Weird that I'm starting website for a podcast that has had 1 post in the last 6 years, but here we are. I've always wanted to gather together all the information I have in one place, along with sources, citations, and links to where to find or buy the music I've used.
Does this mean new episodes are coming? Hm... good question.
But if you're new to the podcast or never saw my weird old tumblr for the podcast, I thought I'd share the first post again here, for posterity. (Some notes: It was written 7 years ago, roughly. It was written back before I knew I was going to start a podcast and thought I was just starting a weird blog. The post was titled "INSANE".):
I made a decision a few days ago that I was going to try to work my way through all the songs on the Roud Folk Song Index. I don’t know why at all, I just did. I was looking up the origins of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (/the alphabet song/baa baa black sheep) and found it was re-arranged by Mozart and I thought that was fascinating… for some reason… So this led me to discover the Roud Folk Song Index. You can find the whole thing here: http://library.efdss.org/cgi-bin/query.cgi.
What it is, is a database of all the instances of 25,000 difference folk songs being recorded or referenced in writing or in music over the last… ever. It seems to be primarily white people culture. Anglo-Saxon, Western European, American, etc. It also has nearly 200,000 items.
Now, I’m a crazy person, but I’m not so crazy as that I’m going to go out and find every reference to every song like this dude did. What I’m doing is this: I’m going number-by-number, starting with 1, and finding out all I can about each song. I’m trying to listen to each song, and the different variations of each song, and researching a little about them.
My process: I go to the index maintained by the English Folk Dance and Song Society, (link above) and I search by Roud Number. I type in “1,” say. And then I go to this handy Wikipedia Page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_folk_songs_by_Roud_number and I scroll down and find “1.” Then I look at the Wikipedia page for the song (type in the song name into Google if it seems to be lacking information,) and I go to YouTube and I try and hear all the different versions, as the song has changed over the years. This can make me insane. Different versions of the same song are just 100% different. They’re scattered so far and wide and making sense of it tells an incredibly wide story of history and culture, spanning continents and centuries…
But that’s also why I’m finding it fascinating.
SO I started posting random nonsense about it on Facebook, as I came across things I found particularly interesting, but I figured that was super annoying. Though I liked having a place to compile my thoughts and observations. So I opened this Tumblr and if no one reads it but me, FAIR ENOUGH!
And if I DO go insane trying to get through this project, there will be a fun little online document of the fall of a 26-year-old comedian and writer who took on the weirdest project ever for no reason and it led him to the brink of human sanity.
ROUD! (it’s a fun exclamation)
And here's the post where I decided it was now a podcast:
Hey, everyone! I launched a new podcast based on this blog. The sporatic-posting-of-random-notes-and-videos-I-found-while-looking-up-folk-music wasn’t cutting it anymore. I decided to do a full-on PODCAST EXPERIENCE where I share the music I’ve found and the things I’ve learned while attempting to listen to every folk song in Roud Index Number order! The feed is here: http://everyfolksong.libsyn.com/rss and pretty soon it will be up on iTunes and all over the place. LISTEN! TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! TELL YOUR FRIENDS! And in the future, I will be posting each individual episode of the podcast here, and there may be less of the weird videos and pictures and rambly stuff. But maybe not.
You can find all that at https://myroudjourney.tumblr.com/ if you're so inclined. Anyways, see you soon.
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