The Palace was more than four hundred years old and had served its purpose; it would be unbecoming to despise it for showing its age. But there was now one spot within it of something new. Turn your thought to it for a moment. One incongruous new idea amid a marsh of stagnant facts. — Steven Brust’s Brokedown Palace
Ahhhh, plump pork sausages sizzling in their own fat, eggs any way you like them, palacsinta thick with lekvár, gulyás topped with sour cream, fresh brewed coffee with cream so thick it stands up… Sound good? It is. After a night of playing music, the musicians are always hungry, quite hungry indeed.
So Béla, our long-resident Hungarian violinist, pleased the lot of them — fussy though they be at the best of times — by delivering a crate of spicy Kolbasz sausages packed in ice and sawdust along with another crate that contained Páter Sör, a most excellent Hungarian wheat beer. and yet a third crate loaded with yet more Hungarian goodies for later.
We could even smell it in our rooms under the eaves up on the fourth floor, so we got up, dressed, and went down to the feast! Of course we got music as well, as Béla and several other musicians started playing some of the tunes collected by Béla Bartok, which you can find in Yugoslav Folk Music, his monumental four volume collection.
Gary came up with quite a number of archived reviews covering the academic writing of Jack Zipes about one of our favorite topics, fairy tales. Let’s see what he’s found.
Cat was highly impressed with Jack’s sprawling The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales. ‘If you purchase only one reference book about the fairy tale tradition this year, this should be it. I have more books than I can count that are devoted to the subject of European fairy tales and their origins, but this is the first comprehensive guide that I’ve seen in print. The subtitle of the book is quite accurate: “The Western fairy tale tradition from medieval to modern.” ‘
And he was more than impressed with The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature. ‘Any library with a more than bare bones children’s section needs this, as does anyone who is more than simply a fan of this literature. It is good enough that I expect to reference it a half dozen times a week. It’s certainly worth its weight in silver doubloons, fairy gold, dragons’ teeth, and gossamer wings!’
Chuck Lipsig reviewed at least five of Zipes’s books. He starts with two related works, Zipes’s Utopian Tales From Weimar, and Hermann Hesse’s The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse, edited and translated by Zipes. ‘I hesitate to choose any nation to be the nation of fairy tales. However, if I had to make a list, Germany, with its early 19th-century outpouring of tales, most notably by The Brothers Grimm, would merit consideration. With Utopian Tales From Weimar and The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse, both edited and translated by Jack Zipes, more recent incarnations of Germany’s fairy tale heritage, from just before World War I to the rise of the Nazis, are presented.’
He gave props to Jack’s Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry: ‘I am not, I suspect, the intended audience for Jack Zipes’s Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry. Zipes is a solidly on the political left, bemoaning the capitalist culture industry, especially Disney. I’m a pro-laissez faire celebrator of consumer culture and, specifically, a Disney fan. So when I say this is an excellent book, take it seriously.’
Faith reviewed a modern edition of folklore collected by 19th century scholar Thomas Frederick Crane, as edited by Jack Zipes. ‘Italian Popular Tales is a work of serious scholarship, but you don’t have to be a serious scholar to find it interesting. Where the scholar will find an excellent introduction to the early collections of Italian folktales, the casual reader will encounter a number of fascinating tales.’
Jack’s Creative Storytelling: Building Community, Changing Lives is an academic book of interest to educators who teach fairy tales, but it is very accessible, Chuck says. ‘However, this is not a book for those with casual interest. One needs a strong interest in either education or fairy tales — or better yet, both — for this book to be worthwhile reading. On the other hand, it does not take a scholarly background to read this book. Zipes is happily free of the gobbledygook that passes for academic writing these days.’
He was also positively impressed with a collection of Jack’s essays entitled When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition. ‘Overall, When Dreams Came True is an excellent resource. The essays on the Brothers Grimm, fairy tales in Victorian England, and L. Frank Baum stand out as strong, detailed, and insightful. While not the ultimate compendium, the 20-plus page bibliography is a handy reference source on its own.’
