Cultural Conservation Narrative Stage: Federal Cylinder Project; Native American: Appalachian Ballads
Web Video Text Tracks Format (WebVTT)
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Speaker 1: Um, American Indian music in the years between about 1890 and 1940
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that are now housed in the Library of Congress.
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um, for those of you who aren't familiar with the cylinder player,
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there's one in the photograph behind us,
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of people would sing into that horn back there,
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and it would be picked up on wax cylinders.
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I have a couple of wax cylinders for you.
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Um, the cylinder phonograph was invented in 1879 by Thomas Edison
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and he thought it was going to be used as a kind of dictaphone machine.
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But those people who were studying American Indian music
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and musics of other traditional groups found that it was a very useful portable machine,
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as portable as a tape recorder is today, and they would take to the field with them.
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These cylinders and record American Indians performing music
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and speaking narrative traditions, um,
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the first American Indian recording made in the field was made in 1890 by J. Walter Fewkes
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who was an archeologist and he took the cylinder phonograph up to Maine,
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to the Passamaquoddy people in Callas, Maine and this is what he recorded.
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[[sounds of phonograph being started]] {recording} this song is inscripted by Noel Josephs of the Passamaquoddy tribe, Callas Maine. March 18, 1890.
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[[cross talk over recording by Speaker 1]]
Speaker 1: This is Noel Josephs talking at first, explaining about the song, which is a snake dance song.
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And he's telling about a bit of the history of the song. The first voice that you heard was J. Walter Fewkes telling where he was and that this was March 18, 1890 in Callas, Maine.
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{recording} [[phonograph scratching, Passamaquoddy language song]]
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Speaker 1: This is the snake dance song, Passamaquoddy
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{recording} [[phonograph scratching, Passamaquoddy language song]]
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Speaker 1: now this cylinder illustrates some of the problems with cylinder recorders,
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even though the sound quality is surprisingly good for the first field recording ever made of American Indian material,
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there is a lot of surface noise that you have to listen through, the sound quality is a little bit bad,
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the cylinders get out of round, over the years they tend to deteriorate and they get mold on them, they're made out of wax so they get eaten up by the mold.
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And part of the other problem is that they're very limited medium, the short cylinders only record about two and a half minutes worth of program,
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and the long ones record maybe about 6 minutes of program. That's a much later, 1920's or '30's model.
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Um, but one of the things that we're trying to do is take a little of that surface noise out and eventually taped copies of these cylinders which are now in the Library of Congress
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will be given back to American Indian communities so that they can work with some of these materials,
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and start to recover some of the culture that they've lost.
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Next to me is Gus Palmer of the Kiowa tribe and he has been working with elders in the Kiowa Elder Center
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playing back some of these cylinders for them and getting some of their responses.
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and before Gus talks about it, I'd like to play just a little bit of one of the songs that Gus took back with him recently to the Kiowa tribe.
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{phonograph noise, Passmaquody language song}
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Speaker 1: Gus, could you tell us a little bit about this song and what happened when you brought this song back?
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Gus Palmer: OK, that is a courting song or that is a love song recorded in 1896 by the late Ida Hummingbird.
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And um, the song the courting songs are songs which the Kiowa people used to do just before the turn of the century,
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and they would ride around camps and they would sing songs to one another and they would court around the camps.
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But the response I got from the people in Oklahoma was that they had never heard this song in quite a while
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and they were familiar with at least they knew through stories through conversations with their grandparents and parents that the Kiowa people had done courting songs, so the response was immediate.
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And right away a lot of the elders who remembered some of the old songs began to sing some of the songs.
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One of the things about the cylinder project is that you get people remembering old songs and remembering traditions, recorded traditions, traditions which were recorded on the cylinders, and they start to look around and remember songs and sing these songs.
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And that's one of the things that's important about the cylinder project is that we again get people interested in music, they start bringing music back out, and they start teaching the young people music, so one of the projects we're involved with is getting the elders to record music and also teach the young people.
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Dorothy: Oh- some of these songs are going back to people who have had a continuing tradition of musical practice and performance
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and who have kept up a great deal of their culture.
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The language is still spoken by a number of people,
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but in some cases, the languages have been lost,
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and these songs are the only records we have of the musical practice and styles of particular cultures.
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Um- Louise DeFredo is Gabrielino.
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And we have on cylinder some Gabrielino songs,
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but there are no Gabrielino speakers left.
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Um-before I ask Louise to speak, I'd like to play this one song that was recorded in 1918
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by an anthropologist named John P. Harrington.
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[[static]]
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[[song plays]]
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[[song ends]]
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Dorothy: Louise?
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Louise: Um, first of all, I want to say,
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nobody knows how much that means to be able to hear some of my antecedents speak,
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because, in about 1700 before-
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well at the time of contact-
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my people numbered anywhere from 8-10 thousand
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and by 1900 they numbered 150.
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And nobody speaks the language anymore.
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There are some groups who still sing Gabrielino songs.
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They know the words, but they can't translate them.
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And, from what this song sounds like to me,
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From being Luiseno as well and hearing Luiseno bird songs,
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I'll tell you that the Gabrielino had a tradition of bird songs
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And, that's not imitating a bird call or anything like that,
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It's more similar to Homer's epic.
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Like, Odysseus was the hero in Homer's epic,
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for us, the eagle was our hero- our epic figure.
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And, these songs were more like stories, and they were related in a series.
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And at one time, there was probably a thousand of these songs.
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And today, maybe 35 exist.
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And there are a few singers who can sing them- mostly in Luiseno.
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That's one of the things that the Luiseno
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Uh-It was a trait that was shared between the Gabrielino and the Luiseno
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But the songs probably originated with the Gabrielino.
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They were native to what is now Los Angeles.
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They were the people that lived in Los Angeles.
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Um- Basically, it's important because we can at least-
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there's only about 30 words recorded of the Gabrielino language and about 12 numbers.
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And it's nice to be able to just even hear that,
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to hear how we made music, and that it did differ.
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It differed quite a bit from the other groups that were a little further South.
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Um- Sitting next to me is Valana.
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She's an elder from the other side of my family, from the Luiseno side.
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She still speaks the language, and she's one of the last persons who can translate the Luiseno songs,
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which Dorothy has been playing for her- some of the older songs.
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And I believe she played a deer song for her
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which Valana knew right off, because it came specifically from her group of people on Rincon,
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which number about 531 right now.
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Dorothy: Yeah,for those of you who just arrived, this is the Federal Cylinder Project discussion
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The Federal Cylinder Project is part of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress,
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and the cylinders were recorded on machines such as that in the picture behind me,
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and recorded on mediums such as, um, that long wax cylinder.
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We have thousands of recordings of American Indian music made between around 1890 and 1940.
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And we played earlier some of the earliest songs,
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and I'd like to play a Luiseno song that Valana has been listening to, and telling me a bit about.
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{phonograph noise, Native American song}
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Speaker 1: You were saying, [[Velanna]] that this is a deer song, a deer hunting song
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} yea, that's the deer hunting song. They sing this just before they go hunting. They make up their mind to go hunting, so they gather together, talk about it, and they sing these songs.
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And then all night they sing. And towards morning they get sage and other plants from the hills, then they rub themselves with it so the deer won't know the difference you see. And then after they get through they go on to find a deer. And they find it pretty close.
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Speaker 1: you were saying that the song helps the deer come.
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} oh yes, sure, when they sing the deer comes, the deer comes closer. When they go out they'll find it, just right there. And then they, the oldest person there, the hunter, he stabs the deer and when the blood rushes out. And if there's a young person, a young man, a young boy, another hunter supposedly well, they give him one swallow of blood and that is making him a good hunter.
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Speaker 3: [cross talk between the 2 speakers] {SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} now that song is telling the story of that, to bring in a young person to hunt.
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} yes, that's right
Speaker 3: so these songs tell us about the way our society used to be, from gaps that we don't have in ethnographic materials, we can go back to things like this and have people like [[Velanna]] translate it and it tells us about our ways and about our beliefs and how we went about it,
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because some songs are very descriptive while others are very repetitive because they belong to a specific ritual and there's not very many verses to them. But there are songs that are similar to this which are stories.
