Tag Archives: folk music

I’ve Been Working on the Railroad

Nationality: American
Age: 76
Occupation: Teacher
Performance Date: 4/29
Primary Language: English

“I’ve been working on the railroad,

all the live-long day,

I’ve been working on the railroad,

just to pass the time away,

Can’t you hear the whistle blowin’”

rise up so early in the morn’,

can’t you hear the captain shouting

Dinah blow your horn.

Dinah won’t you blow,

Dinah won’t you blow,

Dinah won’t you blow your horn.

Dinah won’t you blow,

Dinah won’t you blow,

Dinah won’t you blow your horn.

Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah,

someone’s in the kitchen I know.

Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah,

strummin’ on the old banjo.

Fee, fie, fiddly-i-o,

fee, fie, fidlly-i-o-o-o-o

Fee, fie, fiddly-i-o,

strummin’ on the ol’ banjo.

“This song is a lot of fun, and is another one I learned at girl’s camp. I like it because you can really add a lot of different things into the song, and keep it going. When I taught 4th and 5th grade, I taught this song to my students while we were learning American history. They all seemed to enjoy it.”

Like other folk songs, it seems that much of the meaning and joy that this song evokes in the performer is it’s adaptability. It can change while still retaining the core identity of the piece. With a song like this, which is deeply routed in American history, this change is important. It allows the song to remain relevant and even novel to later generations, which is crucial to the survivability of a piece of folklore.

Wishcraft

Nationality: American
Age: 76
Occupation: Teacher
Performance Date: 4/29
Primary Language: English

“If there were witchcraft, I’d make two wishes,

a winding road that beckons me to roam,

and then I’d wish for a blazing campfire,

to welcome me when I’m returning home.

But, in this real world there is no witchcraft and golden wishes do no grow on trees.

Our fondest day dreams must be the magic that brings us back our happy memories.

Memories that linger, constant and true,

memories we’ll cherish, Camp Lo-Kai of you.

“I would sing this song at camp, always around a fire. We usually closed each night at camp with a big bon-fire. This would be the last song we’d sing before we headed to our cabins for the night! My friends and I just found out recently that the lyrics actually say “If there were wish craft”, so we’d been singing it wrong all this time! We do think the actual lyrics do make a little bit more sense than what we had been singing.”

Songs are an integral part of many camping experiences. In my mind, these songs help form a sense of community among the campers. This song in particular seems to evoke a certain nostalgia, a fondness for memories and a hope that the memories made during camp will last a lifetime. Indeed, this does seem to be the case for the informant, as she still meets with some of her camp friends, often singing this song when they do.

I found the shift in the lyrics interesting, especially given the fact that the informant and her friends came to like what was supposedly the original script of the song. This illustrates the change that is characteristic of folklore, but also brings up an important nuance: that this change is not always unidirectional, and can change back and forth depending on the sensibilities of the performer.

Horsey, Horsey

Nationality: American
Age: 76
Occupation: Teacher
Performance Date: 4/29
Primary Language: English

“I like to take my horse and buggy,

as I go traveling through the town,

I like to hear ol’ Dobbin’s clip-clop,

I like to feel the wheels go ‘round”.

“Horsey, Horsey, on your way,

we’ve been a’travelin for many a day,

so let your tail go swish and your wheels go round,

Giddy up! We’re homeward bound.”

“Music was always a big part of my life. My Mom loved to play the piano, and my family would always sing whenever we traveled. This one of the songs that my Mom taught to me, and I ended up teaching to my grandchildren. I believe I also heard the song at girl’s camp when I was a bit older; it was a song that many people seemed to know back then. I still sing the song when I get together with old camp friends. I think the song is a lot of fun to sing, because both the verses are sung at the same time by different singers, so it takes a bit of timing to get it right.”

My Grandma (the informant in question) taught this song to my sisters and I when I was young. My grandma loved to travel, a passion she instilled in myself and my siblings. As was the case when she sang the song with her siblings, we often sang it while on long road trips. Like my Grandma, I found that the song was most fun to sing as a round, as this required a mild degree of musical cooperation.

As it turns out, this song is actually a copyrighted piece with an established author. However, what I found to be interesting is that the lyrics I was taught differ slightly from the original script. The original song makes no mention of “Dobbin” (which, according to my Grandmother, is the name of the horse in question).

This song, at least in the course of my family’s use, was often performed while traveling. The lyrics themselves seem to invoke the joys of traveling, of moving from one place to another. I think this is particularly interesting because of the antiquated form of travel featured in the song. Though horse and buggies are not commonly used for travel (at least not in the US and other developed countries), there is a commonality which makes the song relevant even to those traveling in an automobile.

