Really?

[conuly]

Now that I've already snarked some Amazon reviews I have to continue, don't I?

Here's one that just has me puzzled:

Unless your child is taking advanced music classes, it is unlikely they know these tunes: "The Blue-Tail Fly," "Red River Valley," "The Mexican Hat Dance," "Alouette" and "America the Beautiful." And, without familiarity of these songs, the "silly dilly" gimmick falls flat. As a parent, I found the lyrics better described as gross instead of silly. (Judging from an earlier paragraph, "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" is probably in his list too.)

Seriously? I remember very clearly singing America the Beautiful in every assembly ever in elementary school, and the rest of them certainly made their rounds in music class or kindergarten music/dance/free time somewhere. Are they really that unusual nowadays? This guy is in the US, so let's have a US only poll!

[Poll #1378059]

Comments

[sayga.livejournal.com]

I know all but the fly one. I did not know any of these out of Elementary school because at that time, I wasn't in America, but I learned them all pretty fast as soon as I got here. I put there is more music education for kids because of all the little singing and musical toys the kids have, so they are often exposed without anyone trying to teach them. For instance, we have a toy piano that plays alouette and a mixture of some classical songs, so the kids will bust out humming the tune or singing the words (if the song has words: alouette does but other songs on that piano don't).

[conuly]

Blue-tail Fly is one of those songs that's almost certainly not PC nowadays, though I always interpreted it as a slave getting away with murder because everybody stereotypes him as being to stupid to do so, which - as he's defying stereotype - probably isn't that racist after all. Maybe.

You might know it under the name Jimmy Crack Corn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Tail_Fly
http://mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=759

[sayga.livejournal.com]

Oh, I do know it then. That's the only one I HAVE known from childhood, because my mom always tells how when she was little she thought it was "kitty cat corn."

[conuly]

I thought you might. I wouldn't go changing the poll though - the example given was using the name "Blue Tail Fly" and if you don't know that name you're pretty much outta luck singing the song, unless you happen to know about Google.

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

Oops, change my answers to reflect htat, too. :P

[conuly]

http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=1378059&mode=enter

I wouldn't though, for the reason I explained above.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I have trouble answering, because degree of familiarity wasn't specified. America the Beautiful I know fairly well and I may have been taught it in school. I definitely had the sheet music to it in one of my songbooks.

Michael Row Your Boat Ashore I've definitely heard sung, probably at camp or on TV. I'm fairly familiar with it, but am not sure when that happened. I don't think of it as a song I sing, but as a song other people sing. But that's probably partly because it's a religious song, afaik.

The Blue-Tail Fly I definitely know and probably heard around the house.
The Mexican Hat Dance and Alouette I definitely heard parodies of at a young age. I would be familiar with both of the tunes. I have probably heard them parodied or simply taken from and used more than I have heard the songs themselves. And this was true in childhood.

Red River Valley sounds familiar and I probably know it. but I'm not sure offhand.

However, only one of these would I expect to have gotten from school.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

We knew and sang every one of those except for "Michael Row Your Boat" before getting to kindergarten. I used to know all the verses to America the Beautiful. Red River Valley was the first song I learned to play on the guitar.

They used to put them out on kids' records besides being on the radio and TV (kids' shows and musical variety shows). There was a lot of popularity of folk songs at the time. I got "Michael Row Your Boat" in I think about 66 off the radio, as done by the Kingston Trio.

In music education at school we did get a few of those but the only one I actually remember us learning at school is "Simple Gifts" which is one of my sister's favorites along with "Glad That I Live Am I".

There is less music ed. in schools now because the money has to go for sports and phys ed. This has been true for many years now.

On television the Smothers Bros used to do Bluetail Fly like this:

Jimmy crack corn and I don't care
Jimmy crack corn and I don't care
I don't care, I don't care --

- That's not the way it goes.

I don't care.

[sporks5000.livejournal.com]

There's something awesome about a question that has the possible answers of "yes" "no" or "I'm American"

[conuly]

It's always you, you know? Every time it's a poll, you're the one who points out how more precise I could've been.

Which is a good thing, because then you make a nice informative comment which is better than a poll could be, but why you? There should be some form of rotation.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Because I'm the person who collapses under normal social situations. Someone says, Hi my name is Mary. What's your name?

And I think... Well, ummm, do you mean the name that I am legally recognized by or what my friends call me?

Then they say, How are you?

And I go .... ahhhh, I can't answer that!

Then they say, so, what do you do?

