COMPARE CONTRAST THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA AND GOETHE'S FAUSTUS Research Paper

COMPARE CONTRAST THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA AND GOETHE'S FAUSTUS - Research Paper Example No contemporary song better illustrates the persistence of the â€Å"Devil as fiddler† than the 1979 country-rock hit â€Å"The Devil Went Down to Georgia† by the Charlie Daniels Band. The Devil encounters a young man â€Å"who plays the fiddle hot† and challenges him to a musical duel, the outcome of which is unexpected: After centuries of bargaining, humankind has finally produced a musician whose natural skills surpass the Devil’s. This paper analyzes the similarities and differences between Goethe’s Faust and Charlie Daniels’s The Devil Went Down to Georgia. It is the contention of this paper that the song has largely adapted the ‘devil wager’ theme while making its subject more straightforward than the complex Faust play. The tune is made up of two instrumental pauses ushered by Charlie Daniels himself on fiddle; every break symbolizes the performance of one of the competitors. The song of the devil has no actual, genuine tune, but an eerie melody that Daniels attained by overdubbing some parts of his own performance with the fiddle. Johnny performs a rendition of the old song called Fire on the Mountain. His melody is presented in the song through the below puzzling verses (Daniels 10): Charlie Daniels, in creating this song, was obviously inspired by folk stories about the demon taking part in fiddling competitions, which have been popular in the U.S. for more than a century. Charles M. Skinner documented such a story, narrated by a Black fiddler called Joost in New York, perhaps in the middle of the 19th century. Similar to numerous devil and ghost tales, in the story of Skinner the demon is chased off by the devotion of Joost in performing a hymn, and by the coming of dawn (Bendix & Hasan-Rokem 128). Nevertheless, in other renditions of the story, the demon is easily conquered by grander musicianship. Still in relation to The Devil Went Down to Georgia, consider, for instance, a rendition obtained by Herbert