DAN CASSIDY: How the Irish Invented American Slang Word origin AND Etymology of Jazz
Find the Word origin of Jazz, Irish American Vernacular English and the hidden influence of Irish and Scots-Gaelic on what we call American English, and the history of Jazz.
How the Irish Invented Slang 9781904859604
Subtitle: The Secret Language of the Crossroads
2007 American Book Award
Jazz: What is the origin of the word Jazz? The Irish word Teas is pronounced jazz, jass, chas, or t'as.
American Book Award Winner Dan Cassidy explains gig, juke, boogie woogie, Irish Slang and Irish American Vernacular English.
Learn about Irish American Vernacular English and the hidden influence of Irish and Scots-Gaelic on what we call American English.
Daniel Cassidy at the NYS Writers Institute in 2008
LISTEN TO CASSIDY EXPLAIN JAZZ "Danny Cassidy knows This page contains a Flash video. To view it requires that the Flash plugin is installed and Javascript enabled. |
Professor Dan Cassidy Trace The HOUSE OF FIRE The House of Fire - St. Bridgid's Teas (Jass) Heat: The pagan Goddess Brigid's feast day and theXtian St. Brigid's Day The Day of the Gin-i-ker |
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Daniel Cassidy, founder of the Crossroads Festival, was lost to us in 2008. The following information about
his work is dedicated to the memory of Danny, a great advocate of the importance of remembering and honoring
our stories, histories, and our passions. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.
all love and respect,
Karen Ellis
2007 American Book Award Winner Hear Speech ISBN: 9781904859604Subtitle: The Secret Language of the Crossroads Ar dheis RIP October 10, 2008
Danny Cassidy left our world tonight from pancreatic cancer. He said how grateful he was to have had the support of so many (his words) "extraordinary friends." It was a privilege to know him; a great grace to have had his friendship. His legacy to the Irish-American community is inestimable. May perpetual light shine upon him. ~ Peter Quinn |
Reclaiming the knowledge
READ
the Book Reviews |
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Irish Americans especially will be delighted to know, they have been
speaking Irish all along in their slang and American English, while believing and bemoaning that they had
lost their native tongue many years ago. With imagination and scholarship, Cassidy has restored this
hidden
treasure to us in a book that is filled with revelations, wit and humor.
New York Times Review "Humdinger of a Project:Tracing Slang to Irelan 11/ 6/07 Permanent link
CITATIONS - REFERENCES - RESOURCES
THE BEGINNINGS
What's the Origin of the word Jazz? The Irish Word Teas Means Heat.
In a series of lively essays, this pioneering book proves that US slang has its strongest wellsprings in
nineteenth-century Irish America. "Jazz" and "poker," "sucker" and
"scam" all derive from Irish. While demonstrating this, Daniel Cassidy simultaneously traces the
hidden history of how Ireland fashioned America, not just linguistically, but through the Irish gambling
underworld, urban street gangs, and the powerful political machines that grew out of them. Cassidy uncovers
a
secret national heritage, long discounted by our WASP-dominated culture.
Professor Dan Cassidy had already published "The Sanas of Jazz as
Teas" ©2002 in the poet David Meltzer's Jazz Magazine Shuffle Boil.
Trace the etymology and sanas of the word
JAZZ.
Ellis makes the research available to you in PDF files showing The Etymology
of Jazz and many other words that originally come from Irish American Vernacular English.
GINIKER
Irish Guys Writing with Irish Words.
Karen Ellis told Danny about an independant scholar and Folklorist named Peter Tamony who lived in
San Francisco and did research that landed in a University library that Danny then researched that
subsequently uncovered the Irish American Sports Reporter "Scoop" Gleason's San Francisco
Bulletin
in 1913 article that showed the first uses and explaination of the word "JAZZ".
Ellis locates Tamony's research papers, emails the "GINIKER" citation to Cassidy who searches the San Francisco Main Library ( which happens to be located only about mile away from where Tamony lived all those years ago) and now locates the newspaper microfiche finding those original sports page articles.
