Insects And Their Influence
Peter Warren
anyone knows of any references or examples I would be most appreciative.
Abby Sale
PW> music. If
Non-children's "bzzz, bzzz said the bee" or "itsy-bitsy" stuff?
Not much _influence_ per se but immediatly comes to mind Hemsworth's "Black
Fly" I'll die with the black-fly picking on my bones, In North Ontari-o-i-o.
And the very real trad of The Ballad of the Boll Weavel...
Gad, insect songs.
Dung beatles of the world, arise!
Abby...@animece.oau.org (online)
stic...@miranda.cc.vanderbilt.edu
(Peter Warren) wrote:
> I am doing research on insects and their influence on human music. If
> anyone knows of any references or examples I would be most appreciative.
Ants Go Marching
Froggie Went A-Courting
These songs cast human characters as insects to deflect
criticism for an obvious insult or threat.
guy byars
|> I am doing research on insects and their influence on human music. If
|> anyone knows of any references or examples I would be most appreciative.
How about this:
The pony jump he buck he pitch,
and threw my master into the ditch.
He died and the jury wondered why,
the verdict was the blue tailed fly!
Daniel M. Rosenblum
(Scott Dorsey) writes, in answer to the request for information on
the influence of insects on human music:
>Oh, the black fly, the little black fly
>Always the black fly no matter where you go.
><something, something> the little black fly
I'll die with the black fly picking at my bones
>In North Ontario, io, in North Ontario.
In North Ontario-ario, in North Ontario.
Someone else mentioned this one too, but didn't provide any
words.
--
Daniel M. Rosenblum, Assistant Professor, MS/CIS Dept.,
Graduate School of Management, Rutgers University (Newark Campus)
ROSE...@DRACO.RUTGERS.EDU ROSE...@ZODIAC.BITnet
d...@andromeda.rutgers.edu ...!rutgers!andromeda.rutgers.edu!dmr
guy byars
Wasn't there a song about the Bo-weivel?
"Oh Boweivel Boweivel.... ??? go away ??? .... sumthin sumthin.....?????
David Kassover
>I am doing research on insects and their influence on human music. If
>anyone knows of any references or examples I would be most appreciative.
Well, I know of some folk songs that have to do with insects,
bugs, arthropods and such...
How about this one, sung to L. van Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"
Beetles are not dirty bugs
Spiders, scorpions, or slugs
Heroes of the insect realm
They sport winged, burnished helms
They are shining and divine
They are lovely and just fine
Beetles do not bite or sting
They love almost everything.
....
Fiddle de fee Fiddle de fee
The fly has married the bumble bee...
--
David Kassover "Proper technique helps protect you against
RPI BSEE '77 MSCSE '81 sharp weapons and dull judges."
kass...@aule-tek.com F. Collins
kass...@ra.crd.ge.com
David Kassover
>
>Wasn't there a song about the Bo-weivel?
>
could make serious inroads in a season's cotton harvest.
Gary Martin
Wasn't there a song about the Bo-weivel?
"Oh Boweivel Boweivel.... ??? go away ??? .... sumthin sumthin.....?????
There's an obscure recording of that by Bo Jackson and Bo Derek -
they call themselves the Bo Weavers.
Back to reality - it's Boll Weevil (at least according to the back cover
the Woody Guthrie Library of Congress Recordings).
Another bug song was just played on WERS - Jeff Warner & Jeff Davis.
It was a song called "Yucky Bugs" or something like that. It was
basically an invitation to a bug squashing party. The meter and
melody had me convinced that it was "wrotten" by Tom Dundee, but
the DJ gave no indication of that. It sounded like the words to
"Workin' on Your Good Old Car" could be substituted.
--
Gary A. Martin, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, UMass Dartmouth
Mar...@cis.umassd.edu
guy byars
down comes the....
Oops, I nearly forgot, a spider isn't an insect!
How about the theme song from the British TV series Butterflies:
Love is like a butterfly...
with brightly colored wings that fly
(or something like that)
David Kassover
...
>
>Another bug song was just played on WERS - Jeff Warner & Jeff Davis.
>It was a song called "Yucky Bugs" or something like that. It was
>basically an invitation to a bug squashing party. The meter and
>melody had me convinced that it was "wrotten" by Tom Dundee, but
>the DJ gave no indication of that. It sounded like the words to
>"Workin' on Your Good Old Car" could be substituted.