Mia found the 38 versions of the Red Riding Hood tale a bit tedious (a lot, actually) in Jack’s The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood, but found the political context interesting. ‘There are some great pieces in this book, but frankly, unless one is obsessed with the Red Riding Hood story, reading it over and over is quite dull. The more modern stories and poems are infused with humor or make use of quirky twists on the tale, and they can be quite enjoyable.’
Robert found the arguments Jack used in Hans Christian Andersen: The Misunderstood Storyteller to be strained. ‘All told, I’m afraid this book was a disappointment, although Zipes does introduce some interesting concepts, such as the idea of revenge being a means of righting an imbalance in our personal moral order. It didn’t really broaden my understanding of Andersen and his role in nineteenth-century literature to any significant degree, or add to my appreciation of just why his fairy tales have remained the force that they are in literature and film as a whole.’
In related books, our Jack Merry took a deep dive into Maria Tatar’s The Annotated Brothers Grimm, which he compares and contrasts with Zipes’s similar tome. ‘If you’re looking for all two hundred and forty-two of the tales, including the thirty-two commonly omitted tales, you must get Zipes’ The Complete Brothers Grimm, as Tatar, like almost all other translators, selects a mere handful of them to reflect her tastes, forty-six for this collection, with nine of them being for adults, more with female protagonists than not.’
Despite knowing hardly anything about cooking, J.J.S. Boyce bravely (or foolishly?) decided to review a couple of complex books by Lesley Chamberlain — and try to cook some of the recipes therein! Fortunately, he was able to enlist the assistance of a Ukrainian uncle who knows his way around the kitchen. Find out how they fared in these detailed reviews of Chamberlain’s The Food and Cooking of Russia and The Food and Cooking of Eastern Europe.
Lahri Bond tracked down a video of the Tam Lin movie directed by Roddy McDowall! ‘For years I’ve heard of a rumor of a movie version of this classic tale, but could not find more details, until a friend found it an online video catalogue. What a surprise to have found that actor Roddy McDowall would have chosen this tale as the basis for his first (and only) turn as a film director. Filmed in 1968 (rendering him unable to reprise his role of Cornelis in the Planet of the Apes sequel) McDowall set the tale in London and the Scottish Borders during the “swinging Sixties.”
Jack Merry gaily took up the task of reviewing Grimm’s Grimmest with illustrations by T. A. Dockray, and an introduction by Maria Tatar. ‘Grimm’s Grimmest serves up tales that you won’t want to tell your daughter if you want her to sleep tonight. But these are tales that any adult interested in the folk process should read. Just keep the light burning brightly by your side as you read them — and watch out for the things that move in the dark corners of your room.’
Gary here with music. In new releases, I review a couple of jazz fusion albums, Yonglee & the Doltang’s Invisible Worker, and Michael Sarian’s Esquina. ‘I’m definitely a sucker for the jazz-rock fusion of my youth: Mahavishnu Orchestra, Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis, Return To Forever, Weather Report. Especially if it has some complicated time signatures and lots of Fender Rhodes electric piano. I’m not alone, because it’s a sound that’s been popular with plenty of musicians right up to the present day, including these two recent releases.’
The Danish instrumental folk trio Dreamer’s Circus has a new album out, always good news. ‘The majority of these 13 tunes are originals, starting with the delightful dance “Uhrbrand’s Cabin” composed by Busk as a tribute to the Uhrbrand family and other residents of Fanø Island and their music; it’s led by Sørensen’s fiddle. It’s the most traditional Danish tune among those composed by the band, although Carr’s Quebecois style tune “The Iron Hall” has strong elements from that tradition …’
I also review a couple of new albums by Norwegian women’s vocal groups singing in different folk traditions: Øyonn Groven Myhren and Marit Karlberg’s Tostemt, and Kvedarkvintetten’s Tagal. Of the former, I note, ‘Using only their voices and simple sparse accompaniment on the lyre (Myhren) and the langeleik zither (Karlberg), they present 13 songs, largely Hardanger fiddle tunes to which lyrics have been added over the years or to which they sing in a type of wordless mouth music, in mesmerizing two part harmony.’
From the Archives, inspired by all the books about fairy tales, I looked up some tasty reviews of ballads, songs that tell stories.
