Category Archives: Musical

Family Reunion (life cycle celebration)

“Growing up [my family and I] always went to [our family reunion]. We usually met in a church. Mom’s dad and all his brother’s and sisters, and all of us, we’d gather to eat and see each other – fried chicken, cream corn, corn bread, green beans, etc. We’d all just catch up and [my mom] and her sisters would sing for everyone – something folky – and then we’d take pictures. So me and granddad and grandma and mom and dad and me and my brothers, and all my first and second cousins were all in one picture, and then other sides or groups of thee family would take their own.”

My informant told me all about the family reunions he attended annually as he was growing up. He doesn’t attend them anymore, as many of those family members have passed away or become busy with their own families.

When I asked him what the reunion meant to him-

“We did it every year, in the summer – usually August. It was nice out, it was nice to see each other. We’re usually all scattered about. I love my family, I like talking to them, catching up with them.”

He is from North Carolina, part of the southern United States, he recounts, but couldn’t specify folk music shared among his family, and the food he described distinctly stuck out as traditional southern comfort food. As his family is not normally all together is this larger collective, it must feel quite nostalgic to come together and share these songs and classic food together.

He also speaks about the photos they always took, and though he didn’t speak on this himself, I wonder about how each picture changes through every passing year and how the image of their family dynamics change. It sounds like his family, whether it is intentional or not, were preserving this knowledge and part of their families history through photography.

May Day Dance Performance

Ritual Dance Performance:

At the informant’s elementary school in Hawaii, every May Day there is a celebration where the students perform traditional Hawaiian song and dance.

Context:

The informant went to elementary school in Hawaii and moved to California in the fourth grade. Within her four years of elementary school in Hawaii, this annual celebration was a very big deal, and she spent one day each week practicing Hula throughout the year in preparation for the May Day dance performances. 

Analysis: 

The performance of traditional Hawaiian song and dance on May Day in the informant’s elementary school, as well as the largeness of the May Day celebration, is a clear example of a folk group actively keeping their culture alive. Especially in places like Hawaii that have become part of larger countries like the United States, it is evidently very important to find ways to keep cultural practices thriving. It is clear that celebrations like these are done with the intention to pass culture along to the youth, as well as to celebrate said culture together. Performances of traditional song and dance provide community members with a sense of shared identity as well, likely aiding in making the informant’s school’s May Day celebration so excitedly anticipated throughout each year. Celebrations involving song and dance are very good ways of keeping culture alive and celebrated, because in music and dance performances, everyone involved can participate to some extent, whether they are the performers or audience members.

Row Your Boat Parody; Swim Ye Sperm

Informant was a teacher of sixth grade science for several years at a private, US K-12 school in the South.

Swim, swim, swim you sperm
From the testicles
to the epididymis
and onto vas deferens
Snack, snack, snack you sperm
on the sweets galore
From the seminal vesicle
not the grocery store
On, on, on you go
through the donut hole,
the prostate press
shoots you out
It is the great escape! 
(last line preformed as goodness what a mess, but when dictated out loud this was the last line used)
Swim, Swim, Swim Ye Sperm Preformed

Informant created this parody of row, row, row your boat for her sixth grade science classes when they learned the reproductive system. Her goal was to ease some of the awkwardness of the subject of genitals for middle school students by having them sing a silly, goofy song to both help them remember the reproductive system and to normalize the discussion of the topic. The other teacher that taught sixth grade students did not teach their students the song, so it became an identifiable marker of who was or was not in the informant’s class or associated with her. Additionally, because the song was so absurd, students often remembered the informant by this song she taught them.

As the informant’s daughter and with features that bare resemblance to her, I would be approached by random students several times throughout my years at the school she taught at. They would ask “Are you [informant]’s daughter?”, and when I replied that I was, they would explain that they were in her sixth grade science class and still remembered the song she taught them and then they would sing it to me.

The American School System has a long history of lacking when it comes to sexual education. Many students’ sex education can be summed up by the word “abstinence”. Although the private school this song was taught at did not have an extensive or even satisfactory sex education, it did have material covering the reproductive systems of males and females and how they worked individually. The conservative approach to the discussion of sex, sexual organs, and sexuality leads to those subjects being taboo both in school and outside of it. The informant’s use of a well know song to ground the subject in something well known and her parodying it with a subject rarely discussed provide a medium by which her students could comfortably and socially acceptably learn and talk about the reproductive systems that were taboo up until that time in their lives. She would sing the song to them first before they had to do it with her to ease tension and let them know it was okay to say or sing all of those words in her class. The need for such a song is indicative of the long standing taboo treatment of sex.

The Big D

Nationality: Dallas, TX
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Language: English

Text:

Residents of Dallas refer to it as “the Big D.”

Context:

The informant lived in Dallas for 17 years, and grew up knowing this nickname for her hometown.

Interpretation:

Preliminary research points towards this nickname originating from the song with the same name, “Big D” from the 1956 musical The Most Happy Fella. The name popularized when Bing Crosby recorded the song, and stuck when a columnist at Dallas Morning News titled his column “Big D.” Since then, residents of Dallas have continued to call their city “the Big D” without necessarily knowing the origin of the nickname.

The longevity of the nickname may be more due to its function as a double entendre than the timelessness origins. Though the nickname remains the same, the meaning behind it changes, so that new generations believe their hometown nickname is unironically an epithet for genitalia.

Barney Parody Song

“Joy to the world, Barney’s dead
We barbecued his head!”

Context: The informant is a junior at USC, originally from Illinois. She told me that children from her elementary school would sing this song to the same tune as “Joy to the World,” and while there’s more to the song, she doesn’t remember it. She hasn’t sung it in a very long time and does remember there being different versions of the song as well. The “Barney” referenced is Barney the purple dinosaur from the children’s show Barney & Friends.

Analysis: From my experience, a lot of elementary schools had parody songs related to violence against Barney, but this was the first I had heard of that wasn’t actually to the tune of the show’s theme song. Regardless, this, as per Jay Mechling’s chapter in Elliott Oring’s Folk Groups and Folklore Genres, reflects one of the antithetical categories of children’s folklore: parodies. Violence against Barney is a purposeful subversion of the show’s theme (a theme that starts with “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family”) and, considering Barney was a cornerstone of many childhoods, almost seems to function as a rejection of that childishness. I think that as we grow up, it becomes “cool” to be more like the older kids; it becomes “cool” to associate with more taboo concepts like sex and violence. It becomes “uncool” to continue to believe in the blissfully unrealistic world Barney portrays, or to engage in displays of earnest emotion. Parodying violence against Barney seems to function as a way to divorce oneself from that childishness and start moving more towards adulthood. It reinforces social dynamics between age groups and shames those who still like things deemed as “childish,” defining social norms that persist far beyond childhood.