Some years ago, I heard a performance of a ballad about the
difficulties of being both an adolescent and an organic gardener.
Basically, each verse describing the various reasons the the
gardener has no time to pursue the motas is followed by a refrain
which includes invitations to such events as aphid pickings,
beetle squishings, slug drownings, etc.
Perhaps this be it.
Peter Norquist
Are you an entomologist?
I wrote a song 15 years ago called "Insects Have No Fear." Never made it to the top
20 though.
-Peter
--
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Comp. support is the opiate of the physicist." -Paul Spencer
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Frank Reid
> I am doing research on insects and their influence
>on human music. If>|> anyone knows of any references or examples I would
>be most appreciative.>
Don't forget the Boll Weevil Song. I heard it sung by Pete Seeger; the
original author may be Woody Guthrie.
--
Frank re...@ucs.indiana.edu
Millie Niss
"Renaissance Favorites" record has a song called "El Grillo" which is
not only about an insect but actually sounds somewhat like a cricket.
Millie.
P.S. To the original poster of the insect question: _Why_ are you
researching insects in song?
Dan Schatz
rren) writes:
> I am doing research on insects and their influence on human music. If
> anyone knows of any references or examples I would be most appreciative.
Bob Devlin, a Washington, DC street singer, one man band, and children's performer, wrote:
"I am a little black bug
Yes, I am a little black bug
Well, I love to crawl and I love to fly
A little blug bug am I."
It can be found on his album with Michelle Valerie, which I think is called ARE YOU MY MOTHER?
The Boarding Party recorded a song called "Mauling Live Oak" which contains the verse:
"It's mosquitoes by day and it's minges by night.
The sandfleas and bedbugs, they bother me quite.
And if ever back home my head I do poke,
To Hell I'll kick Swift and his goddamned live oak,
Derry down, down, down derry down."
Someone already mentioned "Jimmy Crack Corn."
Christine Lavin wrote and recorded a wonderful song called "Fly on a Plane:"
"I'm a fly on a plane,
My flight's a little eratic
The highest I ever been before
Was a swing-time cowgirls attic...."
Speaking of flies, how about,
"I know an old woman who swallowed a fly.
I don't know why she swallowed a fly; I guess she'll die."
Which brings up, by virtue of the next verse, spiders, although I seem to recallfrom my 10th grade biology class (which was a *long* time ago) that spiders
aren't considered insects anymore. Anyway, there's
"Eensy-weensy spider crawled up the water spout.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Up came the sun and dried up all the rain.
Eensy-weensy spider crawled up the spout again."
By the way, I was in Chile for three months this summer (boreal; winter austral)working with, among other things, a nursery school. They were singing that
song, in Spanish of course. (In a religious vigil some youth were singing
"Let My People Go" with freely adapted lyrics, but that is digressing perhaps
a bit too far....
And then there's all those songs written by WASPs. (Sorry, the pun was just
waiting to be made.)
Ah well. I seem to have exhausted my collection of ideas. If I get anymore,
I'll post them, unless popular outcry is too great.
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David Kassover
...
>
>Which brings up, by virtue of the next verse, spiders, although I seem to recallfrom my 10th grade biology class (which was a *long* time ago) that spiders
>aren't considered insects anymore.
Never have been, except in the popular parlance under the
category "bug". But "bug", I am told, is a precise technical
term for a Phylum? Sub-Phylum? of insecta. oh, well...
Somewhere around here, I have an intro to a piano piece called
"Tarantella Napolitana", which says that long ago, in a certain
mediterranean country, it was widely believed that the effects of
having been bitten by a tarantula could be shaken off by
prolonged and vigorous dancing. Dance tunes of a prolonged and
vigorous nature then became known as "tarantellae"
Which, for some silly reason, reminds me of a Mexican tune, "La
Cucaracha". A very grumpy person is apparently known as a
cockroach. It is not clear to me at the present time whether the
subject of the song is a cockroach because she has not had any
marijuana lately, or that she needs some because she is a
cockroach.
Daniel M. Rosenblum
as sung by the Clancy Bros. & Tommy Makem. As I remember the
relevant part, they're all sleeping in the room together,
when somebody happened for to sneeze,
And he wakened half a million fleas in a single room in
Rothsea-o.
There were several different kinds of pests.
They got in our hair and inside our vests,
And they <something-or-other> and made their nests,
And they cried hurrah for Rothsea-o.
