Category Archives: Musical

Chris Travaglini Rhyme

Nationality: Irish/Italian
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, from King of Prussia, Pennsylvania
Performance Date: 4/7/2012
Primary Language: English
Chris Travaglini has a forty-foot weenie
And he stuck it out the bedroom door
His mom thought it was snake and hit it with a rake
And now it’s only four-foot four
 

This is a rhyme my informant and a group of his friends made up about a classmate when they were in middle school. They made it up at an age when most people are going through puberty and finding ways to deal with it, which would explain why the rhyme is penis-joke based. Also middle school is a time when group-forming, teasing, and bullying are heightened.

A Grandpa Song

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25th, 2012
Primary Language: English

The following is a song that the source’s Grandfather used to sing to her when she was a kid. She originally thought that he wrote the song just for her, but really he took the song “Daisy Bell” a very popular and famous American song, and substituted “Daisy” with the source’s name, Maisie. The clip below has the source first sing the original song, and then her Grandfather’s version.

Grandpa song

“He sang that song to me when I was little and he was, dandling? Is that the right word? Bouncing me on his knee”

 

The song really accomplishes two things. First, it helps the source’s Grandfather expose her to a song that he knows, and shares a piece of his generation with her. Also it created a special connection between Maisie and her Grandpa.

“He was my favorite Grandpa” she said.

Nigerian Lullaby

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25th, 2012
Primary Language: English

“So my sophomore year, one of my acting professors was this big crazy guy that did a lot of volunteer work around the world. He was like, really big into using theatre as therapy and stuff like that, and he goes to Nigeria every few years to work with the people there, and give aid, and use theatre to help them deal with the situation over there. And anyway, he taught us this song, which is a Nigerian lullaby, and its a round. And I don’t remember if he actually told us what it meant, no one in the class remembers what it meant, and we might even be singing the wrong words. But we like sing it, the people in my acting class, that took that class with him sing it. We use it as a warm up song before performances, because its pretty gentle on the voice, and also sometimes when we get together, and we’ve been drinking we sing it, because everyone knows the tune, and its a round so it sounds good without people having to know how to create harmonies and stuff like that.”

Nigerian Lullaby

 

I find it remarkable that the song has really been re-purposed from a lullaby to essentially a drinking song by the group of actors, who really don’t know what the song means, and could be singing the wrong words anyway. I think it’s a testament that certain sounds, like harmonies are almost universally pleasing. I don’t believe the meaning of the song is the reason people in Nigeria still sing it to their children, but rather that the sounds are relaxing and pleasing to the ear. That’s why people from cultures as disparate as Nigeria and the United States can find so much enjoyment in the same tune.

Kit Kat Bar Hand-Game

Nationality: Swedish-American
Age: 20
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4.12.12
Primary Language: English

Kit Kat Bar Hand-Game

^^^KIT KAT BAR HAND-GAME VIDEO LINK

Lyrics to the jingle:

Verse 1:
Gimme a break
Gimme a break
Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat Bar

Verse 2:
The chocolate-y taste
Makes my day
Walkin down the street
Hear the people say

“I probably learned that in middle school with all the other hand game things, like waiting in line for recess or something. I originally played it cuz it wasted time, and even now if you’re like waiting around for something or there’s literally nothing else to do. Whoever did it the fastest was the coolest, you know. It became like a competition or whatever. (laughs) The boys probably thought we were so stupid. I mean, the first verse, isn’t that the real jingle? I dunno about the second verse, some girl probably made it up.”

My informant was laughing the entire time she showed me how to play this hand-game. We have two classes together that are back to back twice a week, and one day we got out very early in the first class and sat in the hallway with nothing to do, just waiting for our next class to start. Because we were together, the dumb games on her smartphone got boring quickly and we found ourselves talking about how we’d play hand-games in middle school and high school to pass the time. A hand-game that I knew about McDonald’s prompted her to teach me the Kit Kat Bar hand-game which I had never heard of. She then taught me and we tried to get faster and faster at it, and it prompted a lot of laughs and the time passed very quickly. Two college students, playing hand-games in our University hallway. Our teacher even passed by us and asked us what we were doing, but she thought it was funny and we clearly were having fun with it, singing about a chocolate candy bar and playing a game typically played by kids 10 years younger than us. That we did this reflects not just our absolute boredom, but the integration of consumer products into everyday lives. After so many years I still remembered the song to a number of hand games, many of which refer to food and restaurants, and my informant obviously remembered the jingle from the Kit Kat Bar commercial. It’s very American, and we probably will never forget these games, those that sucked us into the world of advertising and friendly competition, but also promoted camaraderie 10 years later. The power of boredom and nostalgia should not be underestimated.

Morning Song

Nationality: American
Age: 58
Occupation: Physical Therapist
Residence: Portland, OR
Performance Date: 4/12/12
Primary Language: English

I had always remembered my mother noting a song that her father sang to her and her sister every morning to get them up and out of bed. When I asked for more details, she immediately groaned and grimly stated “trust me, after I moved out of home I never wanted to think about that song again. My dad would always sing it so loudly and so early”. She said the song went as follows:

“It’s time to get up, it’s time to get up, it’s time to get up in the mooorning”

She stated that he would repeat this over and over again until both girls finally popped out of bed simply from dreading hearing another verse. She noted that this was one of the few songs that my grandfather knew, because he went deaf at age twelve due to medical complications. He had heard it from his Swedish parents and remembered the tune to sing to his children years after losing his hearing. Perhaps, my mother said, this was why he would sing it so loud in the morning!

Fortunately, my mother never sang that song to my sister or I when we were growing up, and I have a feeling that it has to do with her not liking it when she was young. Because of this, the song will likely not be carried on in family tradition, and I bet each generation will be thankful of that. I believe that this song must have originated from a ‘morning person’ who would be up and cheery and singing in the morning. They must have taken a simple phrase like this and sang it until the tune caught on with their kids and their kids after that.