Date: 12-1-16 Music Lesson with Dr Manhart

Today we learnt some basic information about folk music.

Firstly, Dr Manhart let us try to name a few tunes or songs that we think everyone should know. Our answers included "Star Wars' Main Theme", "Twinkle Twinkle", "Row Row Row the Boat" and many others. Afterwards, he moved on to the subject of oral history.

Oral history is when we pass down something oral in nature to the next generation, for example a folk tale, a folk song or a poem. However, nowadays people prefer to use written history instead as it is more reliable than oral history. Dr Manhart told us a story of when he went to Indonesia to study a particular tribe. He wrote down the tribe's songs which were passed down trough oral history. A year (I think?) after he had left, the tribe was wiped out because of a hurricane. Therefore, both oral and written history have their pros and cons.

After that came the fun part! Dr Manhart split us into groups and instructed us to choose two of what we deemed "folk songs" to perform. My group consisted of Yau Wai, Callista, Irena and me. We chose "Row Row Row the Boat" and London Bridge is Falling Down", which oddly enough were the same songs that one of the other groups chose.

After the performances, we concluded that tradition selects the necessary. It whittles down a magnitude of songs until the best remain. The definition that Dr Manhart has given us for "traditional" is that it has been forwarded for more than two generations and it does not have a composer's name attached to it, because the song is so well-known that the composer is forgotten.

We also tried to identify the various aspects of folk music.

First of all, a folk song is meant to identify a particular political nationality, religion, race, culture, dialect, etc. For example, a Chinese folk song is taught orally to Chinese children, not Caribbean children or something.

Folk music is characterised by its simple, catchy tunes of which everyone can sing (inclusive of me. I have a terrible singing voice.) and memorise, easy lyrics, repetition, and its short length.

This is what we've learnt today.