Folk Music, Schmolk Music!

Schickele Mix Episode #107

Part of The Schickele Mix Online Fan Archive

Premiere
1996-08-14
“Peter, are you ready?”
I'm the very definition of ready.

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Transcript

[This is a machine-generated transcript, cleaned up and formatted as HTML. You can download the original as an .srt file.]

Right here on WBUN-IB. We invite you to stay tuned now for Schickele Mix. And on the subject of Y2K, Peter Schickele is still not convinced that we have escaped the Y2K problem completely.
But we've only got a couple more days today and tomorrow left in Y2K. And so he seems to be relaxing just a little bit. Are you ready for this year to be over?
I'm the very definition of ready. Here's the theme.
[No speech for 15s.]
Hello there, I'm Peter Schickele. And this is Schickele Mix, a program dedicated to the proposition that all musics are created equal. Or as Duke Ellington put it, if it sounds good, it is good. And the good news around here is that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this state-of-the-art but folksy radio station, where I am provided with what it takes to throw together a show that is at least arguable. And that is arguably worthy of distribution by PRI, Public Radio International.
Okay, folks, now I should tell you right off, since this is radio, you know, and you can't see what's going on here, I want to tell you that there are three people in the studio today, me, myself, and I.
And it seems particularly important to tell you that, since all three of us sound exactly the same. I, do you want to say hello? Hello. And myself, howdy. And this is me, who's going to say hello.
[No speech for 44s.]
Oh, man. Will you turn that off? Why? Come on. Turn it off. Hey, come on. Will you just turn that thing off? Turn it down. Come on.
Honestly, do you really call that folk music? That schmaltzy symphonic arrangement? And Robert White? Give me a break. He's a beautiful singer, but he's a classically trained tenor. If he's a folk, the Vanderbilts are hillbillies. Yeah, but the song... Oh, come on. Beautiful Dreamer is not folk music. We know who wrote it. Stephen Foster, right? A professional songwriter.
He lived in New York City, for Pete's sake. If there had been a tin pan alley in those days, he would have been part of it. That's not a song that has been woven into the fabric of society for so long that its origins are shrouded in the mysticism. You want folk music? I'll give you folk music. Here's a song that's been around since Methuselah was a little boy. Oh, right. Yeah, right. No, but seriously, guys. This song, in some form or another, is probably older than this country.
[No speech for 11s.]
To take a walk, just a little walk
Down beside where the waters flow Down by the bank
So the Ohio leaves say Wait a minute. Turn that off, will you? Hey, come on. We're on the air here.
No, turn it off. Look, it's my show, right? Look, turn that thing off. Listen, can I tell you something? Joan Baez may be called a folk singer, but that does not mean she really comes from the people. You know what I mean? I mean, she didn't learn that song from her mammy or her... ...pappy. She comes from a middle-class family.
Her pappy's a professor or a scientist or something like that. Yeah, but she's not a trained singer. I did some work with her in the late 60s, and she told me once that as a teenager, she used to sing in the shower, and she'd practice her vibrato by holding the flib on the front of her throat with her fingers and jiggling it while she sang. Hey, good story. And she's a terrific singer. But that's part of the problem. She's got a beautiful voice. She doesn't sound like just a... ...regular person. And the Greenbrier boys that are playing and singing with her there. I went to school with Ralph Rinsler, the mandolinist in that group.
We're talking about Swarthmore College, folks. One of the most intellectual schools in the country. And John Harold, the guitar player. I know Johnny, and he's a great guy. I like him a lot. But he doesn't even always drop the G on his INGs. You know what I mean? Okay, now here's a song by a guy who learned it from his family in the hills of North Carolina. And who doesn't sound like Luciano Pavarotti. He sounds like you or me. Or at least you or me if we could sing in tune. This is folk music.
Shoulder up your gun and whistle up your dog. Shoulder up your gun and whistle up your dog. Off to the woods for to catch a groundhog. Oh, groundhog. Run here Sally with a ten-foot pole.
Run here Sally with a ten-foot pole. To twist this whistle pig out of his hole. Oh, groundhog. Sorry guys, turn that thing down. Oh, come on. Now turn it, turn it off, would you? Look, Doc Watson is terrific. And he does come from a real grass roots tradition.
But he's a professional entertainer. He's given concerts at schools and clubs and auditoriums all over the country. He doesn't work in the mines all day and maybe play a little guitar on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Wait a minute, this is ridiculous. You're saying that the only folk music, I'm saying that the only folk music, that deserves to be called folk music is...
