Background: The Informant was a band member in high school. The riddle was told by the band teacher.
Text:
Q: What music instrument never tells the truth?
A: A lyre.
My band teacher told us this riddle during rehearsal. I didn’t find it funny at the time. It’s pretty much a dad joke.
Analysis:
The instrument has the same pronunciation as the word “liar”. This riddle requires knowledge in the music field, which also explained the occasion and audience of the riddle.
Text:
The folk object is a kind of handshake.
“Before a competition, or before a performance, people would just walk around and do the handshake and say like good luck, have a good run. “
“This is how you do it: Put two thumbs together, spin your fist upright, and then open your hand so it’s like an upside-down high five. And then make it right side up to shake hands. “
“Only people in our band knows how to do it.”
Context:
My informant plays at a marching band at USC. According to her, this handshake had been performed before she joined the marching band. She learned it and then she taught the freshman how to do it.
Analysis:
Handshake is a very common type of folk gesture, especially in the U.S. Special handshakes are signals of shared identity or signals of difference between in-groups and out-groups. Handshakes are connected with unity and commemoration. Although many people may not know each other in my informant’s marching band(because it’s a big band), when they greet each other with a handshake, they would know that they belong to the same place. Also, unity and a sense of belonging are what a marching band needs when it comes to performance because coordination and cooperation are essential to instrumental performance. The sense of belonging is also created by the daily practice, competition, and performance that the members of the marching band participated in, thus the handshake can also be the by-product of this sense of unity. My informant is a folklore carrier. Not only had she taught me about the folk gesture, but she also teaches the freshmen of the marching band.
Background: The informant is a 54 year old man. He was born in Pampanga, Philippines. The informant grew up as Catholic, later converting to evangelical Christianity and becoming a pastor. He was exposed to the tradition by living in the Philippines.
Context: The context was, calling the informant on the phone and asking him about his religious traditions or experiences.
Text:
PG: All Saints Day, All Saints Day, is November 1st, because trick or trick is October 31
Me: Is All Saints Day kind of like your day of the dead?
PG: Day of the Dead, is like, is like the entire cemetery is full pack is like people goes there they’re like having a celebration you know fiesta is like celebration right? Yeah we fiesta, we piesta, we celebrate, it’s like a party. All saints day, all people goes to the cemetery we don’t do it in the house everyone goes there and all cemetery all over the world is full of people they edo the party there they bring boombox.
Me: You know how on day of the dead people create offriendas, the shrine looking things, do you guys do that”
PG: “Shrine looking thing? No, they just bring flowers and candles and make them lit all day”
Analysis:
Informant: For the informant, he seems very excited about All Saint’s Day and what it entails. It is a celebration of life and death.
Mine: in this celebration, it is significant because it crosses between life and death. There is no boundary to the celebration. Normally, secretaries are associated with dreary activities, but during this holiday, it completely changes the stereotype of it. Everything is lively and it changes the usual opinion on death. Death doesn’t always need to be something to be mourned but can also be celebrated because the person has lived a good long life. Traditions can make someone reexamine the context of something and see it from a new perspective.
Main Piece:
CS (mid-twenties, white male, music degree background, LA resident) and I had a conversation about musicians.
Me: “So can you like explain that phrase, ‘take it to the top?'”
CS: “Take it to the top means to go back to the beginning of the song.”
Me: “That’s it?”
CS: “Well, like, there’s also usually a hand motion too.”
He mimes spinning his hand in a circle in the air.
CS: “When we used to play at bars in New York, I’d have to swing my hand around all wild and scream it out just to get people to hear me. It’s usually energetic like that, ya know? Like when you want to keep the jam [song] going, you take it back to the top.”
Background/Context:
Phrases like this seem to be universal to musicians and are passed on homogeneously by other musicians and music teachers. The emphasis of this saying is returning to the “top,” which references the top of a music sheet where the notes would begin. The only real time that this phrase would appear would be during a live performance or amidst a practice with a band that plays the sort of songs that don’t have a clear run time.
Thoughts:
Jazz definitely serves itself to folk expression because of the collaborative nature of the music. Call outs like this connect the band into a collective consciousness that allows them to move as a uniform organism. The call out to loop the song also greatly relies on reading the audience for when the energy in the room wants the song to continue, versus wanting it to end.
Context:
A is a Mexican immigrant from the state of Nayarit. They heard of this legend when they lived in the city of Tepic, which was about an hour away from where the legend takes place. San Blas is a well-know beach and was frequently visited by A.
