Bravo, Doug.  You just won me over.  (And you are so right about the
melody!)

Thanks.  If any petitions are floating around to support "Shenandoah"
as the Virginia state song, I'll sign 'em.

--Jurretta Heckscher


On Feb 17, 2006, at 5:31 PM, Douglas wrote:

> I hope the "official" version they're considering does not include the
> "Indian
> maiden" verse, which would seem to me to be a late 19th century
> addition of a
> commonplace motif. I can't tell you how many Tin Pan Alley ditties had
> Indian
> maidens in them.  Thousands. The "Indian love song" as a genre was
> almost as
> popular as the "coon song." But I would feel pretty confident saying
> that few
> real folksongs did, unless "corrupted" under the influence of the
> popular (read
> "hack") tunesmiths.
>
> To me Shenandoah has two things going for it.  It's an actual folk
> song, passed
> down in the oral tradition in many variants for many generations,
> though most
> of us only know it from the rendtions from the "folk revival" of the
> '50s and
> '60s, or later pop versions (from Dylan to Belafonte to Elvis,
> everybody's
> covered this one).  The second thing it has going for it is a far
> better melody
> than any of the eight finalists.  And everybody knows it already.  How
> many of
> us know (or, really, like) the pretenders?
>
> Most modern "Shenandoahs" are descendant from the arranged version
> published by
> musicologists, composers, and lefties Charles and Ruth Seeger (parents
> of
> Pete).  Ruth Seeger's source may well have been field recordings from
> the
> Library of Congress; several of Aaron Copland's most famous melodies
> came from
> the folk tradition by way of the Library of Congress, by way of
> Copland's
> friendship with the Seegers.  The folk process with martinis.
>
> I know that the early ballad collector Olive Dame Campbell (see my
> dissertation
> at U. Penn, "In the World of My Ancestors": The Folksong Collection of
> Olive
> Dame Campbell, 1907-1944) collected a short version she called
> "Shanidar,"probably in Kentucky in the 1910s.  I don't have a copy of
> my diss
> in front of me, and I don't remember whether or not the "Indian
> maiden" motif
> was in that version.  I'll check when I get home.
>
> But in all cases, it seems perfectly possible to read Shenandoah as a
> song whose
> context was the westward expansion, "bound away" from Old Virginia.
> Surely it
> has been sung and interpreted that way for generations.  Jimmy Dean
> notwithstanding.
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Douglas Day
> Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society
> McIntire Library Building
> 200 Second St., NE
> Charlottesville, VA 22902
> 434-296-1492
> www.albemarlehistory.org

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