Monday, May 28, 2012

Benedictine spirituality -

Retrieved from my faculty email account:
Campus Ministry Minute
Janoski, Steven A.
Sent: Mon 5/21/2012 6:55 AM
To: #All Springfield Campus Faculty; #All Springfield Campus Adjunct Faculty; #All Springfield Campus Staff
Cc:

“I cannot go on thinking that nodding to neighbors in the parking lot is hospitality. I cannot fool myself into thinking that being nice to those who are my kind and my class suffices for the moral dimensions of hospitality.”

(from Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today by Joan D. Chittister, OSB, page 130)

Fr. Steven Janoski
Director of Campus Ministry
Benedictine University at Springfield
1500 N. Fifth St.
Springfield, IL 62702

Saturday, May 26, 2012

DNA study suggests mixed racial origins of Melungeons in East Tennessee

http://news.yahoo.com/dna-study-seeks-origin-appalachias-melungeons-201144041.html


 NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — For years, varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark-skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons. Some speculated they were descended from Portuguese explorers, or perhaps from Turkish slaves or Gypsies.

Now a new DNA study in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy attempts to separate truth from oral tradition and wishful thinking. The study found the truth to be somewhat less exotic: Genetic evidence shows that the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin.

And that report, which was published in April in the peer-reviewed journal, doesn't sit comfortably with some people who claim Melungeon ancestry. ...

And so on ... confirms what's been hypothesized for a long time. Some good quotes from 19th-century court cases on racial categories, attitudes of the time ...

Thursday, May 17, 2012

"Old Ship of Zion" (The Happy Sailor)

Dr. B.J. Reagon last performance wSweet Honey in the Rock. Dr.. Bernise Johnson Reagon's last performance with Sweet Honey in the Rock. Performing 'Old Ship of Zion' live at a concert at the Warner theater in Washington, D.C.

Rev C.L Franklin(Aretha Franklin's father) - "The Old Ship Of Zion"

Sacred Harp 388 The Happy Sailor Coker UMC Hour 3 San Antonio Texas 1991 Denison Revision.mp4

From John Bealle's liner notes to a CD of the National Sacred Harp Convention singing their version of the song - “The Happy Sailor” (388) [led by] Seth Holloway, Nashville TN

C. J. Griggs (1911) | Arr. B. F. White (1859) Seth Holloway is in the music business in Nashville and was chair of the Young People’s Convention when the singing was hosted in that city. He is descended through his mother Sarah Smith from the singing Beasley family of Marion County, Alabama. His uncle Joe Beasley (1929- 1995) made some important recordings of Sacred Harp beginning during the 1950s that were recently released on compact disk. Beasley moved from Alabama to New York City and was a pivotal figure in the Sacred Harp revival there during the years before his death in 1995. In Beasley’s honor, a scholarship fund has been established that is awarded to young Sacred Harp singers to help with college expenses. _ Benjamin Franklin White (1800-1879) was the chief compiler of The Sacred Harp. In 1842 he moved his family from Spartanburg, South Carolina, to Harris County, Georgia. It was there that White, having contributed in some now-unknown capacity to William Walker’s Southern Harmony, set about to compile his own book. Along with The Sacred Harp, his chief contribution to religious song was the founding of the Southern Musical Convention (1845), thereby setting in motion the practice of democratically-organized singing conventions that has endured continuously since then. _ The tune of this song was arranged by B. F. White for the 1859 edition of The Sacred Harp; singer C. J. Griggs of Atlanta contributed the second and third verses. Griggs was a steadfast supporter of old sacred songs through the period when many turned to gospel music, and served J. S. James as assistant president of the United Convention in its early years. _According to James, the author of the original verse of the text is unknown. Both text and tune have circulated widely in variants under the title “The Old Ship of Zion,” notably as an African-American spiritual. As a spiritual, the most famous printed setting is surely the transcription by Lucy McKim in the book Slave Songs of the United States (1867), pp. 102-3. See: Jackson, Spiritual Folksongs, song #210. Information on C. J. Griggs is from the 1911 James footnote to “The Happy Sailor.” Joe Beasley’s recording is the Joe Beasley Memorial Sacred Harp Album: Northwestern Alabama 1954~1976~1977~1978, produced by Jean Seiler, 1999.