Give them plenty of outdoor exercise plenty of pep and "GINIKER" which means excitement - something exciting to do that is full of energy - that produces combustible energy - makes them sweat, produces heat, full of fire! It does not mean respect authority! That was theprincipal of the school sharing his classroom management advice with the teacher.
GINIKER The Great American Pastime 1956
A mild-mannered lawyer gets more than he bargained for when he takes over a little league team.
Nathaniel Benchley Writer Born
in Newton, Massachusetts to a literary family, he was the son of Gertrude Darling and Robert Benchley
(1889-1945).
"GINIKER" -
THE MISSING LINK that explains the new word "JAZZ"
in the San Francisco Bulletin March 1913.
ARTICLES AND PICTURES trace and explain what Jazz
means.
These first Published Examples S.F. Bulletin, March 3, 1913 of the new word Jazz have nothing to
do
with music, but refer to an intangible quality possessed by baseball players; what another writer
in the S.F. Bulletin, Ernest Hopkins, described in April 1923 as “life, vigor,
energy, effervescence of spirit, joy, pep, magnetism, verve, virility, ebullience, courage, happiness oh,
what's the use? Jazz. Nothing else can express it”.
The San Francisco sports reporter Scoop Gleeson claimed he heard the word Jazz from fellow
Irish American newspaperman, Spike Slattery, while they were at the training camp of the
local baseball team, the San Francisco Seals. Slattery said he had heard it in a crap
game.
Dan Cassidy Meets Spike Slattery's Grandson in Sonoma CA at the book reading
11/07.
Irish American Vernacular English Baseball Words used by Scoop Gleeson in the Sports pages. Jazz appears in print 25 times in the month of March 1913, 24 times in Scoop's articles.
Karen Ellis returns from the Fire Pit in Kildare Ireland to Boyes Springs CA to complete the journey of JAZZ.
© 2006 Boyes Hot Springs is 10 miles away from this hot spring that I visited at the last mission built
in
Sonoma, CA. ~ KE
Where was the game?
In Boyes Springs, CA
What do you find there?
HOT WATER.
Art Hickman an unemployed local San Francisco Irish Jazz musician had also been to Boyes Springs and to the baseball training camp looking for contacts. Dan Cassidy can elaborate on this story. The Boyes' Hot Springs' water was in a state of natural 135 degree natural JAZZ (teas, pron . Jass, Heat) Using the word as a Gaelic incantation to the gambling "gods of the odds."
Essays, References, Citations, Resources, Definitions
Find out what Scoop Gleeson meant - when he said: 'Its members have trained on ragtime and `jazz'.'
Irish American Vernacular English words used by Scoop Gleeson in the Sports pages to talk about baseball.
- Jasm & Gism as a Source for the Word "Jazz" - From the Work of Peter Tamony
- The Irish and Scots Gaelic Sanas of Fizz, Fizzle, and Sizzle and Teas. - Like a lexical star the Irish and Scots Gaelic fizz and fizzle are perpetually losing their Teas (pron. chass, jass, or jazz depending on your dialect) means heat, excitement, and high spirit.
- The Big "Butter an' Eggman" - The King of Teas (Jass, Heat)
- The Sacred Secret Tongue of the Saol Luim - (Slum, World of Poverty)
- Boogie Borrowing from Irish into English we used the words boogie and boogaloo to mean move fast or depart quickly with no reference to music. Also see Boogie Woogie Music. What Does Boogie Mean? 1941 Ball of Fire - Billy Wilder, Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyk. Slang is words that takes off his coat, spits on it's hands and gets to work!
