Hootenanny

[Jonathan Lighter]

So widespread was it that there was a short-lived TV series of that name about 1965.  Each week it featured a folk-music concert from a different college campus.

If memory serves, it was replaced by "Shindig," which featured babes dancing in cages.

JL

sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: sagehen
Subject: Re: Hootenanny
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>Another sense, that no-one's mentioned so far, is known in the UK from the New
>Year TV party "Jools' Annual Hootenanny". Jools Holland is a jazz pianist, a
>raconteur and definitely someone to be seen with, and he hosts this annual
>broadcast musical gathering from about 11am until 1am every 31 December - 1
>January; fashionable people are invited and interviewed by him, and play /
>sing their music if they are musicians.
>
>Before this ADS-L thread I had never come across the word except in Jools'
>context, and so assumed that it must mean something noisy / raucous / joyful
>(onomatopoeia from 'hoot' and from the number of syllables and different
>vowels
>in the word, I suppose). But if there are more Google hits for
>'thingumajig'-like meanings, perhaps Jools calls it that because it
>doesn't fit
>comfortably into any other definition, so he doesn't really know *what* to
>call
>it?
>
>Damien Hall
>University of Pennsylvania
~~~~~~~~
The other use of "hoot(e)nanny," more like the one you cite, and which I
didn't learn until I was in college in the late 40s, was for a
singalong--usually folk, labor, political kinds of music. Pete Seeger
might have presided over this sort of event: don't really remember. I
think that usage was fairly widespread.
A. Murie

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