Genealogist traces the origin of songs

''A thousand pages of songs'' authored by wellknown genealogist Dr Michael Lobo is perhaps the one-stop answer to all queries pertaining to over 3,500 popular songs and over a thousand biographical sketches, writes Ronald Anil Fernandes 

Did you know that the origin of the most frequently sung song in the English world — “Happy birthday to you,” goes back to the year 1888 when Patti Hill, a young woman of 21, graduated from a teachers’ training school in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, sang it for the first time.

Did you know that the Christmas song “Jingle Bells” was composed by James Pierpont in the USA in 1857 and originally entitled “The one horse open-sleigh.”

Did you know that “Silent Night,” the most famous of Christmas carols, is of relatively recent origin - having first seen the light of day in the Catholic Church of St Nicholas at Oberndorf in Salzburg, Austria, on the German (Bavarian) border.  While the organist Franz Xavier Gruber composed the music, Curate Joseph Mohr wrote the lyrics.

The three songs mentioned above are only samples. There are thousands of such popular songs. Be it “Home sweet home,” “Love’s old sweet song,” “Daisy bell,” “Moonlight bay,” “Missouri waltz,” “Grandfather’s clock,” “Whispering hope,” “Apple blossom time,” “Beautiful dreamer,” “In the good old summertime,” “Silver threads among the gold,” “When Irish eyes are smiling,” “I’m twenty one today,” “Shine on harvest moon,” “Till we meet again,” “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag,” “Home on the Range,” “You tell me your dream,” “It’s a long way to Tipperary,” “By the light of the Silvery Moon,” “If you were the only girl in the world,” “In the shade of the old apple tree,” “Let the rest of the world go by...” and many others.

If you think that it is fairly easy to find out more about composers and writers of famous songs, you are mistaken. Perhaps, even the ubiquitous internet will not be of much help, in some cases.

Treasure in the form of book

“A thousand pages of songs” authored by wellknown genealogist Dr Michael Lobo is perhaps the one-stop answer to all queries pertaining to over 3,500 popular songs and over a thousand biographical sketches. From medieval times to the modern rock era, the book, that may be described as an encylopaedia of songs, contains drawing-room ballads, novelty songs, comic songs, children’s songs, folk songs and even nursery rhymes. The longest entry in the book is “Silent Night,” to which two full pages have been devoted.

The speciality of the book is that each song is entered alphabetically by song title and the historical details follow, that is, the country of origin, the year of composition if known, the names of the composers/ songwriters, publishers, and artists who recorded the music or song; also any other pieces of information that may be of interest, such as chart positions, best-selling records, stories relating to the composition, etc. 

Finally, the words of the song are also noted. These are in smaller print than the main text - and highlighted in bold type.

The main section is preceded by a smaller section providing information on classics, opera, and popular instrumental pieces.

Speaking to City Herald, author Dr Michael Lobo said that the nucleus of this book was researched and compiled in the early 1990s, when he was employed at a university in England. 

“I made use of a number of reference books, some fresh from the press and others so long out of print that they could only be found at the British Library, London. 

In December 1993, shortly before my permanent return to India, I put together my material to form a book of 600 pages. But I did not seriously consider publication as it had not attained the state of completion that I desired,” he said.

“However, the advent of the Internet opened up unlimited possibilities and suddenly, I found myself accessing material that was not easily available even in the British Library, London,” he said.

Companion volume

Though he could not complete the book till the year 2011, he succeeded in completing a companion volume, “Popular music - A historical and theoretical analysis” along with his voluminous song book.

Dr Lobo said that the book possesses several unique features that distinguish it from its predecessors. 

“Even in the case of encyclopaedic works such as the four-volume Guinness Encyclopaedia of Popular Music, outstanding popular singers and songwriters of the early 20th century are brushed aside with a mere passing mention - if they possess an entry at all,” he said and added that the present book offers a far more balanced study of the various eras that marked the growth and development of popular music.

“It is one of the first - perhaps the very first - to portray a continuous historical picture of popular music from the folk song era through the eras of parlour songs, big bands, pop and the final evolution (or devolution?) into modern rock music.” The book provides a survey of the five basic eras in the history of popular music: They include ‘The folk song era’ (from medieval times to the mid 19th century); ‘The parlour song era’ (the late 19th and early 20th century); ‘The big band era’ (1920 - 1950); ‘The prime years of pop’ (1950 - 1965); and ‘The modern rock era’ (from the mid 1960s onwards).

Price

Ask him about the price of book, which is slightly on the higher side (Rs 1,200 for ‘A thousand pages of songs’ and Rs 600 for ‘Popular music: A historical and thematic analysis’), pat comes the reply: “One might instead purchase dozens of minor song-books after paying Rs 200 or Rs 250 each and end up spending several thousand rupees, and still have only a small fraction of the information that may be found with the pages of this book!”

The foreword for the ‘thousand pages’ has been written by Justice Michael F Saldanha, the retired judge of Karnataka High Court. As he puts it: “The compilation is the outcome of a super-human effort even for a man of his exceptional talent and capacity.  Putting it together has taken him a decade and a half of hard labour, but all of it was worthwhile because we have a volume that is a world-beater and the only one of its type ever.”

The man behind the mission

A doctorate in transonic aerodynamics from the Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore), Dr Michael Lobo was awarded the Young Scientist Medal of the Indian National Science Academy in 1983. He then spent several years at Cranfield University, England, where he guided PhD students in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and was associated with a consortium of industry including Rolls-Royce and British Aerospace.

Interestingly, his writings tend to focus on the study of  origins! Be it the voluminous genealogical encyclopadiea of Mangalorean Catholic families or the etymological dictionary of English words rooted in Classical Greek (yet to be published). The present one, published in December 2011, too is all about the songs and their origins.