Question of the week:
As I tackled this week's assignments, I found myself at a loss to determine where I should begin. After all, because this is a rhetoric of song class, it made sense to listen to the song selections before delving into the readings. On the other hand, as a student of rhetoric, I've been conditioned to privilege the persuasive power of the written word—so much so that I found myself wanting to read the texts first so that they would provide some indication of how I should "read" sound and song.
To prove how tied to the text I am, I started by reading Burke, and I feel that much of the reading and listening I've done this week for class has been shaped by his theories. On a positive note, Burke's definition of rhetoric as "language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols," I feel, opens a space to talk about songs, such as ballads, as rhetorical. I have to confess, though, that I also empathize with Alan and John Lomax's fear that by theorizing about songs, "capturing and imprisoning them in cold type," we may somehow kill them as we try (because we try?) to understand them. Just like them, I'll charge on anyway and try not to worry about the damage . . .
My question is this:
Let's take as a given Burke's idea that rhetoric unites people who identify with each other based on their shared "substance" (shared motives, values, beliefs, ideas, emotions, reasoning, language). Using our readings and listening assignments for this week as examples, what could this shared substance be exactly, and why does it lend itself to taking shape as a ballad?
What do you all—heck, let's be folksy—what do ya'll think?
-Mandy
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I'd say homicide. Homicide links us all, esp. whilst using a pen knife.
ReplyDeleteOK, not exactly, but I like this question. While listening to the anthology/reading the selections, I also kept coming back to the questions of why these tracks retain their stamina (at least for me) so long beyond their inception (sort of nodding at the question you're asking above, Mandy). To keep rhetoric on the table, I am hearing George Kennedy's definition of "rhetoric" chiming through all this. Essentially, Kennedy claims rhetoric as "a form of mental and emotional energy," thus blowing the door wide open to interpretations of how anything human-produced--such as notes from a banjo, dulcimer, jaw harp, et al,--have rhetorical import. To be even more fair to Kennedy, saying "human-produced" is limiting, as Kennedy includes animal communication within the domain of rhetoric.
Anyhow, to reign my thoughts in here, there is something in the shared experience of these songs and ballads that gives them staying power, let's them travel to the present. Loss, grief, dissapointment, love, returned love, etc., these are human concerns. Sort of bordering on an anthropological discussion, but I would claim that the motives and emotions of human experience are of a shared span, even if their manifestations differ. The particulars are relative, sure, but the motives objective. Am I being too absolutist or objectivist here? Maybe. Too easy an answer? Perhaps. And very blue-sky. But it is the best I got right now.
Animals and banjos as rhetorical . . . I love it!
ReplyDeleteIt's really helpful, I think, to put the big question-what is rhetoric in terms of song-out there at the very beginning, even if it's only to establish the question that we will continue to ask throughout the semester. So we have answers (well kind of) to that question from both Burke and Kennedy, but I wonder if anyone else has a definition of rhetoric in mind (or even another theorist) that would add to this discussion. Any takers?
I like the blue-sky take on the shared "substance" that threads these songs together. I think that this response makes a good point: We all respond to music because it "gets at" what we consider universal emotions and motives somehow. It makes me think of how we all just know somehow when someone is singing off-key. In a true display of solidarity with everyone except the singer, we wince.
Does anyone else have any ideas about the "substance" you found in these songs or a take on why ballads in particular are a rhetorically effective way to communicate it to its intended (unintended) audience/s?
To open up the discussion a bit, how are the songs on our reading list and playlist for this week working to achieve their rhetorical purpose? More generally, what is that rhetorical purpose?
They all do seem to have a unifying theme to them: death, love, love lossed, sadness etc. but I noticed a definite difference between the cultural take on these themes.
ReplyDeleteWhat I thought was the most interesting difference was between their take on class. Both the American and the English/Scottish ballads use the images of death, loss and sadness, but while presumably the songs were passed along by the lower classes in both societies, (both Lomax and Bruncand said that the folk songs/ballads were passed along orally by the 'unlettered' or 'peasants') the English/Scottish ballads seem to use the upper class people as subjects while the Americans seem either to use lower class people, or to not mention social status at all.
Brunvand shows this difference explicitly with the example of "The Three Ravens" (pp. 184-185). The Scottish version has the three birds eating away the corpse of a fallen knight, whereas the American version has them eating only the corpse of a horse. There is no image of a fallen upper class.
Other English/Scottish ballads all seem to mention that the tragedies are happening to a knight, lady, lord or at least a property owner. Lord Randal, or Edward or any of the other names in the similiar songs, makes sure, after he realizes that he was poisoned and death is iminent, to leave a will of substantial property to his family. The American ballads don't seem to mention any real property ownership, but instead focus on the troubles of the lower class.
