Category Archives: Musical

“Oh Shenanigah Dah” Song

Nationality: Dutch / American
Age: 96
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Newport Beach, CA
Performance Date: 03/12/15
Primary Language: Dutch
Language: English

“Oh, shenanigah dah, let’s play the guitar, go to the bazaar, ha ha ha ha

Oh shenanigah dah, let’s play the guitar, go to the bazaar, ha ha ha ha

Let’s go on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday…

Oh, shenanigah dah…”

 

The informant is a 95-year old woman, who was raised in the Netherlands and then moved to California with her husband and daughter after surviving the Holocaust. She was raised in a upper middle class Jewish family, attended school through her adolescence, but never attended any school past that. She survived the Holocaust hiding in the attic of a gentile woman. The “Shenanigah Dah” song is one she told me she learned from her aunt and one she always sang with me when I would come visit her. The informant sings this song in a playful manner, typically at times of leisure (for instance: during “coffee” a sort-of Dutch ritual everyday around 11 am where family gets together, drinks coffee, eats cookies, and chats.

 

Thoughts:

The nature of this song—a very cheery, up tempo melody, repetitive nature, and simple lyrics—along with the setting in which it is sung, it seems that this song is a reflection of the cyclical nature of time; it gestures to the passing of the days in a cyclical fashion and in its lyrics and melodies, is an invitation of sorts to the listener to join the singer in leisure time.

 

In searching for more information on this song, I found several references to Dutch Grandmother songs; I love the idea that there is a whole genre of songs designated to grandmas (Omas, in Dutch) for singing with grandchildren. While I discovered this sub genre of folk music, I couldn’t find anything online about the song I grew up singing with my Oma. However, what I find really curious about my Oma singing this song is that it is in English, and doesn’t seem very much like a song that is Dutch in origin. When I asked my mom, she could remember my Oma singing it to her as well, but couldn’t think of a Dutch translation or trace wher my Oma might have gotten it.

This seems like a sort of folklore crossover: my Oma practiced the Dutch custom of singing grandmother songs with one of her main songs being an English one.

 

“Morning Accordion Song” – Russian folk song

Nationality: Russian-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: April 30, 2014
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian

Morning Accordion Song

(The attachment contains the song in Russian, a general translation, an explanation of the accompanying motions, and some additional commentary.)

Transcript of audio file (condensed and edited):

Informant: This one is…my mom always woke me up with it. [the song] She touches both my cheeks and says, “Wall. Wall.” Then she touches my forehead and says, “Ceiling.” And then she makes an electronic doorbell and touches my nose, “Zing.” Then she asks, “Is the owner home?” Then I say, “Yes,” grudgingly. Then she says, “Is the accordion ready?” Then I say, “(sighs) yes.” Then she says, “Can I play it?” Then I say, “Yes.” Then she plays the accordion with my ears (makes motion of tugging at each of the ear lobes). And that’s just like a waking up ritual.

When I asked him when he first learned the ritual, the informant said that his mother had probably doing that since he was baby. When asked whether he knew where she had learned it, he replied that he did not. “I would guess probably from her mother…It never really mattered to me,” he said. “I mean of course now I’m curious and I’ll probably ask her later today, but it had never crossed my mind to ask her. For me it was just a way she showed that she loved me.” And it seems that the ritual even today, when the informant is 20-years-old continues to function as a demonstration of affection. While his mother no longer wakes him up with the chant, she “does it whenever I’m down, and it pretty much works every time.”

In this instance, the folklore functions as a link for the informant to his childhood, his mother, and his heritage. In the sharing of other folk songs and jokes, the informant would preface them by saying, “In my broken Russian…” Nevertheless, despite any uncertainty he may have regarding his language skills, he didn’t stumble with any of the examples of folk speech he shared, having grown up with all of it.

With regards to the piece itself, it’s interesting to me that the face is the facade of a house, in which the occupant must undoubtedly be the mind, more specifically, a conscious one. The informant mentioned nothing about this distinction between the mind and body, but I can imagine that even a little chant could engrain the delineation between the two for any child’s thinking. More research would be required to account for the significance of the accordion in Russian culture.

LA’s Biggest County Fair

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/17/2014
Primary Language: English

Zach, my friend and fellow sophomore at USC, recently attended LA’s biggest music festival: Coachella. He is an avid festival-goer, attending different ones all over the world, and sited Coachella as his favorite. He shared with me his individual experience at the festival as well as the larger sense of what LA’s biggest cultural festival is all about.