For another form of this song:

101 Childrens Songs & Nursery Rhymes. Pegas, 2001. MP3.

There’s a Daisy on my Toe

Nationality: White
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Huntington Beach, CA
Performance Date: 4/28/14
Primary Language: English

There’s a Daisy on my Toe

Personal Background:

Jack is a sophomore at California State University, Long Beach and is studying aerospace engineering. He is part of the Air Force branch of ROTC and is from Huntington Beach, California. He has grown up in a family that is also from southern California, and he considers himself someone who has a lot of “American values.”

Folk Song:

            “There’s a Daisy on my toe/ It is not real, it does not grow./ It’s just a tattoo of a flower/ So I look good taking a shower/ It’s on the second toe of my left foot./ If you ask me it looks real good./ There’s a daisy on my toe/ It is not real, it does not grow.”

This is a song Jack learned when he was at Camp Shalom in the Santa Monica Mountain Institute in Santa Monica, California for his AP Environmental Science Class. This is a song that the camp counselor taught his group one day when they were on a hike so they could pass the time. It was a song only his hiking group knew, and when everyone would get together, his group would sing the song the other groups did not know. Even though it was only taught to his group, he calls them “The Sunshine Bears,” other people from other groups said they had heard the song at other camps.

To Jack, this song is a reminder of his friends, The Sunshine Bears, he had while he was at camp. He was able to have this connection with only his group, and it is something he is able to take with him. It brings him a sense of happiness that he had a great time at the camp, and he also loves the fact he was able to mock the other groups who did not know the song.

Analysis:

What makes “Daisy on my Toe” a folk song is the fact that it is not copyrighted. It is something that is made for young kids to sing and have fun with. It has a simple enough rhythm that is slow, and has very simple lyrics, making so anyone can learn it. It is the perfect for children. It is part of a culture that is surrounded by camp and young kids, yet they do not need to know anything about the song to enjoy it the most. To me, it was a way Jack was able to feel like a kid again, even though he was in high school. He was able to be weird and crazy in the Sunshine Bear group. A song about a daisy tattoo can have a much deeper connection that originally thought.

“The Story of Maui”

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: March 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese, Hawaiian

 

            The informant is from Honolulu, Hawaii and she first heard the myth in elementary school, where she explained she learned most of the folklore and traditional stories related to Hawaii due to the inclusion of what she called “cultural education” in classroom curriculum. A practicing Hula dancer, the informant also picked up stories during her dance classes as a child. The informant also explained that the myth was authored into a song by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, a popular Hawaiian folk singer who encouraged Hawaiian sovereignty by reviving and popularizing traditional Hawaiian stories.

           

             Maui―like the island―was a demigod. Well, he was better than a person but he wasn’t a deity. He was a super trickster kind of guy; he was fun, and sneaky, like a hero. Maui is actually in a lot of Hawaiian stories, but one of the popular ones that a lot of kids know is that he was canoeing with his brothers when he received a message from a god. It might’ve even come to him in a dream, but it had definitely come from a god. The message was that if he went fishing, he would pull up a huge catch, um, but he couldn’t turn around to look at it or he would lose his catch. So he and his brothers are paddling, and Maui feels his line go taut. He pulls it, it’s really heavy, but he keeps pulling as the canoe moves forward. One of his brothers, the story goes, turns around, and because the brother looked the line snapped. Turn out, Maui had actually pulled up the Hawaiian islands. That’s why Hawaii is shaped like a chain, with the big island and the small ones trailing behind it. They descend in size because that’s what they looked like coming out one by one from the ocean. It’s actually said that there would have been more Hawaiian islands. . .but somebody looked.

 

            The story the informant retold bears all the classic indicators of a myth. It takes place in a pre-world (or, in this case, “pre-Hawaii”) setting, the characters involved are of divine or semi-divine importance, and it describes the genesis of a land and its people―the story of Maui is, more narrowly, a creation myth.

            The myth’s presence in Kamakawiwo’ole’s song immediately reminded me of stories about Hercules. The lyrics retell a string of Maui’s heroic deeds much in the same way books on Greek mythology usually dedicate a chapter or more to describe the (lengthy) list of Hercules’ achievements. The informant explained that Kamakawiwo’ole encouraged a resurgence of a Hawaiian identity movement through his music, and his lyrics clearly illustrate the pride Hawaiians should have in their land and culture. For Kamakawiwo’ole’s musical rendition of the myth, please see his “Maui Hawaiian Sup’paman,” produced  by Big Boy Records.