A common song topic that often goes overlooked is displacement and homesickness. Particularly country music, I have a little collection of songs like this spanning the decades.
This one here is not a country song, but a tune by the immortalized Fanny Brice. You may have heard of the play/movie "Funny Girl," based on her life.
Here is a good site comparing the true facts of Fanny's life to the story of "Funny Girl." I should probably watch that movie, but I can't bring myself to. I remember my parents making fun of
Baaahbrah when I was a very young child. I think their generation had more class associations with music. I don't really think of anything as "uptight rich people music." Wait, maybe I do. Celine Dion?
Anyway, this song deals with the classic disillusionment of city living, from an immigrant point of view. The rat race. The capitalist dream. It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under.
"'All day long I hear the Song of the Sewing Machine in a factory on Union Square....' The Fanny Brice side [of this LP] closes with an early 20th-century reminder of working conditions of not too long ago in the Garment District of New York." - (1969) Gerald P. Plano, Fanny Brice/Helen Morgan LP
Fanny Brice
The Song of the Sewing Machine
12/20/1927
from RCA Fanny Brice - Helen Morgan split LP, 1969I have some more songs with this theme that I want to post, but some of them are newer songs, so I might only keep the files up for a week or so. So keep checking back! If you want me to update more, you should send me an optical mouse, because my mouse is filthy and impossible to use, and it makes me never want to touch the computer again.
Labels: displacement
