Jeez, I'm weirdly nervous about this, it's been years since I was on a proper forum... but! hello! I go by Amry on the internet, and I'm a longtime reader of Seebs' blog. After hearing so much about the forum through the blog, it reminded me how much time I spent on discussion forums back in the day, and how many great people I met there, so I wanted to try dipping my toes back in! Also, I've always wanted to participate more openly in the kinds of discussions Seebs starts, but I try to keep my tumblr life as low-profile as possible and my fandom life confined to folks I already know. I'm a lady (she/her) and a law student, I like RPing on and off the Internet, I'm super into folklore and musical folk traditions??? That feels like a weird thing to lead with, idk, but it's been my hobby forever! (In law school all my professors constantly want an "interesting fact about you" as an icebreaker, so now this is just my first instinct on an introduction - hello i went to college at [place] and my favorite sports team is [what] and did you know i [once went somewhere interesting]/[can do an unusual but not awkwardness-inducing thing]/[am very interested in the performance of traditional corsican three-part lyric poetry] it's very nice to meet you.......) In any case! Looking forward to meeting y'all! :D
Welcome! :O Do tell. I'm not like ~into~ into folkore and musical etc. but traditions are fascinating and I bet you know some interesting things.
Thanks for the welcome!! :D I always super liked different musical traditions growing up - my dad was really big into world music, there was even a time I was flat determined to be an ethnomusicologist - and then after college I was able to get into a world music choir run by some ladies who travel around, learn folk traditions in five or six different countries, and come back to teach them to groups in the U.S. My favorite of the traditions we've sung in is from the Republic of Georgia. The music is one of the world's oldest polyphonic traditions, and it's experienced an enormous post-Soviet revival - there's a big effort to record, write down, and preserve the songs, some of which are from traditions more than a thousand years old. For example, there's a song our directors learned in Georgia and brought back that is in a dialect that isn't spoken anymore, and folks there know vaguely what it's about ("yeah, it's like, a wedding song, 'green trees and the beautiful maiden and blah dee blah, something....'"), but not what most of the words mean. Despite that, the melody and lyrics keep on getting passed down, because the oral tradition keeps it alive, and I think that's really cool! There's not a recording of that one that I know of (unfortunately, it's this majestic three-part WALL OF SOUND), but Georgian is super big on drones and overtones, which is like, my favorite thing!!! It gets almost a little like throat-singing sometimes! Here is one of my favorite songs, just generally; here is one I've actually gotten to sing before. The latter one is a style of lullaby intended to be sung over children's cradles when they're sick, addressed to the spirits of childhood illnesses who need to be calmed. The singing style requires this really... stoic expression, isn't intended to be showy, and the mouth is kept mostly closed (to let the sound, like, reverberate in the sinuses, I swear)-- with a well-coordinated group the harmonies are absolutely earthshaking, you feel them down to your toes! ...And a third one I've gotten to sing (it's faster!) because I'm just a little bit obsessed, I am sorry, thank you for indulging me, I love this stuff so much, IT'S NICE TO MEET YOU I would love to hear about any favorite musical styles you have! :D It... absolutely does not need to be like this, no pressure at all, my Geek Trigger has just been soundly hit
Oh man give me a little detail about murder ballads, I am not familiar with the term but I am intrigued
About a maid I'll sing a song, sing rickety-tickety-tin, About a maid I'll sing a song, she didn't have her family long. Not only did she do them wrooooong, She did every one of them in, them in, she did every one of them in. (Admittedly, Tom Lehrer is not exactly "folklore".)
Tom Lehrer is relevant to every discussion, probably ...I can't remember what it's called, but there's a real catchy Georgian song about coming down the red-flowing river to the sound of women's wails, hai de lai dee fuck the across-the-river tribe and all their dead warriors, does that count as a murder ballad or does it have to be, like, a ballad
Ooh those songs are all lovely. They make me think of Gregorian chant - maybe it's just that it's acapella? I like the lullaby a lot. They must be amazing to listen to in person! Wow, that's pretty awesome. I think it's really cool that people still sing songs that are fifty or a hundred years old, but more than a thousand, so old no one knows the language any more? That's amazing. I like all kinds of music, honestly. These days I listen to a lot of K-pop, but I grew up on classical and church music. I never studied it properly, just sort of marinated in it. My mom had dozens of classical CDs that we listened to a lot, she taught me and my siblings hymns at home besides the ones we learned in church, we listened to Handel's Messiah every year around Easter, we used to sing Compline and Evening Prayer from a Lutheran prayer-book, we do Christmas caroling as a family every year, we've participated in this church-hosted choir performance thing for years, multiple times a year, and for a while we were in a really small church without a proper choir, and our priest would ask us to learn and sing hymns for special services. I think that's where we learned the Coventry Carol, which is still one of my favourite pieces to sing. (My other favourites are Saw You Never in the Twilight, which I'm not linking a video because I can't find one that's not excessively schmaltzy, and a Gloria which I'm not linking a video because I forgot the composer, and I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say, which I'm not linking a video because I can't find one with the tune I want, augh.) Oh yes also, here's a thread for posting about what music you like! We have a couple of other ones around too, and a music-making thread!
