ALTERNATIVE REALITIES IN FIRST WORLD WAR SONGS
ALTERNATIVE REALITIES IN FIRST WORLD WAR SONGS

Author(s): Ylva Berglund Prytz, Gerald Porter
Subject(s): Customs / Folklore, Music, Oral history, Pre-WW I & WW I (1900 -1919)
Published by: Instituti Albanologjik i Prishtinës
Keywords: War Memories; Patriotic Songs; Soldiers; Farewell Songs; British Folk Songs;
Summary/Abstract: Both literally and figuratively, war has always been an arena for encounters with the otherworld. From the interventions of the gods in the Trojan War to the Angels of Mons in the 1916, the mythology of conflict has offered resolution in the shape of alternative realities. As if war is too materialist, it must be endowed with magic. This might be from outside (the Angels of Mons) or through the appeal to internal anxieties implied by the famous question 'What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?' This paper examines the ways in which contemporary songs explored alternative representations of the First World War, asserted a critical consciousness of the paradoxes and ironies involved, and also, in many cases, asked whose interests the War served. The study is based on a huge international initiative to gather oral and written narratives from all the countries taking part in the 1914-18 War. It takes examples of songs from both ‘sides’ in a war in which the ideologies of each were, in fact, remarkably similar.

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