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{SPEAKER 4} Something I'd like to reiterate, excuse me, as far as language is concerned when Louise was talking earlier, one of the things you get as kind of a byproduct and an offshoot from these recordings, you get a tremendous amount of information insofar as language is concerned many tribes across the nation are at a point where they are cultivating or trying to restore language.
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Language is one thing which is the heart of any race of man because language has a way of bringing together the ideas and concepts and outlooks, and so when one cultivates the language one can grow and prosper from it.
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Many tribes are recognizing this. And so with the recordings you get language, you get music, you get a lot of good stuff here that you can really put into projects which are long-lasting which you can cultivate which can have a tremendous amount of depth of impact on people, so this is one of the things that is causing the cylinder project to expand and to involve more and more ground, so it's just something that we think about in cultural conservation.
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Speaker 3: And also another issue that we think about in cultural conservation, is about people who have been displaced from their original settings and what happened to us with the Mission system especially these southern Californian Indians, the [[?]] fell under the mission of San Luis Rey we were brought under to work under that mission,
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we were taken from our original homelands and we don't even know the names for our people because we were named according to the specific ecological niche that we had, whether we were from the foothills or the mountains or the coast, and when we were taken out of that setting in 2 or 3 generations we even lost the names for ourselves.
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But what these songs help us do because as [[Velanna]] was telling me many songs have migration stories, they tell us who we were, where we came from, where we had our children, where we made a home, and this is all information that is relayed by word of mouth and-and it's captured in many forms especially stories and songs. So that gives us some more information that we lost because of displacement in the Mission setting.
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{SPEAKER 1} [[Velanna]] you were also saying that the people who sang these songs, their families are now gone
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} Yes, they are all gone. All gone. Everybody's gone.
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[[cross talk of speakers 2 and 4]] what families is it? Somebody and this was a while. They are all gone.
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{Speaker 3} Tell us about your brothers who were singers too.
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} Oh my brothers were great singers. Great singers. But they left one by one. One by one they left.
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{speaker 3} With the [[?]] people, there were certain roles in society that were strictly hereditary roles because underneath the headman there was a council of specialists, and each specialist knew a certain part of that ritual or a certain aspect of the environment. We were very in tune with things like that. We even had a class of specialists to instruct and to advise an advisory council and [[Velanna]] comes from a family whose, they were headmen, they were chiefs, and underneath that they were singers. So it was passed on in her family to all 6 of her brothers, they were all singers but when they left, when they passed on, there are no more singers left for the traditional ceremonies. They were the last, they were the [[collects.]]
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Speaker 1: and your family also made deer hoof rattles, is that correct
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{Speaker 3} She wants to know about our musical instruments, the deer hoof rattles and the...
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} ahem. Yeah, their instrument was deer hooves. They fixed it some way. They claimed it, and then took a rattle, it would make lots of noise when they sang, and then they rattled it. Deer hooves.
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Speaker 1: I, I think it was probably the cylinder noise, that's part of the problem with these old sound recordings.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. You get a lot of static and the tracks are
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Speaker 3: No, in Southern California we didn't have drums. We had very quiet music and and we had flutes and we had clapper sticks and we had rattles, but uh, no drums.
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Speaker 4: Rattles made of, by, turtles.
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Speaker 3: Turtle rattles. And also we had gourd rattles, right?
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Speaker 4: That's right.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, we had deer bone whistles and clapper sticks and we made real soft, pretty music.
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Speaker 4: That's right.
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Speaker 2: You know, Louise made a good point earlier when she was describing a series of songs, of bird songs, in which there were epic tales of uh, uh, heroic personages in the tribe, and the birds were these.
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And so the story was told in long tradition and it was a whole sequence of stories so that if one part was missing, then you didn't have the entire story. But what is important in this is that, in order to keep, because the story wasn't written, it was much like she described the classic Illiad or Homer's Odysseus
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Right, were everything was done by word of mouth. Everything was memorized because people were in a state of of of uh, clarity I think. [[ laughter ]]
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Much more than we are today because we've got so many distractions, but at any rate, some of the devices that were used were like in the case of Homer, there was a staff, you know. And so while he recited his marvelous epic poems, he would continue to keep in time with the rythm of the story by beating this staff on the ground, and so this kind of mesmerized people, kind of brought them into the story.
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Well you get the same sort of situation with Indian chants and storytelling, because a lot of the times they'll incorporate a drum or a handshaker, or clapping, or footrocking, you know there's all kinds of way that you keep the. It's just a natural human element, I think, and so we're attracted by that, makes it really useful.
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Speaker 3: And there's such a wealth of stories too. When, in the 1600s when Hugo Reed had contacted our people, he said if Ovid had lived a thousand years, he could have never engendered the number of metamorphoses that existed in the bird's songs and in the stories. Because, they had to do with every aspect of personality
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Speaker 1: I d- [[Velanna]], she wants to know if you noticed any change between the older songs, the, for instance, the dear songs still on ring con, but she wants to know if there is a change in the song on the old cylinder as to what is used today
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} Oh yes, yes these
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Speaker 1: Is it, is it just language or
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} No it is because the record is no good and
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[[laughter]]
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} I can't even hear it, I can't understand it
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Speaker 3: that's a good answer huh
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[[laughter]]
Speaker 1: She says that's the big change
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[[laughter]]
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Speaker 1: but you were talking a bit about language too, you were saying that some of the words were a little bit different..um
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} oh yes, from one reservation to the other, its a little bit different
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Speaker 1: we had dialects uh- even in just such close ranges, even between the six reservations where we are now
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but [[Velanna]] was talking about this song and she was so excited because it comes from ring con
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She can understand the other places, but they're slightly different, but this one was, the song you just heard, came from her people in- in her area
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} mmhm [[affirmative]]
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Speaker 1: for those-- um oh yes--
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} [[mumbles]]
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Speaker 1: Jump in, Go ahead, tell em! [[giggles]]
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tell em about when you where a little girl and what happened to you when you were in school
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2" [[Velanna]]} [laughs] oh it was alright I guess, but... I didn't run very much [[giggles]]
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Speaker 1: Tell em about when you wanted to speak the language
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} I know... and I wanted to talk Indian, because I was Indian, and always spoke Indian at home and- uh they won't let us... they won't let us speak our language
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They'd punish us if they heard us talking... uhm Indian
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that was a big change there... ha
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Person in Background: Well has it changed now?
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Speaker 1: well the point now...
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no, no it's alright now you can speak what you wanna speak-- mmm
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Speaker 1: And some of these songs, some of these early recordings, are beginning, and-and some of the stories that are coming back to Indian communities
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are beginning to find their way into curriculum, um primary and secondary school curriculums
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so people are beginning to use the tales and beginning to use the songs on- on, in reservation schools to start teaching um- children, to start teaching young people about their culture {SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} That's right, mmhm [[affirmative]]
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and also there are Indian community centers with after school programs that do the same thing, where you're using some of these old materials to help reeducate, and educate some of the younger people about these songs {SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} That's right
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{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"[[Velanna]]} She wants to say something
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Speaker 1: Right, in the case of the Kaiwa, you hit on a good note when you asked about educationally what are people doing, or if there is any support in so far as Indian culture being taught is concerned.
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Um, and in large measure, a lot of what has happened in the Indian community that I come from is that we've tried to incorporate the school programs within -uh- into the Indian community, into an Indian setting.
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I work with an elderly program where we are just within - about 200 or 300 feet of the public schools, and so what we do is we set up little classes in language. we also have storytelling sessions where we have the youngsters come over with their teachers and they sit around, we have a fireplace. The elders sit around and they tell stories, and it's kinda done in the old way, you know
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And naturally, in most cultures, that is- at least for Indian cultures, the teachers, the educators, the leaders, all of the tribal government was based upon the wisdom of the elders, okay.
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It was a very good way, and I think we should re-, in American culture we tend to overlook these important elements, you know. A person hits 60 or 65 we say well, this guy is ready to retire. You know, turn him loose, he's done his job, let him go, he's- we forget, we tend to forget about that.
