Re: "Donna Donna"

[Judah Cohen <jcohen...>]

I honestly don't think the spread of "Dona Dona" was that simple.  The song
appeared as "Dana, Dana, Dana" in "Sing Out!" Magazine in July, 1953 (#249;
v. 3, #11) in a slightly different (more overtly populist) translation
attributed solely to Arthur Kevess.  Interestingly, it was introduced as "a
delightful song of the Jewish people":

1.  In a meadow bound and sobbing
    Lies a calf with a mournful eye.
    High above him flies a swallow
    Sailing freely through the sky.

    In the fields, the winds laugh
    Laugh with all their might.
    Laugh and laugh [the] whole day through and almost half the night.

    [Dana dana, with each phrase ending:  "dana dana dana da."]

2.  Says the farmer:  "Stop your sobbing.
    Who told you a calf to be?
    You could have been like that swallow
    Flying there so proud and free."

3.  Poor dumb cows are easy to bind,
    But a man with wings is free.
    Toward the future he flies proudly,
    None can bind him in slavery.
 
In 1956, Kevess and Schwartz collaborated on a pamphlet of 17 Hebrew and
Yiddish folksong translations entitled "Tumbalalaika" (New York:  Hargail
Music Press), in which I believe the translation above was modified into the
one most of us know today.

The songleading and group singing movements in Jewish summer camps during
the 1940s and 1950s were highly attuned to these songs, and several
songleaders from that time period (I worked especially with songleaders in
Reform Jewish summer camps, but they seemed to be part of a much larger
network ranging throughout the Jewish group singing world) told me they took
several of their songs directly from "Sing Out!" magazine, among others.  So
there's a very good chance it *was* a part of the culture before Baez got to
it several years later.

Moreover, the title of the song as it appeared on Baez's 1961 album was
"Donna Donna"--I have not yet seen this spelling in any of the chordsters
and song collections I've seen.  This suggests to me that while Baez's album
might have popularized the song enormously, the song itself may have been
enjoying a quiet life of its own in folksinging venues (including Jewish
ones!) already.  Perhaps I'm having delusions of grandeur, but this might
also have been one reason why Baez's recording of the song caught on so
easily in the first place. . .

Judah.


>> Solely, I think, as a result of
>> that record--I don't think Bikel really had much to do with it--the song
>> went around the world, appearing in countless songsters and collections,
>> sung in coffeehouses, at camps and campfires, among adults and teens, etc.,
>> etc., etc.  (Teddi Schwartz showed me a letter from Joan's office thanking
>> her for the translation and advising her that the song was the single most
>> requested song of Joan's [!] in Europe.)

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