I could easily say that the shared substance of human experience is our paradoxically solitary state. Every man is an island and all that—connected beneath the waves by a shared foundation, but rising alone against the vault of the heavens to meet the raging wind and marvel at the stars, etc., etc. But I don’t think that would be productive. Lomax informs us right up front that this is the origin of the ballad—“a life of isolation” (xxvii). But we cannot allow the definition to end there. Songs and ballads are, through the very nature of their preservation, shared creations. They are meant to speak to the shared human experience of isolation and are meant to evoke emotional responses.
ReplyDeleteI am particularly influenced by Lomax’s notion that “word of mouth” is the necessary component for the continuation of the ballad as a human experience. Oral tradition was (and has been) the sole means for the preservation of history and culture in many societies that still influence us in the here and now. Through the creation of ballads and the interaction between people(s) therein necessitated, further culture was continually propagated. More was expressed; more was taught; more was shared. So what shared human experience must be addressed in these ballads?
If we take for granted Burke’s idea of mankind as the symbol-using animal, we must question the depths to which these symbols go. If literature, including the ballad (and thereby the symbols that constitute it), is, at its heart, a tool for mankind’s use when he must approach the complexities of his own life, what lessons is it teaching and how?
We have specifically addressed the shared experience of loss (of love or through death, etc.). Most, if not all, of the ballads we have heard contain within them an element of loss, perhaps most cohesively a loss of innocence or goodness. Many of these ballads, however, do not deliver a specific moment of loss, though there are, of course, counter examples. “Fatal Flower Garden” does not speak of the moment of the murder, but moves immediately on to the boy’s wishes for his burial, etc. In “Willie Moore” the cause of Annie’s death is uncertain; in “John Hardy was a Desperate Little Man” we do not see the moment of John Hardy’s hanging.
Nonetheless, these ballads still manage to impart the gravity of sorrow through language—“Fatal Flower Garden” and “The Butcher’s Boy” are strangely reminiscent of Ophelia’s lament in their imagery. (Notably, “Henry Lee” and “Fatal Flower Garden” use the symbolism of the phrase “lily-white hand.”) Indeed, the repetition of symbolic imagery is striking; these ballads would seem to rhetorically teach periphrasis through extensive imagery. Ideas of loss, though we seem to be culturally obsessed with them, have been linguistically avoided for centuries through euphemism and amalgamation. We do not speak of death; we speak of loved ones who have “passed on.”
Thus we pass on this lesson through such symbols as those employed by ballads: that we can convey, through our expansive language and circumlocution, the extent of our loss, without touching the brutally painful soul of it.
I like this question but I’m having a tough time answering it. Each time I think up something that might tie all of the ballads together, I find an exception. I read before I listened, and before I listened, I had some preconceived notions about what makes a ballad. I’d associated them with death (or loss), but then I came across some examples that challenged these definitions. The Robin Hood ballads, for instance, seem more about storytelling than about grieving. This makes sense, given Brunvand’s definition of a traditional ballad as a “narrative folksong” (p. 72 of the packet). Also, the “Old Lady and the Devil” variations, or “The Wife Wrapt in Wether’s Skin,” seem more interested in amusement than some of the others (I’m hesitant to mention “King Kong Kitchie” because I have an inkling that there’s more to it than I could understand). So narrative seems to be a more common thread than loss.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Lomax Brothers visited the plantation looking for ‘made-up’ songs (xxvii), they called the man’s impromptu satire “the type of song that may grow into a genuine ballad.” This also suggests that ballads don’t require tragedy in their storylines. That said, I suppose satires, and comedies, all have their root in some sort of death. Hence Woody Allen’s definition, “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” Still, I’m wondering if the commonality has more to do with content (form, style) than subject matter.
But I have a question, were the last two disks in this week’s listening file ‘songs’ rather than ‘ballads?’ Are we supposed to note the difference?
I might, and will, argue that the American ballads on the anthology function similarly to the list of proverbs Burke discusses at the outset of “Literature as Equipment for Living.” Burke describes proverbs as “medicine” (757), and the metaphor goes down easily: for every simple malady in life, there’s a corresponding pill-sized truism to ease, or at least illuminate, the situation. Who doesn’t like proverbs? They’re quotable, memorable—universally palatable, and for two main reasons: (1) They’re simple and thematically general enough that most everyone feels at home in the space of “shared substance” they put forward (true, they tend to target the blue-collar, working man or woman, but a wealthy individual can certainly appreciate that “the wind in one’s face makes one wise,” too). And (2), their brevity and clever phrasing makes them pleasurable to repeat on a purely aesthetic level. They’re short, sweet, meaningful.