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But in Indian culture, we try to incorporate them even more. because when a person gets to that age level, they know a lot, they are at a point where everything is very clear in retrospect. OK, language, songs, all of these things that they've learned, and all of the good things that they wish to give to the children, they can give at that age.
00:26:18.000 --> 00:26:30.000
So we bring them there, we sit them down, we try to record, we try to get some sort of dialogue going, and then the kids become open to the ideas, they open to the conversation, and so- it's an ongoing thing.
00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:49.000
And, I've learned my Kaiwa language by growing with old people. I've learned the songs, I've learned the lifestyle of our people because the old people were around and they were the teachers. You went to them, and they were like a Rabbi, you could sit there and they were your favorite teacher.
00:26:49.000 --> 00:27:02.000
I can remember after going to college if anyone were ever to ask me who were your first teachers or which is the most important teaching in your life, without a doubt I'd say my grandfather, because that was it.
00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:09.000
Speaker 2: Right, especially for the luiseno, being an elder was a specific role which meant teacher, it was synonymous with teacher
00:27:09.000 --> 00:27:24.000
The younger people, the parents would go out and do the everyday work, gather the food, and they would leave their children with the elders all day. and they taught, they had a school, there was a school in every village. and there was a church in every village, well, what we call- what I guess everybody else calls a church [[laughter]]
00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:43.000
But I think also it is particularly important to note that elders, um- when they get to a certain time, they're at a time when they're reevaluating their life and they're looking back over things, and they know what kind of information they want to pass on and what's important because they've lived and they know what they've used
00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:50.070
what part of their ethnicity has been important to help them bridge particular times in their lives.
00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:56.000
Speaker 1: Are there any questions? Are there any questions from members of the panel?
00:27:56.000 --> 00:27:59.000
[[Silence]]
00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:13.000
Speaker 1: We have some information for you if you'd like on the tribes that are covered by the Federal Cylinder Project, and also a brochure if you're interested in the kinds of things that we're doing. The Library of Congress, thank you very much for coming. [[Applause]]
00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:17.000
[[Silence]]
00:28:17.000 --> 00:28:22.000
[[Music]]
Singer: A lil' bit of Cripple Creek would hit the spot right now.
00:28:22.000 --> 00:28:36.000
[[Music continues]]
00:28:36.000 --> 00:28:38.000
Come on, pat along folks.
00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:52.000
[[Music continues]]
00:28:52.000 --> 00:29:05.000
[[Inaudible]] [
00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:12.000
] Now, this is Mountain Dance music. The least y'all could do is clap your hands, pat your feet, do something. Get into this music here.
00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:42.000
[[Clapping starts]]
00:29:42.000 --> 00:29:47.000
[[Music stops]] [[Applause]] Yeehaw
00:29:47.000 --> 00:29:59.000
Thank you.
Speaker 2: The workshop here in the Cultural Conservation Area, starting off the day, is going to be looking at Traditional Ballad styles from the Blueridge Mountains. [
00:29:59.000 --> 00:30:05.000
We have with us two of the region's finest balladeers, who sing in very very different styles.
00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:16.000
Mr. Doug Wallan, from the very rich valleys and fertile mountains of Madison County, North Carolina, an area known for its growing of Burley tobacco and lumber.
00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:31.000
Mr. Wallan sings in an unaccompanied ballad style, performing a lot of the old songs carried over to this country from Scandanavia and the British Isles as well as ballads composed in this country commemorating murders and great tragedies.
00:30:31.000 --> 00:30:38.000
[[Laughs]] If a tragedy could be great. In the fingers of a ballad writer, it certainly was.
00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:49.000
Next to him, and the person you just heard on the banjo is Mr. Frank Profit Jr. Though living only 60 miles away from Madison County, Frank lives in a country of hard-scrabble farming.
00:30:49.000 --> 00:30:58.000
It's a lot of steep, rocky cliffs there, the soil is not worth a thing, and you can't grow much in the way of Burley tobacco or anything else.
00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:10.000
The folks there try and grow a small crop and Frank's family has been doing just that for generations in those mountains, trying to grow a little bit of Burley tobacco, maybe some strawberries or corn to do some truck farming.
00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:28.000
The tradition in Madison County, the tradition of singing ballads was one largely unaccompanied, singing without any instrumentation, or if you did use an instrument, it was only to play the tune through one time before you got to telling the story through song.
00:31:28.000 --> 00:31:42.000
On the other hand, in Watoga County, the tradition was one of always, or almost always, accompanying your ballads. Playing a guitar, a banjo, a dulcimer, or sometimes a fiddle while you sang the stories.
00:31:42.000 --> 00:32:12.000
What'd I'd like to today is start off by showing you some examples of the older types of ballads and doing a little bit of comparison between the two styles. Then, we'll move to some ballads from this country along with some stories and some explanations of why the ballads are still being sung, why the ballads have survived two and three hundred years to be passed on in forms very similar to those in the 17th and 18th century
00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:36.000
A lot of folks when they think and hear about ballads in the Appalachians and immediately say "Well the reason those ballads are still there is because those folks are isolated. You know, they really didn't have a way to hear what was happening in the latest music, and they- as a result of this isolation, maybe they just weren't as creative. They didn't come up with their own things and they kept singing the old things because that was easiest."
00:32:36.000 --> 00:32:46.000
Well, you know when you really look at that region in the mountains, you realize real quickly that the latest in musical developments were always available.
00:32:46.000 --> 00:33:29.000
In the eighteen-hundreds, in the early nineteen-hundreds, peddlers selling sheet music combed the mountains. The catalogs, especially the Sears and Roebuck catalog, was everywhere and folks would order their ukeleles or organs for their homes, and indeed Doug's mother had an organ from his early childhood. Yet the songs that they chose to keep in their repertoires the songs that lasted because not they were old, not because they were old but because they continued to tell a meaningful story were the ballads. Or at least, the ballads were some of those songs. The ballads from the British Isles, the ballads from America along with the play party songs and the dance tunes.
00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:42.000
Mr. Wallan was raised in a community where ballads were being sung all the time. Doug, could you tell a little bit perhaps about where you learned your ballads and how common they were up in Madison County?
00:33:42.000 --> 00:34:28.000
Doug Wallan: Well first let me say hello to all these good folks. As for where I learned my ballads, I learned them mostly from my mother and father. This first one I'm going to do, is my second favorite of all the old ballads. I'm a little bit stingy with my first favorite, my very favorite so I may not sing it here today. [[chuckles]] This one is called the the House Carpenter, some know it as the real old English ballad, some know it as the Demon Lover but down where I live and grew up we know it as the House Carpenter. Going to kick it off here on the old fiddle to get the right pitch and we'll take it from there. [[chuckles]]
00:34:28.000 --> 00:34:50.000
[[music starts]]
00:34:50.000 --> 00:39:55.000
[[singing]] Well met, well met, my old true love. Well met, well met said he. I just returned from the salt salt sea, and it's all for the sake of thee. Now I could have married the king's daughter dear, and I'm sure she'd have married me But I forsaken all her gold, for the love I have for thee If you could have married a king's daughter dear, you had better have married she For I've lately married a house carpenter, and a nice young man is he if you forsake your house carpenter, and come along with me I'll take you where the grass grows green, on the banks of Sicily If I'll forsake my house carpenter, and come along with thee Pray tell me what you have on land and sea to keep me from slavery? I have three ships upon the sea, they are making for dry land I have three hundred jolly sailor boys, you can have them at your own command Then she dressed up in a yellow robe most glorious to behold She walked the streets around and about, and shined like glittering gold Then she picked up her tender little babe, and kisses gave it one, two, three Stay at home, stay at home, my tender little babe, and keep your papa company They hadn't been sailing on the sea two weeks, I'm sure it was not three Till she began to weep, and she began to mourn, she wept most bitterly Are you weeping for my house? Are you weeping for my store? Are you weeping for your house carpenter whose face you see no more? No I'm not weeping for your house, neither for your store. I'm weeping for my tender little babe whom I left a-sitting on the floor. They hadn't been sailing on the sea three weeks, I'm sure it wasn't four Till the ship springs a leak to the bottom she goes She goes to rise no more Take me out, oh take me out. Take me out cried she For I'm too rich and costly to rot in the saltwater sea Now don't you see that white cloud arising? As white as any snow? There is a place called heaven you know, where my tender little babe will go Now don't you see that black cloud arising? As black as any crow? There is a place called hell you know, where you and I must go.
