Low bridge, everybody down! An Erie Canal Music Celebration.
Overholser, Lisa
Canal season may be over, but at The Erie Canal Museum in November
2012, the music of the Canal resounded in "Low Bridge, Everybody
Down!: An Erie Canal Music Celebration." The two day public
celebration, co-organized by The Erie Canal Museum and The New York
Folklore Society, was the first-ever event devoted exclusively to an
exploration of the rich musical heritage created, developed, and
transmitted by means of the Erie Canal. Workshops, concerts,
presentations, discussions, and displays provided activities that
appealed to a wide variety of audiences.
The celebration originated with a simple question posed by Dan
Ward, folklorist and curator at The Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse, and a
long-time canal researcher who co-produced Canal Stories for the Erie
Canalway National Heritage Corridor: "What if we gathered together
all of the performers and researchers of Erie Canal music in one
place?" Surprisingly, it's never been done. And, even though
most people think they know the lyrics to "Low Bridge, Everybody
Down," one of the most well-known canal songs in existence,
it's a little known fact that the original lyrics refer to
"Fifteen years on the Erie Canal" rather than fifteen miles.
With these inquiries and observations, a public symposium was born.
An Arts-in-Ed workshop kicked off the celebration on Friday,
November 2. Led by Glenn McClure, a composition professor at Eastman
School of Music and SUNY-Geneseo and an enthusiastic arts-in-ed
supporter, the workshop brought teachers and artists together to
collaboratively explore ways to make core curriculum connections through
canal songs, musical instruments, stories, and objects. Many of the
workshop topics referred to themes highlighted in panel sessions the
following day, including the history of immigrant communities that
settled New York State, minstrelsy, social life along the Canal, and the
Canal's economic impact.
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Steve Zeitlin, folklorist at City Lore in New York City and the
other co-producer of Canal Stories, moderated Friday evening's
keynote panel discussion, "The Song We Know and Love." The
discussion centered around "Low Bridge, Everybody Down," the
iconic aural representation of the Canal. In addition to the uncovering
of the original lyrics, "Low Bridge" highlighted the many
access points to a discussion about music of the Canal through a look at
the history of its composition and printing, the stories of life
represented in its lyrics, and the way the song was transmitted along
the Canal to become part of a newly crafted American musical history.
Panel discussants included some of the most well-known performers and
researchers of Erie Canal music: George Ward, Bill Hullfish, Rich Bala,
Dave Ruch, and Robert Snyder. A showcase sampler concert following the
keynote panel included many of the panel discussants along with Chris
Holder and Rick Heenan performing canal favorites and original songs.
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Saturday's daytime presentations featured seven panels
covering a wide range of activities and topics. Canal cooks were the
featured topic at the first panel, "Through a Cook's
Eyes." From songs discovered by Aaron Walker in the Pearl S. Nye
collection at the Library of Congress, to interactive sing-alongs and
dramatic reenactments by Merry Mischief (Harry and Merlyn Fuller) and
Gretchen Sepik, the panel nicely demonstrated the variety of modalities
in discovering and experiencing the same body of music.
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Two songwriting panels illuminated folkloric processes at work.
"Recreating and Reviving" (moderated by Dan Ward) focused on
the use of archival and documentary sources in canal songwriting, a
textually oriented process that serves as a strong link to the past and
becomes the basis for many musical products like the Erie Canal
Songbook, compiled by Bill Hullfish. "The Birth of a Song"
(moderated by George Ward) explored more community-oriented songwriting
techniques and sources of inspiration, such as Dennis Lafontaine's
reliance on family canal stories to Rick Heenan's production of the
annual Erie Canal Song contest, a community-songwriting project in
Lockport, NY.
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The Erie Canal Song Contest formed the basis of another panel,
"The Music of Place" (moderated by Dan Ward), along with a
presentation and mini-performance by Pamela Vittorio of the Chittenango
Landing Boat Museum. Heenan's community-songwriting project in
Lockport and Vittorio's original musical about historic canal life
in Chittenango provided nuanced portrayals of how the idea of
"place" is conveyed through musical activity. They affirmed a
sense of community both local and corridor-wide.
"Singing, Dancing, and Community" (moderated by Lisa
Overholser) focused attention on the musical heritages brought by
immigrant groups that worked and migrated along the corridor. Ted
McGraw, folklorist, musician, and leader of the Comhaltas organization
in Rochester, talked about two contemporary collections of Irish tunes,
many still heard in Irish music circles today. Nils Caspersson and two
members (Tim Cuddy and Don Sandy) from Svenska Spelman, a Swedish
gammeldans quartet in Jamestown, suggested a possible link between the
spelmaner (a psalmodikon-dulcimer hybrid) and the fretted dulcimer, a
well-known American folk instrument.
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"Minstrels on the Canal" (moderated by Jim Kimball) was a
lively panel about the development of minstrelsy and its contribution to
a distinctively American musical heritage. Jim Kimball and Rich Bala
discussed and performed show tunes that were created in the context of
minstrel shows and popularized by means of canal town performances,
while Robert Snyder, historian at Rutgers-Newark contextualized the
musical findings in a larger American social context.
A particular highlight of Saturday's public symposium was
George Ward's presentation of "'Live Steam Voices':
A Legendary Tribute to the Empire State in Music and Steam."
Excerpts from a documentary film made about the musical flotilla
carrying several historic steamship whistles through the Canal in 1988
were framed by Ward's brief history of the procession and his
description of the continuing work he does in collecting oral histories
of the event. "Live Steam Voices" showed an entirely
different, and quite literal, perspective of the music of the Erie
Canal.
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Displays throughout the day on Saturday included the collection of
handmade instruments crafted by Zeke Leonard, founder of the Salt City
Found Object Instrument Works. All the objects were assembled by hand
from scrap pieces and found objects (a technique not uncommon in canal
days), and beautifully functional. An original copy of Thomas
Allen's sheet music for "Low Bridge"-- with the original
lyrics--was also provided courtesy of the Motto Sheet Music Collection
at the Fayetteville Free Public Library.
Of course, the public symposium wouldn't have been complete
without lots of music, and there was plenty of opportunity for that!
Rich Bala and Dave Ruch led a fun Kids and Family concert during lunch
on Saturday, while Bill Hullfish's Golden Eagle String Band closed
the entire event with "An Immigrant's Journey," on
Saturday evening. "An Immigrant's Journey" took the
audience all the way from Ireland to Chicago by way of the musical
experiences that documented and expressed the often perilous and always
adventurous journey taken by immigrants coming to America in search of
work and opportunity.
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The New York Folklore Society and The Erie Canal Museum are
grateful for the support of contributors, including The Erie Canalway
National Heritage Corridor, The New York Council for the Humanities, The
New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), and for general operational
support from The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). But our most
heartfelt "thanks" goes out to the talented performers,
scholars, researchers, and artists that keep the musical communities of
the Canal alive and thriving. There is so much more to learn about the
sonic world of the Canal, and we hope to keep the momentum going with
more events in the 2013 canal season. Stay tuned!
Lisa Overholser is staff folklorist at the New York Folklore
Society, where she manages the mentoring and professional development
program and contributes to many other projects and intiatives. She holds
a PhD in folklore and ethnomusicology from the University of Indiana.