Re: What is a folk song?

[Sylvia Schildt <creativa...>]

Not far-fetched at all, Batya.

Perhaps the writer of "I Gave My Love A Cherry" heard Tumbalalaika at a
Yiddish Zingeray and thought - Cool! I can do that.

Seriously folks, riddle songs are common in folklore.

Sylvia Schildt
Baltimore, Maryland



on 1/14/04 4:30 AM, Batya at batya_l (at) macam(dot)ac(dot)il wrote:

> 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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