John Beale 2003 Liner notes. Traditional Musics of Alabama, Volume 3: 2002 National Sacred Harp Singing Convention. CD. Alabama Traditions 203, produced by the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture. http://www.arts.state.al.us/actc/vol3all.pdf

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

A HISTORY OF U.S. ARMY BANDS
Subcourse Number MU0010
EDITION D
US Army Element, School of Music
1420 Gator Blvd, Norfolk, VA 23521-5170
a 3 Credit Hoursa
Edition Date: October 2005
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/armybands.pdf

* * *

13. BANDS OF THE WEST

a. During the era after the Civil War, the country expanded westward. New posts were established throughout the great frontier. Although regimental bands were abolished by the Army Act of 1869, the Army carried music with it to the West. Regimental commanders continued to maintain bands. These bands usually consisted of men detailed for that purpose. They were paid from the regimental fund or by subscription.

b. Post life was lonesome and unexciting with few chances to experience culture. Leading parades, performing for dances, providing concerts and escorting funerals brought a certain amount of pomp, entertainment, and culture to remote areas. Every evening, when not in the field, the band gave an hour concert in front of the regimental headquarters. Army bands were present at many historic events. In 1869, the 21st Infantry Band helped to celebrate the joining of the nation with the golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah.

c. Bands played for ceremonies marking the end of campaigns and hostilities. After Geronimo surrendered, he and the other Indian prisoners were sent to an Indian reservation located in Florida. On September 8, 1886, the Fourth Cavalry Band assembled on the parade ground at Fort Bowie and played as the prisoners were escorted from Fort Bowie to be loaded aboard a train for Florida.

d. On January 21, 1891, General Miles' Army staged a final grand review at the Pine Ridge Agency to mark the end of the Ghost Dance Uprising. On this occasion, the First Infantry Regimental Band provided the music.

e. During this period, Lieutenant General Philip H. Sheridan commanded the Division of the Missouri (1869 to 1883). Many of the same officers serving under him during the Civil War now had commands in his division. Among them was Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer. As mentioned earlier, both Sheridan and Custer loved music and knew the effect of music upon their troops. As a result, bands found themselves at the front once more.

f. LTC Custer insisted on a band for the Seventh Cavalry. The musicians were given gray mounts (horses). This was the traditional color for musicians. Sheridan used the color gray for his bands during the Civil War. This presented an additional requirement for the band; each bandsman also had to be a superb horseman. In order to keep the hands free while playing, the musician controlled the horse with his knees. It was a difficult enough task for the musician to perform while the horse was standing still or at a walk. This problem was only compounded when playing at the charge.

g. The mounted band of the Seventh Cavalry accompanied Custer on many campaigns. Playing Garry Owen, the band led his charge at the Washita River in 1868 and again in 1873 on the north bank of the Yellowstone below the mouth of the Bighorn.

h. By 1876, a number of Congressional acts provided the Army with 40 chief musicians, 60 principal musicians, 10 chief trumpeters, 240 trumpeters, and 628 musicians. All the positions of chief trumpeter or trumpeter were assigned to the 10 cavalry regiments (1 chief trumpeter and 24 trumpeters per regiment).

i. In garrison, the trumpeters were posted on a rotation basis to the guardhouse. They played the daily calls which so regulated post life, even causing one lieutenant's wife to write, "We lived, ate, slept by the bugle calls."

j. In the field, one bugler reported to the regimental commander as orderly bugler of the day. Once a command or signal was given on the march, the bugler played the appropriate call for that command or signal. After a pause, he repeated the last note. The original call that was sounded became the preparatory command. The repeated last note became the signal of execution. In addition, a call which ascended the musical scale indicated movement to the right of the line or column while a call which descended the scale indicated movement to the left of the line or column.

k. An additional duty of the orderly bugler of the day was messenger for the regimental commander. Trumpeter John Martin (Giovanni Martini, originally a drummer for Garibaldi during the wars to unite Italy) was the orderly bugler of the day at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. His life was spared when sent back with a message from Custer's Adjutant (LT W.W. Cooke) to Colonel Benteen requesting the ammunition packs brought forward. In 1879, Martin was called to Chicago to give testimony at the court of inquiry investigating the events at the Little Big Horn.

l. The musical and non-musical requirements of the bands and field musicians often put them on the front lines and exposed to fire. However, they responded to these duties as they had during the Civil War. Some of the musicians earned the Medal of Honor for their individual actions. For example, Trumpeter John E. Clancy, Light Battery E, First Artillery, received the Medal of Honor for his actions at Wounded Knee Creek, December 29, 1890.

