Whenever I think about social politics and folk song, I
immediately think about the popular ballad “The Rain and Snow.”
It was collected by Cecil Sharp in his rambles in North
Carolina in 1916, and has resurfaced several times via other musicians and
source singers including Obray Ramsey, Dillard Chandler (both of NC), the
Grateful Dead, Pentangle and many others.
In those versions, a husband who is repeatedly abused by
his wife resorts to killing her.
Commonly, the homicide verse runs like this:
“Oh she came into the room, where she met her fatal doom
And I’m not gonna be treated this a’way.”
The first time I heard the song, the lyrics were from the
perspective of a wife being abused by her husband. Being used to the version, I
was surprised when I finally heard the song most people know. I realized I had
viewed the version I knew as a story of liberation, though admittedly a dark
one. To hear it from the perspective of an abused man killing a woman created
an air of unease in me. It made me realize my own biases about gendered
experience. In the world of the song, it was reasonable to me for the woman to
kill her husband, but not for the husband to kill his wife, though both
suffered from the same abuse. To me, the
wife “freeing” herself from her husband had a modern appeal in an old guise.
But it seemed to me that the husband killing his wife was something most people
probably viewed as staying in the old, tragic mythos of ballads, in which it’s
expected for men to do away with female lovers in such a manner.
This experience alongside many other has me constantly
thinking about the social power of traditional song. What songs get left in
because of their relevance to modern politics? What songs get left out because
the context is considered inappropriate by modern standards? When do songs with
potentially racist/sexist etc. lyrics stay popular, because they’re protected
by a privileged sense of historical value? And how do all these decisions
change our perception of the past?
This is a HUGE topic, and one that I wish was being
discussed all the time. I thought I’d throw out a few examples of songs from
the Robert’s Collection as an entry way into exploring these questions. This
post just tugs on the tail of the elephant in the room, so to speak, and readers
are welcome to leave comments.
One piece I’ve quite enjoyed learning while here in Berea
was shared by a man named Dan Wilder from East Pineville, KY. It’s called “Marching
Away with the Spaniards:”
“A pretty little miss came steppin’ down stairs
Pulling off her slippers
Putting on her high shoes
To go marching away with the Spaniards.
Thursday night her father came home
Inquiring for his daughter
The only words that he could hear
She’s gone across the water.”
It’s a nice variation on the “Gypsy Laddie,” (Child #200). In this version, instead of a wife and
mother leaving her lord, a young woman is leaving her family. Her father pursues, only to reach her on the shore as she
sails away. He pleads for her to come back but the young woman happily declares
she’ll stay with the Spaniards.
This song appeals to me as one to teach and sing with
contemporary audiences, much for the same reasons that versions of Gypsy Laddie
have remained popular: because
contemporary listeners can interpret it as a tale of female liberation.
In its history being sung, this piece has undoubtedly
meant to compel women because it painted a picture of independence during
periods of gender-based repression. But other versions of the Gypsy Laddie tell
us that singers were of divided opinions about the lady who leaves her husband,
and at times starkly conscientious of class realities. Jean Ritchie sings that
the young woman’s clothes become torn and tattered and “Her gypsy found another
lass and left her heart a breaking.” In Martin Carthy's “Seven Yellow Gypsies,” the lord
hangs all the gypsies. Despite how well
known these versions are, I feel that modern performers rarely choose to sing
them, preferring the positive ending (see Chieftans/Nickel Creek, Watterson:Carthy).
But when the “liberation” version is chosen to be
perpetuated, what are we forgetting? Not all singers thought leaving the lord
was the right choice. To leave out the other versions is to only tell one part of
the story, to in part, forget the many voices that make these songs live so many
different lives because our past is full of diverse experiences. Our concept of
the past becomes homogenous.
And yet , I don’t think it’s contradictory that there are
plenty of songs I’d gladly see gone from oral tradition. For example, a song
often called “Bachelor Boy” or “Devilish Mary.” A version of this was sung by
the Couches and comes up regularly in transcripts submitted to Roberts from
students and associates. A man marries a wife. The wife exhausts him because
she talks incessantly, and in some cases swears and curses. The new husband
goes, cuts a switch, and beats her to death. The Couch version says he beat her
so hard “her tongue it rattled like a clapper in a bell.” Wife-beating has long
been used as a humorous element in many other songs in English tradition, and
just two generations ago, this song was still considered funny. Surely one can
distinguish that it is useful to know this song existed, but that singing it
would be in poor taste to most modern audiences? And yet, I think a mistake
that is often made in singing communities is confusing reverence for the culture of song-singing, and reverence
for the song itself.
I often feel a double standard is presented to me in
traditional singing communities. Some ballads, such as “Bachelor Boy,” would
never meet approval in modern context. And yet, some songs survive because of a
sense that the community is “over” the issue, or the issue doesn’t exist. Consider “Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies”
(link here for some common lyrics). This song, at its root, may be about the hurt
of betrayal in love, but it makes a pretty clear statement about the inherent
manipulation that men bring to relationships. So why does this song still
appeal to me when I’ve had no less than three conversations recently with men
who’ve been terribly hurt by their female partner’s patriarchal assumptions that they cannot feel
deeply? The liberal and radical communities I’ve been in often assume that
gender issues have been resolved, that everyone is being treated equally. And I
think that’s one reason a song like this one keeps being sung without any
discussions around its meaning. I feel this piece has even been
re-contextualized into a feminist narrative. And yet if one were to challenge
the song’s philosophy, respect for its inherent wisdom as an old folk ballad
might be toted over the fact that the song speaks to very real cultural
assumptions that men always hurt, and women can only be wounded.
Sometimes blatantly racist songs are sung under the guise
of “historic value.” Moving off the ballad path and into shape note tradition, “Whitestown,”#211 in the Sacred Harp, is a good example. The song proudly promotes ideas of manifest
destiny with the first lines reading, “Where nothing dwelt but beasts of prey,
or men as fierce and wild as they, He (God)
bids th’oppressed and poor repair, And build them towns and cities there.” I
doubt most singers would comfortably compare native peoples to wild and fierce
beasts in their day-to-day conversations. But because native peoples have so
little self-reputation in this country, the song continues to be sung. And
through defaulting to an excuse of the song as “historic,” the present reality
of native struggles is put away into the past as well.
I’m not saying it’s easy to make choices around what
songs cultivate a healthy culture, but I’m saying it’s a question that should
be asked, and we don’t ask it enough. There are plenty of songs I consider
beautiful, that I love to sing, that still exhibit values that I don’t identify
with. It's confusing, because the sound of the song itself holds meaning to me, the melody or the tonality resonate more than the words. But that's why we have to challenge ourselves to move beyond the comfort of what we already know, to innovate, and cultivate evolving material that still keeps much of the power of these older songs. Let’s revere the culture of song-singing. Let’s honor the
intuition to sing, and to tell our own stories through song. Let’s learn about
the past through the varied stories of our ancestors. But let’s not let a song pass unexplored
purely because it wears the cloak of tradition
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