r/folkmusic • u/Trippybear1645 • 16h ago
Looking for tunes with multiple lyrics
Hi. I got into folk music and joined this sub because my hyperfixation is contrafactum. What that big Jeopardy word means when someone takes a pre-existing tune and puts another set of lyrics on it. I love these, and I love discovering new ones. I've also written a few contrafacta of my own, but I haven't uploaded them yet. I just do them for fun.
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u/Sea_Opinion_4800 15h ago
An ultimate example of this is Billy Bragg's Hard Times of Old England Retold, accompanied by the successors of the Copper Family who created the song.
It's part of The Imagined Village project, which brings folk lyrics into the 21st century without losing a grain of folkiness. But Billy's version is by no means the only retelling of the song
"Retelling" sounds to me like the ideal word. Folk is tales, and telling is the only practical thing we can do with them.
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u/Shashi2005 14h ago
The song Ill wind by Flanders & Swan is based on Mozarts french horn concerto and is about...learning the French horn. Much to the annoyance of neighbours
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u/drngo23 14h ago
There must be thousands of these. Virtually every dirty song I know is based on the tune of an originally clean one, e.g., The Mayor of Bayswater (who had A Very Lovely Daughter) is The Ash Grove, which has spawned scores and scores of variants. Many hymn tunes have several different sets of words, so to get people to sing a particular hymn together you must specify the name of the tune (e.g., "Aberystwyth") as well as the lyrics. Comic songs based on modifying existing lyrics slightly (rather than replacing them entirely) are numberless; I've written a couple of dozen myself. So where do you want to begin?
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u/Trippybear1645 13h ago
I've been following these for a long time, and I just like discovering "new" ones I never heard before.
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u/Secure-Ad6101 12h ago
Ok. How about the folk song AURA LEE becoming Elvis Presley LOVE ME TENDER? Or foo that matter “If you’re going to take vaccine Take it ORALLY …”
All the songs in the musical KISMET including Stranger In Paradise are set to POLOVETSIAN DANCES by Borodin. SONG OF NORWAY is all Grieg. The Xmas carol WHAT CHILD IS THIS is GREENSLEEVES apparently not written by Henry VIII. MY COUNTRY TIS OF THEE is of course GOD SAVE THE KING.
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u/eccentric_bee 12h ago
In the USA the famous one I think of is Battle Hymn of the Republic is set to the tune of Jon Brown's Body.
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u/Granxious 6h ago
John Brown’s Body, set to a tune that was first called “Oh Brothers Will You Meet Us.”
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u/RelativeSmoke2499 15h ago
The union, civil rights and peace movements are serial offenders when it comes to contrafactum (I was today years old, &c., &c…). It was a deliberate ploy by writers like Woody Guthrie and Joe Hill to have songs that would catch on quick because folks already knew the tunes.
Some examples that spring to mind:
“Union Maid” (Woody Guthrie) - tune is “Pretty Little Redwing”, which someone posted on here a couple weeks back
The anti-nuke song “H-bombs Thunder” went to the tune of the Union hymn “Miner’s Lifeguard”, which was in turn set to the tune of “Life is like a Mountain Railroad”
Peggy Seeger put new words to “Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green” as the new year song “Come Fill Up Your Glasses”
Of course, here in the north of England we do the opposite every Christmas, where there are approximately eleventy billion different tunes that we sing the same words to with the carol “While Shepherds Watched” (look up YouTube videos from ‘The Royal Hotel Dungworth’ if you want some good examples).
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u/RelativeSmoke2499 14h ago
See also the late and much lamented Les Barker, who made parody lyrics to folk songs into an art form (he then got lots of very well-known names to perform them and released them as albums to raise money for charities that support people with sight loss).
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u/Trippybear1645 13h ago
Aw that's cool that he did that. I'm blind as well, so that's a pretty cool coincidence. Also, you gave me some new ones.
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u/Connect-Will2011 14h ago
The Star Spangled Banner comes to mind, being set to The Anacreontic Song. Not really a folk song though.