See also the version "The Day We Went to Rothesay-O" in Peggy
Seeger & Ewan MacColl's _The_Singing_Island:_A_collection_of_
_English_and_Scots_Folksongs_ (London: Mills Music Ltd.), 1960.
I'm just a Bebopper
Abby Sale <Abby.Sale%f137.n...@animece.oau.org> wrote:
>PW> I am doing research on insects and their influence on human
>PW> music. If
>
>Non-children's "bzzz, bzzz said the bee" or "itsy-bitsy" stuff?
What about _The Ant and the Rubber-Tree_ song, I'm not sure of the true
name.
Also, _Shoo Fly_ on the Bluesiana CD.
pk
Andrea Aldridge
>And, as I read these postings, I'm reminded of "Rothsea-O",
>as sung by the Clancy Bros. & Tommy Makem. As I remember the
>relevant part, they're all sleeping in the room together,
>
> when somebody happened for to sneeze,
> And he wakened half a million fleas in a single room in
> Rothsea-o.
I learned the next verse as:
There were several different kinds o' bugs,
Some had feet like dyers' clugs (clogs?),
And they sat on the bed and cockt their lugs
And cried, "Hurrah for Rothesay-O!"
Daniel M. Rosenblum
n904...@henson.cc.wwu.edu (Andrea Aldridge) replies to my
earlier posting (article <Oct.5.14.32....@andromeda.rutgers.edu>),
in which I mentioned the Clancy Bros. & Tommy Makem's version
of "Rothsea-O", by writing:
>I learned the next verse as:
> There were several different kinds o' bugs,
> Some had feet like dyers' clugs (clogs?),
> And they sat on the bed and cockt their lugs
> And cried, "Hurrah for Rothesay-O!"
Yes. That's the version in _The_Singing_Island_, Peggy Seeger
& Ewan MacColl's old collection. If I didn't mention that they
have a nice version (and probably more "authentic" than the
Clancys') in there in my earlier posting, consider it now mentioned.
Jon Berger
> In <28eqmd$j...@reznor.larc.nasa.gov> klu...@grissom.larc.nasa.gov
> (Scott Dorsey) writes, in answer to the request for information on
> the influence of insects on human music:
> >Oh, the black fly, the little black fly
> >Always the black fly no matter where you go.
> ><something, something> the little black fly
> I'll die with the black fly picking at my bones
> >In North Ontario, io, in North Ontario.
> In North Ontario-ario, in North Ontario.
> Someone else mentioned this one too, but didn't provide any
> words.
I don't know the words to the verses either, but it's by Wade Hemsworth,
same fellow that wrote "Log Driver's Waltz". The words are undoubtedly
available in some published collection or other; in fact, I seem to
remember reading that a new Hemsworth collection was just recently
released.
Since this is a "wrote" song, and since, therefore, it's TERRIBLY TERRIBLY
IMPORTANT that the words be quoted EXACTLY PERFECTLY, I'll just mention that
the refrain does, indeed, go "North Ontario-io", not "North Ontario-ario".
Wouldn't want to insult anybody, now, would we?
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-__ __ /_ Jon Berger "If you push something hard enough,
//_// //_/ jo...@netcom.com it will fall over."
_/ --------- - Fudd's First Law of Opposition
Daniel M. Rosenblum
sung, but I've seen it twice anthologized--oops, make that
three times, but only twice with music. Once is in one of
Pete Seeger's books published by Oak Publications, and I
can't tell you which one because I don't have it, but merely
had it out of the library once years ago. Another is, uhh,
I can't recall for sure but it may have been one of the
volumes of reprints from _Sing_Out!_, and what I noticed
was that the tune there was somewhat different from the one
in Pete Seeger's collection. The third (words only) is in
_Rise_Up_Singing_ (where else?).
Daniel M. Rosenblum
about "The Black Fly":
>Since this is a "wrote" song, and since, therefore, it's TERRIBLY TERRIBLY
>IMPORTANT that the words be quoted EXACTLY PERFECTLY, I'll just mention that
>the refrain does, indeed, go "North Ontario-io", not "North Ontario-ario".
Actually, now that I think about it, I seem to recall seeing it
(in the Pete Seeger book I mentioned in my first followup to Jon
Berger's message) as "North Ontari-ario", and that's what I meant
to put in the message Mr. Berger was responding to, but my
fingers got ahead of my brain and stuck in the extra "o", which
of course doesn't fit the tune.