Home Boston Jahar on the MTA — the Musical Version

Jahar on the MTA — the Musical Version

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by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

Today we have a new song. It’s called “Jahar on the MTA.”  Jahar’s real first name is Dzhokhar, but it will be easier to sing the nickname, don’t you think? I won’t occupy space here to explain that the Tsarnaev brothers, Jahar and Tamerlan, were not the Marathon bombers “as advertised.” This article is only about the music.

In 1865, Henry Work wrote the song “The Ship That Never Returned,” about a shipwreck. He was born in 1794 in Pennsylvania. I don’t think the song reflects an actual event. Later, in regard to a real train crash, the tune was taken over for a new song, “the Wreck of the Old 97.”

That had to do with the 1903 crash of a mail truck, numbered 97, running from North Carolina to Virginia.  Eleven men died and seven more were injured. The cause of the accident, plunging the train down a hill, was that the conductor was told to “floor it” to make up for having lost time on the previous trip. There is disputed authorship of the lyrics for the song “The Old 97.” It ended up at the US Supreme Court.

I wish my song, “Jahar on the MTA,” would end up in the Supreme Court for other, non-copyright reasons. But, as I said, I’m not talking about that here. (Am I?)

In 1949, the melody of the shipwreck song was used again, for the humorous song “Charlie on the MTA.” It became a hit a song by The Kingston Trio in the 1960s. The song is a complaint about the fare on Boston’s subway trains, which poor Charlie can’t afford.

The lyricists, Jacqueline Steiner and Bess Lomax Hawes, were dedicated activists. Their song starts with this spoken (not sung) preface:

“These are the times that try men’s souls
In the course of our nation’s history
The people of Boston have rallied bravely
Whenever the rights of men have been threatened

Today a new crisis has arisen

The Metropolitan Transit Authority, better known as the MTA,
Is attempting to levy a burdensome tax on the population
In the form of a subway fare increase
Citizens, hear me out, this could happen to you!”

The main action comes in Verse 2 where we learn:

“Charlie handed in his dime at the Kendall Square station
And he changed for Jamaica Plain
When he got there the conductor told him, “One more nickel”
Charlie couldn’t get off of that train!”

(Believe it or not, Bostonians used to pay trolley fares at the end of the ride instead of the beginning.  The trolleys, aka “trams” in Melbourne, were also known as street cars. (Ask me sometime about the pulling up of the tram tracks in Adelaide.)

As you may know, in 1969 Dr Richard Day, a Rockefeller employee, did a lot of foretelling of social change. Most of it was pretty sinister, however he mentioned that breaks would be given for the elderly, such as discounts on travel. Sure enough, around 1970, the MTA started to give senior citizens a reduced fare. Both my parents were thrilled that they were allowed to drop a mere dime into the relevant receptacle on the bus, or in the train station.

Eventually, predicted Dr Richard Day, that generation would die off and the benefits would be withdrawn.  People would be asked to deal with Mom and Dad not via a nursing home but by gifting them a “demise pill.” Of course, I am not going to discuss that now as this article is very non-political. It is strictly about music.

I’ve fit my song into a particular cadence, as is heard below in Isto’s YouTube rendition of “Charlie on the MTA.”. I hope you will try singing along with Isto, using my new words. I recommend that you change his setting, by down-speeding it to .75. Isto goes too fast for my subject matter to be comprehensible — though in fact he’s not the fastest performer of the Charlie song.

I hope someone will try using both guitar and banjo for “Jahar on the MTA.” The Boston Pops have arranged a version of “Charlie” using the full array of instruments, but I don’t want to get into copyright strife with the BSO.

The 2022 Debut

I wrote the Jahar song yesterday, November 5, 2022 to take advantage of the free hour that would be given us after midnight, when changing the clocks for end of Daylight Savings Time.  (Although the 5 verses were drafted in less than an hour, it took much of the next day to tweak it.)  I thank Henry Work for setting up the refrain “she never returned, no she never returned” with reference to the ship. It keeps the narrative in balance, rhythmically.

By the way, in the YouTube Comments under one of the various performances of the shipwreck song, I found this item (contributed 5 years ago by Angelo):

“This song was played over and over every single day on a POW camp in The Philippines when the thousand Americans surrendered from the Japanese imperial army. The objective of the song is to emotionally destroy the morale of soldiers because General McArthur fled to Australia saying “I shall return” but for three years they waited and nothing.”

But far be it from me to enter into a debate about POWs at this time.

