Farmyard Cacophonies: Three Centuries of a Popular Song
2011; Volume: 10; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2056-6166
Autores Tópico(s)Diverse Musicological Studies
Resumo'Old MacDonald Had a Farm' is an immensely successful popular song. In this essay I explore the life of this song from its earliest known version as performed on the English stage in the early eighteenth century, its development as a vaudeville and blackface minstrel song in the nineteenth century, its place in oral tradition, commercial recordings of the song in the 1920s and later, and its status today as a modern 'children's favourite' in a variety of forms. I consider the song in the context of other pieces that list animals, animal parts, and sometimes animal sounds. I look at the way innuendo and satire can be read in versions of the song and the way the song relates to the relationships of humans to animals. I explore examples of the parodies, transformations, and translations the song has spawned, and hypothesize on the reasons for its enormous success. I emphasize that any sound history must look for continuity as well as change but also be aware of the ways in which texts can take on different meanings in different historical situations. I do not remember when I first heard 'Old MacDonald Had a Farm' but I associate it with a 1950s Saturday morning record show on BBC radio called Children's Favourites. I later learned that the recording I heard was by Spike Jones and his City Slickers. Jones specialized in comedy records which combined fantastically good timing and superb musicianship with cartoon-style sound effects and zany humour. There is what we might term a recurring irony here in that 'Old MacDonald' was performed by a band called the 'City Slickers': as I will show, the song most probably originated, and was certainly used, as an urban satire on country life. The Spike Jones recording was lively enough but, young as I was, I thought it was corny. (1) Nevertheless, I absorbed the song then and have carried it in my head ever since. It was years later that I realized that the song was of considerable antiquity. As an adult researcher into historical popular song I took to reading through song collections whilst commuting. Working through Thomas D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719-20), I came across 'A Charming Country Life', a clear forerunner of 'Old MacDonald'. (2) I was not me first, nor the last, to discover independently this presence, (3) but I can recall that I felt a strong emotion on finding that something that I had not believed to be very old had in fact been around for some considerable time. Aspects of the song's story have been told before and I am indebted to people who have investigated the song previously. (4) I hope that in this essay I will give a more complete version of its story, together with some exploration of the characteristics of the song, its meanings and uses, and some reasons for its enormous success. (5) The Development of 'Old MacDonald' The appearance of 'A Charming Country Life' in Pills to Purge Melancholy was not the first time it had appeared, in print. It was performed as part of a comic 'opera' called The Kingdom of the Birds, written by D'Urfey and first produced in 1706. The music notation given here is from The Kingdom of the Birds, with text taken from the 1707 edition of Pills to Purge Melancholy. (6) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the Fields in Frost and Snows, Watching late and early; There I keep my Fathers Cows, There I milk 'em yearly: Booing here, Booing there, Here a Boo, there a Boo, ev'ry where a Boo, We defy all Care and Strife, In a Charming Country Life. Then at home amongst the Fowls, Watching late and early; There I tend my Father's Owls, There I feed 'em yearly: Whooing here, Whooing there, Here a whoo, there a whoa, every where a whoo, We defy all Care and Strife, In a Charming Country Life. When the Summer Fleeces heap, Watching late and early; Then I Shear my Father's Sheep, Then I keep 'em yearly: Baeing here, Baeing there, Here a Bae, there a Bae, every where a Bae, We defy all Care and Strife, In a Charming Country Life. …
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