A fun Italian (Neapolitan) song on this week’s episode of GlobeSongs. “Funiculì, Funiculà” was written to celebrate the opening of the cable railway (funicular) up Mt. Vesuvius, and won first prize at the 1880 Piedigrotta Festival. It has since become nearly cliché as an Italian song, even though it was written not in standard Italian,…
Tag: GlobeSongs
GlobeSong 9 from Azerbaijan
Now up, the ninth episode of my GlobeSongs YouTube series, featuring the Azerbaijani song “Qal, Sene Qurban” (“Stay, You for Whom I Would Sacrifice”). This is a song that I learned and started performing during my Peace Corps service in Azerbaijan, and it appears on my 2013 album Who Are My People?. If you’d like…
À la Claire Fontaine
Discover this lovely French folk song (translation: “By the Clear Fountain”) and its variations in Canada and the Caribbean in this week’s episode of GlobeSongs, and decide for yourself whether this song may be connected to the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.”
Mama Don’t Allow
The newest episode in my YouTube series GlobeSongs is on the American traditional song, “Mama Don’t Allow,” which was originally played by Black musicians in jug bands in the early 1900s and has been performed in a wide variety of styles over the years including bluegrass, jazz, and blues. My daughter joins me for our…