Here is my song.  Note: I can’t yet declare it public domain until I find out whether that would affect a singer’s willingness to record it.  And also, this is still only a draft.

Isto did not sing the “Poor Jahar” echoes, but I’ve printed them here anyway — they’re traditionally done by an outside voice. Maybe your neighbor can be recruited to do the echoes.

Be aware that you can’t stop to take a breath between the four lines of each verse — they run together awfully quickly. Note: I sometimes capitalize an emphatic syllable, or an emphatic, ahem, concept.

Please listen now to Isto’s version of Charlie, on its own, and then do your “cover” of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw072prymhY                     

JAHAR ON THE MTA 

Music by Henry Work, 1865
Lyrics by Mary Maxwell, 2022
(Sung to tune of “Charlie on the MTA”)

  1. America needs to hear ’bout a man named Tsar–NA-ev, and his capture in Watertown. Jahar had no way to know that he and his bro would be suspects for a Marathon bomb.
    Will he ever return? Will the prisoner return? His fate is currently sealed.
    We need lots of good people to stop acting like sheeple, and get the truth revealed!

  2. Tamerlan was NOT ‘run over,’and was neverin a shootout, on that April 19th morn.
    He was shown on CNN — with FBI escorting him — he was as naked as the day he was born.

Will he ever return? No, Bro can never return.
And for Todashev, the same is true.
Tam hoped to be a boxing star.   His Dad thought he’d go far.
But his 26 years are through.

  1. Boston Globe declared the bomber was hiding in a boat. He had penciled a confession on deck!  Troopers shot 200 bullets, at the un-armed suspect. And Jeff Campbell said, “They knifed his neck.”
    Will he ever return? Will Maret’s nephew return?  The injustice is still un-learned.
    It took masterful collusion, to arrive at “execution” — a sentence that he DID NOT earn.

  2. Ja-HAR had some classmates, down at U-MassDartmouth,  who could give him an alibi.  They got rounded up real fast.  Some were jailed and harassed.   So, they could not testify.

Will he ever return? Will Dzhok-har return?   Some say his chances are slim.
All it takes is one “OK.”  It could happen any day. Then his murder will ‘LEGALLY’ begin.  [guitar]

  1. Gov’nor Patrick made a robocall, to all the local cellphones, to announce a bit of martial law.  Soldiers beat on doors, as their Humvees roared,  You might have thought it was war.

Will he ever return? Yes, if witnesses come forward. If you know who killed Sean Collier, please ‘sing.’  Let’s give M.I.T. a schoolin.’ We don’t have to take their foolin’, about the parking-lot surveillance thing.   MIT must stop their foolin, or we’ll give them a good schoolin, about the parking-lot surveillance thing.

  1.  Now, Citizens of Boston, please reclaim your heritage. Don’t fall for every story you hear. If the plot sounds phony, just assume it’s baloney — and let fiction writers have their career.

Will he ever return? Yup, Tsarnaev will return.  We’re taking back our country today.
It’ll be great to shake the hand, of the Chechen who was damned, and see him ride the MTA.   Yes, Jahar on the MTA.   Jahar smiling on the MTA.

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33 COMMENTS

    • Well, in defense of my state, I have to say that the contestant in that picture from my county — Merrimack —
      weighs about half as much as I do. (second from the right on bottom row, green dress.)

      If I meet her I will challenge her to a weigh-in.

      • “Maybe I couldn’t make it. Maybe I don’t have a pretty smile, good teeth, nice tits, long legs, a cheeky arse, a sexy voice. Maybe I don’t know how to handle men and increase my market value, so that the rewards due to the feminine will accrue to me. Then again, maybe I’m sick of the masquerade. I’m sick of pretending eternal youth. I’m sick of belying my own intelligence, my own will, my own sex. I’m sick of peering at the world through false eyelashes, so everything I see is mixed with a shadow of bought hairs; I’m sick of weighting my head with a dead mane, unable to move my neck freely, terrified of rain, of wind, of dancing too vigorously in case I sweat into my lacquered curls. I’m sick of the Powder Room. I’m sick of pretending that some fatuous male’s self-important pronouncements are the objects of my undivided attention, I’m sick of going to films and plays when someone else wants to, and sick of having no opinions of my own about either. I’m sick of being a transvestite. I refuse to be a female impersonator. I am a woman, not a castrate.”
        ― Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch

    • Plain embarrassing. And why are the competitors smiling.
      What’s this called ? Soon there’ll be quotas… for everything. We’re heading to the paddocks.

