April 27, 1922 M U S I C A L C O 11 K I EII (> THE AMERICAN FOLK SONG By Huger! Putnam Copyrighted, 1922, by The Musical Courier Company* (x-t me say that the music of both these folk song*, is extremely attractive. And now here is one that seems to me to have been made by the negro and the white man jointly. The rhymes arc too clever, and they are correctly spelled, and so canned l»e the product of the negro entirely; yet the music is distinctly of a negro character, even if ths white man started the tune; OP JOT Davis, you better watch out, The blue coat» arc after you to make you about; They’ll meet you at the band, they’ll give you understand, To let Mr. Abraham have that land (Lincoln), You can imagine this song was not popular with the white people of the south! Here, on the other hand, is a genuine negro reel, as they call it: STATE OF GEORGIA Oh, one of these mornings you won'y know. A hearse will come backing up to your doe (meaning door); You better be ready and prepare (for prepared) To meet your Jesus in the air. A religious air and this style of rhyme will always betray the negro song. Finally. I will prove that the amateur musician, the singers among the common people, did not suddenly lose their power to make new tunes when they arrived on American soil, as some seem to think. With all the bigness and strangeness of this new continent to stir the imagination, with all the adventure and the romance of the pioneer days, with all the patriotism of the Revolutionary and the Civil wars throbbing in the hearts of the American people, it does seem remarkable that some writers sit in their libraries and draw the conclusion that we have died musically since we arrived over here. On the contrary, we have kept on singing. It is to my father that I am permitted to speak with so much assurance, and to give the songs quoted above. On recent visits to'his home in the beautiful city of Greenville, S. C., he sang nearly fifty of these most fascinating folk songs for me and said if he could remember all he had known in his boyhood, they would amount to many hundreds. But let me get to the proof. Songs of the Wilderness Yes. I have made some investigations myself, and one remarkable discovery that I know cannot be disputed. While I was camping on the peaks of Otter (Ya.). I was haunted by a wood thrush that sang a most beautiful song the live-long day, and even into the night, until it got hold of my emotions to such a degree that I decided to have it killed, first taking down the bird's song and testing out the accuracy of it before the shot was fired. In a week or two I heard a mountain boy humming almost the identical song and I realized that he had learned it from this wood thrush that had each summer brought its mate to nest in this vicinity. This bird's lovely song, which I give below as accurately as it is possible in our scale of half-tones, had become a folk song. Not only that; there were other wood thrushes there by the hundreds, whose songs were different, as no two ever sing alike, and I have since heard other mountaineers whistling and singing the sad and highly emotional songs of these birds. Surely nobody in all the wide world can claim the songs of these wood thrushes were made in Europe or have the least bit of European influence, for these birds have spent their winters in Central and South America, and their summers in North America, since the world began, and the folk songs derived from them must be distinctly American. Has it never occurred to the critic that there are thousands of square miles of rural land where the folk song may now be well developed; vast districts of illiterates that would cover whole states, where the folk song may now be having its inception: and mighty wildernesses that need the tribes of Indians to make them look just like they did when Columbus made his voyage in 1492, where the folk song may in future ages spring from the soil, and all this right here in the United States of America: I close with the music of the wood thrush, now become a folk song, which I offer as one indisputable and absolute proof of my contention, even if the other arguments are open to debate, that we have American tunes totally devoid of European, negro or Indian influence. If the birds can inspire, why not the waterfalls, the rivers and sounds of the forest ad infinitum? Here's the message of the wood thrush: I owe the possession of this folk song to my father, who learned it nearly fifty years ago. In its childlike simplicity, two points are clear: First, it was constructed since Georgia and Alabama were formed, and by a man who lived in both states. It, therefore, deserves to he called American just as much as our national and state governments deserve to be so called, so far as the words are concerned, at least, in the second place, it was the song of a white man, for the girl he loved had light brown hair and rosy cheeks. _ I will not attempt to prove the origin of the music in this particular case, but it is so well wedded to the words, and evidently shaped and inspired by them, that it may he assumed to be wholly American until it is proved otherwise. It is very simple: WHEN I LEFT THE But what if someone should find that this tune shows evidence of European influence, would that take away its American flavor? Not necessarily, and let me illustrate. For instance, I suppose no one would dispute the characteristically American nature of Edgar Allen Poe's "Raven,’’ yet one of his most beautiful passages, namely “And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain” great literary authorities concede is almost a plagiarism of Mrs. Browning’s words in "Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,’’ namely “With a murmurous stir uncertain, in the air the purple curtain.” Why, then, strain at a little European influence in the American folk song? There is no need to strain, for here is one that evidently goes back to the middle ages. It was conceived in the day of tyrants, helmets, conquerors, dungeons, etc. My father traces it back a hundred years from the time he learned it about fifty years ago. It evidently originated in Europe: I could bear in this dungeon to waste away youth, Or fall by a conqueror’s hand; But I cannot endure that you doubt my truth, (While I die in a far-away-land). Words f¡led f;i here. Fly away to her bower, sweet bird, and say That the tyrant is upon me now; Oh, I ne’er shall mount my steed again, With a helmet upon my brow. I give the words to show how easy it is to approximate the date of the formation of the folk song. The music was probably composed when the words were made in the long ago, so why deny the American the same probability in his folk songs? I read in a musical dictionary: "Marseillaise was written and set to music during the night of April 24, 1792, by Rouget de Lisle, Captain of Engineers, at Strass-burg.” Why not our folk songs also? I will now quote a number of folk