The Life of a Song

February 2024

Does a song have its own life?

The story of songs sometimes goes beyond their composers, their place and time of origin. It might look like songs have their own trajectory, or even destiny, which is not surprising considering how artists often describe their works, as to have a life independent from their creators. In fact, artists put together ideas that have a wide variety of origins, and it’s often not clear where these ideas come from. Also artists, and musicians in particular often speak of their job not as creators but as vehicles or channels for their works to take form and, for lack of better words, live. In addition to that, interpretation in music is a crucial element: each performance of music is bound to the unique time and place you hear it, and the performers you hear it from.

So, a piece of music relies entirely on its interpreters to carry its artistic message through time and space, and today we are going to see a few examples of such a journey. The question we are asking is: does a song have its own life?

This is a tune called “Black is the Colour”, you might be more or less familiar with it: there are a few versions out there, some by well known artists. This fact, that a tune takes different forms according to its interpreters is not surprising: we enjoy very much when the lyrics or melody of a song get revisited: the same song can tell us things we didn’t hear before thanks to a new interpreter’s expressive abilities, as if those meanings have always been part of the song, but it took a sensible interpreter to bring them out, convincingly and beautifully.

The following question though is natural to ask: what is the initial version, the so called original? In the case of Black is the Colour, the first recording dates 1941 in a collection of American folklore songs. That version had the lyrics by John Jacob Niles, who wrote them around 1920. These lyrics are the ones that are now mostly taken as the ‘authentic’ ones, evidence is that the hundreds of versions recorded after this one adopt the same lyrics. And believe me, there are hundreds of versions. We understand something more: the song existed before those lyrics, but the lyrics allowed for the song to settle into a more defined, stronger version, one that has become easier to identify. Nonetheless, the song ‘Black is the colour’ had a life before 1941.

It is described as a traditional Appalachian tune, from the mountain area in the United States that goes from Alabama up the East coast to New York until Maine. It is traditional, so we might think it was sung by people as part of their traditional heritage, although we may find it difficult to decide exactly what tradition that is. Some point at Native American, and my limited knowledge of native American folk music tells me it is possible: the melodic contour and its harmony matches with the technique and style that I associate with native American music folklore. Interestingly however, some attribute its origins to Scotland.

Famed folklorist and musicologist, the late Alan Lomax, attributes "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair" to Scottish origin, sometime during the 19th century. There's a line in the most known version of the song: "I go to the Clyde to mourn and weep / But satisfied I could never sleep," referring to the River Clyde in Scotland. The folk tune made its way across the Atlantic, probably in the company of Scottish immigrants, many of whom settled in North Carolina and Appalachian America. The song was first collected by English folk music archivist, Cecil Sharp, who notated and recorded it during a 1916 trip to North Carolina, which he then published in his English Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians (1917). Then the lyrics were adjusted by John Jacob Niles, who recorded them in its collection of American folklore songs in 1941, and from then up until now hundreds of artists reinterpreted it.

I find this fascinating, but similar stories happen all the time. It is no coincidence that our song lead us into the Folk music genre, since Folk is where tunes and songs emerge from traditions that are most often developed collectively, transmitted orally, and seldom are the output of one creative mind, either composing or writing the lyrics. It is hard to trace the history of a piece when the composers are many, sometimes adding to it at different times or even in different areas of the world.

This short journey back in time shows that the original version of Black is the Colour escapes us, and that might make us wonder, why are we looking for it? As an artist, I look for originals for two reasons: because I value authenticity, and because I want to feel that my interpretation of a text (musical or otherwise) is independent of outside influences. I think there’s nothing original in that, I want a one-to-one engagement with art, where I feel I am diving freely into the artwork minimizing the intrusion of art educators and facilitators: sometimes one might take it too far and be inclined (as I often am) to reject any source of information that does not come directly from the work (I have a hard time in museums just because I see the curators are trying to conduct my reactions, or I often skip the introduction of a book if not written by the author for the same reasons).

With regard to authenticity, in music there is a problem: I need to know what the authentic version of a song is in order to interpret it, but that authentic version is nowhere to be found. Should we just take any version, or the one I prefer, or the one that is most popular, to be the authentic one? In the musical work Folk Songs (1964) by Luciano Berio, to me the most interesting collection of music related to the topic, the composer explores the issue of origins and authenticity in traditional music, which in music is transmitted orally almost by definition. He did astonishing research into performing practices of traditional music in various areas of the world, processing it all in a writing style that is not what one would expect.

We might be inclined to think that doing historic research and collecting information within a particular musical tradition aims at finding out how exacly a music in that tradition was performed. Writing (or transcribing) it down -like many ethnimusicologists have done- in the educated European notation system would be the best way to finally set in stone the most authentic version of it, no? So you would think. This is probably what the academic world would wish: looking into history in an attempt to clean an artwork from the dust of time and reoffering it new and shining to the audiences of today…

Berio, who understood music profoundly, did the exact opposite: he chose folk songs from traditions that are centuries old with complex histories, challenging this very idea of a unified, clear, single origin, and wrote his versions incorporating that dust of time, enhancing it rather than washing it away, embracing the cultural and historical gap between those traditions and us. Berio knew fully well that that same dust, those inaccuracies of traditional performances, those many contrasting versions of the same tune, all of that is the LIFE OF A SONG, the true, authentic story that comes alive when we hear it.

Every time we listen to a song we are engaging with a version, an instance of it, and that none of what we hear can be the one, original - authentic. Each instance is true, human, alive, but the original one is lost in oblivion, or perhaps it never existed. Berio might be suggesting something profound: the impermanent nature of music is what prevents a song to become the ‘authentic’ version, and that perhaps can be applied not just to songs but … to all music?

Here is Luciano Berio’s version of “Black is the Colour” from his Folk Songs:

Coming back to our question, what version should I take as the original, what should I use as the authentic thing to interpret? I don’t know the answer. It is a decision one takes on his own. Whatever I decide to do, whichever version I rely upon and whichever version I end up making up, as an artist I feel I am adding my little contribution to the life a song. We don’t know who gave birth to it, where or when, but we have the chance to contribute to its existence, briefly, just by singing and performing it. It takes some courage to believe that you are taking part in the life of a song, I think Berio takes that responsibility very seriously, as well as Nina Simone when she sings it.

And finally, an instrumental version of Black is the Colour, as a way to hint at the fact that the soul of a song can be kept alive without its lyrics. This version is by the jazz artist Kit Downes, pianist and organist, who plays it on organ in the album Obsidian, 2018. You will agree that the organ itself as an instrument carries special layers of significance to the modern listeners, its relationship to religious tradition, to choirs and spiritual gathering, its long life in musical history (much longer than the history of piano) does make sound everything more ancestral. Kit Downes here is interpreting the Berio’s score for organ solo.

I would be inclined to take such a version as the final one, a clean, modest, elegant, sombre (lightened up from lyrics that did not pass the history-authenticity test). I would be tempted to take it as the version to show in a museum of songs, if there was such a thing, but I will be a bit deluded I suspect, cause even this version is just a heartbeat in the life of a song.

This is a written version of an episode from the podcast “Where is the Music”

You can listen to it by following these links: