"O [insert birthplace here], My [insert birthplace here]!"

[muckefuck]

Sunday night, for reasons which are now obscure to me, I was joking around with the Old Man about state symbols. For instance, I told him that the State Rock of Missouri was something called "mozarkite" and asked him if he knew what it was for California, his home state. He said he didn't, although he thought it might be a botryoidal form of jade. I considered this for a moment and said, "I know! It must be yosemite!" (Actually, it's serpentine.)

Then I started teasing him about the State Song. "O Clementine"? "That's not about California!" he protested, prompting me to belt out:

In a cavern, in a canyon,
Excavating for a mine
Dwelt a miner forty niner,
And his daughter Clementine

I hummed "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" and he said, "That's not about California, it's about San Jose."

At which point I pointed out that there are essentially two kinds of compositions which get designated official state symbols: Well-loved songs associated with a state, which are likely to be rather more specific in their references (since the better songs of that era tend to tell stories, and it's unlikely you'll have a tale which just happens to namecheck all the important locations within a state) and songs commissioned especially for that purpose, which tend to be awful.

No prizes for guessing which of the two Illinois has. (Here's a link to the lyrics. Anyone who can get through more than a stanza without feeling the urge to vomit probably deserves some sort of prize.) monshu pointed out that a fair number probably consist of some shitty poem composed by a local greengrocer's wife which were later set to music. As it turns out, that's pretty much the story of California's selection.

My home state, by contrast, went the "well-loved" route, which brings with it its own problems, given how much sensibilities have changed in a century. Wikipedia describes the "Missouri Waltz" as "essentially ... a minstrel song" and the original version includes this noteworthy stanza:

Way down in Missouri where I heard this melody,
When I was a Pickaninny on ma Mammy's knee;
The darkies were hummin'; their banjos were strummin';
So sweet and low.

The bowdlerised version in current use (no date for when that happened, but I'm willing to bet it's mortifyingly recent) substitutes "Mommy" for "Mammy", "little child" for "pickaninny", and "old folks" for "darkies", but nobody's fooled--particularly with the words "Dixie" and "Dixieland" intact. No wonder I never once heard the song growing up, let alone learned to sing it.

Could be worse, of course: my birth state's song was written by a bonafide Confederate, leading to such choice lines as "Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!" (sung to the tune of "O Tannebaum" for maximum cognitive dissonance). Colorado actually had a perfectly respectable tune in "Where the Columbines Grow", which I imagine became a little awkward after the effects of April 20, 1999; it's now co-official with John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High" and I don't think I have to guess which of those is more commonly performed.

Comments

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

Mozarkite is kind of pretty, anyway. That's some consolation. Also I like dogwoods, and I'm all for crinoids as the state fossil.

(Yes, I'm in MO! And despite knowing the state rock and the state fossil, I had never heard the Missouri Waltz, and I'm quite sure you're right about why.)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Apparently it's regularly played at Mizzou home games. That would be another reason why neither of us has ever heard it.

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yes, it would.

[tyrannio.livejournal.com]

Apparently DC does have an official song, but I'd never heard of it until now (and, since it doesn't seem to show up on youtube, I may never hear it).

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

how about Sweet Honey in the Rock's "No taxation without representation"?

[bunj.livejournal.com]

Actually, "Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!" is kind of catchy. I'll have to find ways to incorporate it into everyday speech.

WAITER: "Would you like some fresh ground pepper?"

WOMAN: "No, thank you."

ME: "Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!"

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I always liked the way the Florida state song's title became retroactively more appropriate: "Old Folks at Home".

(Though it's probably better known as "Swanee River", and is another one firmly in the minstrel song tradition, with the dialect and unfortunate word choices getting somewhat smoothed out over the last couple of decades.)

[prilicla.livejournal.com]

I can't deny that the Illinois state song is on the lame side, but at least it lets everyone know that we were on the right side in the Civil War! (Though I must sadly admit that this was news to me. I only learned the first verse in school, and it never occurred to me that there might be others.)

[snousle.livejournal.com]

There is even a song about California specifically for Canadian expatriates:

http://lyrics.wikia.com/Stan_Rogers:California

When I think about it, though, most songs mentioning this state are not especially easy to sing. Not exactly beer drinking songs.

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

You'd think that with "California, Here I Come" just sitting there, they'd have jumped on that with both feet. My own beloved birth-state certainly leapt at the chance to get a Broadway showstopper of a state song for free.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was totally impressed to see that Oklahoma's state song is, in fact, the most famous song ever about Oklahoma. But I wonder how it works on a practical level to have an official song that is not yet out of copyright.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Surely grabbing it before it's officially available for public use is squarely within the Sooner tradition.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

ZING!

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

given the circumstances of John Denver's death, isn't Rocky Mountain High kinda troubling too?

[lhn.livejournal.com]

And for those who can't remember their own state song, there's always Lou and Peter Berryman's "Your State's Name Here."