 

Informant:

“Coachella, where do I begin… It’s this big music festival about an hour outside LA out in the desert near this town called Indio. It happens over two back-to-back weekends in April. It’s kinda the LA thing to do come springtime. About 100,000 people attend each weekend, mostly 18-25 year olds, but I saw people of all ages when I was there, old farts, families with little kids, crazy stuff. It’s a music festival, right, so they bring in the best and biggest variety of artists from every genre, rock, EDM, alternative, indie, folk everything. The way they set it up, it’s kinda like LA’s county fair but way out in the desert and bigger, the world’s biggest county fair almost. They bring in all sorts of incredible food trucks and weird sideshows – some of the coolest artists in the world design the actual venue, which is so so cool especially when combined with all the unbelievable music. It’s held on the Eldorado Polo grounds which is this huge flat expanse of land that they completely transform with all these art installations and cool lights – it’s actually really sick, like you’re in a completely different world. Most people camp… It’s sort of like the place everyone goes to from around LA to dress up and have a fun hippie weekend full of music and dancing.

Me? I went with friends from USC; we had about a twenty person campsite and the people I came with really is what made it special. Even just within our camp we had a huge variety of people, which I thought really kinda represented the whole wide range of people Coachella draws, you know, people who aren’t all that prominent in stereotypical LA culture but who all come out for the weekend to sort of escape the city and dance around in the desert for three days. It was cool cause we would split off into small groups during the day and do our different things – I danced for basically 10-12 hours every day but other people took it a little more easy… If you got separated it was really hard to find people, its the middle of the desert so there’s not really cell service. But at the end of the night we would all come back to the campsite, decompress, swap stories about what we all did that day, go to sleep, then get up, go out and get to do it all over again.

The last night was really special. As fun as it was, being out in the heat and dust for three days straight is a lot, so when we finally got to Sunday night, it was kind of a celebration for everyone that we made it. Coming back to school after that was really hard – everything is so carefree and beautiful at the festival and having to come back and face finals and everything was a definite reality shock. I definitely suffered from post-Coachella depression for a week or two.”

 

Analysis:

Though it is marketed as a music festival, Coachella is so much more than just a glorified concert. From food to art to music, it is a complete celebration of LA culture and of the beauty of life.

It would make sense that festival celebrating LA’s culture would take place in Los Angeles itself, but the festival is held a couple hours away in the small town of Indio. By holding the festival out in the desert, festival-goers are able to escape the traffic and general chaos of the city, allowing them to be completely immersed in the festival experience. The art installations, light fixtures, hippie garb, lack of cell phone service, and camping on the grounds all contribute to the sense of being in a world completely removed from the real world.

 

While everyone is in this sae world-away-from-the-world, each individual’s experience in the festival is completely different. There is no planned ritual, no ordered manner in which one is meant to experience the festival. In a way, this complete freedom is Coachella’s biggest draw. Why would people choose to go tough it out in the desert for three days rather than get a ticket to their favorite artist’s concert or go down to the art district to see the latest talent? Because people want the Coachella experience. They want to enter into a world free of time and worries to take part in a celebration of what makes life worth living: food, art, music and each other.

THOT

Nationality: USA
Age: 13
Occupation: Student
Residence: Pasadena, CA
Performance Date: 4/09/14
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

THOT

“Thirsty Hoes Out There. It means that they’re really thirsty and that they’re out there cheating on their boyfriends… I first heard this from a friend but I know that people started using THOT after a song came out.”

My informant is a 13 year old boy who is in his final year of middle school. He is of Mexican descent but has been born and lived for all of his life in the US. This then means that even though he still has strong ties to his heritage, his American nationality has been playing a big role to his upbringing as well.

When analyzing this phrase I found that it is actually very common among youngsters. Another thing that I found interesting is that it is most often used to describe females. Being thirsty refers to someone who has a very strong sexual appetite, so for this to be used towards other young females is very alarming. I researched where this phrase originated from and as my informant said, it seems to have come out of a rap song in which the rapper keeps repeating THOT. This then goes to show that music now a days plays a very big role in younger population’s everyday life. For more information, you can check out the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuB3S6_1omQ&feature=youtu.be

 

Kum Ba Yah

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 50-60
Occupation: Camp Nature Director
Residence: San Gabriel Valley, CA
Performance Date: 4/29/2014
Primary Language: English

Kum Ba Yah

Informant: Okay, it needs to be dark, there needs to be a campfire, I got get myself in the mood here. Umm . . . okay . . .

In a deep, doth, darkest of Africa, there was a group of men who went into the mountain. They were thirsty, they were hungry, they needed to eat! They mined  for their families. They did everything they could, everything they could to find food and help their families! (pause)

They were in the mine, when a horrible, horrible, horrible, accident had happened. (pause)

The barrel of coal started from the top and started to head down deep and hit 12 men. That took all the shorings out and everyone of those men, were stuck in that deep mine.
Well you know how these men would be, they would be freaking out! Wouldn’t you? Right? Don’t you remember your great-grandma telling you this story, right? Of those men? Her brothers and sisters even! They did what ever they could to feed their families.

*A beat, informant becomes highly emotional *

(solemnly) Well it was a horrible, horrible, day. Back in 1886 in that mine and everything went wrong. Everything collapsed. (Raises voice) It was horrible! It was horrible! (pause)

And the men didn’t know what to do, they were out of their minds crying. They were frightened. They were crying . . . yet there was this one man who said, “no, we’re going to make it. We’re going to make it through this. We are not gonna perish today. We are gonna make it through”. (pause)

So this man he prayed. He prayed. “Come pray with me” he said. “Pray?” What are you talking about, we need to get out of here, we need tools, we need people to get us out!” said the others. “ Well” he said, “ we need to pray that we can get out of here”.

And the men started crying, (sobbing voice), “ what are we going to do, I don’t know what to do, how are we going to get out of here? We’re going to die in here!”. So the miner started singing, (in a singing voice) “Come by here, my lord, come by here. Kum Ba Yah, my lord, Kum Ba Yah”. He sang, he finally got the men to laugh. “ Please, laugh with me . . .laugh with me” he said. “Even if this may be our last day on earth, we can have a good laugh, we’re together, let’s hold hands. It’s pitch dark in here, there is nothing else that we can do”.

“okay”, the others said, “it’s worth a try”. They prayed, they laughed, they cried together because they were so frightened. Then the miner said, “I think were going to make it”. He started singing again (singing) “come by here my lord, come by here”. Louder! “Come by her my lord! Come by here!”. So all 12 men started to sing. Then something came over them and they started to laugh and they thought, “okay, this might work”.

Then they heard it. They heard it. (Takes keys and starts tapping it against table in a rhythmic tapping). “what’s that?” one man said. “It sounds like Billy-Bob, he’s on the top!”. “Billy-Bob we’re here, we’re down here Billy-Bob”, they all scream.

And so the men, started to all be so positive. They started to start clinking. “Grab the rocks, get your tools, pound! Pound! Pound into that rock! We’re going to make it! (rhythmic tapping). “can you here us up there? oh God! Can you hear us? Help get us out of here! (rhythmic tapping)

Ands all of a sudden there was this huge pound. Huge Pound! Huge Clink! (one final tap) and Billy-Bob broke through the rock. There was sunlight coming through, the men could breath. The lights came back on.

The roar could be heard all over town! “They’re alive, they’re alive! Sound the alarm, they’re alive”. And they were. Each man held his hand up and walked out of that mine and they were all saved that day. And that’s the story of Kum Ba Yah.

(singing) Kum Ba Yah my lord, Kum Ba yah.  (2 x) Oh Lord, Kum Ba Yah. And that’s why we sing Kum Ba Yah out at campfire, almost every night to close it. So we can think about how it is to be at camp. Looking at the last ember of the flame of the campfire and thinking about how grateful we are to be together.

Interviewer’s notes:

It is interesting to note the blatant religious motif such as the fact that there were 12 men, just like the 12 apostles. The story perfectly coincides with the Christian ideas of  YMCA camp by highlighting the rewarding aspects of having faith in God. As an oral story, the storyteller employs an interesting use of the rhetorical. This invites audience participation, which in turn enhances the memorability and thus the longevity of the story. Furthermore, the story has a direct connection to the song the campers sing each night at camp. This also ensures the resonance with the audience. Also repetition in the story, no only enables memorability, but is also in keeping with Olrik’s Epic Laws of Narrative.