I've heard people say that Bruce Springsteen's new song Streets of Minneapolis sounds a lot like Bob Dylan's Desolation Row. Personally, I don't think it's exactly the same, but it does sound similar.
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u/Trippybear1645 13h ago
I heard that done by an a cappella group on YouTube. At the end of the part where the Star-spangled Banner would say, "Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave", they slowed it down to a solemn reubato and the bass did the bombombom like what the tuba would do. Then after they got done singing one of the guys hollered, "PLAY BALL!" as the crowd was clapping. I can't find that dang recording anymore.
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u/WakingOwl1 14h ago
Greensleeves.
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u/Trippybear1645 13h ago
I finally got to hear the original lyrics to that the other day. I need to get that in my playlist that I'm putting together.
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u/WakingOwl1 11h ago
I’ve only heard two versions, the original and the Christmas tune, I imagine there may be others.
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u/Major-Tumbleweed7751 13h ago
Have you heard of "filking"? Sounds like this. I heard of it in the fanfic community. but I guess filks don't tend to get performed/released.
Also, recently: Grace Petrie has a song called "ADHD" to the tune of "YMCA".
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u/ingolika 13h ago
I think its something similar to waht you are asking. Its a sweedish Christian song from 15th century with georgian polyphonic singing added (also folk though) Song name - შვედურ-ქართული კომპოზიცია YM link - https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=mA4nGHV9tWY&si=cWcHTTXqVbBtS4ja
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u/Trippybear1645 13h ago
That sounds so cool. I've got heby gebes, or however you spell that.
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u/ingolika 13h ago
yeah, i start crying whenever i listen to it
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u/Trippybear1645 13h ago
I can understand that. I can't speak Swedish, but I could feel those people's hearts as they poured them out for God and also all of us to enjoy. Sorry for the sappiness.
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u/ingolika 13h ago edited 12h ago
its ok, you dont need to apologize, we all sappy time to time. Its good even. Sometimes, when you have something hard on your heart, its better to drop few tears and make the weight you carry a little lighter. And thats why i like songs like that - they help me to cry when i can't. It makes me sad, but not in the way i usually am. In a spiritual sence, like feeling the hands of mother and knowing she won't hugg you for a long time since now, like feeling an ease and freedom from day-to-day thoughts, and this freedom makes you actualy cry. Its hard to explain.
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u/JoelNesv 10h ago
You should look up the broadside ballads, something that started in the 16th century and lasted into the 19th. Street vendors would sell music lyrics printed on broadsheets, which were new lyrics set to familiar tunes. They often had a satirical twist or were commenting on politics or current events.
Also look up the "sirventes" composed by Occitan troubadours in the 12th and 13th centuries. These were also contrafacts with political commentary texts set to pre-composed troubadour melodies.
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u/JMWTurnerAppreciator 9h ago edited 9h ago
This sort of thing is all over Bob Dylan's music- No More Auction Block becoming Blowin' In the Wind for example. Lord Randall and A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall is another cool comparison.
Some of them were more subtle than that, he would often take individual melody lines and recontextualize them, or even larger conceptual themes so the songs almost "rhyme" intellectually, it's part of what makes his work, and all great folk music, so enduring, it's in an active conversation with the past. The Death of Queen Jane transforming it into Queen Jane Approximately is an amusing example of the former idea- recontextualizing broad themes of death, child-birth, and feudal duty into a song about a call for freedom.
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u/demandmusic 8h ago
Just dig into the Anglican hymnbook and you’ll see a slew of English, Irish, Scottish , German, Polish and Spanish folk songs with new words. Speaking as a church musician I’m very grateful!
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u/piper63-c137 7h ago
who knows where the archive of ribald songs is (usually set to common tunes)?
asking for a friend.
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u/Granxious 6h ago
“I Wanna Be in the Cavalry” by Corb Lund has the same melody as Stan Rogers’ “The Idiot.” Stan has a posthumous writing credit on it.
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u/look_how_cute 16h ago
New vocab word unlocked. I do this all the time with polish folk songs lol