Fantastic story, Judith. Thank you!
Lynn
-----Original Message-----
From: study of popular / folk / traditional ballads
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Judith R Cohen
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 5:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: "Anyone for ballads?"
hi, Julia asks quite reasonably, "anyone for ballads?"
So (relieved, because I can't read any attachments in digest form), let me
tell you a small
ballad story.
I was lucky enough to be sent to the Azores Islands this past summer for 2
weeks, and the other
night was asked to present some of the results of what I learened about
older musical traditions
at the local Azores CUlture House (Toronto). As a sort of prologue, without
saying a word of
introduction I started to sing a long, very complete version of O Conde de
Alemanha (The COunt
of Germany) collected in the Azores by a colleague of mine a few years ago.
I used a cordless
mike (big hall, coffee cup noises etc) and used my other hand to set out my
instruments, display
books and pictures etc on the table on stage - an adaptation of domestic
tasks carried out while
singing ballads. Then I went into the main rpesentation (which included
other songs ) - and
afterwards, a woman perhaps in her 30's came up to me and told me she'd been
looking for the
ballad for years: her grandmother had used it to sing her to sleep but died
when she was still
small, and they emigrated to Canada; and she just hadn't known how to look
for it and couldn't
remember much about it. But she said the version I sang was "exactly" as she
remembered it.
This sort of thing has happened to me before - but I left out one crucial
part.
She "told" me all this - in rhymed song, in the imporovised "desafio" (song
duel) tradition
which is an integral part of Azorean tradition. She just stood there at
intermission in the
crowded hall, a young woman in a big city in modern clothes - and sang me
her story of how I'd
"found" her grand-mother's ballad for her.
Anyone else for ballads?
Judith
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