American Folk Music, Folk Songs, and Ballads

Author(s):  
Stephen D. Winick

Folk music, folk songs, and ballads are nested categories of traditional expression: folk songs are folk music that has words, and ballads are folk songs that tell stories. These genres are universal; all people make music, and almost all start with what scholars would call “folk music.” Nevertheless, this chapter suggests specific ways to find and study them in an American context. Music, songs, and ballads are created by individuals, circulate orally, are adapted by other individuals, and thus become communally re-created works of art. Finding and studying such works is a challenge, requiring us to combine aspects of historical inquiry, literary and linguistic analysis, musicological study, and ethnography. These genres have also become part of popular culture in ways that have been called “folkloresque,” one of which is the movement generally known as “the folk revival.” Virtually all Americans hear folk music in the context of these folkloresque adaptations.

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Joyanta Sarkar ◽  
Anil Rai

"Meghalaya is a richly inhabited Indian state. Drums, flutes of bamboo and hand-held small cymbals are a common ensemble. The advent of Christianity in the middle of the 20th century marked the start of a decline in tribal popular music. Over time, Meghalaya’s music scene has evolved, attracting many talented artists and bands from both traditional and not-so traditional genres. Any of the most recent Meghalaya musicians and bands is: The Plague Throat, Kerios Wahlang, Cryptographik Street Poets, etc., Soulmate, Lou Majaw, and Snow White. Meghalaya’s music is characterised by traditional instruments and folk songs. The Musical Instruments of Meghalaya are made from local materials. Meghalayan people honour powerful natural forces and aim to pacify animistic spirits and local gods. The instruments are made of bamboo, flesh, wood, and animal horn. Any one of these musical instruments is considered to have the ability to offer material benefits. The Meghalaya musical instrument is an essential part of traditional folk music in the region. In this article, we offer an overview of the folk musical instruments of Meghalaya. Keywords: Idiophone, Aerophone, Chordophone, Membranophone, Trumpet. "


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Adam Svec

American folk music has long presented a problematic conception of authenticity, but the reality of the folk scene, and its relationship to media, is far more complicated. This book draws on the fields of media archaeology, performance studies, and sound studies to explore the various modes of communication that can be uncovered from the long American folk revival. From Alan Lomax's cybernetic visions to Bob Dylan's noisy writing machines, this book retrieves a subterranean discourse on the concept of media that might help us to reimagine the potential of the networks in which we work, play, and sing.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-19
Author(s):  
Khoerul Izzati Izzati ◽  
Wulan Adiarti

Many conflicts that arise in Indonesia such as loss of humanity, love and respect for NKRI, recognition of the culture by other nations, causing division between regions, countries and nations. Therefore, it becomes an important thing to cultivate learning national vision into the nation's next-generation, especially from an early age. Various character values ​​need to be applied to children, especially the character to love culture of the nation and country, which is grown through learning the cultivation of national vision. So, children know the origin of their birth and various cultures of their resident people. This study aims to determine the learning program for the cultivation of national vision in Indonesian children with permanent resident status (PR) at Little Stars Kindergarten, School of Indonesia (Singapore) Ltd. In addition, this study aims to see how the behavior of students after participating in the learning of national vision at Little Stars Kindergarten, School of Indonesia (Singapore) Ltd. The target of this study is Indonesian children with permanent resident (PR) status, aged 4-6 years at Little Stars Kindergarten, School of Indonesia (Singapore) Ltd. This study uses qualitative methods, with data collection through observation, interviews and documentation (triangulation). Permanent Resident is the legal status granted by a country so that it has the same position as a citizen. Almost all students at SIS Little Stars are permanent residents. The results of this study indicated that students with permanent residency (PR) status at Little Stars Kindergarten, Indonesia School (Singapore) Ltd, have diverse national perspectives. The national vision possessed by students includes: knowing the city or country of origin at birth, local languages, special foods, Indonesian national songs, some folk songs, and general knowledge about Indonesian culture. Students still have a national vision for Indonesian, even though they have long-lived and settled in Singapore. This is the output of the learning of national vision conducted by the teacher.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 283-286
Author(s):  
Mikhail Semenovich Zhirov ◽  
Olga Yakovlevna Zhirova ◽  
Natalya Stanislavovna Kuznetsova

