National Children's Folksong Repository

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BE A PATRIOT AND SAVE OUR HISTORY
Silver and gold will rot away but a good education will never decay.

2009 An urgent initiative to document and make accessible endangered oral literatures before they disappear without record. For many communities around the world, the transmission of oral literature from one generation to the next lies at the heart of cultural practice. These creative works—which include ritual texts, curative chants, epic poems, musical genres, folk tales, creation tales, songs, myths, legends, word games, life histories or historical narratives—are increasingly endangered. Globalisation and rapid socio-economic change exert complex pressures on smaller communities, often eroding expressive diversity and transforming culture through assimilation to more dominant ways of life. As vehicles for the transmission of unique cultural knowledge, local languages encode oral traditions that become threatened when elders die and livelihoods are disrupted.

"Schools often only see playground rhymes as an encroachment into literacy, they're only interested in seeing the playground as a problem, not as a stimulus to literacy."  ~ Mavis Curtis

FROM THE MEAT SPACE PLAYGROUND TO THE CYBERPLAYGROUND History of NCFR 1976 - 2006 JOURNEY

2) WATCH A 3 SHORT VIDEOS LEARN THE REASONS TO DONATE YOUR SONGS:
Allan Lomax explains the Saga of a Song Hunter.

COMMMUNICATION IS SUPPOSED TO BE 2 WAYS:

Lomax says: [...]Our job is to represent all the submerged cultures in the world. The slogan is: "Every Culture with it's equal time on the air and in the classroom". Cultural equity should join all the other important principals of: human dignity, freedom of speech, freedom of movement freedom to work and enjoy yourself and freedom of your culture to express itself. Cause that's all we have you know [...]

Beginning

Middle

End

Work songs
[9:31 - 9:33] weaving songs (stretching the tweed)
[9:49] Spanish Spinning song
[9:33] Work Songs - hammer stone quarry driving in wedges, Shanty Man, Gang Leader, Roll the old chariots along root of american railroad work songs.
[9:35] Texas Penitentary Song When that man in the White House can hear how sweet I can drum he sure gonna let me go
Most interesting of all our own Folk Music Good Night Irene -Ledbelly
[9:37] and [9:41] Go down Old Hannah first recording for the Library of Congress
[9:38] and [9:40] Michael Taft speaks about the forms of discs and about field recordings
[9:42] Explanation about the view of learned society, the snobish upper class and how Lomax made the nation understand the worth of culture from all people, that even poor people's culture has value and is as good as the other culture.
9:43 Pete Seeger explains Alan was 22 years old and in charge of cataloging music and he did it all in 6 years.
9:50 Songs carry the Culture of the people, you have the spirit of the place and the person, in all these songs all the fragments, what you have is the history of the people and the memory of the people, its how they feel about so many things and its the wonder of the language not written down just passed down thru the centuries from mind to mind is a miracle.
9:55 Spanish Folksong Style - No one asks why there are bagpipes in Spain?
Bagpipe - the piper doesn't live to far from here Galicia road to colambria recorded in the middle of the night in a bar work song cutting the rye, cutting the straw.

Dr. Alan Jabbour Integrating Folk Music, Folklore and Traditional Culture Instruction Into K-12 Education

HOW TO SEND YOUR FOLKSONGS OR PLAYGROUND GAME SONGS / CHANTS

1. HOW TO EMAIL THEM TO THE NCFR PROJECT

2. U.S. RESIDENTS CALL TOLL FREE AND LEAVE THEM ON THE PHONE 1-877-220-0262

Please record your American Playground Poetry - the circle games, jump rope games - songs and chants, kiddy rhymes, play parties, call and response songs AND folk songs.

FIND THE FOLKSONGS

UF STUDY:
CHILDREN’S KNOWLEDGE GAP OF FOLK SONGS THREATENS OUR HERITAGE

Children in the United States aren’t singing the songs of their heritage, an omission that puts the nation in jeopardy of losing a longstanding and rich part of its identity.

Find out your state rank.

FIND GAME SONGS

FIND PLAYGROUND GAME SONGS

Indigenous playground poetry - American folksongs, jump rope chants, rhymes, songs. It is the U.S. Online Library where you can Record using your ipod, phone, or computer.

Collect Playground Poetry Classroom Activity

Find video example that we can include Pizza Pizza Daddy -o 1890--Jesse Walter Fewkes records the Passamaquoddy Indians off the coast of Maine. This is the first field use of the newly-invented recording machine.
54 Ring Game Songs From the Library of Congress 1980s.

PENNSYLVANIA EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE
HEAR FROM USIP.edu COLLEAGUES

BALLADS SPREAD LITERACY

HOW BALLADS WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR SPREADING LITERACY.

The Roots of Print, Power, Politics, Literacy, Ballads, Plays, Thought and failed Censorship. Who is allowed to write? Who is allowed to read? Who is allowed to hear? Who is allowed to print? Who is allowed to publish!

Why Use Playground Game Chants to Teach Reading

PLAY IS SERIOUS WORK for the young and old from the novice to the experienced. RESEARCH PDF It's about all the different ways we play to learn. Larger brains are linked to greater levels of play. In other words, playing makes you intelligent. Rich or poor, young or old, male or female, play has evolved to shape the overall architecture and to build big brains, explaining why children need the playground just as much as the classroom.

CONNECTIONS BETWEEN EVOLUTION, MUSIC, LANGUAGE, READING.