Ong and the Orality of American Song (page2)

When the train, it left the station, with two lights on behind
When the train, it left the station, with two lights on behind
Well, the blue light was my blues, and the red light was my mind
All my love's in vain

Oral patterning has been a continuing tradition of the blues. B.B. King's "Thrill is Gone" repeats the phrase "thrill is gone" six times, twice at the beginning of each verse (King). The practice of oral patterning has even seeped into other forms of American song such as bluegrass, pop, and even techno music. There is an entire song that contains few words other than, "I'm blue if I were green I would die", and said phrase repeats countless times throughout the song.

(ii) Aggregative rather than analytic
Ong claims that one function of orality is to stimulate memory (38). For this reason, he states, "Oral expression thus carries a load of epithets and other formulary baggage which high literacy rejects as cumbersome and tiresomely redundant because of its aggregative weight" (38). This function capitalizes upon the commonality of human experience, the fact that we all know someone who fits a certain description. Just as Ong says that orality has engrained the "brave soldier", the "beautiful princess", and the "sturdy oak", songs have in the same fashion as oral tradition engrained similar images (38). Songs like Hank Williams' "I'm so Lonesome I could Cry" and Ralph Stanley's "Man of Constant Sorrow" have helped develop the idea of the lonesome drifter, while similarly, Willie Nelson's "Red Headed Stranger" and Madonna's "Beautiful Stranger" romanticize the image of an enigmatic stranger.

(iii) Redundant or 'copious'
Redundancy has an important function in Ong's definition of oral culture and also has had profound influence on American song form. Ong says, "Redundancy, repetition of the just-said, keeps both speaker and hearer surely on the track" and there exists no better example of this in song form than the concept of the chorus (38).
A chorus, or refrain, is simply the part of a song that repeats and typically contains the hook of the song. While the concept of a chorus is by no means an invention of American song form, American popular music would not be the same without it. Pop music for more than the past fifty years has relied on the verse-chorus form of delivery. Every year countless songs top Billboard's Hot 100 Singles chart by way of a strong catchy chorus.

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