Wait a minute, what do you mean deserves to be called folk music? Who are you to decide what deserves to be called folk music? Yeah, but who gives you the right? I mean, who gives you the authority to be a professional entertainer and to keep an eye? Hey, come on you guys, shut up. Be quiet. Fellas, this is supposed to be a discussion, not a brief for all. I'm sorry, but there's no point in giving your point of view... ...if nobody can hear it. Guys, hey guys, they do professional entertainment. I am going to have to ask you guys to leave.
You know, one of the nice things about life is that you don't have to have arguments like that.
If you've got a fairly integrated personality, you don't have to choose. You can enjoy whatever strikes your fancy. Arguments about the purity of folk music, at least if they're tied to value judgments, rate high on the yawn scale for me. I recently heard someone giving a talk about Hungarian folk music at the beginning of the 20th century, and he made a big distinction between the rural music of the peasants and that of the gypsy bands who played in the cafes in the cities. And there certainly is a difference in the music. But he kept referring to the rural music as the more authentic music.
Well, it seems to me that the other is just as authentic. It's authentic gypsy cafe music. And a lot of it sounds pretty great to me. Today's show is called, Folk Music, Schmoke Music.
We're going to prowl around the edges of the folk music forest where the good, pure, old, isolated stuff meets big, bad, modern civilization.
My father spent the last of his teenage years in a charming southern German town called Baden-Weiler, literally on the edge of the Black Forest. It has natural hot springs, and it's been a spa since Roman times. Once in the late 1950s, when our family was visiting my grandmother there, I was out walking at dusk, a beautiful evening, and I heard a beautiful melody wafting through the air. That's perhaps a trite expression, but it captures it. That lovely tune was wafting. I'm not even sure what the instrument was. It was probably being played on a hill somewhere.
But it was playing a well-known Schubert song, and I thought, I'll bet many of the people enjoying this twilight serenade don't think of it as a Schubert song. They think of it as a folk song that they've known all their lives. And that's what many of the Stephen Foster songs are for Americans. They are folk songs in the sense that millions of people know them who have never heard of Stephen Foster.
Our first suite today presents four different versions of Foster's most successful song. The first one is especially interesting because it's a recreation of how the song was originally sung. Foster wrote it for use in minstrel shows, which means it was sung by a white man in blackface singing to a white audience. Although sentimental pre-Civil War blackface songs such as this were ostensibly filled with a generalized nostalgia that anyone might feel, they were in those days an implicit apology for, or defense of, slavery, since they painted a picture of plantations all of whose inhabitants were happy and satisfied. The second version we'll hear treats the song reverentially almost like a hymn.
The third arrangement gets a bit cute. And the last one, given the song's origin, I just love the idea of tying the package up with this version. It's by a great black musician who transforms the song so completely that if you were listening to it casually, you might not even realize immediately what song it is. This suite definitely covers a lot of ground. So I call it Old Folks in a Mobile Home. See you in about eight.
[No speech for 14s.]
Way down upon the Suwannee River
Far, far, there's where my heart is turning ever
There's where the old folks stay All up and down the river
And the whole creation Sadly are wrongin'
For the old plantation And for the old folks at home
All the world and sad and dreary
Everywhere I roam
Oh, dark is how my heart grows weary
Far from the folks at home
All rise, I squandered
Many dissonance I saw
When I was playin' with my brother How was I?
Oh, take me to my kind old mother Dare let me leave and
Hold her sad and dreary Everywhere I roam
Oh, dark is how my heart grows weary
Far from the old folks at home
Way down upon the Suwannee River
Far, far, there's where my heart is turning ever
[No speech for 17s.]
I'm still longing for the old plantation.
Oaks and oak.
[No speech for 29s.]
Way down upon the Suwannee River, far, far away.
There's where my heart is turning ever, there's where the old folks stay.
All the world is sad and dreary, everywhere I roam.
Way down upon the Suwannee River, far from the old folks at home.
Do you understand? Suwannee, talking about the river, you know, so far, so far away.
So far away. Oh, yeah. You know, that's where, where my heart is turning ever. And that's where, that's where the old folks stay.
The old folks stay. All the world is sad. Sad and lonely now.
Everywhere I roam. Keep on telling you my darling.
How my heart is going sad. So sad and lonely.
Because I'm so far. I'm far from my folks back home.
Far from my folks back home. guitar solo guitar solo
[No speech for 15s.]
