I remember that discussion and, if I remember, some links to some interesting web pages on the subject (which I forgot to bookmark!). I'll be watching too! Colin Hill ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Plazyk" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 5:40 PM Subject: [HG-new] Re: Hurdy Gurdy Girls
Hi! I am also interested in following this thread. We had some discussion about it on this list in June 2006; following is part of a post I made then. Very best regards, -Gary P. (in rural northern Illinois near Marengo, between Elgin and Rockford IL) Gary Plazyk, [email protected] Fuzzy Bear Farm http://profiles.yahoo.com/g_plazyk http://www.BearCreekMusic.us http://www.RavenswoodMorris.org "Music is too important to leave to the professionals." -Robert Shaw -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [HG] Hurdy gurdies in American Civil War? Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 11:05:41 -0500 From: Gary F. Plazyk <[email protected]> Reply-To: [email protected] To: [email protected] Hi! ... [Omitted: discussion of the hurdy gurdy in the 1937 movie _Captains Courageous_ starring Spencer Tracy] ... *** I did some further searching on Google (search term "hurdy gurdy" "New Orleans"), and found a few promising lines of research. In the Lark in the Morning web site's history of the Hurdy Gurdy ( http://larkinthemorning.com/article.asp?AI=41&bhcd2=1151589961 ), they mention: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Meanwhile, the hurdy gurdy has come to the United States, no doubt in the hands of traveling Frenchmen. It is said that around 1850, there were a few hurdy gurdys being played in New Orleans. There is mention of one in New York about around 1940. There is an early California dance tune discovered in Watsonville, California, which is actually a French tune called La Valso-vienne. No one knows how it originally arrived from France. A friend of mine remembers a man coming to town with his hurdy gurdy back in the Oklahoma oil days. Any information on the use of the hurdy gurdy in the United States which anyone would like to share with us is welcomed. ... BIBLIOGRAPHY: BAINES, ANTHONY, European & American Musical Instruments, The Viking Press, New York, 1966 BROCKER, MARIANNE, The Hurdy Gurdy, Archiv Productions, Hanover Germany, 1972 D'ALBERT, ARRIGO, Mendocino, California JENKINS, JEAN, Eighteenth Century Musical Instruments: France and Britain, Thanet Press, London, 1973 LEPPERT, RICHARD D., Arcadia at Versailles, Swets & Zeitlinger B.V., Amsterdam, 1978 MUNROW, DAVID, Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Oxford University Press, London, 1976 MARCUSE, SIBYL, Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1975 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *** In The Strange Life of the Hurdy Gurdy and other Tales ( http://www.exulanten.com/hurdy.html ), there is an interesting connection between California and Australia gold rush saloon dancing girls and the hurdy gurdy. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ... The hurdy-gurdy is a string instrument that produces sound similar to a bagpipe. The continuous sound is produced by the action of a rotating wheel, turned by a hand crank, rubbing against strings, just as violin strings are sounded by a bow being drawn across them. Some think that the instrument was imported from France by the Ukrainian Cossacks who took part in The Thirty Years War, but others think it originated in the northern part of Iberia some time prior to the eleventh century A.D., and still others have said it originated with the Moors. It has been around for a long time and has a colorful history. An English decree from 1651 that travelling musicians had proper licenses. "The hurdygurdyists, both men and women should be removed completely so that we no longer need to see their vulgar and disorderly talk and gestures which the travelling musicians delight in cultivating together with other impertinances." It fell from popularity for a time, then re-emerged as a popular novelty among the nobility in the 17th and 18th centuries, and older guitars and lutes were sometimes rebuilt into hurdy-gurdies. By the 18th century, Haydn wrote two concerti for the hurdy-gurdy, Mozart included it in a couple of pieces, and its use was later suggested in Schubert's piece "Der Leiermann." ("The Hurdy-Gurdy Player") Then,there was the other definition of a Hurdy Gurdy. Poor Hessian farmers in the 1820s made wooden brooms and fly-whisks during the winter to sell in summer at nearby markets in the surrounding areas, and to increase sales they expanded into other German cities and town and eventually even to France and England. Then they found that their wares sold better if they brought along dancing girls who played the Hurdy Gurdy. This gave birth to a sort of 19th century "pimp" who would talk the parents of these young girls into letting them travel with him and entertain in dance halls on the promise they would send a fair portion of their earnings home. The "Hurdy-Gurdy girls" and "Hessian Broom Girls" ended up all over the globe. Many travelled out to gold-rush California, others ended up in the Australia mining regions. By 1865, laws were passed in Germany to prevent the practise of enticing young girls into what was considered a debauch life,and the practise, at least in public, died out. ... ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *** Following up on this, I checked the Dance History Archives at Streetswing.com ( http://www.streetswing.com/histclub/a1a.htm ), which documents all sorts of musical theatrical performances; they actually have a distinct category for hurdy gurdy. If I'm reading their table correctly, they document hurdy gurdy performances at: * the Alabam Night Club, Chicago IL, 1920's * the Bird Cage Theater, Tombstone AZ, 1880 * La Paradis, Washington WA, 1920's * Valentino's, New York NY, 1890's There was a saloon called The Hurdy-Gurdy House in Virginia City MO. "The Hurdy-Gurdy Girl" performed at the Wallack Theater in 1907. There was a dance called the "Hurdy Gurdy", possibly originating in France in the 1850's associated with "Prostitution, Striptease, Hootchy Hootchi - Cootchi" [!] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- *** The web site The Hurdy-Gurdy Girls ( http://www.hotpipes.com/hggirls2.html ) has some pictures and the disreputable history of the association between hurdy gurdy and the American Gold Rush. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- In looking into all of this further, this writer finds it intereting that something so once-notorious and spectacular as this lengthy and widespread episode seems to have been largely overlooked or misunderstood by modern historians. For example Susann Palmer, in her excellent reference work "The Hurdy Gurdy" (David & Charles: London, 1980) bristles at the suggestion of hurdy-gurdies in dance halls; she writes, "A supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary (1976) humiliates the hurdy gurdy further ... it gives as ... used in North America: 'hurdy-gurdy girl, a dance hostess in a hurdy-gurdy house, being a disreputable type of cheap dance hall.' ... It is almost certain that these 'hurdy-gurdy houses' were places where mechanical barrel-organs were installed." (pp. 41-42). Meanwhile, we find the government of British Columbia, Canada exhibiting confusion on its web site dedicated to the gold rush there, not about the presence and nature of the hurdy-gurdy girls who came there during the 1850s (see photo above), but about the meaning of the term "hurdy-gurdy" and the womens' relationship to the instrument. We at Nova Albion Research are continuing to look into this subject and will expand these comments as information is uncovered. We would also like to bring Kurt Reichmann's "Hurdy-Gurdy Girls" exhibition to North America, if suitable sponsorship can be found. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This site highlights the confusion created by the fact that "hurdy gurdy" is commonly used to refer to at least three vastly different music producing mechanisms: - the rotating bow on keyboard stopped stringed instrument we play - the "organ grinder" music roll pipe or reed barrel organ - the cranked music box *** There's quite a treasure trove of references when you use the search terms "hurdy gurdy house" and "hurdy gurdy girl" - mostly references to saloons and houses of ill-repute! http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060606/NEWS04/606060345/1037 http://www.phantomranch.net/folkdanc/articles/boysnite.htm http://www.suite101.com/lesson.cfm/17161/609/7 http://www.umwestern.edu/Academics/library/libroth/MHD/vigilantes/DIMSDALE/chapters/chap1.html http://www.rootsweb.com/~orgenweb/bios/jamespoindexter.html http://www.bookideas.com/reviews/index.cfm?fuseaction=displayReview&id=1454 http://members.aol.com/Gibson0817/bbasin.htm http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20060616/DAYTON/106160070 I would guess that there is good material here for a Master's Thesis on the history of the hurdy gurdy in North America. I'm particularly intrigued by the assertions that the hurdy gurdy was used in Western saloons during the 1840's-1880's. (Does anybody have access to a Masters Thesis database? Maybe somebody has already done this?) -Gary P. Also, here's a tantalizing comment from Sara Johnson: Finally, of the Southern Appalachian Culture, Richard Trythall says: "Respecting the traditional Celtic fondness - almost to the point of exclusivity - for plucked and bowed string instruments, mountain musicians gradually integrated number of new string sounds into their music. Over the course of the centuries, instruments such as the guitar, banjo (an instrument of African origin), Hawaiian steel guitar (lap and pedal versions), dobro, and string bass were added while, of course, the primacy of the fiddle (the prima donna and "devil" of Celtic music) and the use of other traditional stringed instruments of equally ancient lineage such as the mountain dulcimer, the autoharp (developed from the zither family), the mandolin (developed from the lute family), and the ghironda (hurdy-gurdy) was continued." --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hurdygurdy" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hurdygurdy The rules of posting, courtesy, and other list information may be found at http://hurdygurdy.com/mailinglist/index.htm. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
