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Great Grandpa John Kravarik

by Alyssa Rodriguez

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about

This song is written in the style of a story telling folk-ballad (like the well known "John Henry") and is based on true happenings in the life of my grand-grandfather John Kravarik and his father, as told by my grandpa Frank Kravarik.

lyrics

Great grandpa John Kravarik went walking through the woods /
He saw something drifting, looked hard as he could /
He walked on up that river up half a mile/
Off Boughton Street Extension
When my grandpa was a child /

[fiddle]

Great grandpa John Kravarik found a fiddle floating down /
The outside case was waterlogged but
Words inside he found /
Said Stradivarius, the fiddle was pristine /
He played on it for many years
When my grandpa was 16 /

[fiddle]

Great grandpa Kravarik fled Czechoslovakia /
When he was just 9 years old from Russians rule with pa /
His father was a coal miner in Pennsylvania/
One day his tunnel caved on in and nearly took his life /

But after many many days they got out all the dirt /
And his head was stitched and good as new like he had not been hurt /
And that’s the day that Papa said we’re moving somewhere new /
They moved on up to Norwalk where he a safer job he’d do /

[fiddle]

But great grandpa Kravarik he played the fiddle fast /
Never had a lesson, and always went to mass /
He was the finest carpenter and mason in the town /
He build his house and fireplace and went the river down /

Great grandpa Kravarik went up the river and found /
The finest fiddle he did see, floating his way down /
Now he plays the finest csárdás in dance halls in town /
He plays the finest csárdás in dance halls in town.

[fiddle]

credits

released June 26, 2021

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Alyssa Rodriguez Rochester, New York

Fiddle, nyckelharpa and dulcimer folk musician and composer based in Rochester, New York. Alyssa is a 2021-2022 Fulbright Finland alumn who researched Nordic folk music at Sibelius Academy.

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