And if I can possibly get away with it, I point at corpsefairy who is my designated social explainer of what I do. But she's not always about.

I am constantly hearing questions that people expect to be simple and thinking of oodles of aspects about the question that leads to too many possible answers, most of them far too long and detailed.

I try to avoid talking to strangers; it's just easier.

[feebeeglee.livejournal.com]

I agree with this comment. Except I point to Sean, my husband, not corpsefairy.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Well, that skews my answers too, because I only knew it as Jimmy Crack Corn.

I still have no idea how the Mexican Hat Dance goes, though, and I learned Alouette in high school during French class.

[conuly]

Not really. Because the tune given for that particular song is "to the tune of 'Blue Tail Fly'" it's important that you can relate the words "Blue Tail Fly" to the correct melody. If you can't, his point (in relation to that one song) stands.

[conuly]

What's really weird is that I have similar problems (less ever since I learned the concept of the "script", though that just means I'm rehearsing answers to questions before they're even asked nowadays!) but (obviously) they don't translate to me making very precise and specific questions.

[conuly]

Mexican Hat Dance.

I have clear memories of doing that during dance class one summer (when they didn't have real classes, just camp). I don't have memories of them *teaching* us this... I think they expected us to know it like they expect children to know the chicken dance (another one I didn't know until I observed other people doing it) or the hokey pokey or London Bridge or... I don't know, any of the other dance games people *do*.

*thinks*

Actually, we did a lot of those as a kid, in schoolish settings. Bluebird, Bluebird and I Went to the City and Ring Around the Rosey and all.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do that all the time and I try to prepare. But these days, even if I've pre-worked out an answer, I often freeze when the situation actually comes up and instead of recalling my answer, I think of all of the complexities to the question. Sometimes though I manage.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Here we go again... I don't know the bluebird song or the city song (dances?).

I'm not sure about the "chicken dance", either, unless it's the one used on the CHicken Tonite brand commercials where you hook your thumbs under your armpits, flap the resultant "wings", and jump around.

We didn't do many dance games--Ring-a-ring-a-rosie, Hokey Pokey, and London Bridge are about all I can think of. (Sunday-school dance games don't count, since most of the time the songs AND dances were made up by the sunday-school director.)

[conuly]

Clearly the same song, but we had different words:

Bluebird, bluebird, through my window (3x)
Johnny, aren't you tired?
Take a little girl* and tap her on the shoulder (3x)
Johnny, aren't you tired?

Everybody stands in a circle with their arms up and hands touching to make "windows". It (Johnny?) runs in and out the windows, like threading a needle, until "tap her on the shoulder" where she picks somebody. Then the person she picks repeats the process with the first person tagging along behind until... I don't know, until everybody's running through one window, I guess.

*Or boy, but we did this in Bluebirds and were all girls

Going to the City turns up as the chorus in this song, which is either cool or disturbing! Except our words were a little different:

I went to the city
I went to the fair
To see the senorita
With flowers in her hair
Shake it shake it shake it
Shake it all you can
Shake it like a milkshake and do the best you can
Rumble to the bottom, rumble to the top
Turn around and turn around until you make a stop
S T O P spellllllls STOP

Everybody stands in a circle, it in the middle. The people in the circle roughly clap in beat, the person in the middle more or less acts out the words after "shake it". Whoever they point to when stopping is it.

http://playgroundsongs.com/2008/08/06/i-met-a-senorita-with-flowers-in-her-hair/

This is the chicken dance.

We also did Farmer in the Dell a heck of a lot, which the kids I know today don't know. They know the words, but not the game - if they think of it as a game at all, they act it out, which isn't how we did it ever.

[pne.livejournal.com]

My answer for the last one would have been "I have no idea what the state of kids' musical education is these days, so I couldn't possibly comment".

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Nope, never heard or seen any of those....with the sole exception of the Salome version, which I saw in print as "Salome was a dancer/Who danced before the king,/And every time she danced/She didn't wear a thing."

[conuly]

Not even Farmer in the Dell? Where did you grow up? What did you do?

[conuly]

Isn't Amy in school? Basic music education (singing, fingerplays and game songs, using rhythm sticks and the like) was a huge part of our kindergarten education when I was growing up, and it's a big part of preschool here still.

Well, not that it matters, you'd still know about music education at her school, not in the US.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Isn't Amy in school?

In kindergarten. (Not sure whether you're counting that under "school".)

But I don't know how much music plays a part in their daily routine -- I confess I have little idea exactly what they do between being dropped off and picked up again.

[conuly]

If you count it as school, I count it as school.