songs to show that these are not isolated examples from which I am trying to prove my point. They follow: There’s a yellow rose of Texas, I’m going now to see; Nobody ever loved her, Nobody, only me. She cried so when I left her, It almost broke my heart; And if I ever find her. We never more will part. She’s the sweetest rose of color; To friends, she’s ever true; Her eyes are bright as diamonds, And sparkle as the dew. You may talk about your Mary, And sing of Rosalie; But the yellow rose of Texas Beats the belle of Tennessee. It was certainly inspired since Tennessee and Texas were formed, and furthermore, if seems pitched on too high a plane of sentiment to be of negro origin; also the rhymes, as I will show below, do not betray the stamp of the negro. Here’s another: It's when I’m sad and lonely, I make nty banjo play, To remind me of my true-love, When I am far away. It’s farevouwell forever, To old Tennessee; It’s farevouwell, my Lilia, dear, Don’t you grieve for me. THE MESSAGE OF Just twelve years ago Busoni—“giant among pianists and among musical intellects,” as the Musical Courier called him—was making his unforgettable tour of America. He was everywhere acclaimed the greatest pianist since Rubinstein and Liszt, and it was thought that the possibilities of the piano had been so nearly exhausted by his genius as a transcriber and a pianist that this instrument could not hold his attention much longer. Such was our admiration when, on the eve of his departure from our shores, he struck terror to our hearts by issuing a statement containing the following words: “Out of the soil rises the character of the people in tonal forms which are true and its own; and from the root of this plant will grow the folk song. For days I have traversed the great western prairies, to the eye apparently endless, and I have observed myself how much there remains to be done to the soil of this country. The soil is not prepared as yet. That is the thing that must-be accomplished first of all, and then the soil will begin to sing the great song of American liberty and unity; and developing in the natural course, the American tonal art will be born. Perhaps you may reply that I have overlooked the negro songs and the old Indian melodies, but these do not tell of the great nation of the United States, and these place the Americans themselves in opposition to the Indians and colored men.” Our Situation Naturally, our pride was hurt—yea, it was more than that; it was deeply wounded by this statement from Busoni, published in the Musical Courier at the time of his departure, for we had considered ourselves a musical nation! But how could a denial of the accuracy of his “judgment of America as a musical country” be made by our critics or composers in the face of such a thrust from the most devout student of the present age of the music of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, Chopin and others; for surely if the classic masters did not use the folk song, Busoni would not have spoken thus, especially in the face of the fact that he had been led to think we had not any folk songs of our own making? In this connection let me say that I have just been reading of how V. Stefansson, Arctic explorer, is exploding popular beliefs about the supposed frigidity of the far north. I quote from a reliable newspaper : “Stefansson’s theory is that popular fallacies about the far north have been handed down to us by writers and re writers of the ‘old stuff’ who pose as authorities, though they never were there to check up! How much of our supposed knowledge in other fields is really misinformation? We are open to conviction; let’s see your facts!” But I cannot hold in any longer; so before I begin the discussion of my proof that we have made many hundreds of folk songs that have some very good reasons to be called American in the truest sense of the word, let me tell you that I met a folk song collector in the mountains of Virginia during the summer of 1919 who told me he had collected thirteen thousand folk songs in the Blue Ridge Mountains alone. I have often wondered if he didn’t mean thirteen hundred. I was so stunned with the story of this achievement that I felt like throwing my pencil and paper away, for surely he had gathered them all. But he assured me he had only begun. After I had looked over a large batch of his collections, which he produced on the spot, I saw how it might possibly be true, for many of them were very short motives and dance tunes. One of our leading-publishers has published many tunes found by this man, and the Literary Digest, I am told, has made mention of his work. I would like to give his name, but you have probably already guessed it. (Cecil Sharp.) An Invitation Now, if you will come with me to these same mountains I will point out to you territory projecting into seven states where dwell people who are continually making new and perpetuating old folk songs; as I will prove to you later in this article. Then we will pass down into the valleys of these and other southern states, where romance, love songs, springtimes and golden-leafed autumns abound, for that is where I have made my investigations and found my proof. Songs may be hard to find at first, for the people do not like to sing for strangers. We will not pursue the usual method of the folk song collector by singing some old English ballads, and when we find one they have kept alive and fail to get a new one; conclude they have no songs of their own making. But we will pitch our camp for a while. In the meantime we can pick up as many negro tunes as we wish in the way of practice. The Proof Now I will submit, as a matter of logic, three points of proof that we have folk songs of true American flavor which, I assure you, can be found by the hundreds. First—I will prove that we have folk songs that were constructed on American soil. Second—I will prove that these songs were shaped by white people, and not by negroes nor Indians. Third—I will prove that the music is, in some cases at least, unquestionably that of the American white man. Can I do it? Well, here is the first song I have chosen to prove the first two points, and I will support it with others later: When 1 left the State of Georgia, To Alabama I did go; There I spied a pretty fair Miss, Oh, her age, I did not know! Her hair was of a light brown color; Ilcr cheeks were soft, her roses red; Her eyes shone bright as the morning star— “She’s the girl for me!” I said. When I sleep, I dream about her; When I’m awake, I have no rest; Kv’ry moment seems like an hour, Oh, that pain across my breast! Her father says he is not willing; Her mother says it will not do: So come, my Love, if you are willing. 1 will run away with you! THE WOOD THRUSH P cresc Hi a tempo pp nip Slowly j k l K—h X n \ t I J U •y k ,S 5V 5?51 k Y II ^ / ^—w— r a i ■— i ^ w — When I left the State of Georgia to A1 —a — bama I did go! There I ù h ־k k—[-■ S—