Song Sharing

Title: Song Sharing

General Information about Item:

Informant Data:

Scott Bohn is a male Dartmouth student in the class of 2018, from Minnetonka, Minnesota. Scott was born in Mexico, but raised in Minnesota. At Dartmouth, he studies Computer Science and History, and plays club hockey. When he is older, his dream is to live in a cabin in the woods in Minnesota, next to a lake, with a dog. In his freshman summer, he participated in trail crew, a group of trail maintenance people based out of a cabin next to the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. As a result, he went on many week-long backpacking trips in the outdoors to help repair trails for the Dartmouth Outing Club.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: Backpackers spend a lot of forced time together doing the same thing, which is great motivation for coming up with things to do together, and activities to pass the time, get to know each other, and have fun.
Social Context: This tradition, or ritual, would be performed during hiking as backpackers move from site to site. It’s used to pass the time and hopefully distract themselves from the pain of hiking with a heavy pack. It also allows people to share parts of their childhood and is meant to be a fun sharing activity.

Item:

Backpackers and hikers share songs from their childhood. Each person has songs from their childhood that they share to increase group unity and also share aspects of their childhood. Individuals share songs and teach them to the group, and the group sings them to pass the time and distract themselves from the discomfort of lugging heavy equipment up and down the mountain.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Relevant portion: [6:15 – 6:45]

Transcript of Associated file:

“In terms of what we did along the trail, while we were walking from site to site, usually the big thing I remember is teaching each other songs. And so for me, campfire songs from camp back in the days, those were the ones I would teach. And then other people would teach different songs from their childhood that we would sing and round along the way to pass the time as we have to carry 50 to a 100-odd pounds of tools up the mountain.”

Collector’s Comments:

This is very similar to games and activities that people play while hiking, such as Contact. I think the main motivation comes from trying to pass the time while doing a monotonous, and painful (at times) activity.

Collector’s Name: Kyu Kim

Tags/Keywords: Customary, Verbal, ritual, songs, music, childhood

Dartmouth Folklore Archive