The context of this piece was over a dinner when we were discussing future plans to visit Nayarit, specifically which beaches we were going to. A mentioned the legend and showed me the song.
Text:
Uh-uh-uh-uh, uh-uh
Ella despidió a su amor
El partió en un barco en el muelle de San Blas
El juró que volvería
Y empapada en llanto, ella juró que esperaría
Miles de lunas pasaron
Y siempre ella estaba en el muelle, esperando
Muchas tardes se anidaron
Se anidaron en su pelo y en sus labios
Uh-uh-uh-uh, uh-uh
Uh-uh-uh-uh, uh-uh
Llevaba el mismo vestido
Y por si él volviera, no se fuera a equivocar
Los cangrejos le mordían
Su ropaje, su tristeza y su ilusión
Y el tiempo se escurrió
Y sus ojos se le llenaron de amaneceres
Y del mar se enamoró
Y su cuerpo se enraizó en el muelle
, sola en el olvido
(Sola), sola con su espíritu
(Sola), sola con su amor el mar
(Sola), en el muelle de San Blas
Su cabello se blanqueó
Pero ningún barco a su amor le devolvía
Y en el pueblo le decían
Le decían la loca del muelle de San Blas
Y una tarde de abril
La intentaron trasladar al manicomio
Nadie la pudo arrancar
Y del mar nunca jamás la separaron
, sola en el olvido
(Sola), sola con su espíritu
(Sola), sola con su amor el mar
(Sola), en el muelle de San Blas
, sola en el olvido
(Sola), sola con su espíritu
(Sola), sola con el sol y el mar
(Sola), ¡Oh, sola!
Sola en el olvido
(Sola), sola con su espíritu
(Sola), sola con su amor el mar
(Sola), en el muelle de San Blas
Se quedó
Se quedó sola, sola
Se quedó
Se quedó con el sol y con el mar
Se quedó ahí
Se quedó hasta el fin
Se quedó ahí
Se quedó en el muelle de San Blas
Uoh, oh-oh-oh
Sola, sola se quedó
Uoh, oh-oh-oh
// Translation:
Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh, uh-uh
She said goodbye to her love
He left on a boat at the pier in San Blas
He swore he’d come back
And drenched in tears, she swore she’d wait
Thousands of moons passed
And always she stood on the dock, waiting
Many afternoons nested
They nested in her hair and on her lips
Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh, uh-uh
Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh, uh-uh
She wore the same dress
And just in case he came back, he wouldn’t be wrong
The crabs were biting him
Her clothes, her sadness and her illusion
And time slipped away
And her eyes were filled with sunrises
And she fell in love with the sea
And her body took root on the pier
Alone in oblivion
(Alone), alone with her spirit
(Alone), alone with her love for the sea
(Alone), alone on the pier of San Blas
Her hair bleached white
But no ship to her love returned to her
And in the town they called her
They called her the madwoman of the pier of San Blas
And one April afternoon
They tried to transfer her to the asylum
No one could tear her away
And from the sea they never ever separated her
Alone in oblivion
(Alone), alone with her spirit
(Alone), alone with her love for the sea
(Alone), on the pier of San Blas
alone in oblivion
(Alone), alone with her spirit
(Alone), alone with the sun and the sea
(Alone), Oh, alone!
Alone in oblivion
(Alone), alone with her spirit
(Alone), alone with her love the sea
(Alone), on the pier of San Blas
She stayed
She stayed alone, alone
She stayed
She stayed with the sun and the sea
She stayed there
She stayed until the end
She stayed there
He stayed on the pier of San Blas
Uoh, oh-oh-oh-oh
Alone, alone she stayed
Uoh, oh-oh-oh
Analysis:
This text describes the legend of the crazed woman of San Blas. This song was made by the well-known Mexican rock band Mana and is around the folklore of the madwoman of the pier of San Blas. It was said that she was a young and beautiful woman that had fallen in love with a young sailor, possibly a fisherman. The two fell madly in love but their time together was brief as he left once his work was done in Nayarit. His departure was set to be from the shores of San Blas, a popular beach in Nayarit. Before leaving, he promised he would come back for her and marry her. As the song says, she stood there for a thousand nights and spent the entirety of her life waiting for him to come back. The legend says that the overwhelming feels of sadness, nostalgia, and desperation drove her into madness. It was said that in her state of madness, she began to head to the pier in a wedding gown with a veil and bouquet to wait for her groom to return to her. I found this song especially interesting as it was able to turn a somewhat niche local lore and publicize to the masses. I enjoyed how the band was able to transform the lore into a musical piece that captured the lore’s essence.