m. In 1899, an effort was made to improve military musical units by selecting suitable men for regimental bands from recruits at depots or by special enlistment. n. In 1894, a War Department general order authorized one sergeant and 20 privates per band, plus the chief musician or leader.

o. Though no record dating before 1889 indicates any standard instrumentation for Army bands, a list of the instruments issued to each regiment for the use of its band during the period 1889-1895 gives some indication of the instrumentation of the times. This list included the following: D-flat piccolo, concert flute, E-flat clarinets, B-flat clarinets, E-flat cornets, B-flat cornets or flugelhorns, E-flat altos, B-flat trombones (valve or slide), B-flat baritone, E-flat basses, snare drum, bass drum, and cymbals. a. On February 15, 1898, an explosion sank the USS MAINE in Havana Harbor killing 266

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

"Early in the Morning" - in Slave Songs of the United States (1867)

Early in the Morning - Andrew Calhoun

Sea Island Spiritual found in "Slave Songs of the United States," published 1867.
"Walk 'em easy round the heaven [3x]
Till all living may join that band."
Video by Muriel Poehler, Royalton, MN 4/20/2009

Calhoun is a Chicago singer-songwriter who specializes in Sea Island spirituals and Anglo-Celtic traditional music. From his website: "Veteran Chicago area folksinger/songwriter Andrew Calhoun is joined in performance by his daughter Casey, adding vocals and interpretive dance. Casey's pure, distinctive voice takes the lead on songs by artists from Anais Mitchell to Frank Loesser, and adds new dimensions of harmony and call-and-response to Calhoun originals, Scottish ballads and folksongs, and rare 19th century African-American spirituals. Casey, an accomplished dancer, moves to Mary Oliver's poetry and Dave Carter's music in this striking, joyful combination of complementary talents."

Monday, May 14, 2012

"The Buffaloes" - a regimental song of the 10th Cavalry from the 1880s (and 1960s) - and snippets of camp life in Spanish-American War

Wikipedia entry on 10th_Cavalry_Regiment_(United_States) has the text as a "Regimental Song of the Tenth Cavalry Regiment from about 1885. Sung to the tune of Stephen Foster's "Camptown Races"):

We’re fighting bulls of the Buffaloes,
Git a goin’ – git a goin’
From Kansas’ plains we’ll hunt our foes;
A trottin’ down the line.
Our range spreads west to Santa Fe,
Git a goin’ – git a goin’.
From Dakota down the Mexican way;
A trottin’ down the line.
[CHORUS:]
Goin’ to drill all day
Goin’ to drill all night,
We got our money on the buffaloes,
Somebody bet on the fight.
Cited to “Official 4ID History 4th Infantry Division Homepage: History". United States Army. 2 August 2010. Archived from the original on 29 January 2010. Retrieved 9 February 2010; and "Official 4ID History 4th Infantry Division Homepage: History - 1-10 Cav". United States Army. 2012-02-28. Both links broken.

Song is also available linked to a History of the 1st Cavalry Division webpage by Cavalry Outpost Publications ® and Trooper Wm. H. Boudreau, "F" Troop, 8th Cavalry Regiment (1946 - 1947): 10th Cavalry Regiment - Organizational Legacy - "Ready And Forward" ... identified as "Regimental Song of the 10th Cavalry Regiment." No date.

Spanish-American War

  • From Salt Lake Tribune, April 20, 1898, as the 24th Infantry was preparing to ship out for the Spanish-American War:
    One soldier had his kid spread out on the floor of the veranda in front of his barracks. It contained besides the usual camp equipment, a cracked blue mug with a gilt label, "From One Who Loves You" running diagonally across its face. An inscription on the photography gave Mobile, Ala., as the place where it was taken, and as the soldier rolled up his belongings he softly hummed:
    "Down Mobile, down Mobile,
    How I Love 'at pretty yellow gal,
    Down Mobile."
    (Clark 234)
    Michael J. Clark, "Improbable Ambassadors: Black Soldiers at Fort Douglas, 1896-99." Buffalo Soldiers in the West: A Black Soldiers Anthology. Ed. Bruce A. Glasrud and Michael N. Searles. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. 221-41.

