Re: Los Bilbilicos

[Joel Bresler <jbresler...>]

Robert,

Was this your message last year?

"... (And BTW, such borrowing--the practice, after all, is ubiquitous in 
folk and popular music generally--sometimes goes in the opposite direction: 
Richard Farina used this same "Tzur Michelo" melody--if we want to call it 
that--for "The Swallow Song" [unattributed, of course!].) ..."

I think that you are right about alerting us to Swallow song. Great 
anecdote about Mimi Farina. My guess is that Richard heard it stateside, 
though, cuz it was traveling through folk song circles earlier in the 1960s.

Best, Joel

At 12:08 PM 5/21/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Dear Joe Offer:
>
>As I was, I believe, the person who originally informed others on our 
>Jewish Music list that Richard Farina had borrowed this Sephardic melody 
>for his Swallow Song, I've been following the discussion on _your_ list 
>with interest.  I thought you might like to share with your list that I 
>wrote Mimi Farina asking if she had any idea how her husband had learned 
>the Sephardic melody; she didn't know, but felt certain "he'd picked it up 
>when he was in Spain.  He traveled through Spain during the summer of 
>1963--seeking the ghost of Hemingway, I'm sure."
>
>Regarding another of Richard's "borrowings" (or, as Woody Guthrie and 
>others would have called them, thefts), in this case for "The Quiet Joys 
>of Brotherhood" (from an Irish song), Mimi wrote, charmingly, I 
>guess:  "Dick Farina had a way of plagiarizing that was not only bold, but 
>also endearingly forgivable."
>
>I *did* find that cute, though I imagine you'd have to ask the plagiarees 
>to determine if it was forgivable ...
>
>Just what *is* the nature of your list, anyway?
>
>W/ all best wishes--Robert Cohen
>________________________________________________________________________
>Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
>



Joel Bresler
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