Music 190W Week 4

Folk Music and the Blues

Reading: chapter 4, Hacker 5 & 6

Listening: CD 1, tracks 4, 5, 6

Study Questions

  1. What is folk music? How is it different from art music?
  2. What are some examples of folk music?
  3. What is authentic folk music, or traditional folk music?
  4. What are the two main cultural/ethnic branches of American folk music?
  5. Describe the style of folk music. What form do many folk songs use?
  6. How is folk music performed? Describe a typical folk vocal style.
  7. What is an oral tradition? Are oral traditions in music always folk musics?
  8. What effect does oral tradition have on the lyrics and tunes of folk songs?
  9. Who are two important collectors of folk songs?
  10. Who creates folk songs?
  11. What is a field recording?
  12. What are some categories of folk songs?
  13. Define "strophic."
  14. Which instrument is prominent in folk dance music?
  15. What are spirituals? How are they sung?
  16. What are the blues? What defines a blues text, and the blues musical form?
  17. How do folk and popular music interact? (see p. 51)
  18. What is a revival? Give some examples of musical revivals.
  19. What are some categories of blues?
  20. Study the suggestions for listening on p. 53

Listening exercises

To use this section, make sure CD 1 is in the CD-ROM drive of your computer.

"Barbry Allen," a narrative ballad, track 4. Sung by Jean Ritchie, the well-known folk singer. The form of this song is strophic: the same tune is used for each stanza of text. Compare the first phrases of stanzas 1 and 2:

All in the merry month of May
When the green buds they were swellin'

He sent his servant to the town
To the place where she was dwellin'

and the second phrases of stanzas 1 and 2:

Young William Green on his death bed lay
For the love of Barbry Allen.

Sayin', Master's sick and he sends for you
If your name be Barbry Allen.

The texture is monophonic: one unaccompanied melodic line.

The meter is not strongly emphasized, although the tune can be written in triple meter (see p. 58).

The music has a modal sound: it sounds different from music composed in the standard major and minor keys. One reason for this is that the melody pauses on three different notes (you could also say it pauses four times, once for each breath, but the first one on G sounds less final to me than the next three), and it uses the pentationic (five note) scale (G-A-C-D-E), as shown in the following illustration:


Play this excerpt (track 4, 00:00-00:22)

Listen also for the slight vibrato and the quick decorative notes in Jean Ritchie's version of this song. We'll listen to two other versions in class.

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," track 5

composed by Robbie Robertson of The Band, performed here by Joan Baez

Use the questions on p. 58 as a basis for listening to this piece and discussing it in class.

Use this outline to hear the form. Links will play the excerpts with CDLink. If you're on a machine without CDLink, use the timings with your CD player to identify the sections. Note that the order of sections given on p. 58 omits the first verse, and that organ and piano are also included in the instruments accompanying the voices.

intro 00:00-00:09
verse 00:09-00:41 Virgil Cain is my name...
chorus 00:41-01:06 The night they drove old Dixie down...
brief instrumental vamp 01:06-01:13
verse 01:14-01:46 Back with my wife in Tennessee...
chorus 01:46-02:10 The night they drove old Dixie down...
brief instrumental vamp 02:10-02:18
verse 02:19-02:50 Like my father before me...
chorus 02:51-03:20 The night they drove old Dixie down...

play entire track

"Bourgeois Blues," track 6

Composed by Huddie Ledbetter, known as "Leadbelly"
performed by Taj Mahal on vocal, twelve-string guitar, and piano, with Ralph Rinzler on mandolin

Listen for the lyrics, which narrate Leadbelly's experiences in Washington, D.C.

Listen for the twelve-bar blues form. One time through the twelve bars is called a chorus. The first chorus has a link to each four bars to help you hear the chord progression.

chorus 1

first four bars 00:09-00:17
second four bars 00:17-00:24
third four bars 00:24-00:32
chorus 2 00:32-00:54
chorus 3 00:54-01:15
chorus 4 01:15-01:35
chorus 5 01:35-01:55 (instrumental)
chorus 6 01:55-02:16
chorus 7 02:16-02:40 (instrumental)

entire track

Hacker handbook exercises

This week's Hacker topics are no. 5, "eliminate confusing shifts," and no. 6, "untangle mixed constructions."

The two kinds of shifts described in no. 5 are shifts in point of view and shifts in verb tense. Point of view refers to first person (I or we), second person (you), or third person (he/she/it/one or they). When your sentence unexpectedly shifts from one to the other, the reader is confused and has to go back and reread:

I expect each student in this class to listen repeatedly

to each week's examples when you take the quiz.

This sentence shifts from third-person singular (each student) to second-person (you). This sentence would read more smoothly in either of these two revisions:

I expect each student in this class to listen repeatedly

to each week's examples when he or she takes the quiz.

Or:

I expect you to listen repeatedly to each week's examples

when you take the quiz.

Shifts in verb tense confuse the time of the action being described.

Duke Ellington's famous band of the 1940s 

included such sidemen as Johnny Hodges and Harry Carney, 

and plays concerts in Europe.

This sentence mixes past tense (included) and present tense (plays) and would read more smoothly as:

Duke Ellington's famous band of the 1940s 

included such sidemen as Johnny Hodges and Harry Carney, 

and played concerts in Europe.

As the handbook points out at the top of p. 9, however, when writing about literature it is acceptable to use present tense to describe the plot of a work. Similarly, in music, we write in present tense when describing a recording:

Louis Armstrong's recording of "Hotter Than That" 

includes solos by cornet and clarinet.

"Includes" is better than "included" because we experience the recording in the present.

Topic 6, untangle mixed constructions, tells how to fix sentences that seem to take a wrong turn along the way because the writer switched plans:

Although jazz does not have the mass popularity 

it had in the swing era, but it has retained its core audience.

This sentence doesn't work with both "Although" and "but." One of them has to go:

Although jazz does not have the mass popularity 

it had in the swing era, it has retained its core audience.

There will be two questions on these topics on the week 4 quiz.

Quiz

Take the chapter 4 quiz to receive the writing prompts for this week. The chapter 4 essay is due at your class meeting in week 5.

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This file was last modified on 16 May 2000.