Appreciation of Bill Monroe's "On the Banks of Ohio"
Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 7:19 PM Judging from the melody, Bill Monroe and Monroe Brothers’ “On the Banks of Ohio” is not like a traditional murder ballad because it is not filled with fear, cruelty, or indifference (which is so common in murder ballads, for example, in Nick Cave’s music), and the singers have not changed their emotion a lot throughout the whole song. To some extent, this song reminds me of another song – “Sun and Moon”, in that they both involve an unbelievable and shocking murder, and they both belong to folk music. Therefore, “On the Banks of Ohio” bears a lot in common with “Sun and Moon”: the repetition of melody, stable atmosphere, basic feeling, shifts of lyrics, etc. In “On the Banks of Ohio”, we can hardly tell narrator’s emotional changes from the music because the music stays quite the same. The form of this song is, I think, “A-A’”. The song is played with a rather stable melody, but there is still slight difference between the first two lines and the next two lines in every verse: at the end of the first two lines, there is a lift in tone, while at the end of the next two lines (especially the third line), there is a falling tone.
One thing more about my favorite part of this song: the chorus. The chorus appears three times throughout the song. The use of chorus leaves me an impression of ancient Greek tragedy. The repetition of chorus builds a sad, pitiful, blue feeling which makes this murder ballad more impressive and memorable. By means of chorus, the narrator keeps showing us the scene of his proposal to his lover, therefore, the contrast between his killing the girl and his proposal is more shocking as well as pitiful.
Alicia Zhang (Yi Zhang)
Reader Comments (1)
In Johnny Cash’s rendition of On the Banks, many of you commented that Cash’s vocals, instrumentation, and rhythm were monotonous and so interpreted the song as numb and unemotional towards the subject matter of the song. Also, many of your posts related Cash’s steady instrumentation/vocals with surprisingly dark disturbing lyrics to Professor Carson’s definition of folk music as having tension between melody and idea.
Though Cash’s monotony of the song is clear, there are some varied opinions among your posts as to whether or not it contains emotion. Do you think that Cash is expressing a different emotion through his monotony, or is he completely unmoved/unemotional by the female subject and his murder? Perhaps his low monotonous tone ironically serves to greater emphasize his depression, or his inability to cope with what he has done, resulting in a repressing numbness in his tone. Think deeply about Cash’s purpose for his vocal tone and instrumentation manner. Why do you think he chose to sing the way he did? What might he have wanted to convey to his listeners? If he sang with more melodic variation, what effect would this have on the song? Would it feel more/less authentic? Consider a few of your peers’ posts on these issues:
http://benleedscarson.com/by-banks-in-pines/author/hunterswanson
http://benleedscarson.com/by-banks-in-pines/author/navidramirez
http://benleedscarson.com/by-banks-in-pines/author/christopherwichmann
Please do not feel that you have to answer all or be limited to these questions. Comment to each other what you find interesting or how you feel about any of these issues raised. Even if this topic is not relevant to your original post, try to get involved with discussion anyway! I encourage you all to express your opinions to each other, and please, don’t be afraid of a little dispute!