00:39:55.000 --> 00:40:05.000
[[applause]]
00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:34.000
Speaker 2: ballads such as the House Carpenter with their stories of kings and sailing ships continued to be sung in this country, not because of those references and their age, but because of the moral lesson that those ballads contain. These were stories in song, stories that had a lesson. Stories that raised issues which remained ever relevant. Now, Mr. Wallan when you were being raised how common were ballads? Where were they sung by people then?
00:40:34.000 --> 00:41:11.210
Doug Wallan: Very common. and they mostly sung I guess around the home. That's where I learned about all of mine, but usually when they had a party, had a bean stringing, or apple peeling something, or corn shucking, then they would play and dance a while. The fiddlers and banjo players would play for the dancing. Then they would have a lot of something good to eat maybe, then they would do some ballad singing while the musicians rested. And that's about the way that I learned what I know of it.
00:41:13.000 --> 00:41:20.000
Speaker 1: So clearly the ballads had many functions, they were used for moral instruction, they were used, I believe, also sometimes in courting, weren't they?
00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:21.000
Speaker 2:
00:41:21.000 --> 00:41:25.000
Yes sir, they were used to teach.
00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:27.000
The old folks used them to teach their kids a lesson.
00:41:27.000 --> 00:41:38.000
And some of the ballads it did, things that happened in the ballad, they taught their kids the, that way to avoid some of the pitfalls of life, I guess.
Speaker 1:
00:41:38.000 --> 00:41:46.000
At the same time, as you mentioned at the parties, at the bean stringings, and corn shucking, and apple peelings, sometimes the ballads were used when a break was needed by the dancers or the instrumentalists.
00:41:46.000 --> 00:41:49.000
Here, the ballads served as entertainment.
00:41:49.000 --> 00:41:55.000
And sometimes in these settings, the ballads weren't only those songs of love and murder, of passion and tragedy.
00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:56.000
But often, entertaining songs.
00:41:56.000 --> 00:41:59.000
Songs of exaggeration, especially.
00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:05.000
One of the oldest and most well known of the British ballads is one called Darbie's Ram.
00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:13.000
A story of a rather huge ram and I think, Doug will perhaps treat us with his version of it.
00:42:13.000 --> 00:42:17.000
The way he learned it, letting y'all know about the size of this beast.
00:42:17.000 --> 00:42:30.000
Speaker 2: Well, the other day, you were here 'till the tenth on the other stage, I forgot about half the words to this song.
00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:38.000
I'm gonna take a little more time and change, and try to get as much of it in as I can.
00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:45.000
I'm sure that you'll agree that it's one of the largest sheep that you've ever heard about.
00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:58.000
[/singing] As I went down to Darbie upon a rainy day, there I spied the biggest sheep that was overfed on hay
00:42:58.000 --> 00:43:14.000
Tell my Pa, tell my pa, diddle day The old ram had four feet and upon them he did stand
00:43:14.000 --> 00:43:16.000
and every foot he had covered over an acre of land
00:43:16.000 --> 00:43:21.000
Tell my Pa, tell my Pa, diddle day
00:43:21.000 --> 00:43:25.000
The old ram's horns were so high no man could reach
00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:31.000
And there they built a pulpit for the preacher man to preach
00:43:31.000 --> 00:43:32.220
Tell my Pa, tell my Pa, diddle day
00:43:34.000 --> 00:43:40.000
[SPEAKER name= "Speaker 1"] The old Ram's teeth were like unto his horns
00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:45.000
and every tooth he had held 40 bushel of corn
00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:49.000
Tell my pa, tell my pa, diddle day
00:43:49.000 --> 00:43:55.000
Now the wool upon his back was reaching to the sky
00:43:55.000 --> 00:44:00.000
the eagles build a nest for I heard the young ones cry
00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:03.000
Tell my fa, tell my fa, diddle day
00:44:03.000 --> 00:44:08.000
Now the wool on his belly was reaching to the ground
00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:14.000
and there they sold a Darby one hundred thousand pounds
00:44:14.000 --> 00:44:21.000
Tell my fa, tell my fa, diddle day
00:44:21.000 --> 00:44:30.000
[applause] [SPEAKER name= "Speaker 2"]
00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:36.000
I'd like to now tell you a little bit about Frank Profits, so we can compare the styles.
00:44:36.000 --> 00:44:42.000
Frank, as I mentioned earlier was raised a mere sixty miles away, though the tradition of ballad singing was very different.
00:44:42.000 --> 00:44:48.000
At the same time, Frank, was raised at a much later date.
00:44:48.000 --> 00:44:58.000
Mr. Wallen was born in 1919 and raised in a period where the ballads were very common. They were being sung at home, at parties, and while folks ploughed the fields.
00:44:58.000 --> 00:45:34.000
However, when Frank was raised, he was born in 1946, the ballads had started to die in that area of the country. Though his father and kin people knew of the old ballads, and had sung them quite a bit of their youth, by the time Frank was coming along folks had lost interest in this style of singing, at least that was so until, collectors, specifically one song collector and folklorist from the North Mr. Frank Warrner travelled to that area of North Carolina and began collecting ballads from the musicians and singers there.
00:45:34.000 --> 00:45:48.000
Letting people know that there was an interest outside of that community. That there were folks who were really interested in what the ballads had to say as well as the very fact that those ballads were still being sung.
00:45:48.000 --> 00:46:01.000
Well, when Frank came to the area, he began to record Frank Profit Senior, Franks father here, there's a whole lotta Franks in this aren't there?
00:46:01.000 --> 00:46:21.000
He was recording Frank Profit Senior and Frank Profit Senior began to play and sing the ballads once again, picking up his guitar and playing along, later on adding the banjo and dulcimer, going far and awide ultimately to festivals across the country, to colleges, universities preforming the ballads.
00:46:21.000 --> 00:46:46.000
Now, Frank Profit Junior, raised at this time, didn't hear a lot of those ballads when he was a young, young child. But when his father started to go out and he recognized this interest on the part of outsiders, that combined with his respect for his father, and his real passionate interest in history, led him to decide that he needed to keep these ballads going, that this was a tradition that was too valuable.
00:46:46.000 --> 00:46:52.000
A family, and a community tradition that shouldn't be let to die.
00:46:52.000 --> 00:47:10.000
As a result, Frank learned a lot of the ballads from his father and his kin people in that area and is fortunately with us today to preform them. Frank could you maybe start by giving us a compliment basically to what was done by Doug by preforming one of the older English ballads? [SPEAKER name= Frank]
00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:11.000
Unaccompanied? [SPEAKER name= "Speaker 2"]
00:47:11.000 --> 00:47:14.720
Sure, why don't you start with an unaccompanied one.
00:47:19.000 --> 00:47:36.000
Frank: Morning Fair. and howdy, I'm glad to be here, haha. Away from Pick Britches, North Carolina, Western part of Watauga County about 14 miles west of Boone, North Carolina.
00:47:36.000 --> 00:47:44.000
And uh, just a great honor old mountain boy can have a chance to do something like this, it's a great country. Alrighty.
00:47:44.000 --> 00:47:46.000
Morning Fair.
00:47:46.000 --> 00:48:05.000
As I woke up one morning fair, To take a walk all in the air Thought I heard my true love say Oh turn and come my way.
00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:15.000
You told me tales, you told me lies. You courted a girl worth more than I,
00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:26.000
But gold will fade and silver will fly, my love for you will never die.
00:48:26.000 --> 00:48:36.000
Is it because that I am poor, that you turned me far from your door?
00:48:36.000 --> 00:48:46.000
To wander out in a cruel dark world because you love a rich man's girl?