- Irish American Vernacular English gave us Gambling Slang. Learn The Sanas (Irish Etymology) of Faro, Poker and the Secret Flash Words for the Brotherhood of American Gamblers and more Irish American Vernacular English Origin of Hoodoo and Juke Joint
TRACING when words first get "BORROWED" from the vernacular into the standard. IRISH LANGUAGE WORDS GET BORROWED
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." ~James D. Nicoll 1990
No one can dispute that the Irish word 'teas' (pronounced jazz) means "heat, warmth", and the notion of borrowing from Irish into English happened every day since the Irish came to America. Language contact covered the entire United States and Caribbean. [see Boogie] Ireland, boasts family ties with 15 U.S. presidents. Four have direct ties to Northern Ireland. And there are 34.3 million people in the United States who claimed some Irish heritage in the last census.
TRACING happens in many ways including songs. A word can exist for numerous years even centuries before it gets into print.
[". . .Rhymes that have been rubbed clean and hard against the bone of life, whose stories are rooted in an eternity of time."][ ". . . Jingles, riddles, silly ballads, wistful lullabies, jiggy tunes and game songs"] belong to the children of America and reflect a composite character of the common people residing in the United States. ~ Lomax
Words that were spoken and spelled by non Irish speakers, (like Lomax) who had no training in Irish as a Second Language spelled out what they thought they heard pronounced, and didn't bother to write the Irish words correctly, and couldn't pronounce the Irish words in the first place. This is how you end up with so called "nonsense syllables" now termed "vocables."
TRAVEL WEST
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Paddy Works On The Railway
Retranslated
At the hour of rising I return to work upon the railway...
Sla/n agus beannacht
Why Does the Cowboy Sing
-
Starts off with Ramblin Jack Elliott 58 minutes
The cowboy's job has always been dangerous, lonely, dusty, gory and low-paying. So why do cowboys make
music, and why do they need to tell their story? Why the Cowboy Sings is a journey across the open West to
explore this unique genre of folk art.
Archie Green Helped to collect the information also see The Moonshiner Drinking song by Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makum The Dubliners.
Down By The Glenside This song was written by Peadar Kearney, who also wrote the national anthem of Ireland. Brendan Behan, the Irish playwright, poet and singer was Kearney's nephew. The song was used in the film West of the Rio Grande (1944). Fenians were an Irish revolutionary organization, formed in New York in on March 17, 1858. Many Irish-American soldiers who fought on both sides in the American Civil War went home to Ireland to fight for Irish independence in 1916. (Reference: album: Brendan Behan Sings Irish Folk Songs & Ballads)
Whoopie Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Doggies
** Whoopie Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Doggies
Re-translated
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THE SECRET IRISH TRAVELLER Bain-Fhile (Woman-Poet) of "Whoopie Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Doggies" PDF explains the how the Irish language was borrowed and written down by english speakers to sound like something they could say. And the Doggy is not a dog but Irish for the poor misfortunate starving pathetic person who has only misery in their life.
In 1910 John Lomax concluded the first edition of his now canonical Cowboy Songs and Frontier Ballads, {introduction by President Theodore Roosevelt} with a song he called "the quintessential cowboy song, unlike others known to have been imported and adapted in the West," Whoopie Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Doggies collected from black cowboy informants. The enigmatic phonetic lyrics of this world-famous, foundational American cowboy song have puzzled scholars and American folklorists for a century. were collected from .
Band COWBOY SONG Whoopee-Ti- Yi- Yo (Oh my little darling txt)
John I.White, vocalRoy Smeck, guitar and harmonica. Recorded April , , in New York. Originally issued on
Perfect .Many classic cowboy songs-such as “The Strawberry Roan”-are so recent that we can trace them to
their
authors and their first appearance in print in turn-of-the-century western newspapers and magazines.
