{"id":2133,"date":"2019-11-30T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2019-11-30T09:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/?p=2133"},"modified":"2019-12-05T21:03:51","modified_gmt":"2019-12-05T21:03:51","slug":"folk-songs-in-the-1930s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/sound\/folk-songs-in-the-1930s\/","title":{"rendered":"Folk Songs in the 1930s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The very first audio I listened to was from the collection \u201cVoices from the Dust Bowl.\u201d I\u2019m not sure why I picked this specific audio and frankly, I can\u2019t be sure if I even liked it or not. It\u2019s certainly an intriguing song performed by Ruth Elliot in the summer of 1940 in Arvin FSA camp. The song, titled \u201cThe Old Apple Tree in the Orchard,\u201d starts off quite beautifully and simple by depicting a child reminiscing about their father and an apple tree he planted.<\/span> However, the song quickly takes an interesting turn when the singer then describes the father having an affair with a married woman, followed by his subsequent murder by the neighbors<\/span> for doing so.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> This song certainly brought this question to mind: why were folk songs like this so popular for everyday Americans in the 1930s?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The song was sung as if it was a common children\u2019s rhyme that\njust about everyone knew and loved. Despite what the lyrics suggest, the manner\nin which the performer is singing gives the song more of a humorous tone than a\ndark one. The song doesn\u2019t seem to have too much historical meaning as it seems\nto have been written solely for entertainment purposes, but perhaps the reason\nfor entertainment in the time period creates a historical relevance for the\nsong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The LA Times article by Morris Dicksten suggests that the arts, primarily music and movies, were not a means simply to distract Americans from their everyday struggles but was more of a means to counteract the crippling economy.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Dickstein was probably right in that assertion, but for everyday Americans of that time, the arts likely meant more as a distraction than an economical support system that they wouldn\u2019t see positive effects from for many years. In the Library of Congress article, \u201cThe Migrant Experience,\u201d the author states that \u201cwhen they were not working or looking for work\u2026the migrants found time to engage in recreational activities,\u201d such as \u201csinging and making music.\u201d<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u201cThe Old Apple Tree in the Orchard\u201d certainly sounds like a song that was likely created out of boredom to create a lighter atmosphere than the situations the Depression and Dust Bowl created. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The very first audio I listened to was from the collection \u201cVoices from the Dust Bowl.\u201d I\u2019m not sure why I picked this specific audio and frankly, I can\u2019t be sure if I even liked it or not. It\u2019s certainly an intriguing song performed by Ruth Elliot in the summer of 1940 in Arvin FSA … Continue reading “Folk Songs in the 1930s”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sound"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2133"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2136,"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions\/2136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jessicadoeshistory.com\/courseblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}