Re: ballads 2

[andyrubin <andyrubin...>]

In my view what we're witnessing here, with shanteys and other melodies being 
mixed in with more clearly-acknowledged "Jewish" melodies (and we can go on 
forever on what THAT means), is a very contemporary process, one that may be 
conscious or unconscious on the part of the musicians. I remember sitting in an 
orthodox shul in Brookline, MA one Shabbat morning in the late 1980s, wondering 
if, during the mussaf kedushah, the chazan was aware that he was singing the 
melody to "We're off to Valaparaiso 'round the Horn" (he did a beautiful job, 
by the way). My guess, for what it's worth, is that someone, at some VERY 
recent point, had made the conscious transfer and it stuck, at least for one 
Shabbat morning service. 

With all of the Jewish participation in the folk revivals of the 
fifties-sixties-seventies, this should very much be expected. Lots of 
musically-inclined people out there with melodies busting out of their brains 
that are hankerin' for reassignment into our inclusive musical tradition(s).

Shabbat shalom,

-Andy Rubin
The Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band and Ceilizemer

www.freilachmakers.com
www.shalomireland.com




> hi again, I think Batya was referring to songs officially classified as
> ballads not in the general sense but in the specific sense of a certain
> corpus of narrative songs such as the famous "Henry Martin" and other
> Child ballads many of us of my geenration first heard as sung by Joan
> Baez. But I'm quite intrigued by David's comment about a sea-shanty
> Yigdal - why do you think it sounds like a sea shanty? Where is it from
> ("Sephardic" isn't a very specific term in temrs of culture or
> geography) And why "MUST" that particular "lejay olamim" be a halyard
> shanty? Where is it sung? WHich Sephardim?
> English and Spanish sailors had contact but didn't necessarily serenade
> each other... and their songs didn't necessarily make it to Spanish Jews
> - who tended not to be sailors (though when exiled, probably spent an
> awful lot of time huddled miserably on ships, not necessarily in earshot
> of shanties, and probably not desiring to hear them any more if they
> managed to land in one piece!) - and by the time of the Armada were, in
> any case, Crypto-Jews if they were still in SPain.
> Shantily, Judith
> 
> 
> > Yigdal" that sounded as if they might be a sea-shantee. The "lechay
> > olamim" 
> > sung on Simchas Torah HAS to be a halyard shantee as well. But I can't
> > prove 
> > it. Rest assured, English and Spanish sailors had contact, usually not
> > so 
> > friendly--remember the Spanish Armada episode.
> 
> 

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