The paper is devoted to the problem of creating an electronic version of a folklore archive and finding ways to present it on the Internet. A preliminary review of the electronic archives of folklore materials posted on the Internet indicates different approaches to their implementation. In the category of archives containing information about folk songs, various methods of classifying musical genres are used, as well as ways of organizing them, which in general makes it difficult for the user to work with resources. The authors of this study propose their own development of a draft electronic map Ethno-cultural heritage of Belgorod Region. This information resource is aimed at both professional figures in the field of folk music and a wide range of amateurs. The basis of the electronic map was made up of expeditionary materials from the archive of Folk Singing Art Department of Belgorod State Institute of Arts and Culture. While developing the project, modern trends in the presentation of archival materials on the Internet were taken into account, which made it possible to fully reveal the traditional culture of the region. The proposed method of presenting information allows you to maximally illuminate the musical genre composition of folk singing, get acquainted with the creative heritage of outstanding performers, as well as greatly facilitates the search for specific song samples, both among the archive materials and in existing publications.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 135-141
Author(s):  
I. P. Ryabkova ◽  
A. A. Deryugina

The article studies the ways of rendering stylistic and lexical features of museum texts in the Russian, English and Finnish languages in translations. Research in the field of translation of museum texts seems important in view of the growing popularity of museums and the increased number of international visitors who have to refer to translated texts. The study uses the texts of Kiasma and the Helsinki Art Museum (HAM), Helsinki, as well as the texts of the Museum and Exhibition Complex of Small Arms named after M. T. Kalashnikov, Izhevsk. The source languages ​​(SL) of the analyzed texts were Russian and Finnish, the target languages ​​(TL) were Russian and English. The objective of this research was to study the peculiarities of translating museum texts. In the course of the study, a linguistic analysis of texts in the SL was carried out. It was found that museum texts feature a combination of different functional styles. In addition to publicist and scientific styles, museum texts can have some features of fiction, formal business and colloquial functional styles. The study showed a link between the type of the museum text or the nature of the museum and the functional style of the text. In the course of a comparative and translation analysis of texts in the SL and the TL, the main stylistic and lexical problems of translating museum texts were identified, and optimal translation solutions for conveying the stylistic and lexical features of museum texts were described. It was found that lexical translation problems were most often associated with idioms and the vocabulary lacking equivalents in the TL, as well as the dependence of texts on the visual component of works of art. Stylistic problems, in turn, were due to the need to preserve the functional and stylistic characteristics of the original.


Muzikologija ◽  
2006 ◽  
pp. 365-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Jovanovic