00:48:46.000 --> 00:48:56.000
She gave you cake, she gave you wine. You rode out in her carriage fine.
00:48:56.000 --> 00:49:07.000
She set herself up on your knee, you told her things that you won't tell me.
00:49:07.000 --> 00:49:16.000
Her father gives to me his land and also of his daughter's hand.
00:49:16.000 --> 00:49:25.000
To give it up, a fool I'd be to trade it all for love of thee.
00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:35.000
She went upstairs, up to her bed and aching was, all in her head.
00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:47.000
A rope she tied around the sill then they found her hangin', cold and still.
00:49:47.000 --> 00:49:56.000
Upon her bosom was this note, All with her pen, these words she wrote:
00:49:56.000 --> 00:50:08.000
"Heap up my grave so very high so that Willy can see as he rides by."
00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:18.000
Thank you. [[ applause ]] [[ light laughter ]] Thank you very much.
00:50:18.000 --> 00:50:36.000
Speaker 2: The morals of stories like that were obviously an important part of the ballad tradition, yet in Watagau County, just as in Madison County, there were humorous ballads too. Humorous ballads which dated back hundreds of years, yet which maintain their function as entertainment within the community.
00:50:36.000 --> 00:50:53.000
One of the, perhaps best well-known, most well-known of these ballads is one that used to be called "Our Good Man", came to be called in this country "Four Nights Drunk", a story about a man who got awful drunk and got in some trouble.
00:50:53.000 --> 00:50:55.000
Frank, tell us about this ballad.
00:50:55.000 --> 00:51:07.000
Frank: Real drunk. He got real stoned, or sodded. [[?]] used "stoned" back then. Well, sodded. And this is, uh, that's been handed down in the mountains for generations.
00:51:07.000 --> 00:51:12.000
It got out of the mountains [[?]] done it on the Grand Ole Opry. Kinda spread all over the country.
00:51:12.000 --> 00:51:26.000
And it was sorta changed from the, a lot, when the American pioneers, [[?]] rascals, got a hold of it then changed the dinner pot to a chamber pot and stuff like that in it. From the old English version, you know.
00:51:26.000 --> 00:51:36.000
And the title, [[?]] "Our Good Man" to "Four Nights Drunk". And it's a mess. This is one that might oughta died out, I don't know.
00:51:36.000 --> 00:51:38.000
[[ laughter ]]
00:51:38.000 --> 00:51:46.000
But thank goodness it didn't. If I keep it up, it don't look like it's going to.
00:51:46.000 --> 00:51:57.000
[[ Banjo music and foot stomping starts ]]
00:51:57.000 --> 00:52:06.000
Other night, when I come home, drunk as I could be, somebody's horse was in the barn where my horse oughta be.
00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:16.000
Come here little wifey, 'splain this thing to me! Who's that horse in the barn where my horse ought to be?
00:52:16.000 --> 00:52:26.000
[[ in falsetto ]] Oh you blind fool, you crazy fool, can't you never see? That ain't nothin' but a milk cow my granny sent to me.
00:52:26.000 --> 00:52:37.000
[[ in normal voice ]] Now I've been around this whole wide world a hundred times or more! But a saddle on a milk cow's back I never did see before.
00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:44.000
[[ Musical interlude ]]
00:52:44.000 --> 00:52:54.000
Next night, when I come home, drunk as I could be, Somebody's hat was a-hangin' on the rack where my hat ought to be.
00:52:54.000 --> 00:53:04.000
Come here little wifey, now 'splain this thing to me. Who's that hat a-hangin' on the rack where my hat ought to be?
00:53:04.000 --> 00:53:16.000
[[ in falsetto ]] You blind fool, you crazy fool, can't you never see? That ain't nothing but a chamber pot my momma sent to me.
00:53:16.000 --> 00:53:26.000
[[ in normal voice ]] Well I've been around this whole wide world a hundred times or more! But a John B. Stetson chamber pot I never did see before.
00:53:26.000 --> 00:53:33.000
[[ Musical interlude ]]
00:53:33.000 --> 00:53:46.000
Next night [[ laughter ]] I come home, drunk as I could be. Now somebody's pants was a-hangin on the chair where my pants oughta be.
00:53:46.000 --> 00:53:55.000
Want you to come here little wifey, 'splain this thing to me! [[slurring]] Who's them fants that're hangin on the shair where my fants oughter be?
00:53:55.000 --> 00:54:07.000
[[ in falseto ]] Oh you blind fool, you crazy old fool, can't you never see? It is only a dish rag my mom sent to me.
00:54:07.000 --> 00:54:15.000
[[ in normal voice ]] I've been around this whole wide world a hundred times or more but a zipper on a dish rag I never did see before!
00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:23.000
[[ Musical interlude ]]
00:54:23.000 --> 00:54:33.000
Oh last night when I come home, drunk as I could be, somebody's head was a-layin' on the pillow where my head oughta be.
00:54:33.000 --> 00:54:48.000
Come here my little wifey, (you're in a heap of trouble [[ laughter ]]) 'splain this thing to me! [[ slurring ]] who's that head layin' on the pillow where my head oughta be?
00:54:48.000 --> 00:54:58.000
[[ in falsetto ]] Oh you blind fool, you crazy old fool, can't you never see? Ain't nothing but a cabbage head my granny sent to me.
00:54:58.000 --> 00:55:16.000
[[ in normal voice ]] Oh, I've been around this whole wide world a hundred times or more! But a moustache on a cabbage head I never did see before. [[ Musical interlude ]]
00:55:16.000 --> 00:55:29.000
[[ banjo music and foot stomping ends]] [[ applause ]]
00:55:29.000 --> 00:55:25.000
Thank you very much, appreciate it.
00:55:25.000 --> 00:55:43.000
Speaker 2: So far the ballads that we've heard have all come from the British Isles. Let's come to this country a little bit and talk about a ballad with which probably ninety some percent of you are familiar.
00:55:43.000 --> 00:55:57.000
How many of y'all have ever heard the song about Tom Dooley? "Hang Your Head Tom Dooley", made popular by the Kingston Trio in the late 1950s, sold three million copies, went to the top of the charts.
00:55:57.000 --> 00:56:10.000
The version that they sang, that the Kingston Trio sang and made popular, was taken from a recording made by Frank Warner, of Frank Proffitt, Senior.
00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:28.000
That ballad was collected from Frank's father, in Watagua County, put out by Frank Warner, the Kingston Trio saw it, read the lyrics, heard the tune, picked it up, recorded their version, and the song became internationally popular.
00:56:28.000 --> 00:56:41.000
What we'd like to do now is bring it back to its routes. Talk a little, tell a little first about the story, and then hear two different versions. Let's go ahead and do a direct comparison here.
00:56:41.000 --> 00:56:53.000
Frank has been performing this ballad since he's been here and I'm [[?]] just about every day, telling the story and performing it as he learned it from his father because his, was it great-grandmother?
00:56:53.000 --> 00:56:54.000
Frank: Uh-huh. Great-grandmother.
00:56:54.000 --> 00:57:13.000
Speaker 2: heard Tom Dooley singin' this song in his jail cell in North Carolina. But the song spread all through the state, and we found out yesterday for the first time that Doug Wallin learned that song when he was young, too. So he sings his version.
00:57:13.000 --> 00:57:33.000
What I'd like to do, Frank maybe if you could tell a very brief version of the story, and then we'll have Doug sing the version that he learned in Madison County, then have Frank Proffitt come back with the banjo and perform the version that was really the direct antecedent of the Kingston Trio hit.
00:57:33.000 --> 00:57:50.000
Frank: Thank you, it's hard to tell it and make it short and digest it, but I'll try. This young feller named Tom Dooley returned from the Civil War, and he got mixed up with the liquor and the women, pretty simple as that.
00:57:50.000 --> 00:58:02.000
And pretty complex. Love triangles and more than triangles, but it was. And he just got easily led, I like to think he was just a good ol' boy and he just,
00:58:02.000 --> 00:58:10.000
uh the war kindly had him messed, pretty rough before he went in the war, but extra messed up after he got out, I reckon.
