Is “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” Important? Thinking about song literacy

There are a thousand songs I know and never sing. Many of them I learned when I was very young – so young I don’t even know where I learned them. The assumption is that they are genetic material, right next to the gene that houses my eye color and my predilection for large amounts of Heath bars.

Bu, of course, that’s not true. And there’s no reason a kid will know “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, or “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, or “Do You Know the Muffin Man” – someone had to sing those songs to the kid – probably at least seven or eight times, and they had to sing it themselves.

We kind of figure that will just happen, but I’m not so sure.

I was at workshop of librarians recently and one of them said that she had visited ten pre-schools, and there was no singing in any of them. I would like to believe that the parents were taking care of the singing, but, um, that is a generous assumption. Most people don’t sing – they leave it to the experts (if I’m the expert we’re in trouble), and of course, singing isn’t for experts, it’s for humans in general.

How long does it take to lose a song? Jane Jacobs, in one of her last books, Dark Age Ahead, says it only takes one generation to lose part of a culture. If the parents don’t sing, and the pre-school teachers don’t sing, the kid ain’t gonna sing either. The song is gone. It may be in a book, but a song in a book, unsung, is a very sad little piece of information, and not really breathing.

Is something lost if we don’t sing something as simple as those songs we know but don’t sing?

Well, yes, something is lost. First, of course, because singing is part of being human, so not singing is approaching something else entirely, and I don’t want to see that permutation of the gene pool as it devolves. But second, those songs, those melodies, form a part of our common understanding. For sure, there are issues of cultural sensitivity, or white-guy dominance (“London Bridge” may have less value than “De Colores”, if those things are measureable) and we need to expand what we have in common. But those cultural references are important in conversations and community.

Songs we all know, in that way, are building blocks for a community we build. And I’m guessing songs do that better than guidelines for behavior or credos or laws.

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Singing Together

Over the past two weeks, I’ve had a half dozen reminders of the purpose and power of people singing together. Since I get paid to stand in front of people and sing by myself, I realize the inherent paradox. But, really, singing together is what people have always done. There’s less of it today – we leave it to the “professionals” (me?) and forget that we’re happier and healthier if we open up our mouths and belt it out with the people around us. This has nothing to do with virtuosity, or perfect pitch, or being a soprano or alto or whatever. It has to do with being human.

A couple of Mondays ago I got together with a half dozen songleaders in Providence for unisong, organized by Jodi Glass. People worked with the songleaders of their choice for twenty minutes, then we all met for the “performance” – for no one but us. It was a blast. I led two songs I don’t generally sing – “Run Come See, Jerusalem”, which I had learned from my pal Derek Burrows, and “Wild Mountain Thyme” – the perfect beginning of summer song.

After that experience I got a hold of a recording I’ve been meaning to get for years – the Folkways recording of Pete Seeger’s Singalong Concert at Sanders Theater in 1980. It’s Pete at the height of his powers as a song leader, and a textbook for people interested in leading songs. What I’ve learned from Pete is that teaching the song is part of the performance, and also more than half the fun. When you hear a thousand people singing together, it’s pretty impressive.

Last Monday, I sang at the last town meeting for Paul Cuffee School – we sang a bunch of songs we all knew. The fifth graders even sang, knowing it was the last time they were going to get a chance to do it. I’ve sung the same songs with them for six years, and that day, with everyone singing, it felt good and right.

Last, I was lucky enough to be a performer at the Old Songs Festival in Altamont, NY last weekend, and sat in the “audience” for sessions on shape note singing (a form of choral singing popular in nineteenth century America) and gospel. You get goosebumps all over being part of it, and it’s not about having a “professional voice”. In a large group, individual voices can be heard, but questions of pitch, vocal quality, and even singing the right words become less important – it all gets mixed up together. What I’m most struck by in these experiences is that people are a group animal, and singing is an expression and fostering of community.

All of this was in my mind many years ago when I managed to talk a bunch of singers and activists to make a recording of Freedom Songs from the Civil Rights Movement, I’m Gonna Let it Shine. We were in a retreat center for three days and recorded, a capella, twenty songs. There, in that cold barn in April, voices joined together into something that was almost holy.

Here’s a song from that session, “Get On Board” with Chuck Neblett, one of the original Freedom Singers, leading. Click 01 Get On Board, Children.

All this reinforces my resolve to get audiences to sing more. It’s a better show when everyone is part of it.

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