The founder of modern Serbian ethnomusicology, collector of folk songs ethnomusicologist, and music pedagogue, Miodrag A. Vasiljevic (1903?1963) was a younger contemporary of the famous Hungarian composer and ethnomusicologist B?la Bart?k (1881?1945). Bart?k was the author of the first synthetic study of Serbian and Croatian vocal folk traditions, which was also the first such study in English. During the same period and immediately after Bart?k had completed his study, Miodrag Vasiljevic, along with other pioneers of modern ethnomusicology in former Yugoslavia, started to research musical folklore on field at home. Bart?k's study was published a year after Vasiljevic's first book; by 1965 Vasiljevic's other collections, studies and articles had been published (most of them in Yugoslavia, i.e. in Serbia). Independently of Bart?k, yet almost simultaneously, Vasiljevic had written down hundreds of melodies and studied some elements of Serbian and South Slavonic traditional culture: tonality, rhythm, melodic modes and terminology. This was in addition to his great work experience on field and his empirical insight into the fundamental characteristics of musical folklore in this area,. The final result that he wished for, but unfortunately, did not manage to complete, was a synthetic study of Serbian and South Slavonic musical folklore. Vasiljevic's margin notes, handwritten comments on Bart?k's findings, published here for the first time, are considered to be a source of information about his attitude towards Bart?k's assumptions and explanations, as well as showing the results of Vasiljevic's own work, and the ambit of his study focus. Bart?k's and Vasiljevic's primary motives in their approach to South Slavonic traditional music were different. While Bart?k was interested in features of South Slavonic tradition, so that he could note the particular features of the Hungarian music heritage more clearly, Vasiljevic studied the regularities of Serbian folk music approaching it in comparison with other South Slavonic traditions. This diversity determined their approach to the material. Bart?k often leaned on his excellent knowledge of other traditions and drew conclusions from facts that were familiar to him. In contrast, Miodrag Vasiljevic paid more attention to questions relating to the wider issue of the autochthonous development of Serbian musical folklore. Many of Vasiljevic's comments on Bart?k's study are classified here in the following categories: 1) comments in which he expresses agreement with Bart?k; 2) comments in which he gives precious supplements to Bart?k's observations; 3) comments in which he expresses disagreement with Bart?k: a) argument and b) with no evident arguments; 4) comments in which an incomplete understanding of Bart?k's findings is reflected; and 5) comments which indirectly refer to a professional aspect of Bart?k's work. Some of the comments, according to their wide, still unstudied subject matter, demand greater added elaboration and thus have not been covered in detail in this paper. Insight into Vasiljevic's comments on Bart?k's study is significant for experts outside Serbia who have little information on continuity in the development of the Serbian school of ethnomusicology, and are also important because of the huge degree of disproportion in the two scholars' work display.


Author(s):  
Pete Ward

This chapter presents a study of celebrity worship in an attempt to clarify how popular culture can be like religion, although both remain categorically different. Most approaches to religion involve at least one of the following ideas: a belief in a supernatural power, the significance of religion to generate community life or some kind of church, or a divine power's influence on people's lives. Celebrity culture in almost all of these respects falls significantly short of what is required of a formal religion. Yet rather than dismissing celebrity worship as not religiously significant, it might be possible to cast new light on how, through the action of the media, and through the agency of audiences and fans, something like (and not like) religion is starting to emerge. The term for this is “parareligion.” Parareligion is based on the premise that celebrity worship is not a religion but has religious parallels. Parareligion suggests that religious elements are present but that they are presented ambiguously. These religious elements are often contradictory and open to a variety of different understandings.


Popular Music ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-334
Author(s):  
Rachel E. Love

AbstractThis article examines how Roberto Leydi and Giovanna Marini, two important figures of the Italian ‘folk revival’, negotiated diverse American cultural influences and adapted them to the political context of Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that American musical traditions offered them valuable models even as many Italian intellectuals and artists grew more critical of US society and foreign policy. To explore this phenomenon in greater depth, I take as examples two particular moments of exchange. I first discuss American folklorist Alan Lomax's research in Italy and its impact on Leydi's career. I then examine how Marini employed American talking blues in order to reject US society in her first ballad, Vi parlo dell'America (I Speak to You of America) (1966). These two cases provide specific examples of how American influence worked in postwar Italy and the role of folk music in this process.


Author(s):  
Milan I. Surducki

I propose to present here the findings of an analysis of a limited corpus of English loanwords as found in four Canadian weekly newspapers published in the Serbo-Croatian language. Though interference in written language is a secondary phenomenon in a situation of languages in contact, instances of such interference are interesting and important since they may contribute to the adoption and spread of the corresponding instances of interference in spoken language. In addition, kinds of interference, as well as the total amount of interference in an immigrant language contact situation, may be usefully compared with interference phenomena in the corresponding standard language (in which very often, as is the case with E and SC in contact, almost all borrowing is done from a written model language). The linguistic analysis of the interference in written language seems therefore to be worth while.


2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
GILLIAN A. M. MITCHELL

This article focusses on the concept of cultural pluralism in the North American folk music revival of the 1960s. Building on the excellent work of earlier folk revival scholars, the article looks in greater depth at the “vision of diversity” promoted by the folk revival in North America – at the ways in which this vision was constructed, at the reasons for its maintenance and at its ultimate decline and on the consequences of this for anglophone Canadian and American musicians and enthusiasts alike.


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