00:58:10.000 --> 00:58:24.000
And just uh, the people then were very depressed, the Reconstruction, and [[?]] they said a family around ours rich, if they had a milk cow they was considered rich. So it was just uh, a day to day struggle and it was
00:58:24.000 --> 00:58:34.000
He got involved with this Laurie Foster and then transmitted a disease from, and also to I mean to Anne Melton.
00:58:34.000 --> 00:58:49.000
And Anne was jealous of Laurie too, there was all kinds of emotions. And her and Laurie never did fighting over the fellers all the time. And she conspired with Tom to murder Laurie. She wasn't gonna have no more to do with him.
00:58:49.000 --> 00:59:13.000
I think Tom really loved Anne, so he was led astray, that rather than lose her. And they, by some stories that Anne did it herself. So on May 28th, 1866, a murder was committed and Tom ran away to Tennessee. People was getting suspicion towards him.
00:59:13.000 --> 00:59:22.000
They captured him, brought him back to Wilkes County, put him in the jail, and before the body had even been found, charge him with the murder of Laurie Foster.
00:59:22.000 --> 00:59:41.000
So they had his trial throughout 1867, two trials, and appealed it to North Carolina Supreme Court twice, and he lost his last appeal on February 6th, 1868, and they hung him for the murder of Laurie Foster on May 1st, 1868.
00:59:41.000 --> 00:59:55.000
And later exonerated Anne, she, they had her trial and it was an all male jury and they said she was the prettiest woman to ever live , so I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not, but [[?]] didn't hurt none.
00:59:55.000 --> 01:00:09.000
And Tom, Tom wrote out a statement the night before he was hung that he was the only one that had a hand in the murder of Laurie, so they still protecting his true love, as near as he can figure. So that didn't hurt none neither.
01:00:09.000 --> 01:00:21.000
But they said and she died twenty years later they try to get her to tell what happened that dark night. And she's cuss 'em up one side and down the other. When she took her last breath you could hear witches a-screamin'.
01:00:21.000 --> 01:00:39.000
[[?]] Sound like meat a-poppin' and a-crackin' and [[?]] any racket you ever hear and if she wasn't up to that she's sure into some business in her life. If that's true, I don't know, lotta folk lore, it's uh. That's about as quick as I ever got through that.
01:00:39.000 --> 01:00:48.000
Speaker 2: That was pretty amazing! Usually that goes a half hour, folks! That was perfect.
Frank: Well, this noggin does work sometimes.
01:00:48.000 --> 01:00:56.000
Speaker 2: Doug could you, could you perform for us now the, uh, the version that you heard there in Madison County when you were young?
01:00:56.000 --> 01:01:14.000
Doug: Well, my version of this song of the story runs pretty close to, to his. There's one thing that he might've forgotten or might not have heard was that Anne Melton was a very wealthy girl.
01:01:14.000 --> 01:01:38.000
That might've been one reason why Tom wanted to switch girlfriends. She was also illiterate, couldn't read nor write. The story I heard about it, Tom lives, er, Frank lives closer to this place, probably knows it better than I do, but I heard she was real wealthy but was illiterate, couldn't read and write.
01:01:38.000 --> 01:01:53.000
And uh, I guess probably this is one reason that caused Tom to switch girlfriends. And uh, like Frank said, when, they said when Anne started to die everybody thought she had a hand in it too.
01:01:53.000 --> 01:02:06.000
And she was so close to the bad world that the old timers told that they could hear something like meat a-fryin', poppin', black cats ran up the wall a-squallin'.
01:02:06.000 --> 01:02:19.000
Frank's version of this is probably better than mine, but, and he knows a little more of it than I do, but I'll try to do a little of it for you now and hope you like my version.
01:02:19.000 --> 01:02:33.000
Hang down your head Tom Dooley, hang down your head and cry. For the murder of Laurie Foster, poor boy, you're bound to die.
01:02:33.000 --> 01:02:44.000
You met her on the mountain, there to be your wife. You met her on the mountain, and stabbed her with your knife.
01:02:44.000 --> 01:02:56.000
You dig the grave four feet long, and you dig it three feet deep. Threw your overcoat over her and tromped it with your feet.
01:02:56.000 --> 01:03:09.000
Hang down your head Tom Dooley, hang down your head and cry. You killed poor Laurie Foster now poor boy, you must die.
01:03:09.000 --> 01:03:20.000
They had my trial at Wilkesboro, and what do you reckon they done? They moved me o'er to Statesville and that's where I'll be hung.
01:03:20.000 --> 01:03:32.000
At this time tomorrow, boys, where do you reckon I'll be? If it hadn't've been for Grayson, I'd've been in Tennessee.
01:03:32.000 --> 01:03:44.000
Now take down my old banjo and pick it on your knee. For this time tomorrow, it'll be no use to me.
01:03:44.000 --> 01:03:56.000
Take down my old fiddle, boys, and play it all you please. For this time tomorrow, I'll be hanging from a white oak tree.
01:03:56.000 --> 01:04:05.000
[[ applause ]]
01:04:05.000 --> 01:04:15.000
Speaker 2: Frank could you just explain once again how this, the ballad came to your family, and then, uh, perform your version?
01:04:15.000 --> 01:04:30.000
Frank: Well the, the story is that my great-grandmother, she was in her twenties and she knew Tom and Laurie just brief, not really too close, just kindly was living within a mile or two of them and just seen 'em every now and then.
01:04:30.000 --> 01:04:56.000
Maybe meet 'em in a store, somethin', place like that. And she went over to the hangin' with the rest of her family, and went by the jail cell and heard him singing this ballad, that he had composed. And then this, so down that it is directly from Tom Dooley, himself, if all that's worked out the way they say.
01:04:56.000 --> 01:04:59.000
And I like to believe it is. Of course, that's oral tradition.
01:04:59.000 --> 01:05:02.000
Speaker 2: Don't put down oral tradition.
01:05:02.000 --> 01:05:31.000
Frank: It works pretty good. [[ laughter ]] Tape recorders and stuff. And this is. I do it a little higher than my father, he had a little different tuning on the banjo and I never did get the hang. I can do it a little bit but I kindly got my own style but it's pretty close to the way my father done it and maybe the way Tom Dooley himself.
01:05:31.000 --> 01:05:47.000
[[ Banjo music and foot stomping starts]]
01:05:47.000 --> 01:06:04.000
Hang your head Tom Dooley, hang your head and cry. Killed little Laurie Foster and now you're down to die.
01:06:04.000 --> 01:06:22.000
Well I met her on the mountain, there I took her life. Met her on the hillside and stabbed her with my knife.
01:06:22.000 --> 01:06:38.000
Hang you head Tom Dooley, oh hang your head and cry. You killed little Laurie Foster poor boy you're bound to die.
01:06:38.000 --> 01:06:46.000
[[ Musical interlude ]]
01:06:46.000 --> 01:07:04.000
Well, this time tomorrow, reckon where I'll be in a lonesome valley a-hangin on a white oak tree.
01:07:04.000 --> 01:07:17.000
This time tomorrow, which reckon where I'll be hadn't've been for Grayson I'd've been in Tennessee.
01:07:17.000 --> 01:07:31.000
Hang your head Tom Dooley, oh hang your head and cry. Killed little Laurie Foster and now you're bound to die.
01:07:31.000 --> 01:07:47.000
I'll take down my banjo, pick it on my knee, for this time tomorrow it'll be no use to me.
01:07:47.000 --> 01:08:04.000
Oh, hang your head Tom Dooley, oh hang your head and cry. Now hang your head Tom Dooley, poor boy, you're bound to die.
01:08:04.000 --> 01:08:14.000
[[ Music ends ]] [[ applause ]]
01:08:14.000 --> 01:08:16.000
Thank you very much, thank you for comin' by.
01:08:16.000 --> 01:08:19.000
Speaker 2: We're coming to the close of our workshop now
Frank: Thank you for sittin' through it. [[laughter ]]
01:08:19.000 --> 01:08:31.000
Speaker 2: I'd like to just make one more point. The area that we're in is called cultural conservation and I think that the two performers that we have on stage now really illustrate the point that we're trying to make.
