Programs

From the beginning of history, we have felt the need to pass the news along often by singing about it. We hear of a fire, a murder, an assassination, a mine disaster, a national or local tragedy or triumph, a living or dead hero and we often come up with the musical equivalent of a tabloid magazine – or, perhaps a blog. These aren’t the songs that made it to the hit parade or the top twenty; in fact, many of these songs showed up originally in the “poet’s corner” in rural newspapers, written to a currently popular tune.

Few of the songs are polished, and often they don’t “get it right,” but many of them are hilarious, and they have guts and directness that make up for what they lack in finesse. And they tell what really happened. No lie. Honest.

Songs accompanied by guitar, banjo, autoharp and harmonica.

The Great Depression of the “Dirty Thirties” left Americans with a wicked gallows humor, a sense that if they could keep laughing, they wouldn’t have to start crying. This program shows that spit-in-the-demon’s-eye spirit, not through history and literature, but through folklore and “illiterature.”

Popular radio music sturdily ignored the Depression, assuing us that “Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries,” and “We’re in the Money.” But rural and small-town musicians saw the Depression for what it was, poked fun at political figures of the time:

Roosevelt’s in the Whitehouse, dion’ his best,

Hoover didn’t do nothing but around and rest

Audience members are encouraged to share their own or their family memories and stories about those hard times, and Mr. Rossiter shares stories he has collected during dozens of presentations.

Songs accompanied by banjo, guitar and autoharp.

“How happy am I as I crawl into bed, a rattlesnake rattles a tune at my bed, A coy little centipede, void of all fear, crawls over my pillow and into my ear.” “Seeing the elephant,” they called it. It was the pioneer’s term for getting wised up and fed up. When the 19th century settlers started West, they sang songs about the land of milk and honey. By the time they got here, they rewrote the same songs to tell of rattlesnakes and alkali water.

In our cynical age, the romance of the railroad may have faded like the railroads themselves, but those steel rails tied the West to “civilization” and formed a collection of territories into a nation. Songs about railroads display attitudes about the “iron horse,” from the young girl, anticipating the arrival of marriageable railroad workers to the grumpy wagoner, afraid railroads will kill his business and bring in crews of Irishmen! (Oh no! There goes the neighborhood!) Railroad songs and stories help us recapture the wonder the rails once inspired. Using these tunes and yarns, we’ll explore what the railroad meant to the West and its pioneers.

Songs accompanied by guitar, banjo, harmonica and autoharp.

“No Irish Need Apply” The Irish who fled to America to escape the potato famine of the 1840s often met a wall of hostility, vividly reflected in the era’s songs. The new arrival might read “No Irish Need Apply” on a job announcement, and hear a popular song about a “black-hearted ruffian from Erin Go Bragh.” But in time the Irish “became Americans” and served with distinction in peace and in war. Eventually, the songs about “Paddy and Biddy,” hard-drinking brawlers from the “Ould Sod,” were replaced by songs about “Patrick and Mavoureen,” romantic figures from the “Emerald Isle.” In this program Rossiter uses songs and stories to exemplify the barriers between the new arrivals and respectability.

Ballads, the story-songs that served as an early-day National Enquirer, told of love and loss, of deeds chivalric and dastardly and ghostly, of gossip and legend and of other lore beloved by “enquiring minds” of ages past. Many American story-songs have their roots in the British Isles and Australia. This program features traditional and historical songs, many of them paired with their “ancestor songs” from the old country.

In singing about our food we celebrate our identity. Many food songs represent nostalgia for an uncomplicated past, when grandma cooked real food and we turned up our noses at haut cuisine. Ethnic and national groups, for example, preserve an important part of their culture when they serve traditional foods.

These songs are about home cooking, about the ethnic and farm kitchen, pork chops, corned beef and cabbage, lefse, pastries. They are all fall-back dishes when times are tough, and go-to dishes when we need to get back to basics: grits and greens, garden tomatoes, potatoes, lutefisk (not for the sissy). The songs help us understand American cultural, ethnic and social history, a simpler time when the basic rule of nutrition was “Fill ‘er up.”

These songs are about home cooking, about the ethnic and farm kitchen, pork chops, corned beef and cabbage, lefse, pastries. They are all fall-back dishes when times are tough, and go-to dishes when we need to get back to basics: grits and greens, garden tomatoes, potatoes, lutefisk (not for the sissy). The songs help us understand American cultural, ethnic and social history, a simpler time when the basic rule of nutrition was “Fill ‘er up.”

Songs accompanied by guitar, banjo, autoharp and harmonica.

These songs celebrate women of tradition, fiction and fact through the songs that tell their stories and praise their courage. Some valiant women are quietly strong, and others are warriors; some are famous and some obscure; some are fireworks and some are flowers. And all followed their convictions and their vision, and all are worthy of our notice – and often our admiration. The songs and tales come from several centuries of Anglo-American tradition, although some of them are the descendants of tales as old as civilization itself.

From “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” to “Take this Job and shove it,” Americans have been singing songs and telling tales about their jobs, whether they’re nine-to-fivers or dawn-to-duskers. Some are outright protest songs, while others give a thoughtful look at what it means to show up day after day, whether it’s at the office, the mill or the mine.

When the subject of work songs comes up, we naturally think of the “Hard-Time Hungries,” when wages are low and conditions tough. Workers came together to ask for – or to demand – a few more bucks per week, a shorter work week, safer conditions and a little help with injuries. They worried about the management attitude that “there are ten more waiting for your job.” They worried that their kids were destined follow them into a career in the mill or the mine. Their songs provided a voice that both clarified the issues and inspired workers with the fact that they were all in it together. Workers’ movements as far back as the 1770s had their songs and slogans, and during the depressions of the 1800s and, of course, the “Dirty Thirties,” they tried and failed and tried again to make these songs echo in the corridors of power.

Today we are pondering these questions again – and again: What are the real issues? Who allots the “fruits of labor”? Do the workers “own” their labor? Are these controversies about rights or are they about privileges? Does “the system” slant one way or the other? Not an easy question in the bunch, but maybe we can get a little insight into what’s going on today by looking at what went on back then, when singing at a rally or a march or a meeting was the equivalent of opening with a prayer.

Traditional songs of the Civil War are “snapshots” capturing particular moments, events and emotions of that conflict. These musical marginal notes on Lincoln and the War illuminate that turbulent time, not from the historian’s viewpoint but as musical snapshots taken “on the ground.” Some of these political songs, still singable 140-plus years later, make today’s “negative campaigning” look positively angelic. The songs in this presentation show the human side of the war—the love and the hatred for Lincoln, the emotions and small tragedies and triumphs that we miss if we study only battles and battalions. The presentation explores the setting and context of each song, helping us understand what each snapshot is really showing us.

Songs accompanied by guitar, banjo, harmonica and Autoharp.