As to the OP, how do laments compare to slow airs?
Yeah. It was absolutely freezing. Pouring with rain half the time too. And then you’d have to traipse back to the bloody make-up shed to get it fixed, which was about 2/3 of a mile there and 2/3 of a mile back. By which time, your make-up had run again. Grrr … They did have make-up people stood around on set to sort of ‘touch up’ the make-up, but sometimes the rain was just too much, and they didn’t want to miss a possible moment of filming.
Yeah, tomatoes are a new world fruit, aren’t they? (South American, not US.) Mind, I think the Italians co-opted them a very long time ago. They were discussing them in print from the early part of the 16th century, and the earliest cookbook with tomatoes in it (anywhere in the world, that is) was published in 1692 in … guess where? Naples!
To be fair, we weren’t a country yet.
yep, SA… what makes the Spanish the instigators!
More like Meso-American (which would partly include the US), at least in terms of the vector of cultural transmission. That it was the Nahuatl word “tomatl” that was adopted with the fruit is a clue, as opposed to say the original Quechua / Aymará term (which I don’t have handy).
Tell you what, that old thread is a bit of an eye-opener. Have I really learned nothing in the intervening time? I mean, I’m saying exactly the same things. (With the same built-in flaws that people are either missing or kindly failing to attack. 
) Told you I was having deja vu …
As for tomatoes, my point was really just that they’ve been in Italy a long time. Longer than pizza I guess. 
Good grief! The things an enquiring mind can learn around here. You say one thing, check it out … and …
Pizza is much older than European use of tomatoes for cooking. It says so here.
my but we are having a busy day
I think New York was probably the main crucible for worldwide popularity of pizza (including Europe) outside of Italy and Italian ethnic communities. The first US pizza parlor was Lombardi’s in Little Italy (1905), followed by Totonno’s in Coney Island. Lombardi and Totonno were both Neapolitan immigrants. And development would have been strongly influenced by Sicilian tastes, given the nature of NY’s immigrant population.
My mom certainly remembers her first exposure in the 1940s. After having lived in various places (Texas, LA, Chicago, Miami), it wasn’t until moving to NY that she became aware that there was even such a thing as pizza. An accurate reflection of the history and dissemination, I think. (And, now that I’ve read it, consistent with the Wiki article).
Yes, see the previous thread.
Absence of proof is not proof of absence. And all that’s needed is an general understanding of folkloristics and how the folk process works and has worked for years, including in relation to the American hymn tradition, to entertain the possibility of mixed-multiple origins.
The American LOC has a vested interest in emphasizing American roots, if only through implicit bias.
I think the Afro-Scottish hypothesis of the previous thread stands as the most plausible explanation.
Thank you for pointing out the prior thread. Perhaps the most important line from it is from a post of yours (quoting your quotation): "The familiar tune, which we all associate with Newton’s words, was also unknown in Britain. According to Mr Turner’s " emphasis original.
Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
That’s right. Likewise you can’t prove that there weren’t Chinese musicians in the royal courts of Medieval Ireland. Science is what you can prove or demonstrate to be true. Religion is what you believe in anyway. I’m not going to argue religious beliefs. If you want to believe that the tune was brought to America from Africa or some other place, there’s no proof against it.
But when it comes to the musical history of Scotland from 1700 to the present, it is well published. The burden of proof is on he who wants a good composition to exist that is not documented, when seemingly everything that could be collected was.
Again, 100% of the evidence points to an origin in the South. If there are British antecedents, I’d like a reference. I just looked over all the airs in Gow and Skinner, and I don’t see anything similar. Setting aside tonality, the tune is the wrong structure for a Scottish tune. The rhythms aren’t really Scottish either. Don’t know much about Irish or English from that time. Would like a citation.
And personally (perhaps religiously) I don’t believe the researchers at the Library of Congress gives a rip what direction the facts point.
I think the pizza is an Italian response to a Turkish thing based on a flat bread.
Flat breads are more or less a global phenomenon and occurs in many traditional societies from Mexico to India by different names, naturally, and serving differing culinary functions.
A bit like “slow airs” in different traditions.
I don’t know why you blokes are arguing about the origin of the “air” of Amazing Grace in the context of the topic. Whatever its origin, it is an air that is more reflective of the ethos of American folk than, say, Scots or Irish Trad (as it is currently). Even from a scalar perspective the item is STRICTLY major pentatonic whereas the other trads when they do have anything similar in scale always break the strict major pentatonic mould with a 4th (Wild Mountain Thyme) or a minor 7th (Give me your Hand) as just two examples.
Also, IM(untested)O the pulse (and slow airs do have a pulse) is too march like to be analagous to Irish slow airs and the unambiguous resolution of the melody on the key note of the scale is unlike the slow movements I hear in Scots stuff.
The great majority of Americans have no idea of what a real pizza is, untill they come to Italy and go to a good place. Better not to go to Naples in this particular period of history though…
My mama’s making some excellent pizza right now
Well, if you’re going to argue against yourself, who am I to object? 
Oh sure, agreed, me too. That is what my hypothesis entails.
If you think there’s some conflict between my more recent posts in this thread and my prior posts, I’d suggest going back and reviewing. And if you sill think there’s some conflict, please point it out so I can clarify. If there is any conflict, it is in the interpretation of what I wrote, and not the thoughts behind the writings.
I don’t have any hypothesis in this thread. Given the body of evidence at hand, there’s not a lot of room for hypothesis.
We all agree on so much.