It's sad and lonely now
Everywhere I roam Keep on telling you my darling How my heart is going sad
So sad and lonely Because I'm so far So far from my folks back home Yeah, I'm far from my folks back home Yeah, so far from my folks back home Yeah, oh, far from my folks back home Yeah
Okay, old folks at a mobile home. We began with an interesting box called Popular Music in Jacksonian America. A bunch of LPs. And that was Philip Barron singing in the style of the old blackface singers being accompanied on the banjo by Tom Sauber. And then we heard the hymn-like performance of the song by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Third was part of a medley, a Stephen Foster medley from a Lawrence Welk album. A double album, actually. And then finally, Ray Charles doing his Swanee River Rock. By far, as I'm concerned, the greatest version of all. You know, I've been listening to this Ray Charles album for at least three years now.
35 years, and I figure I'll still be listening to it when I'm an old folk at home. Back then, as now, my name was Peter Schickele. The program, however, is Schickele Mix from PRI,
Public Radio International. So what is folk music? Maybe a useful component of a definition of folk song, if one wanted to concoct a definition, which I don't, would be that it's a song that has no definitive version. For instance, the people, at least in this country, who are familiar with songs by Brahms are people who listen to classical music, and they know the songs as Brahms wrote them. The Brahms lullaby, on the other hand, is known by millions of people who have never heard the original. They've only heard it in arrangements made by others. And with a pop song, even if you've heard it in dozens of arrangements, the version that made it a hit feels like the definitive version. At least until and unless somebody else comes along and gets another hit out of it.
But with Down in the Valley, or I've Been Working on the Railroad, or Take Me Out to the Ball Game, I don't think of those songs as having one definitive version.
Using this definition, or partial definition, both classical songs and pop songs can become folk songs if they become so much a part of the general culture that people don't remember the original versions, or at least not. One of the things that folk status has in common with pop status
is that it makes a song fair game for arrangers. It's like jokes. Jokes get made up by somebody, but I know I'm not the only one who often, especially with longer jokes, makes changes when I retell them. You know, actually it's interesting if one of the characteristics of folk music is the freedom its performers have to make. It's the freedom of the audience feel to make changes, whether they're intentional or due to the vagaries of memory, then jokes are one of the last bastions of real folk art in our litigious and copyright-obsessed society. Here's one of the most individual voices in folk music.
I wonder, as I walk through the sky, how Jesus, our Savior, did come forth to die.
For poor, hungry people like you, and as I've wandered out under the sky.
When Mary birthed Jesus, t'was in a cow's stall, with wise men, and shepherds, and farmers, and all.
But high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall.
And the promise of age, ah, it sounded recall.
If Jesus had wanted for anything, a star in the sky, or a bird on the wing, or all of God's angels in heaven to save,
he surely could have had it, cause he was your King.
[No speech for 12s.]
John Jacob Niles. Now, John Jacob Niles was a folk song collector, but he wrote I Wonder as I Wander, words and music, based on fragments of a song he heard in Murphy, North Carolina.
in 1933. And I wonder if he was more amused or annoyed in the following decades when he heard other singers present this song as a song that they themselves had collected way up in the mountains of old Virginia, or something like that. Here are two arrangements of this haunting song by classical composers.
[No speech for 44s.]
I wonder as I wander How Jesus, the Savior, did
For poor ornery people like I wonder as I wander
Out under the sky
When Mary birthed Jesus, t'was in a cow's stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all But high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall. And the promise of the ages
It then did recall
If Jesus had wanted for ever
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing
Or all of God's angels in heaven for to sing He surely could have seen, Sing it
As he was the King.
I wonder as I wander Out under the sky
How Jesus, the Savior,
did come for For poor ornery people like you and
I wonder as I wander Out under the sky
[No speech for 19s.]
How Jesus, the Savior, did come for to die
When Mary birthed Jesus, t'was in a cow's stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all But high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall.
And the promise of the ages It then did recall If Jesus had wanted for ever A star in the sky or a bird on the wing Or all of God's angels in heaven for to sing
He surely could have had it As he was the King.
[No speech for 40s.]
Two arrangements of John Jacob Niles' I Wonder as I Wander. The first was sung by Joan Baez. The arrangement was made by yours truly. The name's Peter Schickele. Here's my card. And I was conducting the orchestra in that one from a Christmas album that Joan made called Noel. And then the other one was by Luciano Berio. And that was Kathy Berberian singing with Berio conducting the Juilliard Ensemble. I said before that folk musicians feel free to make changes. And I also mentioned our highly copyrighted society.