ReplyDeleteThe ballads aren’t as pithy as proverbs—what is?—but, consistently clocking around three minutes, they’re pithy enough. They don’t exactly function as life lessons the way proverbs do, either, but as “Grifter” notes above, they take on fundamentally “human” concerns, mostly tragic ones: heartbreak, hard times, murder, etc. That is, you don’t to be a cobbler to lament the speaker’s situation in “Peg and Awl”; folks aside from murderers and families of murder victims will still turn an intrigued (possibly disturbed) ear to the grim narrative in “Stackalee”; et cetera, et cetera. So, my first criterion for proverbs above also holds up for American ballads: they offer a broad area of “shared substance” to attract a broad audience. And for the second criterion, I’d argue that the music offers the same appeal as the poetic snappiness of the proverbs. That is, songs are also pleasurable to repeat, because repeating songs means singing and pickin’ along. And these songs are musically simple enough, and the vocalists who perform them—how to put this?—“unrefined” enough, that they make for good, comfortable singalongs where anyone can join in. Let’s use a rhetorical term: these songs take on a distinct ethos, and it’s usually one that welcomes the listener on equal ground.
I find the question of what this shared substance could be and why this substance lends itself to taking shape as a ballad really difficult to answer. Maybe an easier question to answer might be concerned with why the ballad form is so effective in voicing shared substance. Brunvand's essay elaborates on this subject, explaining the ballad as an oral form that is easily transmitted and shared and, more or less, preserved through tropes like repetition and stereotyped/clichéd language. But in answering the original question of what this shared substance could be, I find myself most interested in the section in Brunvand's essay where he discusses how traditional British ballads have been altered in the United States. Maybe a shared substance among the people who transmitted these ballads can be teased out by examining the ways in which the ballads have been altered by the American population who continued to transmit them in the United States. In his analysis of the social function of proverbs, Burke says that proverbs (and literature as “proverbs writ large”) name typical, recurrent situations and provide strategies for dealing with these situations. Proverbs might be used for consolation or foretelling or exhortation. What I find interesting is how many of the traditional British ballads acquired a brief exhortation-like/moralizing stanza in the United States. Brunvand provides the example of the House-Carpenter ballad, which in the U.S., acquired this moralizing stanza at its conclusion: “A curse be on the sea-faring men,/Oh, cursed be their lives,/For while they are robbing the House-Carpenter,/And coaxing away their wives.” Even after reading this additional stanza, I don’t know, exactly, what can be said about a shared substance – but maybe the people who transmitted this ballad in the U.S. did share some sort of social tendency/convention/desire (maybe because of their fundamentalist religion, as Brunvand says) to find, or create, morals within narratives. In any case, I found this subject to be really intriguing – that the American versions acquired these concluding stanzas, which often voiced moralistic interpretations of the ballads’ narratives. Maybe these stanzas do say something about shared motives, values, language etc.
ReplyDeleteI’m still a little fuzzy on what constitutes a ballad; Jan Brunvand defines a [traditional] ballad as “a narrative folksong,” though this definition seems to be hinging on his definition of “folksong,” which he seems to argue needs to contain at least 1) a melody, 2) “fluidity of form and content”, 3) an oral heritage, and/or 4) an organic history. The last two are a bit sticky, and I’m not sure I can elaborate much further (esp. as I seem to be missing the rest of the article after p. 155), but I’ll try: it seems that the performance of the song (and even, perhaps, the ethos of the singer[s]) is just as significant a role in determining its classification as folksong or not as its content and historical journey from inception to present-day rendition. So then, what seems to make a ballad a certain type of folksong appears to be its narrative.
ReplyDeleteI’d disagree, perhaps stupidly, that the most important distinction of a ballad be its subject matter. Sure, many (maybe even most… I didn’t count) of the ballads are concerned with death, treachery, love gone bad, etc. etc., but I think the hilariously succinct headline-esque descriptions by Smith are not a coincidence. Says Brunvand: “Stories involving supernaturalism, stark tragedy, and bloody violence, often between lovers or family members, are narrated with little intrusion of editorial comment or sentimentality…” going on then, to compare the content of ballads to modern newspaper stories. Sure, there’s the occasional celebratory story about someone winning, triumphing, beating the odds, etc., but the majority of the news is bad news. Why does this interest us? It just does.