“Whoopee-Ti-Yi-Yo” is an exception, a genuinely anonymous folk song that is first mentioned in Owen
Wister's diary of written in central Texas. Alan Lomax in The Folk Songs of North America provides a
provocative theory of the song's genesis. The dogie, an orphan calf weaned too soon and with belly
swollen
from a premature diet of grass, needed sometimes to be carried on the cattle drive, slung across the
cowboy's saddle. Perhaps in the mind of some nineteenth-century cowboy, Lomax says, the dogie seemed
like
the child lulled by the cuckold of the old Irish song, “rocking the cradle and the child not his own,” and
thus was created of ancient elements a new folk song. Beyond the tender “fathership” of the Irish song lies
the archetype of Joseph of Galilee. Lomax concludes that the origin of the trail song may be the re-creative
use of an old theme on the part of the northern cowboy who made the original dogie song- yet who can deny
the
kinship between the carpenter, Joseph, and the cowboy tenderly carrying the tired dogie across the pommel of
his saddle?
Cowboys were also called BUCKAROOS.
Jesse Chisholm, for whom the Chisholm trail was named, was a Scots-Cherokee, His father was a Scots Gaelic speaker. Chisholm is also reputed to have spoken a number of Indian languages. Also see: Cowboy Poetry Explained by Hal Cannon.
Casey Jones
Remembered
Hal Cannon of the Western Folklife Center tells the story of legendary train engineer Casey Jones. Many
consider him a mythic figure, celebrated in verse and song. But Casey Jones was in fact, real; he died 100
years ago in 1900 when his train collided with a freight train near Vaughn, Mississippi.
A glance at the folk songs and ballads of The Wild Wild West.
Folksong & Storytelling makes Wyatt Earp a legendary figure of the Wild West.
Professor Daniel Cassidy Biography
Professor Daniel Cassidy Director of Irish Studies at New College, CA is a writer, film maker, and musician.
Cassidy has toured with his music all across North America, playing Carnegie Hall, The Tonight Show, and
The
Los Angeles Civic Auditorium, as well as dive bars and juke joints from Brooklyn to San Francisco. He has
written for films and television and has worked with director Francis Ford Coppola and actor Danny Glover on
feature film projects. He has also written and produced six films. His documentary Civil Rights and
Civil Wrongs was nominated for an Emmy in 1997. Cassidy's prose and poetry have been
published
in The NY Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Atlantic Monthly, The NY Observer, Ireland's Hot Press
magazine, and many other newspapers and scholarly journals in English and Irish.
50 Fantastics and 50 Personalities Filmed: 1964-66
The Stephen Koch filmography credits the cast as: Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Jim Rosenquist, Zachary Scott,
Peter Orlovski, Daniel Cassidy, Harry Fainlight. (SG145) 50 Fantastics and 50 Personalities included Screen
Test footage. Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Jim Rosenquist, Zachary Scott, Peter Orlovsky, Daniel Cassidy,
Harry
Fainlight, "and others". 16mm/BW/silent/16fps. (SG146) Note: The following films are listed in
1964
in the Victor Bockris filmography: The End of Dawn, Messy Lives, Apple, Pause, Lips.
His book The Secret Language of Poker & The Pizzazz of Jazz was published by New College Press 2005.
Daniel Cassidy was born in Brooklyn, NY, and lives with his wife Clare in San Francisco.
Daniel writes: "My Fathers family spoke Donegal (Irish
dialect), which pronounces teas like Jass, or chass, or t'ass). My father was born
in
Brooklyn on March 2, 1913. The next day, March 3, 1913,
teas spelled teas makes an appearance in print! Jazz appears in print 25
times in the month of March 1913, 24 times in Scoop's articles, and once in
his fellow sports reporter Francis Mannix's column."
About Professor Cassidy's father, Daniel Patrick
Cassidy PDF
JAZZ IS IRISH
21st Century Linguistic Rights
The origin of Tory is an Irish word for thief/brigand #true
A people without a language of its own is only half a nation.
Western Historical Manuscript Collection |
CROSSROADS IRISH-AMERICAN FESTIVAL CELEBRATES PETER TAMONY
|
ST. BRIDGID'S HOUSE OF FIRE |
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2 Crossroads Conference 3/8/06 Honoring the work of Scholar Peter Tamony and Linguistic Rights. |