Sometimes those two things come into conflict. Around 1966 or 67, I did the arrangements for one of Joan Baez's albums. It was called Joan. And one of the songs she did was Dangling Conversation by Paul Simon, who was a folky from way back, you know. Joan had what she thought was a great idea about changing one line of the lyrics from Is the theater real? Is God really dead? to Is God really dead?
There had been a lot of talk about the death of God in the mid-60s. And we recorded it that way. Then somebody must have decided that they should check it out with Paul Simon. And I guess he didn't think it was such a great idea.
Because there's a sentence among the credits on the back of the LP saying, Paul Simon asks Joan to note that the line in Dangling Conversation was originally Is the theater really dead? He felt strongly about it apparently, but not enough to make us re-record this. So he decided to re-record the song. If you deal in folk music, the initials PD loom large on your horizon. They don't stand for police department or philosophical differences or pretty darn. They stand for public domain. If the song's not in copyright, the sky's the limit. You like the words but not the melody?
Hey, feel free, write a new melody. Here's something you don't hear very often. Comin' Through the Rye, sung in Russian. First we'll hear the first turn's lyric with its most famous melody, and then in a setting with an original melody by Shostakovich.
[No speech for 132s.]
String String String String
[No speech for 18s.]
Okay, now I just have to read you a little bit from the text of that Shostakovich album,
because obviously somebody translated the Robert Burns into Russian. And in these liner notes here on the album, instead of just giving the original Robert Burns, they had somebody translate it from Russian back into English. Somewhere along the line, some changes were made because, you know, the poem, the original Burns poem,
Well, the way that comes out here is, And if someone's hugged by someone, how to tick him off. Certainly captured the spirit there. That was the Royal Scottish National Orchestra Chorus. I hope they never perform in theaters with small marquees.
Accompanied by, here's a surprise, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, under the baton of the Royal Scottish National Sir Alexander Gibson, performing Coming Through the Royal Scottish National Rye, followed by Rudolf Barschai conducting the Moscow Chamber Orchestra with the Royal Scottish National Chorus. With Yevgeny Nesterenko singing Genie, Coming Through the Rye, from Shostakovich's Six Songs to Lyrics by English Poets.
And okay, okay, if you're a Scot, and you're getting all hot under the kilt about Robert Burns being called English, just be careful whom you call Russian the next time you go to the former Soviet Union.
Or, should I take a page from Prince, should it be the country formerly known as the Soviet Union? I mean, what's in a name? Peter Schickele, for instance. Or Schickele Mix.
Or even PRI, Public Radio International. Folk music, schmoke music. We are, depending on your point of view, either playing fast and loose with received gems of time-honored lyrics and music, or we're allowing for creative freedom and refusing to be bound by the masculine proprietary concepts of authenticity associated with classical music and the jerks who formulated them. Here's another example.
An old text fitted out with a new tune. First, we'll hear just the melody of this English ballad in a setting from military band. Then we'll hear words and music in a choral setting, and finally the old words put to a new melody in a chamber setting. I call this suite Morning Dew Blown Away, and it lasts about seven minutes.
You know, it seems to me that the newest setting, in spite of its obviously jazzy licks, feels closest to the spirit of the old. But, of course, I'm prejudiced.
[No speech for 67s.]
There was a farmer's son Kept sheep all on the hill
And he went out one May morning to see what he could kill Singing, blow away the morning dew The dew and the dew Blow away the morning dew How sweet the winds do blow
He looked high and low
He clasped his hands in his hands He cast them under low
And then he saw a pretty maid beside the watery brook He spied a pretty maid And sing, blow away the morning dew Blow away the morning dew The dew and the dew
Oh, blow away the morning dew How sweet the winds do blow away Oh, blow away If you come to my father's house, which is golden all around Then you shall have a kiss from me at twenty thousand pounds Twenty thousand pounds? Wow! And here's a maid within Blow away the morning dew The dew and the dew Let sing, blow away the morning dew How sweet the winds do blow She looked quite steed and so likewise did she And then they rode along the lane so gallant, swift and free And sing, blow away the morning dew
Blow away the dew and the dew
And then they came to her father's house, so nimble she popped in And said, there is a fool without
And here's a maid within Singing blow away, blow away, blow away, blow away the morning dew, oh, blow away the morning dew.
How sweet, how sweet, how sweet the winds do blow, blow away the morning dew.
There was a farmer's son who kept his sheep all on the hill.
And he walked out one morning for to see what he could kill.
He looked high, he looked low, around him he did look.
And there he saw a pretty maid beside the watering brook.
[No speech for 23s.]
