Category Archives: Musical

Roll Calls

Nationality: Italian, english, dutch, irish
Age: 18
Occupation: student
Performance Date: 4/30/15
Primary Language: English

My informant is an 18-year-old College student who is from San Francisco. His ethnicity is Dutch, Irish, and English, and Italian.

My informant played many sports when he was growing up so I asked him if he had any sort of initiation or rites of passage within any of these sports. He remembered performing what he called, “roll calls”, on buses for football games and this act was in a way a rite of passage for some people.

Informant: “A roll call is just a four line song that you make up on the spot. It always starts the same way. So someone would start by yelling, “break em off break em off 1-2-3”, then the rest of the bus would yell the team’s name who we were on our way to play, so lets just say we were playing the dolphins, they would say, “dolphins dolphins 1-2-3”. Then the person who has the roll call would stand up. The structure of the little songs, I guess they are songs, are all the same also. Ill try to make one up right now, so, “My name is Cole”, and then everyone else on the bus yells, “yeah” in between, so let me start over. “My name is Cole” (yeah), “I’m such a bore” (yeah), “I make my friends” (yeah), “give me folklore”. They are usually really clever and target one single person. They are fun though they aren’t meant to be mean, but sometimes they get a little crazy. I think this in a way can be a rite of passage cuz like, if you are not the most popular guy, but you make a really good roll call, everyone is going to think you’re funny and you kind of earn respect in that way. It is kind of weird I know”

Analysis: I thought this was a really good example of a rite of passage. It is a little different from maybe other rites of passage that are taken more seriously and are recognized as a rite of passage. This rite of passage is not directly referred to as a rite of passage and even my informant made a comment about this and how he did not really see it as a rite of passage as it was happening, but he had realized it much later after the fact. I think there are a lot of small ways that rites of passages are conducted and many of them are not as direct as we might think. Sometimes these rites of passage take some reflecting on in order to realize their effects.

SAE Yell

Nationality: dutch, english, italian, irish
Age: 18
Occupation: student
Performance Date: 4/30/15
Primary Language: English

My informant is an 18-year-old College student who is from San Francisco. His ethnicity is Dutch, Irish, and English, and Italian.

This informant is the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon and had a hard time cornering one song that he wanted to share with me. Many of the songs that they song are sacred to the fraternity and sharing them with any outsiders can be seen as a betrayal to the rest of the fraternity so he was very careful with the one that he shared with me. He chose to share with me the “SAE Yell”.

SAE Yell:
Phi Alpha Alcazee
Phi Alpha Alcazon
Sigma Alpha, Sigma Alpha, Sigma Alpha Epsilon
Rah Rah Bon Ton Sigma Alpha Epsilon
Rah Rah Bob Ton Sigma Alpha Epsilon
Ruh Rah Ruh Rah Ruh Rah Ree
Ruh Rah Ruh Rah S-A-E!

Informant: “The SAE yell is something that every SAE knows. You learn it from like day one because you have your “older bros” yelling it at you like every day so it sticks in your head. It is one of those songs you have to learn quickly or else you like get in a lot of trouble. It is definitely special to me because it is something that unites us all together, since every SAE knows it we all chant it at chapter meetings or leadership seminars with other SAE’s from different schools. It also gets us fired up when we are partying or basically whatever we are doing, its kind of cool to hear everyone chanting it loudly together.”

Analysis: I thought this piece was fairly interesting. I know he has other songs that are more compelling and have deeper roots, but he is not allowed to share them with me and I respect that. I can respect the fact that they want to protect a private part of their culture and I think a lot of different cultures around the world have this same sentiment. If everyone knows every part of your culture than nothing is really held sacred anymore and anyone can be considered inside the group’s circle once they know all the secrets.

Brick Wall Waterfall

Nationality: polish
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Performance Date: 4/30/15
Primary Language: English

My informant is a 20-year-old College Student. She has a predominantly Polish heritage.

My informant gave me a children’s song that she remembers very vividly from when she was very young. The song goes as follows:

“Brick wall waterfall (insert person’s name) thinks he/she knows it all,
but you don’t and I do, so poof with that attitude. No peace punch captain crunch I got something that you can’t touch, bing bang choo choo train wind me up and I’ll do my thang, no Reese’s Pieces seven up, mess with me and I will mess you up”

Informant: “Kids would chant this on the playground if someone was being mean or annoying to them. It’s what they would say as like a sassy remark. As someone who got made fun of a lot I would use this quite often because I was too scared to try to be clever so it was my go-to response”

Analysis: This piece is interesting because it shows how children in their youth deal with such instances like being made fun of. In order to combat these mean kids, my informant had learned this “defense song”. A few interesting things about this song are that the song reflects someone who is strong willed. They portray themselves as someone who will “mess you up” if they overstep their boundaries. At the same time there are multiple references to popular culture like seven up and Reese’s Pieces.

Arirang

Nationality: korean
Age: 24
Occupation: student
Performance Date: 4/30/15
Primary Language: Korean

My informant is a 24-year-old foreign exchange student who was raised in South Korea his whole life.

When I first asked him to give me some Korean folklore he quickly jumped to the first thing that he could think of. He told me about a song entitled “Arirang”.

Informant: “Everybody in Korea knows this song. They play it all on the TV and in many places. It is not something that you learn in school or through book, but like it is everywhere. It is almost Korean anthem because everybody knows how to sing it. I learned it when I was really young because you hear it so much. The song is okay, maybe I don’t like it so much because I have heard so many times, but it is like Korean anthem, so I kind of have to like it”

Analysis: This piece is interesting because Korea has a song that is so popular and everyone knows the song, but it is not the official anthem of the country. The song represents pride in one’s country and when it is played it is sung like a national anthem. It is also interesting that my informant is not so fond of the song because he has heard it so many times. He even went on to tell me that the song is so popular that it is registered in UNESCO.

Tres Elefantes- Spain-South America

Nationality: Spanish
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English and French

The following are lyrics to a never ending song that i learned as a child and to my surprise so did kids in Panama, Peru and Spain. The following was recorded from my friend from Spain Ana Mula Diaz. The only difference between the song that I remember and the one she tells us is the word she uses for balancing. which speaks of a slight choice of words difference between Mexico and Spain but the meaning is the same.

Informant Singing in a 1-2 1-2 1-2-2-3-4 rythym

Informant: Un Elefante se balanceaba sobre la tela de una arana.. y como veia que resistia fue a buscar otro elefante….. dos Elefantes se balanceaban sobre la tela de una arana y como veian que resistia fueron a buscar otro elefante..tres elefantes se balanceaban sobre la tela de una arana y como veian que resistia fueron a buscar otro elefante…

Translated

Informant: One Elephant was balancing over the thread of a spider and since he saw that it resisted he went to find another elephant…. Two elephants were balancing over the thread of a spider and since they saw that it resisted they went to look for another elephant… three elephants were balancing over the thread of a spider and since they saw that it resisted (held) they went to look for another elephant…4

 

The song never ends it keeps going on an eternity, I was shocked that the song is so old that kids in Spain sang it too. The meaning is very imaginative and it probably came as tok says from a creative genius child. we didn’t realize at the time that we sang it that it was so illogical for an elephant to balance himself over a spiderweb let alone 100 elephants. but this song was a part of our childhood and when we were really little the loser would be the one who couldn’t count that high or the one who wanted to stop singing.