Since Martin and Eliza Carthy are in the middle of a rare U.S. tour, I pulled David’s archived review of Martin Carthy’s The Carthy Chronicles. ‘The Carthy Chronicles is a massive set. Sure there are lots of 4 disc boxsets on the market, but this one includes more rare and unreleased tracks than almost any one I’ve ever seen. It leaves the listener hungry for more!’
David also reviewed one of a trio of Charlie Louvin’s latterday albums. ‘Charlie Louvin could sing the phone book and make it interesting I think, but here he Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs and totally captivated this listener.’
‘Nashville’s Eric Brace has teamed up with fellow singer-songwriter Karl Straub to write a “folk opera” set during the California Gold Rush, based on the story behind “Sweet Betsy From Pike,” one of the most durable folk songs to come out of the American Westward migration,’ I noted regarding Brace & Straub’s Hangtown Dancehall. ‘The players and singers are top-notch, the songs are well-written, and if you string them all together they tell a poignant story that puts flesh on the dry bones of history.’
I reviewed Anaïs Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer’s Child Ballads: ‘American singer-songwriters Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer have taken something of a middle tack in their superb little album Child Ballads. They do take a strictly acoustic and folk approach, but with arrangements and production that somehow have a modern feel to them.’
I enjoyed Chuck Brodsky’s The Baseball Ballads: ‘Jealous lovers with guns. Racism. Illicit drugs. The pain and confusion of growing up. And … spies? All of these, except perhaps the last, are typical fodder for American singer-songwriters. But this isn’t a typical record of folk songs. Troubador Chuck Brodsky has made an entire album of ballads inspired by baseball.’
Scott brought us a review of Boris Grebenshikov’s Russian Songwriter: A Collection From Boris Grebenshikov. ‘Backed by a frequently changing assortment of musicians known as Akvarium, Grebenshikov has written and sung an enormous volume of songs over the last thirty years. In this collection, he presents a number of his songs that characterize the Russian singer-songwriter tradition, along with his own versions of one traditional song and three covers of Russian songwriters who exerted a particularly heavy influence on him.’
To go with all those reviews of folklore and children’s lit, here’s an archival review by Mia of the Folkmanis’s Pirate, Princess, Knight, Witch, and Jack-in-the-Box puppets. ‘All in all these are some pretty cool toys for children or adults. Like all Folkmanis they are sturdy and finely crafted and should last for a very long time. I’d not bother with the Jack-in-the-Box myself, but the rest are definitely worth the purchase price.’
For our Coda this week we have a song that seems to be very popular among Nordic musicians. Some sources cite it as ‘traditional’ and imply that it was first written down by Gjermund Haugen, others say it it was composed by Haugen. Whatever. It’s an appealing tune, and we offer first a version by Annbjørg Lien (who recorded it on her first album, Felefeber) on hardanger fiddle, with Bjørn Ole Rasch on keyboards. And you can follow that up with a version by the Danish String Quartet, from their album Last Leaf.
I'm the publisher of Green Man Review. I do the Birthdays and Media Anniversary write-ups for Mike Glyer’s file770.com, the foremost SFF fandom site.
More Posts - Website
What’s New for the 11th of May: Some Nordic tunes for you; Special Jack Zipes edition on fairy tales; an obsure Tam Lin film treatment; songs that tell stories; new jazz, Danish fiddle tunes, Norwegian women’s vocal music; Russian and Eastern European food and cooking, and more
Ahhhh, plump pork sausages sizzling in their own fat, eggs any way you like them, palacsinta thick with lekvár, gulyás topped with sour cream, fresh brewed coffee with cream so thick it stands up… Sound good? It is. After a night of playing music, the musicians are always hungry, quite hungry indeed.
So Béla, our long-resident Hungarian violinist, pleased the lot of them — fussy though they be at the best of times — by delivering a crate of spicy Kolbasz sausages packed in ice and sawdust along with another crate that contained Páter Sör, a most excellent Hungarian wheat beer. and yet a third crate loaded with yet more Hungarian goodies for later.