Cast over me my mantle fair and pin it o'er my gown. And if you will take hold my hand and I will be your own.
And if you come to my father's house, it's walled all around. Then you shall have a kiss from me at twenty thousand pounds.
[No speech for 19s.]
He mounted on a silver steed and she upon another.
And then they rode along the lane like sister and like brother. As they were riding on alone, she saw some poops of hay.
Oh, is not this a pretty place for girls and boys to play?
[No speech for 10s.]
The farmer's son replied,
Alas, I go this very day to meet my future bride. But early on tomorrow, when the sun will rise, And the leaves are decked with dew,
Among these poops of hay, sweet lady, I will wait for you.
[No speech for 23s.]
But when they reached her father's gate, so nimble she flew in.
And said, There is a fool without, and here's a maid within. We have a flower in the yard, we call it Marygold.
And if you will not when you may, you shall not when you won't.
You will not when you may, you shall not when you won't.
How sweet the wind is to blow, begins to blow.
The sun is climbing in the sky and warming all below. And it's no way the morning dew has sleep.
No way the morning dew has sleep.
Why, thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, first we heard the Vaughan Williams, the last part of the last movement, of his folk song suite for military band that has that tune in it.
That was being played by, who is that being played by? Here it is, the regimental band of the Coldstream Guards. And then we heard the king singer. Singing an arrangement by Langford of Blow Away the Morning Dew. And then the last number, as you surely guessed, was by the host of Schickele Mix. Last heard singing and now heard speaking.
I have sometimes appeared in concert with the early music group Calliope. And for those appearances I wanted to write a song for me to sing with them. And because they play mostly Renaissance instruments, I decided to look for a text in the Oxford Book of Ballads. Many of which date back to this day. To the 16th century or earlier. By the way, I have to read you a bit of the preface to that book.
By its editor, Arthur Quiller Couch, writing in 1924. As in the Oxford Book of English verse, I tried to range over the whole field of the English lyric, and to choose the best. So in this volume I have sought to bring together the best ballads out of the whole of our national stock. But the method, order, balance of the two books are different perforce, as the fates of the lyric and the ballad have become diverse. While the lyric in general, still making for variety, is today more prolific than ever, and all cant apart, promises fruit to equal the best, that particular offshoot, which we call the ballad, has been dead or as good as dead for two hundred years. It would seem to have discovered, almost at the start, a very precise platonic pattern of what its best should be.
And having exhausted itself in reproducing that, it declined through a crab-apple stage of broadsides into sterility. They don't write like that anymore.
Or do they? Anyway, that was a concert tape of Calliope and yours truly performing How Sweet the Winds Do Blow. You know, before I leave the Oxford Book of Ballads, I want to tell you about a startling discovery I made.
I was reading through it, and I came to this ballad called Lord Thomas and Fair Annette. Let me read to you, starting with the fourth verse. O Annette, she's gained till her bower, Lord Thomas down the den, and he's come till his mither's bower, by the lee-light o' the moon. O sleep ye, wake ye, mither, he says, or are ye the bower within? I sleep right aft, I wake right aft. What want ye with me, son? Where had ye been on night, Thomas? O wow, ye've tarried long. I'm not kidding you.
O wow, ye've tarried long. W-O-W. I figured this has got to mean something different, you know, in the 16th century or whenever this is. So I went to the library, and I got out the OED, you know, the Oxford English Dictionary. You know, it has a little magnifying glass in it so you can read it. And I looked it up. W-O-W. Wow. It's a Scottish, you know, expotulation, or whatever you call that thing. It's an expression of surprise. It means wow.
I couldn't believe that. Bad. Okay, now we began this program with a big argument about what constitutes real folk music.
But judging from the music I hear coming out of Ireland, that's one of the places where they worry about it least. That is, they worry about purism very little, and they just concentrate on making great music. We're going to go out with a bunch of reels, starting with Con Cassidy's and Neil Gow's Highlands, played by a group called Alten.
[No speech for 96s.]
And that's Schickele Mix for this week. Our program is made possible with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this radio station and its members. Thank you, members. And not only that, our program is distributed by PRI, Public Radio International. We'll tell you in a moment how to get started, and how you can get an official playlist of all the music on today's program with album numbers and everything. Just refer to the program number. This is program number 107. And this is Peter Schickele saying goodbye and reminding you that it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi. Hey, you are looking good. See you next week.
[No speech for 386s.]
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned, send a stamped self-addressed envelope to Schickele Mix. That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Schickele Mix. Care of Public Radio International,
100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, MN 55403. PRI, Public Radio International.