Tag Archives: song

Midsommar

Nationality: Swedish
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 8, 2014
Primary Language: English

My friend was born in Sweden to a Swedish father and American mother, but moved to the United States as a child, so she sat down with me and told me about the different holidays that are celebrated in Sweden. Some were holidays she had celebrated frequently, while others we less important to her, but she still knew about from her family. Since midsummer includes children in the celebration, she had fond memories of past holidays in Sweden.

“Then we have midsommar, which is midsummers, it’s like the middle and it’s usually the summer solstice and that’s where it’s like the typical maypole, it’s almost like a cross with two rings and kids will have strings and dance around the maypole. And that’s also fertility”

Q: Have you celebrated this?

“I’ve done it ever since I was little. Usually it’s like the entire community gets together and there’s a central maypole for that community. So it’s not like it’s a fair, but everybody comes out and they picnic. And what the girls are supposed to do, is you’re supposed to collect seven different types of wildflowers and you make wreaths, like crowns, that you wear and you wear it all day and the girls usually wear white dresses and you’re supposed to jump over five different fences, and what you usually do is eat strawberries, strawberries and cream are like, in season, so you usually have strawberry cake and stuff like that. And you’re outside and you play games and it’s really, really fun. There’s specific songs and dances that you do while you dance around the Maypole. One of them is små grodorna, which means little frogs, and you jump over people…it’s for kids but it’s really, really cute. But when you get older, it’s like you drink and, but everybody still dresses up and it’s really pretty. But what girls are supposed to do is you put the wreath under your pillow and then you dream about the man you’re going to marry. I really remember actually making the crowns, because my mom was really good at doing it, because you have to like, braid, because they’re like wildflowers, you don’t buy something, you braid the flowers to create these really pretty things. It’s super fun and it lasts throughout the day”

I Don’t Wanna Be a Chicken

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/27/14
Primary Language: English

Text:

“I don’t wanna be a chicken, I don’t wanna be a duck, so shake my butt”

Background:

My informant learned it from a couple girls in second grade who made fun of him and shook their butts at them. He said that it feels like it means an insult because you’re calling the other person a chicken/duck. He remembers being very offended.

Context:

This was a song that was sung from time to time among young kids.

Personal Thoughts:

This seems to be the start of young children learning about gender differences, and a way to cope with them. One could even argue that this was a way that girls started learning about their own sexuality since the butt is a fairly sexualized part on a female’s body. Perhaps this was just a way that kids could bond within their own gender.

Cure to Song Stuck in Head

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Jose
Performance Date: April 5th, 2014
Primary Language: English

Information about the Informant

My informant is a college student at a community college in San Jose. He’s an avid amateur photographer, and we know each other through going to the same online high school. His family’s very closely-knit, with his parents very involved in the lives of their children. I collected this piece of folklore that him while he was visiting me on campus at USC. I mentioned having a song stuck in my head, and that reminded him of this piece of folklore that he had heard from his father.

Transcript

“My dad has said that, uh, the cure to having a song stuck in your head is the Beatles. It might have been because…that’s an easy one to get stuck in your head and replace whatever else was there before. And it…it’s good, but I’m not actually sure.”

Collector: “Did he just make that up?”

“I don’t know. I think so, but he might have gotten it from one of his more-musical friends.”

Analysis

My informant and his father share a common interest in music, largely fostered through his father sharing his collection of CDs and records with him since my informant was a child. His father constantly shares interesting music and trivia about music with my informant, and this piece of folklore is one of them. The Beatles, in addition to being an English band that’s well-known in America, is also a band that both my informant and his father enjoy, which is probably why my informant’s father decided to share this with him. There are various supposed “cures” for a song that’s stuck in one’s head, usually involving engaging oneself in a mentally strenuous activity, such as a sudoku puzzle or a crossword. This “cure” however isn’t really a cure at all, as it merely replaces one song with another, making it more of a joke with regards to how easily Beatles songs will stick in one’s mind rather than an actual cure.

Kookaburra Christmas Song

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 16 2013
Primary Language: English

Hannah’s Aunt lives in Australia and would visit Hanna in California every other year for Christmas. It was a tradition after Christmas dinner to sit in the living room and play games and sing songs together. One year, her Aunt changed the lyrics to the Kookaburra Song and sang it to everyone. After that Christmas, it became a tradition that every year her family would sing the Kookaburra Christmas song. The song went like this:

Kookaburra sits in the Christmas Tree
Merry, merry Christmas king of the bush is he
Laugh Kookaburra! (*everyone would laugh) Laugh Kookaburra! (*everyone laugh)
What a life you lead

Kookaburra sits in the Christmas Tree
Merry, merry, merry Christmas bird is he
Sing Kookaburra! (*everyone would sing ahhh) Sing Kookaburra! (*everyone sing)
Sing your song for me

Kookaburra sits in the Christmas Tree
Eating all the sugar plumbs he can see
Stop Kookaburra! (*everyone would yell stop) Stop Kookaburra! (*everyone yell)
Leave some there for me

Kookaburra sits in the Christmas Tree
Counting all the elves he can see
Stop Kookaburra! (*everyone would yell stop) Stop Kookaburra! (*everyone yell)
That’s not an elf that is me

Hannah and her family continue to sing the Kookaburra Christmas song every Christmas even without her Aunt. The Christmas adaptation to the song is a unique way of taking a cultural song from Australia and integrating it into a fun family song that Hannah’s family can sing that symbolizes Christmas.

The Gypsy Rover

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Legislative Affairs Intern, Department of State
Residence: California (Primary)
Performance Date: April 27, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: French

The Gypsy Rover

A lullaby that the informant’s  grandmother would sing to her mom:

 

“The gypsy rover came over the hill,

down the through the valley so shady.

whistled and he sand, ‘till the green wood sprang,

and he won the heart of a lady.

“And then it’s like:

“Ah-di-do, ah-di-do-da-day,

ah-di-do-ah-di-day-O!

whistled and he sang, ‘till the green wood sprang,

and he won the heart of a lady.

“And then it’d be like, it, like, there’s a bunch of, um, different parts, but it would be like, the main one of them, was like, this girl falls in love with the gypsy person, and um, her father doesn’t like it, but she’s, but the part that I remember at least:

“He is no gypsy, my father, she said,

the lord of the valley’s all over.

And I shall stay ‘till my dying day,

With the whistling gypsy rover.

“So it’s just, like, a long ballad thing that my mom would sing to me as a lullaby. I can just totally see this being a 70’s ballad now that I think about it, but I always thought it was like, some special song that she knew from somewhere, that was handed down through the generations.”

 

The informant’s mother sang it if she couldn’t get to sleep beginning maybe when she was two or three (her mother had been singing it as long as she could remember). It was her “go-to” lullaby. She is unaware of the origins of the song, but she liked it because it wasn’t a typical lullaby and nobody else had heard it. She also liked it because it is a long saga, and she says she’ll have to write it down so she can sing it to her children at some point.

The tune of this song is easy to follow because it repeats for each stanza throughout the duration of the song (even for the part where words are replaced by sounds). This may be what makes it enjoyable and easy to pass on; however, the length of it (the informant only knew parts of it) may be a hindrance to spreading by those who do not have great memory skills (the informant said she’d have to write it down). The combination of enjoyable easiness and that challenge in the length seem to make it more precious.