A Common Trend
A common trend in cultures throughout the world, I’ve noticed, is music. Music when you’re happy, music when you’re sad, when someone is born, when someone dies, when something important happens, or for just because. Not only is music a wonderful way to express yourself to the world and bring joy to others, it is also an informal way of documenting and preserving a culture. Music can both reflect and shape a culture in it’s own special way. Many times peoples are united by music, the truth in sounds and words bringing communities together in a way nothing else can. We find this often times in groups of people who are out of place or shunned. Slaves brought over from Africa to the Americas, for example, joined each other in song when they were working or having hard times (which was probably most of the time when you think about it). The this particular quality was a vital part of the culture of the “Okies”, migrant workers from the Midwest working in California who were made famous by John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. Many times the songs of these people expressed their trials and tribulations. Sometimes they made up their own songs-they really did have enough to be concerned about. In the case of one traveler the Joad family ran across had this to say about the situation in California, “Took two kids dead, took my wife dead to show me. But I can’t tell you. I should of knew that. Nobody couldn’t tell me, neither. I can’t tell ya about them little fellas layin’ in the tent with their bellies puffed out an’ jus’ skin an’ bones, an’ shiverin’ an’ whinin’ like pups, an’ me runnin’ around; tryin’ to get work- not for money, not for wages!” (Steinbeck 210) and on like that. So there were several valid reasons to write very depressing songs.
Hey, here’s a joke (that may seem cruel at the moment) to show you what I really mean:
What do you get when you play a country song backward?…
A: you get your wife back, you get your house back, you get your dog back, etc.
Get it?
Now, this might seem funny (or not) but in the context of the migrant workers coming out of the Dust Bowl, it would be true. They lost their family, all their money, their home, their dog(s), and their pride. They did not have much of anything and would express themselves, or raise their spirits, using music.
The funny thing is a group of people a couple hundred years earlier had faced similar problems, and expressed them in much the same way as the migrant workers. Through music. Their music sounded the same in many ways, as well as (sometimes) their problems. In fact sometimes the songs they sang were almost exactly the same as the ones the Okies sang. These people were from England and Ireland and had immigrated to America to avoid or escape a variety of situations. They brought with them to the “New World” songs of their culture and their past and created new ones. What we today call traditional folk songs. In a way, it was like oral tradition, keeping the stories or the feelings of cultures alive through the vivid stories of the songs. These people had evidently gone through too much to trust outsiders anymore (many of them had actually ran away from indentured servitude, but that’s another story), and promptly ran for the hills (the hills being the Appalachian mountains). Fast forward a couple hundred years, and these isolated people are singing the same songs that their ancestors had brought from England and Ireland way back when. Pretty amazing, huh? A movie that portrays this well is Songcatcher, which documents the experience of a woman trying to record traditional English folk songs in the way they were sung originally. Surprisingly, she finds the most untainted versions in these small village-like communities in the mountains. These people have been able to preserve a culture through songs that tell stories of people’s lives. But the really amazing thing is that these songs lasted through so many generations and spread so far. In fact, one of the traditional English folk songs in Songcatcher, Barbara Allen, was recorded by the WPA folk music recording project in 1940 by a migrant worker in the Shafter Government Camp in California. A song first created in 17th century England was passed down 400 years to a people who shared a part of their culture because of these songs.
Below are two different versions of Barbara Allen. The first set of lyrics are from Mrs. Sullivan, the woman who recorded the song for the WPA. It is only the beginning of the song, and does not go as far into the song as the other version does. With it is the recording of the first few stanzas of the song. The second set of lyrics are from the movie Songcatcher and has a video of the performance by Emmy Rossum in the movie. You will note that the lyrics have differences, but those can be attributed by time and the small accidental changes that are bound to happen over about 400 years.
BARBARA ALLEN
Mrs. Sullivan
Shafter, 1940
All in the merry month of May
When the green buds they were swellin’
Young Jimmy Gray on his deathbed lay
For love of Barbrew Ellen.He sent his men unto them then
To the town where she was dwellin’
Saying, you must to my master come
If your name be Barbrew Ellem.For death is printed on his face
And o’er his heart is stealin’
Oh you must you must come to him
Oh lovely Barbrew Ellen. BARBARA ALLEN
Here is another version of the same song
Was in the merry month of May
When all gay flowers were a bloomin’,
Sweet William on his death-bed lay
For the love of Barbara Allen.
He sent his servant to the town
To the place where she was dwelling
Said, “You must come to my master’s house,
If your name be Barbara Allen.”
So slowly, slowly she gets up,
And to his bedside going
She drew the curtains to one side
And says, “Young man, you’re dying.”
“I know, I’m sick and very sick,
And sorrow dwells within me
No better, no better I never will be.
Til I have Barbara Allen.”
“Don’t you remember last Saturday night
When I was at the tavern,
You gave your drinks to the ladies all
But you slighted Barbara Allen?”
He reached up his pale white hands
Intending for to touch her
She turned away from his bedside
And says, “Young man I won’t have you.”
He turned his cheek into the wall
And bursted out a crying
“Adieu to thee, adieu to all
And adieu to Barbara Allen.”
She had not walked and reached the town
She heard the death bells ringing
And as they rolled they seemed to say,
“Hard-hearted Barbara Allen.”
“Oh Mother, oh mother go make my bed
Make it both long and narrow
Sweet William died for me today
I’ll die for him tomorrow.”
Sweet William was buried in the old church yard
And Barbara they lay anigh him,
And out of his grave grew a red, red rose,
And out of hers, a briar.
They grew and grew to the old churchyard,
Where they could grow no higher,
And there they tied in a true love’s knot.
The rose wrapped around the briar.
So in this way, immigrants from 17th and 18th century England were able to preserve the spirit and the tales of their way of life: through the beautiful and wondrous art of music.
All their troubles were put into song, which was immortalized by the minds of younger generations, who made their own songs out of their own experiences, and were then able to tell their own story to the world. And whenever these new generations had causes for joy, for grief, for celebration, or for just about anything at all, they could turn to music. And they did, and by doing so continued to pass on the culture, the traditions, spreading the stories of long dead people to the world, with only a simple tune, an instrument or two, and their heartfelt voices.