A hootenanny is an event involving music in the United States. It is particularly associated with folk music.

Etymology

Placeholder

Hootenanny is an Appalachian colloquialism that was used in the early twentieth century U.S. as a placeholder name to refer to things whose names were forgotten or unknown. In this usage, it was synonymous with thingamajig or whatchamacallit, as in: "Hand me that hootenanny."

Folk music performance

Hootenanny is also an old country word for "party" or get-together. It can refer to a folk music party with an open mic, at which different performers are welcome to get up and play in front of an audience.

According to Pete Seeger he first heard the word hootenanny in Seattle, Washington in the summer of 1941 while touring the area with Woody Guthrie.[1] It was used by Hugh DeLacy's New Deal political club[2] to describe their monthly music fund raisers.[3] After some debate the club voted in hootenanny, which narrowly beat out wingding. Seeger, Woody Guthrie and other members of the Almanac Singers later used the word in New York City to describe their weekly rent parties, which featured many notable folksingers of the time.[3] In a 1962 interview in Time, Joan Baez made the analogy that a hootenanny is to folk singing what a jam session is to jazz.[4]

Events

During the early 1960s at the height of the American folk music revival, the club Gerdes Folk City at 11 West 4th Street in Greenwich Village started the folk music hootenanny tradition every Monday night, that featured an open mic and welcomed performers known and unknown, young and old.[5] The Bitter End at 147 Bleecker Street continued the folk music hootenanny tradition every Tuesday night.[6][7]

A weekly hootenanny has been held during the summers at Allegany State Park most years since 1972.[8]

The Hootenanny was an annual one-day rockabilly music festival held at the Oak Canyon Ranch in Irvine, California, which also incorporated a vintage car show, and was discontinued in 2015.

For years there have been online hootenannies. The most long-standing example is Small Talk At The Wall,[9] which originated in 1999.

Recordings

Television

Several different television shows are named hootenanny and styled after it, including:

Other uses

See also

References

  1. Seeger, Pete (1992). Schwartz, Jo Metcalf (ed.). The Incompleat Folksinger. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. p. 327. ISBN 0803292163.
  2. "Hugh DeLacy papers". Washington.edu. Special Collections, Libraries of University of Washington. Retrieved January 1, 2010.
  3. 1 2 Hendrickson, Stewart. "Hootenannies in Seattle". PNWFolklore.org. Retrieved December 31, 2009.
  4. "Joan Baez: Biography". IMDB.com. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved December 31, 2009.
  5. Woliver, Robbie (1986), Bringing It All Back Home, Pantheon/Random House, ISBN 9780394740683
  6. Santoro, Gene (8 June 2003). "Gene Santoro, NY Times review, Beginning at the Bitter End.: SERIOUSLY FUNNY The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s. By Gerald Nachman". NY Times. Retrieved 6 January 2015.
  7. Nachman, Gerald (2003). Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s. New York: Pantheon Books. p. 659. ISBN 9780375410307. OCLC 50339527. Archived from the original on 2018-09-19. Retrieved 2020-06-25.
  8. Everts, Deb (May 22, 2021). "Senecas to host Sally Marsh's 50th year of Hootenannies". Salamanca Press. Retrieved July 24, 2021.
  9. Petersen, Nils Holger, Music Practices around Bob Dylan, Medieval Rituals, and Modernity. Københavns. 2005. ISBN 978-87-635-0423-2. Retrieved 2011-03-24.
  10. Silver, Dylan (June 23, 2008). "Weezer Cover Radiohead's 'Creep,' Jam with Fans in S.F." Spin.com. Retrieved 2023-08-18.
  11. "HLAH". WildsideRecords.com. Wildside Records.
  12. "Nonesuch Records Realism". Nonesuch Records Official Website. 26 January 2010.
  13. "June 1964". Archived from the original on September 29, 2007. Retrieved September 27, 2016.
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