We could even smell it in our rooms under the eaves up on the fourth floor, so we got up, dressed, and went down to the feast! Of course we got music as well, as Béla and several other musicians started playing some of the tunes collected by Béla Bartok, which you can find in Yugoslav Folk Music, his monumental four volume collection.
Cat was highly impressed with Jack’s sprawling The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales. ‘If you purchase only one reference book about the fairy tale tradition this year, this should be it. I have more books than I can count that are devoted to the subject of European fairy tales and their origins, but this is the first comprehensive guide that I’ve seen in print. The subtitle of the book is quite accurate: “The Western fairy tale tradition from medieval to modern.” ‘
And he was more than impressed with The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature. ‘Any library with a more than bare bones children’s section needs this, as does anyone who is more than simply a fan of this literature. It is good enough that I expect to reference it a half dozen times a week. It’s certainly worth its weight in silver doubloons, fairy gold, dragons’ teeth, and gossamer wings!’
Chuck Lipsig reviewed at least five of Zipes’s books. He starts with two related works, Zipes’s Utopian Tales From Weimar, and Hermann Hesse’s The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse, edited and translated by Zipes. ‘I hesitate to choose any nation to be the nation of fairy tales. However, if I had to make a list, Germany, with its early 19th-century outpouring of tales, most notably by The Brothers Grimm, would merit consideration. With Utopian Tales From Weimar and The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse, both edited and translated by Jack Zipes, more recent incarnations of Germany’s fairy tale heritage, from just before World War I to the rise of the Nazis, are presented.’
He gave props to Jack’s Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry: ‘I am not, I suspect, the intended audience for Jack Zipes’s Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry. Zipes is a solidly on the political left, bemoaning the capitalist culture industry, especially Disney. I’m a pro-laissez faire celebrator of consumer culture and, specifically, a Disney fan. So when I say this is an excellent book, take it seriously.’
Faith reviewed a modern edition of folklore collected by 19th century scholar Thomas Frederick Crane, as edited by Jack Zipes. ‘Italian Popular Tales is a work of serious scholarship, but you don’t have to be a serious scholar to find it interesting. Where the scholar will find an excellent introduction to the early collections of Italian folktales, the casual reader will encounter a number of fascinating tales.’
Jack’s Creative Storytelling: Building Community, Changing Lives is an academic book of interest to educators who teach fairy tales, but it is very accessible, Chuck says. ‘However, this is not a book for those with casual interest. One needs a strong interest in either education or fairy tales — or better yet, both — for this book to be worthwhile reading. On the other hand, it does not take a scholarly background to read this book. Zipes is happily free of the gobbledygook that passes for academic writing these days.’
He was also positively impressed with a collection of Jack’s essays entitled When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition. ‘Overall, When Dreams Came True is an excellent resource. The essays on the Brothers Grimm, fairy tales in Victorian England, and L. Frank Baum stand out as strong, detailed, and insightful. While not the ultimate compendium, the 20-plus page bibliography is a handy reference source on its own.’
Mia found the 38 versions of the Red Riding Hood tale a bit tedious (a lot, actually) in Jack’s The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood, but found the political context interesting. ‘There are some great pieces in this book, but frankly, unless one is obsessed with the Red Riding Hood story, reading it over and over is quite dull. The more modern stories and poems are infused with humor or make use of quirky twists on the tale, and they can be quite enjoyable.’
Robert found the arguments Jack used in Hans Christian Andersen: The Misunderstood Storyteller to be strained. ‘All told, I’m afraid this book was a disappointment, although Zipes does introduce some interesting concepts, such as the idea of revenge being a means of righting an imbalance in our personal moral order. It didn’t really broaden my understanding of Andersen and his role in nineteenth-century literature to any significant degree, or add to my appreciation of just why his fairy tales have remained the force that they are in literature and film as a whole.’
In related books, our Jack Merry took a deep dive into Maria Tatar’s The Annotated Brothers Grimm, which he compares and contrasts with Zipes’s similar tome. ‘If you’re looking for all two hundred and forty-two of the tales, including the thirty-two commonly omitted tales, you must get Zipes’ The Complete Brothers Grimm, as Tatar, like almost all other translators, selects a mere handful of them to reflect her tastes, forty-six for this collection, with nine of them being for adults, more with female protagonists than not.’