Oh man, the struggle of finding Christian tunes on YouTube that aren't horrifying midi nightmares, I KNOW THIS PAIN. It's so cool that you grew up with so much music, though! The Coventry Carol is really beautiful! I have a huge love for sort of... small-group choral music and close harmony, I find it really calming to hear and to sing. Is the version of "I Heard The Voice Of Jesus Say" the one... the closest tune I can think of is "Star of the County Down," the version I've always liked best is near-identical to that tune. Or is that the one you keep running into that isn't what you're looking for? And thanks for the links!! I am going to check those out! Talking about music is one of my favorite things (she said, this being not remotely apparent)
They are pretty much exactly what they sound like, ballads about people being murdered. There's a general description and a list of them here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_ballad The one I'm most familiar with is about Pearl Bryan, who was decapitated when she was 22 by 2 men in Kentucky in 1896. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Pearl_Bryan There's a couple of podcast episodes about murder ballads if you're interested, with some articles you can read: https://paregoricon.wordpress.com/2016/08/27/ep-45-murder-ballads-part-1/ https://paregoricon.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/ep-46-murder-ballads-part-ii/
yo that is perfect, I am on a giant podcast kick right now - one of those is definitely going on next commute!!
Hey, welcome! :D Don't worry at ALL about geeking out--we all do that here, and I for one LOVE hearing people talk about their interests! (FWIW, music-wise, I'm mostly into alt-rock. They Might Be Giants are love, They Might Be Giants are life.) Any cool folklore stuff you can tell me about? I've always been interested in urban legends, which could qualify as an offshoot...
Hello yes another person interested in folklore!! I'm pretty well-versed in local Appalachian and Southern folklore but outside of that bubble I've not done much research. Also those musical tradition things sound super interesting even to a very non-musical person like me :o
I do not actually know much about urban legends! :o That would totally qualify as a kind of folklore, I think-- I just never did any reading in that direction. Does that encompass, like... the kind of sasquatch-chupacabra cryptid stuff? Or do you mean more the kinds of urban legends where everyone passes around a weird belief about something that happens until it's accepted as true? (Having trouble thinking of an example off the top of my head.) When I was in college I got super immersed into legends about Till Eulenspiegel, who's one of those folk heroes whose origins absolutely nobody knows anymore. He started out as this, like, prankster-trickster figure in 1300s Germany and Flanders, who wandered between cities commenting cheerfully on the feudal social order and making fun of the rich and pompous and filling the world with fart jokes - lots of cities have their own individual Till story (which I like! You can still go see places where he supposedly pulled some goofy shit!), and you see statues of him around Germany still, in fountains and so on. He totally never existed, but you can visit his supposed-grave in north-central Germany, and rub his toes for good luck. He's especially interesting, because that playful "ha ha I pantsed the rich guildsman and embarrassed the king" social disruption got totally subverted when a Belgian novelist in the 1800s wrote Till as the protagonist of this hilariously nationalistic, virulently anti-Catholic work of social commentary, which got pretty popular and sort of helped reawaken the Till legend. Except Till was now this revolutionary agitator with a horrific backstory and bitter, sardonic sense of humor who led an exodus of persecuted peasants out of the burning countryside of Flanders and made dark, dramatic speeches standing on hilltops in the rain - It was one of history's most over-the-top grimdark rewrites, and I think that's beautiful. I also like this story because I think Till would have found it absolutely hysterical. Like, man, from a reputation as That Guy Who Once Sold The Bishop An Invisible Painting For Giggles to THE GREATEST FLEMISH FOLK HERO OF ALL TIME. It's funny - I grew up in north Georgia and spent tons of childhood vacations in the Appalachians, but I can't say I know much about its folklore!! :o Or, anyway, what I've read up on has been much more Deep South-stuff, and tied closer into what came out of slave communities and their storytelling traditions. What kind of stuff have you read up on re: Appalachia?? Man maybe there should be a "share your favorite folk stories" thread, there's so much overlap and recurrent theme in folklore and even folks who aren't super into it often know stories from around where they live - maybe people would be into that??
Glad to help! Honestly I just love songs about historical events because you can find some really weird stuff. Like a ballad about a woman "giving birth" to rabbits.