I think then, that other criteria might be more relevant. These issues seem to me to be: tradition, relevance, communication, and engaging audience. It’s important that these stories are sung; it’s important that their audience understand them and relate. It seems logical that a ballad making the trip from England to America lose its supernatural luggage: England has a mythic past (Camelot, Arthur, blah blah); America has only a brief (albeit bloody) history of cowboys and pioneers and the people they stomped all over. England, having centuries on the US, already came up with their take on a less-than-savory history: lie. So the supernatural might not seem out of place in a British ballad, whereas American renditions lose the ghosts, fairies, talking bone lyres, and so on. With such a limited history, current events would naturally take the forefront—for these are about shared history, experience, cultural consciousness. The ballads changed because they needed to; because they needed to keep their audience. Who says “choir” to “Ohio” was an accident?
This makes me think of Américo Paredes’ ethnography of the corrido, a Mexican border ballad, “With His Pistol in His Hand.” The book traces one ballad (or one narrative, rather) in particular, of Gregorio Cortez. Interestingly, if the singer “didn’t know the man,” they described him in detail; if they claimed to know him, they described him as “looking about like you or me.” I love the warrant taken there.
A question: how do you write a ballad?
Hi all, I think I covered in class most of the specific q's you asked above in class. I didn't address Evelyn's "songs" vs "ballads" question, though. It is indeed interesting the way Smith organizes the selections -- he has one album for "ballads" and one for "songs," though ballads (songs that tell stories) are obviously a subset of songs. So one would think Smith would include only non-ballad (non-story) songs in his "songs" selection. But some of the "songs" are arguably "ballads." Don't know whether that answers your question? I suppose the real answer is: Dunno. Let's talk about it more next time.
ReplyDeleteThe issues of class Jonny brings up -- yes -- there does seem to be a difference btw British and American ballads in this regard. The American songs bring up issues of labor (the lazy farmer song -- the guy who doesn't hoe his corn -- and Peg & Awl) without bringing up (apparently) class -- whereas Lamkin and, in a different way, Sir Patrick Spens, address power differentials that are apparently organized around class.
Then again, there's The Wagoner's Lad, on the Smith anthology, which offers an example of a lover rejected b/c he's not good enough for the girl -- and the "lad" complains, "I work for my living...If they don't like me they can leave me alone" and won't stay even to talk to the girl, perhaps out of pride.
The House Carpenter on the Smith anthology, too, mentions a king's daughter that the returning lover could have married, yet he returned to his true-love.
These songs are both ancient songs, and perhaps the class (or at least aristocrat/peasant) issues in them are held over from older versions.
I think where I found the best means to answer was first in Burke's article itself. When he broke down his pentad explaining, act, agent, agency, purpose and scene. Singing and playing music to a group of peers, who in most cases, are encouraged to sing along creates a shared experience. These ballads act as means to explore and explain issues that might not have a forum otherwise, or that might not have a forum because they are considered taboo. I don't know that the experience is always shared, as much as the way they sing about the subject or the mere fact that they are allowed to sing about them with other people, begins to answer the question of substance. Can substance simply be the understanding of expression otherwise unwelcomed or considered weakness? What I mean is where else would individuals express their fears in any other place besides a religious sanctuary or in their dwellings? This is assuming that type of expression is even welcomed in these places. Also, because many of the subjects of ballads tend to be about (dare I use it?) universal themes such as death, unrequited love, poverty, etc. (which have already been noted) it is accepted to lament or confess through singing a ballad. Maybe the understanding is more the substance than the actual subjects within the themes. I think that might be going a bit overboard, but the importance I see is the ability to express issues so bluntly in a ballad, such as in Country Blues by Dock Boggs' he sings
ReplyDelete“when I had plenty of money/
good people/
my friends were all standing around/
but as soon as my pockets was empty/
not a friend on earth to be found/."
The people listening or singing along with the ballad can identify either with the subject or the agency.
On another note, in “Hotel Lautreamont” by John Ashberry, there is a line that speaks to the acceseability of ballads. It reads, “Research has shown that all ballads were produced by all of society;/ Only night knows for sure. The secret is safe with her:/ the people, then, knew what they wanted and how to get it.” This, as I understand the text, is where the another section of the substance lies. In order for ballads to exist and to function, there must be a easy access. If the people meaning the performers and their audience, have access to these ballads then they can more easily identify with the ballads. The singers and the audience belong to the ballads because the ballads belong only to the “night.” People are less likely to be excluded from a tradition of folk singing that defines itself in terms of inclusion. And also because the ballads persist because they are not documented, but they are oral traditions. That there is not necessarily any literature or song lyrics to read, also contributes to the ballads ability to reach others, because there are less barriers. Specifically, one does not have to be literate to be part of the performance.