Gobsmacked: A Song History
"Gobsmacked" brings DulciWhistle to a close: it is the last of the fourteen titles in the listing for John Keane and Karen Keane's book of mountain dulcimer and pennywhistle (tin whistle) duets, published by Fingers Of Steel, and the contents page shown among the listing's images puts it on pages 30–31.[1] The listing presents everything in the book as the couple's original music, but neither it nor the contents page assigns this tune to one Keane in particular, and no tuning is stated.[1] The cover pictured on the listing advertises an included CD, on which the contents page gives "Gobsmacked" track 14 plus an instrumental version as track 26; the download version pairs the PDF with 26 MP3 tracks.[1]
Thomas Rowlandson, Admiration with Astonishment (Le Brun Travested, or Caricatures of the Passions), hand-colored etching, printed in brown ink, January 21, 1800. Shown for its astonished face; it has no connection to the tune.
On their DulcimerDownloads artist pages, John and Karen Keane appear as Shreveport, Louisiana, performers whose range runs from Louisiana traditional music and bluegrass to Mississippi Delta blues, played on mountain dulcimer, Native American flute, ukulele and cajón.[2][3] The same pages say both took music-education degrees at Northeast Louisiana University, since renamed the University of Louisiana-Monroe, and that their own compositions for dulcimer and Native American flute fill several books and CDs.[2][3] Beyond the audio that comes with the book, the sources consulted here document no recording of the tune, nor any explanation of its title.[1][2][3]
As a word, gobsmacked is an informal, chiefly British adjective that Merriam-Webster applies to someone left astounded by shock, surprise or wonder; the dictionary dates this sense to 1956 and builds the word from gob and smack.[4] In the sense used there, gob is a chiefly British word for the mouth, on record since 1568 and probably derived from Scottish Gaelic and Irish.[5] These definitions describe the word only, and nothing in the sources consulted here links them to the Keanes' choice of title.[1][4][5]
Sources
- Fingers Of Steel: "John Keane And Karen Keane, DulciWhistle".
- DulcimerDownloads: "John Keane".
- DulcimerDownloads: "Karen Keane".
- Merriam-Webster: "Gobsmacked".
- Merriam-Webster: "Gob".
- Image: Thomas Rowlandson, Admiration with Astonishment (Le Brun Travested, or Caricatures of the Passions), hand-colored etching, printed in brown ink, January 21, 1800. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.