Banks of the O hi O

found an interesting version! that resonates with me....you'll see (hear) why! Banks of the Ohio!

i looked for different versions of the song and naturally found joan baez's music--i think her version is the first famous female version of a song we have heard so far in class.  I wonder why folk songs are sung (or rather, performed) predominantly by men? Funny considering Banks of the Ohio is gender specific--the murder of the a beloved woman.  I hadn't thought of singing as a gender specific practice--it is a form of expression and can be originated by any participant of a culture.

I go on mudcat to find an answer and the first one to pop up is a thread titled "Are ballad singers predominantly female?" Interesting....apparently a lot of women, more than men join folk singing groups and teach folk singing.  Thinking about our class--I don't know how many joined because of the folk song content but our class breakdown is also slightly more females than males (I THINK...not too sure...).  But this is seems to be like cooking--women might traditionally do the cooking at home (so most of all cooking) but famous chefs are usually men.  I found another interesting post of mudcat

"Some of the most bestest songs are occupational, such as mining, fishing etc. Women were of course underrepresented shall we say, or lucky perhaps, or whatever. Of course, wonderful weaving songs come to mind...lullabies, mg"

and

"Excluding traditional songs I think one of the major problems is that most female songwriters write about "feelings", and love and its many problems. Male writers tend more to write about "life" and its many problems. Male writers are more likely to write in the abstract, creating a character or telling a story. Women writers tend to write more from the personal I/me point of view. Yes there are exceptions others will now pile in to quote, but I'm making a generalisation based on listening over many years."

This is interesting--there is in fact a divide among females and males in the context of folk music, even specifically for lyrics (I think the issue with the thread was whether songs written by one gender can be sung by the other).  I remember "Down in the Valley" there was a gender-ambiguous line "Build me a castle forty feet high/So I can see him as he rides by," though I just took it to mean the postman with the letter...but could really be interpreted differently if a woman were singing it.  I think this is what makes Joan Baez's version compelling, the switch in gender, especially in a murder ballad--she, in a way, personifies the drowned woman in the song.  Joan Baez  Looking on mudcat, the hardcore folk singer crowd seems to have a divided opinion on her, with threads titled "Joan Baez is a fraud" or "Joan Baez kicked out of Walter Reed."  I like the Joan Baez version!

Another version I liked The Blue Sky Boys

Artwork: this one is bit difficult--I think I want to take this one a little far...I've been hearing a lot of about Banks and murder and betrayal...why that sounds like the financial crisis we are in now?!  haha, that's kinda taking it too far and too literal.  I don't know why this one is harder to be inspired from--I really like singing it!