Re: What is a folk song?

[Batya <batya_l...>]

Hi!

Speaking about folk songs, but on a completely different track, can anyone
tell me about Yiddish riddle songs? It seems to me that Tumbalalaika might
somehow be connected with "I gave my love a cherry": is this completely
far-fetched? Do you know of any other Yiddish riddle songs and riddling in
Yiddish altogether?

Thanks,
Batya


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <music (at) sterlingmp(dot)org>
To: "World music from a Jewish slant" <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 5:56 AM
Subject: RE: What is a folk song?


> Sylvia Schildt wrote (and I think these were her own words):
>
> > When a people possesses a song, it becomes part of the ethnic memory,
> > and various versions pop up as imperfect memory takes over.
>
> > I think the greatest compliment the creators can have is when the song
> > is perceived as a folk song - examples, Afn Pripitchik, Kinder Yorn,
> > Reyzele, Rabeynu Taam.  Warshavsky, Gebirtig, Manger have achieved this
lofty
> > status, in my view.
>
>
> *Absolutely* -- and I share precisely this thought with my audiences and
students
> many times.
>
> What greater compliment to Israel Goldfarb than that his "Shalom Aleichem"
is
> almost universally regarded (by amcha, anyway) as "traditional" and sung
all
> over the world -- assumed to have come over on the boat from Eastern
Europe
> (actually, Goldfarb composed the melody in this country, on the Columbia
> University campus in New York City), or even, more astonishingly, to have
> been "traditional" in whatever locale it was sung?  (Goldfarb learned that
his
> melody was being sung in India, regarded as "traditional" and as having
been
> passed on through generations.)  Even if Goldfarb *did* spend much of his
> life convincing people -- including cantors and others knowledgeable in
Jewish
> music -- that he had written it!
>
> So many of Shlomo Carlebach's melodies, of course, have attained this
status
> and "lost their composer"; some had done so, it seems, within months.
Debbie
> Friedman's best melodies will attain this status over time.  Tanchum
Portnoy's
> "Eits Chayim" (OK, it's on my CD, shameless plug) *has* attained this
status;
> out of any 100 congregants singing this melody, often not *one* can
identify
> the composer.  And Shmuel Brazil's newer "Shalom Aleichem", likewise.
>
> And "Oyfn Pripetshik" is, indeed, a wonderful example, as it was
apparently
> being sung as a, quote, "folk" (meaning, i.e., "traditional") song within
weeks
> of its composition.  (It lost its name as well as its composer, since Mark
> Warshawsky called it "Der Alef-Beys.")  And Sholem Aleichem, who was
> instrumental in publicizing Warshawsky's work and getting it out there, so
> to speak, so appreciated in the song, and in Warshawsky's songs generally,
> the quality Sylvia refers to.  "If I didn't know they were your own, I
would have
> to swear I had once heard my mother sing them," he is reported to have
> exulted.  (Shlomo Carlebach's melodies sounded, it was said after his
death,
> like they had always been there.)
>
> And here's what Sholem Aleichem wrote about Warshawsky's songs and about
> what becomes a "folk song" generally (it occurs to me that the preceding
could
> actually be read using either sense of "becomes"):
>
>
> Not long ago a friend of mine, a Yiddish writer from Warsaw, happened to
be in
> Odessa for a Yiddish concert and was delighted by one artist's rendition
of a
> "folk song."  It was Warshawsky's song about "di mizinke."
>
> To this Yiddish writer, Warshawsky's song was a "folk song" and
Warshawsky's
> name never occurred to him!
>
> Who knows?  Maybe this is a virtue?  Maybe that's the ideal that every
creator
> could wish for himself, to reach that degree of popularity?
>
> When I wrote my preface to the first edition of the Warshawsky songs, I
decided
> to play the prophet and predict that it wouldn't take long before those
songs
> became genuine folk sungs [N. B., based on what they'd *become*, not how
or
> whence they originated], sung by Jews throughout the Diaspora.  I didn't
know
> that my prediction would achieve such proportions, that these songs would
> become the voice of a people so long as a Yiddish song was sung, nor did I
> know that the name Warshawsky would be forgotten, as if nowhere in the
> world a Warshawsky ever existed.
>
>
> -- Robert Cohen, who delights in this sort of thing ...
>
>


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