fact, the game creates mashups, a form of folk music. Music is an easy way for people of all ages to bond when they have little else in common, and creating unique folk music mashups together during trips and parties clearly helped build a strong sense of community in the informant’s childhood.

  1. Informant Details

The informant is a middle-aged Indian-American female. She was born in India and grew up with her two sisters in a small town near a holy river in Andhra Pradesh, the Godavari River. After moving to the United States and raising her children there, she enjoyed reminiscing on her childhood in India and sharing stories of it with her children, so that they could see the differences in their upbringings and learn about their Indian heritage.

 

This game was actually adopted into an Indian television show from 1993 to 2007—this show was called Antakshari and was a musical game show. The following news article describes the show’s popularity and some of the main actors: https://www.hindustantimes.com/tv/antakshari-annu-kapoor-pallavi-joshi-share-memories-of-iconic-musical-show/story-JoOrFIY2UYIwhb6VhOIkEJ.html.

Carnatic music

Nationality: Pakistani and Indian American
Age: 18
Occupation: student
Residence: Porter Ranch, CA
Performance Date: 04/19/2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Gujarati
  1. The main piece: Carnatic music

“So, Carnatic music is like a type of Indian classical music. I guess we have a lot of classical like music and dance things. It’s probably super ancient too. There’s two types of classical Indian music, Carnatic and Hindustani, I think? So for Carnatic, it’s actually pretty similar to whatever Western music is called. Like you know how you guys have like do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do? Or the middle C based chord thing. So in Carnatic music, the scale goes “sa-re-ga-ma-pa-da-ni-sa.” And you have this thing called a Shruthi box, which plays like “sa-pa-sa” over and over. And that helps you find your pitch and then you sing along with that. And like songs, you first learn them by singing the notes, and then you replace the notes like “sa-ga-re-ma” with lyrics or words like “rara venu” which means come come cowherd.

  1. Background information about the performance from the informant: why do they know or like this piece? Where/who did they learn it from? What does it mean to them? Etc.

“I used to sing along with a lot of Bollywood songs in our car, so my parents signed me up for classical Indian singing lessons. I learned it from this older Indian lady who actually lived in my neighborhood, so for a few years, I would walk over with my Shruthi box and my singing books and I would have to audiotape myself. I hated practicing. But in the end, I kinda miss singing.”

  1. The context of the performance

“I learned classical Indian dance around the same time. Like, I started dance when I was 5 and then singing probably when I was like 8. So I guess it taught me about, like… India? Yeah.”

  1. Finally, your thoughts about the piece

While there are many folk disciplines of dance in the world, there are not many specifically designated folk singing disciplines. The informant was entered into lessons for this folk style of singing after she used to sing more mainstream, authored songs in the car. This shows that the more mainstream songs may have reminded the informant’s parents of their Indian and Pakistani cultural singing tradition, leading them to sign their daughter up for classes to learn the original singing style which the mainstream “folk music” was derived from. This piece also shows the idea that teaching young children the older folk music traditions of the culture allows them to learn and connect more to that culture.

  1. Informant Details

The informant is an 18 year old Indian and Pakistani American female who grew up in the United States, but moved a lot as a child. While she didn’t feel close to her parents, she met her childhood best friends through local Pakistani and Indian cultural lessons such as dance classes and singing lessons, and prizes her memories of those classes.