01:08:31.000 --> 01:08:47.000
Mr. Wallin was raised in an environment where ballads were very much part of the community tradition. He didn't have to have anyone come and be interested in the ballads from outside because the ballads were there, were a part of meaning and expression of what the community experienced was.
01:08:47.000 --> 01:10:03.510
In Frank Province day, however, that tradition in which [?] County had become to change and had become to die and it was the interest of outsiders along with a very self-conscious recognition of the need to preserve these documents of cultural history really, these documents of meaning for that family in that community that lead to their survival and their very vital survival in the person of Frank Province Jr. It tells us a little bit about why we're here and why this festival is here. It's that expression of interest that often keeps these forms alive and keeps them as vital as vibrant as energetic as they are now. Let's please have a big hand as we close the workshop for Mr. Doug Wallen and Frank Province Jr. And if you stick around there is going to be a workshop now of Mayan, traditional Mayan music and culture here, immediately following this one.
01:10:06.000 --> 01:10:16.000
Don: Yeah that's better...Good afternoon, this is a discussion about the traditional Maya musical instrument called the marimba,
01:10:16.000 --> 01:10:23.000
which you see one version of here on the left hand side of the stage.
01:10:23.000 --> 01:10:35.000
Today is a special treat we are going to explore some of the very most traditional music that the Maya play which are is a kind of music that's played for dances
01:10:35.000 --> 01:10:51.000
but not dances like hoedowns or popular dancing music but devotional dances which are done to act out various dance theater events.
01:10:51.000 --> 01:10:59.000
We are today a little later going to be talking about the dance of the deer dance, the dance of the deer which has various portions to it.
01:10:59.000 --> 01:11:10.000
But before that I would like to introduce one of the players who will act as our interviewer his name is Jerónimo Camposeco.
01:11:10.000 --> 01:11:27.000
He is a Jacaltec Indian from a town in the highlands of Guatemala and like so many of his fellows he has grown up with the marimba
01:11:27.000 --> 01:11:36.000
not as a special instrument that a few people play for everyone else but an instrument that a very many of the Mayas learned to play from very young.
01:11:36.000 --> 01:11:44.000
Somewhat similar to the learning to, by the woman, learning of weaving which there is a weaving exhibit right next door to here.
01:11:44.000 --> 01:11:56.000
So without further ramblings we'll turn right to Jerónimo who will introduce the members of the band.
01:11:56.000 --> 01:12:08.000
Jerónimo: Uh, good morning. Thank you for doing all of this discussion of our Mayan cultural, and now the aspect is our music
01:12:08.000 --> 01:12:33.000
and we are going to start to say how the marimba is made, and we have one of the marimba maker with us from the hamlet of Yalaj San Miguel Acatán in the department of Huehuetenango Guatemala.
01:12:33.000 --> 01:12:49.000
He is a part of a family in this out there. Very few families make marimba, and one of in San Miguel, this is the family--the Gaspar family.
01:12:49.000 --> 01:13:03.000
And in other town very close to San Miguel, is called Santa Eulalia. We have two families: the Hernandez family and the Niktel family.
01:13:03.000 --> 01:13:15.000
I cannot interpret what Niktel means, but it's like "Nickolas," I guess. They make marimba also.
01:13:15.000 --> 01:13:21.000
Don: So in other words, there are very few families that actually make the marimba, unlike the numerous families that play them.
01:13:21.000 --> 01:13:27.000
We have the fortune of having a member of one of those families here with us.
01:13:27.000 --> 01:13:35.000
Jerónimo: This is Gaspar Juan here, and he's going to explain to you how to make marimba.
01:13:35.000 --> 01:13:38.000
[[applause]]
01:13:38.000 --> 01:13:52.000
Jerónimo: He speak, we speak Q'anjob'al Mayan language and I am going to ask in Spanish because Don is going to make the interpretation in English.
01:13:52.000 --> 01:13:59.000
Oh...he is going to speak in in Q'anjob'al. I am going to speak to him in-
01:13:59.000 --> 01:14:03.000
Don: Spanish and I'm going to speak to you in English [[laughter]]. Do you follow the-
01:14:03.000 --> 01:14:14.000
Jerónimo: Bueno, cómo quieres- cómo sientes mejor? Uh, cómo empezaste- we're going to start in Spanish- cómo empezaste aprender la marimba?
01:14:14.000 --> 01:14:16.000
Don: How did you learn to-
01:14:16.000 --> 01:14:27.000
Señor Gaspar: Los voy a contar que mi abuelo Gaspar Tomás, pues, cuándo era como, él era como quince años como muchacho, pues, y él empezó a hacer la marimba.
01:14:27.000 --> 01:14:34.000
Y no hay nadie ingles. El señor, a él no más le saco en su memoria como arreglando la marimba y él empezó.
01:14:34.000 --> 01:14:46.000
Así vivió el cómo ochenta y tres años y en el mundo él está muerta ahora. Y mi papá Juan Gaspar pues él vive en [[ya?]] ahora y salí de Malacatán y él ase las marimbas. Gracias.
01:14:46.000 --> 01:15:00.000
Don: So, he says that his grandfather began making the marimba. From looking at marimbas he figured out how to make one basically. Until he died at the age of eighty-three, he made marimbas.
01:15:00.000 --> 01:15:06.000
and he taught his son who in turn taught señor Gaspar here.
01:15:06.000 --> 01:15:12.000
Jerónimo: ¿Entonces ustedes aprendieron la marimba con tu papa ahora?
01:15:12.000 --> 01:15:23.000
Señor Gaspar: Sí. Mi papa Juan Gaspar ahora, él vive en Yalaj ahora. Él esta trabajando asiendo de la pura marimba.
01:15:23.000 --> 01:15:33.000
Él esta trabajando aya en mi tierra ahora donde yo vivo, pues, ya ase días que salí yo, pues yo estoy en Florida. Sí. Es todo.
01:15:33.000 --> 01:15:47.000
Don: So, his father is still living there and still making marimbas although Juan Gaspar, of course, now lives in Florida where he and about 800- 600 other members of his community are now exiles.
01:15:47.000 --> 01:15:55.000
Jerónimo: Pero, ademas de hacer marimba ustedes también trabajan en el campo principalmente.
01:15:55.000 --> 01:16:10.000
Juan Gaspar: También trabajamos en el campo. Lo que cultivamos en Guatemala, cultivamos el maíz, el trigo, la papa. No mas esos tres clases de cultivos se dan en Guatemala donde yo vivo en mi tierra. Sí
01:16:10.000 --> 01:16:20.000
Don: So, in addition, he says "I'm also a farmer. We grow corn. We grow um wheat. We grow potatoes. Those are the things that grow in the area that I live."
01:16:20.000 --> 01:16:35.000
Jerónimo: Entonces usted para ser marimba es como un arte, como sentir felicidad para ser algo. No viven haciendo marimba, si no, viven sembrando la tierra. ¿Es cierto?
01:16:35.000 --> 01:16:46.000
Juan Gaspar: Sí, cultivamos las dos cosas. En el- Cuando se, se hace negocio en la marimba puede ser en los tiempos veranos de diciembre para delante.
01:16:46.000 --> 01:16:53.000
Es que cuando se llueve bien en Guatemala, pues, en los tiempos de invierno, pues, la gente no, no compra la marimba.
01:16:53.000 --> 01:17:02.000
En ese tiempo de invierno trabajamos en los campos. Ese es el trabajo que estamos cultivando en Guatemala.
01:17:02.000 --> 01:17:07.000
Don: "So, when it rains, in other words, in the rainy season, they'll work on the lands.
01:17:07.000 --> 01:17:12.000
And when it's dry, that's the time when people will buy marimbas and that's when people will build the marimbas.
01:17:12.000 --> 01:17:15.000
About half the year is rainy and about half the year is dry."
01:17:15.000 --> 01:17:21.000
Jerónimo: Creo que el tiempo apretamiento vamos a empezar con la marimba de valle. Muchas gracias Gaspar.