  • Writing in The Atlantic in 1903, Oswald Garrison Villiard says:
    As soon as the army settled down in the trenches before Santiago, smuggled musical instruments -- guitars, banjos, mouth organs, and what not -- appeared among the negro troops as if by magic, and they were ever in use. It was at once a scene of cheerfulness and gayety, and the officers had their usual trouble in making the men go to sleep instead of spending the night in talking, singing, and gaming. In the peaceful camp of the Third Alabama, in that state, the scenes were similar. There was always "a steady hum of laughter and talk, dance, song, shout, and the twang of musical instruments." It was "a scene full of life and fun, of jostling, scuffling, and racing, of clown performances and cake-walks, of impromptu minstrelsy, speech-making, and preaching, of deviling, guying, and fighting, both real and mimic." The colonel found great difficulty in getting men to work alone. Two would volunteer for any service. "Colonel," said a visitor to the camp, "your sentinels are sociable fellows. I saw No. 5 over at the end of his beat entertaining No. 6 with some fancy manual of arms. Afterwards, with equal amiability, No. 6 executed a most artistic cake-walk for his friend." It must be remembered here that this colonel's men were typical Southern negroes, literate and illiterate, and all new to military life.
    Oswald Garrison Villard, "The Negro in the Regular Army, Atlantic Monthly, 91, 1903, 721-729. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/VilNegr.html.

Friday, May 11, 2012

"Ain't I Glad I Got Out of the Wilderness" - played by Michigan troops in Civil War

http://bentley.umich.edu/research/guides/civilwar/introduction.php Ida C. Brown, "Michigan Men in the Civil War" Introduction: Subject Guides and Indexes, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan Frequently at the end of a march a new camp was set up, the men working "very briskly . . . levelling the ground, felling trees, putting up tents, digging wells [and] building log huts." Quite as frequently before the day was ended an order came "to strike tents and be ready to move in two hours." At the end of the two hours "the tents were down [the men] were on the move again, the band playing 'Ain't I glad to get out of the wilderness.'" Perhaps at the end of this march no camp was built. The men spread their blankets on the ground for the night but not sleeping, as one soldier said, "until we had told so many stories and joked, so much that I nearly laughed myself to death."

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Old-time and Irish session links - the basics

http://home.comcast.net/~saustin98/lark/ Vashon Celtic Tunes of Seattle lead sheet, chords and MIDI file http://www.mne.psu.edu/lamancusa/tunes.htm Old Time Fiddle Tunes A collection of fiddle tunes from old recordings and workshops, transcribed by John Lamancusa of Penn State

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

"Life Let Us Cherish" / "Freut euch des Leb­ens"

Then he took his fiddle out of its box. He played for a long time in the twilight, while Laura and Mary sat close to him and Ma rocked Carrie nearby... - He played 'The Campbells Are Coming, Hurrah! Hurrah!' Then he played 'Life Let Us Cherish.' And he put away the fiddle ... -- On the Banks of Plum Creek, Chapter 26, "Grasshopper Eggs"
-- Pioneer Girl: Fact and Fiction of Laura Ingalls Wilder

The University of North Carolina has a copy of Hans Georg Nägeli, Life Let Us Cherish. With variations by Mozart. published in New York by W. Dubois in 1818. Several copies attributed to Mozart in the Levy collection at Johns Hopkins.

The best playing music is on the ABC Notation website ... it's in G instead of F, and there are several websites that will transpose it down to "D for dulcimer."
Nancy Cleaveland has the best background on the song at her Pioneer Girl: Fact and Fiction in Laura Ingalls Wilder website:

"Life Let Us Cherish" was originally a song entitled "Freut Euch des Lebens," written in 1796 by Swiss poet Johann Martin Usteri and composer Hans Georg Nageli. It became immensely popular in America as "Life Let Us Cherish." ...
With lyrics and a MIDI file. Cleaveland has a lot of period music in her INDEX OF SONGS FROM THE "LITTLE HOUSE"® BOOKS.

"Freut euch des Lebens" by German pop singer Edith Prock

The Dictionary of Music and Musicians on Wikisource has this: "LIFE LET US CHERISH. A favourite German song, commencing 'Freut euch des Lebens,' the author of which is Martin Usteri of Zurich ; first published in the ' Gottinger Musen- almanach ' for 1 796 without the author's name. The music was written in 1793 by Hans Georg Nageli. It is used as subject for the elaborate variations which form the last movement of Woelfl's celebrated sonata called ' Non plus ultra.' [R.M.]"