The Danish instrumental folk trio Dreamer’s Circus has a new album out, always good news. ‘The majority of these 13 tunes are originals, starting with the delightful dance “Uhrbrand’s Cabin” composed by Busk as a tribute to the Uhrbrand family and other residents of Fanø Island and their music; it’s led by Sørensen’s fiddle. It’s the most traditional Danish tune among those composed by the band, although Carr’s Quebecois style tune “The Iron Hall” has strong elements from that tradition …’
I also review a couple of new albums by Norwegian women’s vocal groups singing in different folk traditions: Øyonn Groven Myhren and Marit Karlberg’s Tostemt, and Kvedarkvintetten’s Tagal. Of the former, I note, ‘Using only their voices and simple sparse accompaniment on the lyre (Myhren) and the langeleik zither (Karlberg), they present 13 songs, largely Hardanger fiddle tunes to which lyrics have been added over the years or to which they sing in a type of wordless mouth music, in mesmerizing two part harmony.’
From the Archives, inspired by all the books about fairy tales, I looked up some tasty reviews of ballads, songs that tell stories.
Since Martin and Eliza Carthy are in the middle of a rare U.S. tour, I pulled David’s archived review of Martin Carthy’s The Carthy Chronicles. ‘The Carthy Chronicles is a massive set. Sure there are lots of 4 disc boxsets on the market, but this one includes more rare and unreleased tracks than almost any one I’ve ever seen. It leaves the listener hungry for more!’
David also reviewed one of a trio of Charlie Louvin’s latterday albums. ‘Charlie Louvin could sing the phone book and make it interesting I think, but here he Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs and totally captivated this listener.’
‘Nashville’s Eric Brace has teamed up with fellow singer-songwriter Karl Straub to write a “folk opera” set during the California Gold Rush, based on the story behind “Sweet Betsy From Pike,” one of the most durable folk songs to come out of the American Westward migration,’ I noted regarding Brace & Straub’s Hangtown Dancehall. ‘The players and singers are top-notch, the songs are well-written, and if you string them all together they tell a poignant story that puts flesh on the dry bones of history.’
I reviewed Anaïs Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer’s Child Ballads: ‘American singer-songwriters Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer have taken something of a middle tack in their superb little album Child Ballads. They do take a strictly acoustic and folk approach, but with arrangements and production that somehow have a modern feel to them.’
I enjoyed Chuck Brodsky’s The Baseball Ballads: ‘Jealous lovers with guns. Racism. Illicit drugs. The pain and confusion of growing up. And … spies? All of these, except perhaps the last, are typical fodder for American singer-songwriters. But this isn’t a typical record of folk songs. Troubador Chuck Brodsky has made an entire album of ballads inspired by baseball.’
Scott brought us a review of Boris Grebenshikov’s Russian Songwriter: A Collection From Boris Grebenshikov. ‘Backed by a frequently changing assortment of musicians known as Akvarium, Grebenshikov has written and sung an enormous volume of songs over the last thirty years. In this collection, he presents a number of his songs that characterize the Russian singer-songwriter tradition, along with his own versions of one traditional song and three covers of Russian songwriters who exerted a particularly heavy influence on him.’
For our Coda this week we have a song that seems to be very popular among Nordic musicians. Some sources cite it as ‘traditional’ and imply that it was first written down by Gjermund Haugen, others say it it was composed by Haugen. Whatever. It’s an appealing tune, and we offer first a version by Annbjørg Lien (who recorded it on her first album, Felefeber) on hardanger fiddle, with Bjørn Ole Rasch on keyboards. And you can follow that up with a version by the Danish String Quartet, from their album Last Leaf.
Cat Eldridge
I'm the publisher of Green Man Review. I do the Birthdays and Media Anniversary write-ups for Mike Glyer’s file770.com, the foremost SFF fandom site.
More Posts - Website
About Cat Eldridge
I'm the publisher of Green Man Review. I do the Birthdays and Media Anniversary write-ups for Mike Glyer’s file770.com, the foremost SFF fandom site.