01:17:21.000 --> 01:17:23.000
Don: Gracias
Juan Gaspar: Gracias
01:17:23.000 --> 01:17:26.000
Don: He says, "Thank you everyone. Now we are going to play some music."
01:17:26.000 --> 01:17:28.000
[[applause]]
01:17:28.000 --> 01:17:37.000
The music that's going to, that we're going to start with. There are a series of tunes that will be played one after another in what's called "The Deer Dance."
01:17:37.000 --> 01:17:45.000
Now imagine, if you will, like in the picture we have in the background here, people dressed up in very elaborate costumes.
01:17:45.000 --> 01:17:53.000
This particular one is a different dance but they are very similar in the basic form and they will dance a series of different dances.
01:17:53.000 --> 01:18:07.000
Um, although the dance as a whole is called "El Danzo Del Venado" or "The Dance of the Deer," the first song will be, is called, "La Viejita" which is "The Little Old Woman"
01:18:07.000 --> 01:18:15.000
and there is a little old woman who dances in it, or a man dressed up as a little old woman and then there is el viejito, little old man.
01:18:15.000 --> 01:18:20.000
Then, there is the Venado itself which is the deer and he has horns and so on
01:18:20.000 --> 01:18:33.000
and then the monkey. Then the tiger. Then the dog. Then the Mexican. Then the little, the black man and then the uh- what would we call it? The Shepard
01:18:33.000 --> 01:18:42.000
and then the cowboy and these are all parts of the uh, dance that they uh, act out, it's dance theater.
01:18:42.000 --> 01:18:43.020
You have a question there?
01:18:46.000 --> 01:18:48.000
Speaker 1: Well, tiger is a very-
01:18:48.000 --> 01:18:51.000
'tigre' really means puma
01:18:51.000 --> 01:18:54.000
and its a native animal, along with the jaguar
01:18:54.000 --> 01:18:58.000
actually, puma and jaguar are confused often
01:18:58.000 --> 01:19:00.000
but in the Indian language, its called 'balam.'
01:19:00.000 --> 01:19:01.000
Will: Balam
01:19:01.000 --> 01:19:03.000
Speaker 1: Balam- which is 'jaguar.'
01:19:03.000 --> 01:19:07.000
which is the most important animal
01:19:07.000 --> 01:19:09.000
really for the ancient Mayans as well
01:19:09.000 --> 01:19:15.000
Will: We, in our town are specalists-
01:19:15.000 --> 01:19:18.000
Specalists for making marimba and marimba players
01:19:18.000 --> 01:19:22.000
but in marimba players, we have categories also.
01:19:22.000 --> 01:19:30.000
But our people only can play songs for - for the dance, for marimba dance
01:19:30.000 --> 01:19:35.000
So this is some kind of sacred music for dance
01:19:35.000 --> 01:19:40.000
This- the dances are not only for enjoyment
01:19:40.000 --> 01:19:43.000
This is some kind of promesa, and so
01:19:43.000 --> 01:19:47.000
the only man can play that with us now is Pedro Francisco
01:19:47.000 --> 01:19:51.000
and the other people as me and Pedro, the other Pedro
01:19:51.000 --> 01:20:00.000
we play common music for enjoying in the matrimonies and the fiestas of the patron of the town
01:20:00.000 --> 01:20:03.000
Now Pedro Francisco is going to start with
01:20:03.000 --> 01:20:08.000
(Spanish) Vas a empazar con el baila -la vejita, Verdad? [[cross talk]]
Pedro Francisco: la vejita
01:20:08.000 --> 01:20:11.000
Speaker 1: So, in other words, just to go over that one more time,
01:20:11.000 --> 01:20:17.000
While there are dances for enjoyment and there are dances for sort of semi-sacred situations
01:20:17.000 --> 01:20:19.000
Like marriages and festivals
01:20:19.000 --> 01:20:22.000
There's also the highly sacred music of the-
01:20:22.000 --> 01:20:25.000
Of these dances, which are devotional dances
01:20:25.000 --> 01:20:30.000
Someone commits a lot of time, a lot of money to a certain saint to do this dance
01:20:30.000 --> 01:20:33.000
Or, in the case of Pedro here, to play this music
01:20:33.000 --> 01:20:36.000
and very few people know how to play this music now.
01:20:36.000 --> 01:20:40.000
Fortunately, we have Pedro Francisco with us to play some.
01:20:40.000 --> 01:20:43.000
(Spanish) Pues, andale [[laughter]]
01:20:43.000 --> 01:21:51.000
[[Instrumental music plays]]
01:21:51.000 --> 01:21:55.000
[[clapping]]
01:21:55.000 --> 01:21:57.820
Speaker 1: And now the- and now the old man
01:22:00.000 --> 01:23:24.000
[[music starts]]
01:23:24.000 --> 01:23:36.000
[clapping]
Speaker 1: now in comes the deer, the venado? Yeah, la venado?
01:23:36.000 --> 01:25:08.000
[[music resumes]]
01:25:08.000 --> 01:25:39.000
Speaker 1: [clapping] Very good. now imagine as you hear each of these songs, imagine another series of people dressed up with different costumes. This case was the deer and the next one is going to be the monkey, dancing little steps around to this different music. they have cued their steps in, so that basically each mallet, or two, couple of mallet strokes is another step that they are doing one after another which they do all day. Ahora, el mono? Now the monkey
01:25:39.000 --> 01:27:54.000
[music]
01:27:54.000 --> 01:27:59.000
[clapping]
01:27:59.000 --> 01:28:14.080
Speaker 1: I wonder if some of you could see a little monkey jumping around when you were listening to that music. Next we are gonna hear the tigre, the tiger, or the... in fact in my language this should be Balam, Balam which means the jaguar.
01:28:18.000 --> 01:30:02.000
[[music plays]]
01:30:02.000 --> 01:30:07.000
Speaker 1: that was the tigre, or balam [[clapping]]
01:30:07.000 --> 01:30:12.000
well now there is a song about a dog, now some people say why would you have a dog?
01:30:12.000 --> 01:30:24.000
Well, there is someone dressed up as a dog. Dog is very important for the Maya because dog is a kind of sacred companion to human individuals.
01:30:24.000 --> 01:30:33.000
When we go over into the other side after we have died, a dog is the one who's gonna guide us over to the resting place when we've passed away.
01:30:33.000 --> 01:30:43.000
and dogs are often considered to be natural shamans, or natural diviners because they have sensibilities that we with our sense of consciousness don't have.
01:30:43.000 --> 01:30:51.000
so a dog is a very important animal, not to mention the fact that they serve a very important function for the Mayans,
01:30:51.000 --> 01:30:55.000
protectors of their households, particularly when the men are away and the women are alone.
01:30:55.000 --> 01:31:02.010
So now we have el perite which is in Jakaltek is [[language sounds]]
01:31:07.000 --> 01:31:22.000
[[Music plays]]
01:31:22.000 --> 01:31:23.000
Speaker 1: Sí
01:31:23.000 --> 01:32:41.000
[[Music plays]]
01:32:41.000 --> 01:32:44.000
[[Clapping]]
01:32:44.000 --> 01:32:53.000
Speaker 1: Now, uh- the next one is called "The Mexican" and the Guatemalans, when they were conquered in 1524
01:32:53.000 --> 01:33:02.000
uh- the conquering of Guatemala was done with the help of many -about 10,000 Tlaxcalans- who were a group of Indians who live in Mexico
01:33:02.000 --> 01:33:09.000
and they became associated [[Mic Feedback]], they became associated with Mexico
01:33:09.000 --> 01:33:17.000
and there's a whole sort of mythology about the Mexican with the big Sombrero and the- and the pistol and the bullets, just like we have up here
01:33:17.000 --> 01:33:20.000
um- which is highly stylized, and of course, cliché and unrealistic
01:33:20.000 --> 01:33:29.340
but nonetheless, someone plays this role of the wild Mexicano in the midst of this uh- dance theater, and this is the music that goes with the Mexicano
01:33:32.000 --> 01:34:46.000
[[Music plays]]
01:34:46.000 --> 01:35:11.136
[SILENCE]