  3. You really did it. My programming could only get up to Gilligan’s Island theme. I stopped watching some 25 years ago… or did I


    25 years people, walk on by, but its hard to do with that “cheerub” boy looking

  4. I don’t like the way my “epic poem” looks, with all those stage directions, so here it is in prose (sans the chorus):

    Well, let me give you some new thoughts, ’bout a man named Jahar: On that tragic and fateful morn he had no way to know that himself, and his bro, would be connected to a Marathon bomb! Jahar lived at U-Mass/Dartmouth, and he had some buddies who could give him an alibi. The Feebs jailed them pretty fast, and some others were harassed. So they could not testify. Brother Tam was not ‘run over,’ and was never in a ‘shoot-out’ on Laurel St, in Watertown. We saw the car — on CNN — to which he willingly climbed in; he was as naked as the day he was born! “Infra-red has found the terrorist — he’s in a shrink-wrapped boat!” (For the Boston Globe, no story is too odd.) Campbell said “They knifed his neck,” and by a miracle on deck, Jahar wrote his confession, to God! Deval Patrick made for panic, with his mini-martial law, he used Humvees to make citizens obey. But see, when governors do crime, and don’t get convicted, or serve some time, it’s curtains for the American way.

    [Why do I hear a voice from Canada saying “Tell that to the judge”?]

  6. Here is Wikipedia on Jacqueline Steiner, co0author of Charlie on the MTA in 1949:
    Steiner was born in New York City and grew up in Greenwich Village. During her time in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she began singing with other musicians who gathered at Bess Lomax Hawes’ house, including Sam and Arnold Berman. Steiner married Arnold Berman and moved back to New York. She was active in the folk scene in the 1950s and 60s, singing (as Jackie Berman) with Pete Seeger and others on Hootenanny Tonight!
    [Later], Steiner married publisher Myron Sharpe. They honeymooned in the Soviet Union, where she performed in concert. As Jacqueline Sharpe, she released an album of antiwar songs in 1966 entitled No More War. Steiner was a linguist, as she demonstrated in 1991 with her album Far Afield: Songs of Three Continents. Steiner joined the African American civil rights advocacy group the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People(NAACP) in 1991. Steiner died of pneumonia on January 25, 2019 at the age of 94 in Norwalk, Connecticut.

    • Murder, perversion and injustice is a constant. I remember one young lady who got the gig as a M$M newsreader and soon as some particular story came up, a week or two into her tenure, she broke down and had to be redeployed back to the weather or sports segment. Remember another one jumped off a cliff in Sydney about 10 years ago. Imagine how the paramedics feel, scraping another customer off the road. “You idiot” they are thinking, otherwise they couldn’t deal with it.

        • Yes you’re right it is a post to your longstanding concerns about this individual who is a patsy, on death row ? Well if you can’t save him I’m sure I won’t be any use, unfortunately, it’s a disgusting situation.
          Perhaps someone with no job or assets can glue themselves to an art painting for you. That seems to be how it’s done lately:
          CLIMATE EMERGENCY – weather is normal as usual

  7. Race for Arizona Governor – Kari Lake vs Incumbent
    The numbers have been stuck for about 24 hours on 50.3% to incumbent, 49.7% to Kari Lake, in other words manufactured votes for incumbent have to stay a nose ahead of Kari Lake or the shit hits the fan. Every counting machine in sight will have broken down by now and the place must be total chaos as dozens of officials desperately try to avoid jail-time for their misdeeds in 2020. The incumbent should have had all this fixed up by now, they had two years, hmmm ?

  9. Thanks Mary Woodstock with Janis – 1969

    Pattie with The Firm 2016—study the audience -the decor–the signalling- the timing

    Tavistock Agenda fait accompli
    Cathy Morgan tells of a massive concert on the Isle of Wight–Lord Mountbatten Mayor
    David Icke’s Home -today I received Angela Power Disney latest post about “another credible satanic ritual abuse case in Glasgow”— 5 of the accused dead and the case postponed until late 2023.

    “I’ll know my song well before I start singing”

    love the throat singing Joe–they might not look happy–but they are real

    Hope everyone got to watch Gabbi Choong Kay Griggs video-reckon Simon did

    “rabbit-holes, Admiralty law

    do not pass go, shipwrecks including Endeavour/or all the way from Plymouth to Florida.

    Good ditties for Yeaah, wink, in good humour for autistic clarification.”

  10. HARD RAIN:
    And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
    But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
    Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.
    In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back.
    Remember Lot’s wife.
    Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.
    I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.
    Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
    And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.”
    LUKE 17 26 – 37

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