More on Liebster Jesu … variant in 1819 Swedish psalmbook

D R A F T

Mystery solved! (I think …)

The song referred to in the pioneer reminiscence I referenced in a post on Sept. 7 is Hit O Jesu …" and not the baptismal hymn we sing to the melody LEIBSTER JESU

The reminiscence, in The Augustana Synod: a brief review of its history, 1860-1910 (Rock Island: Augustana Book Concern, 1910): 25-27:

The people were beside themselves with joy (i. e. over the visit of a minister). Services were announced for the following day (a Saturday) in the school-house, and all who could crawl or walk assembled. Many of them had lived there five and six years and during all that time had never heard a sermon. When they began the service by singing psalm 328 : 'Blessed Jesus, at Thy Word we are gathered all to hear Thee' (Hit, o Jcsu, samloms vi att ditt helga ord fa bora) [26] the singing was smothered by sobs and only after some minutes were they able to continue.

Cite and context, including another congregation where "the service was carried out by one of the members. When they were through and on the way home, he called out: 'Hold on, boys; I forgot to read the benediction,' to which they shouted back : 'Save it till next time!'" on Hogfiddle Sept. 7, 2013

http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2013/09/pioneer-swedish-american-church.html

In September I didn't make the distinction between two similar chorales, and wasn't able to get them straightened out in my mind till now. They are:

• "Blessed Jesus, at Thy word." Text: Tobias Clausnitzer; trans. Catherine Winkworth. A gathering hymn. Hymnary.org lists in 119 hymnals. http://www.hymnary.org/text/blessed_jesus_at_thy_word.
• "Blessed Jesus, here we stand." Baptismal hymn by Benjamin Schmolck, trans. Winkworth. 50 hymnals. http://www.hymnary.org/text/blessed_jesus_here_we_stand.

Both hymns, the first words of which are practically identical, most commonly use Ahle's tune LIEBSTER JESU. But Clausnitzer's gathering hymn was also set to a minor-key variant by Carl Wolfgang Briegel (1687) and got into the 1819 psalmbook with that tune.

I am not going to try to straighten out the Sept. 7 post -- the information I got from the sources I consulted at that time was correct as far as it went -- but I will repost this disclaimer there in order to (hopefully) minimize confusion.

Clausnitzer's gathering hymn is printed in my reprint of Johan Henrik Thomander's Svenska Psalm-Boken Af År 1819 with Carl Wolfgang Briegel's melody in E minor, No. 328. This is the hymn the pioneers were so glad to hear when a pastor came through.

I wasn't able to find Schmolck's baptismal hymn. But apparently the 1819 psalmbook used a baptismal text by Franzén, Du som var den minstes vän (No. 341), translates roughly, "You who are the friend of the least [of these]" … sung to melody of No. 126, which is variant of LIEBSTER JESU in in G major.

The 1901 Augustana hymnal and service book has "Blessed Jesus at Thy word" [Catherine Winkworth's translation] to the melodies by Carl Wolfgang Breigel , 1687 (first tune, identified as Liebser Jesu, in D minor), and Johann Rudolph Ahle, 1664 (second tune, identified as Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, in G major), at No. 151.

The 1925 hymnal offers more choices:

• No. 225. Blessed Jesus, here we stand. Schmolk's baptismal hymn. Ahle's melody.
• No. 302. Blessed Jesus at Thy word. Clauswitzer's gathering hymn. Briegels' 1687 melody in D minor.
• No. 357. Now our worship sweet is over. Text (see below) by Hartmann Schenk. Ahle

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From Swedish Wikipedia pages:

Du som var den minstes vän är en doppsalm med fem verser av Frans Michael Franzén, som bygger på texter i Nya Testamentet, framför allt evangeliet om Jesus och barnen. Diktad 1814. | Den sjungs till en koral komponerad av Johann Rudolf Ahle 1664. Samma melodi används till Benjamin Schmolcks psalmtext Jesu, du, som i din famn.

• 1819 års psalmbok som nr 341 under rubriken "Kristligt sinne och förhållande. För föräldrar." [But in the Koralbok, No. 341 refers to No. 126 for the melodi.]

http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_som_var_den_minstes_vän

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LBW has No. 187 as baptismal hymn, with Schmolk's words, and 248 as gathering hymn w/ Clausnitzer's.

Bkurbs on all three in the 1925 hymnal from Hymnary.org (w/ help from a Lutheran website for the third, which is pretty obscure).

"Blessed Jesus, at Thy word." Text: Tobias Clausnitzer; trans. Catherine Winkworth. A gathering hymn. Hymnary.org lists in 119 hymnals.

Blessed Jesus, at Thy word
Author: Tobias Clausnitzer; Translator: Catherine Winkworth
Tune: LIEBSTER JESU
Published in 119 hymnals

1 Blessed Jesus, at your word
we are gathered all to hear you.
Let our hearts and souls be stirred
now to seek and love and fear you.
By your gospel pure and holy,
teach us, Lord, to love you solely.

http://www.hymnary.org/text/blessed_jesus_at_thy_word.

"Blessed Jesus, here we stand." Baptismal hymn by Benjamin Schmolck, trans. Winkworth. 50 hymnals.

Blessed Jesus, here we stand.
Translator: Catherine Winkworth; Author: Benjamin Schmolck (1704)
Tune: LIEBSTER JESU
Published in 50 hymnals

Dearest Jesus, we are here,
gladly your command obeying.
With this child we now draw near
in response to your own saying
that to you it shall be given
as a child and heir of heaven.

http://www.hymnary.org/text/blessed_jesus_here_we_stand.

Now our worship sweet is over. Apparently a sending hymn, 17th-century German --

"Now our worship sweet is over."
Author: M. Hartmann Schenk
Published in 11 hymnals: American Lutheran Hymnal #d354 -- Evangelical Lutheran Hymn Book with Tunes #d297 -- Evangelical Lutheran Hymnal #9 Image -- Evangelical Lutheran Hymnbook (Lutheran Conference of Missouri and Other States) #d227 -- Evangelical Lutheran Hymnbook (Lutheran Conference of Missouri and Other States) #d247 -- Hymnal: for churches and Sunday-schools of the Augustana Synod #164 Image Songs of Praise #d208 -- Songs of Praise for Sunday Schools, Church Societies and the Home #d213 -- The Hymnal and Order of Service #d358 -- The Hymnal and Order of Service #d359 -- The Lutheran Hymnary Junior ... of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Synod and the United Norwegian Lutheran Church of America #d187

http://www.hymnary.org/text/now_our_worship_sweet_is_oer

The Free Lutheran Chorale-Book at http://www.lutheranchoralebook.com/now-our-worship-sweet-is-oer/ has the words:

1. Now our worship sweet is o’er—
Singing, praying, teaching, hearing;
Let us gladly God adore
For His gracious strength and cheering.
Praise our God, who now would save us,
For the rich repast He gave us.

Hartmann Schenk, 1634-1681, was a 17th-century German hymn writer and pastor. Biography, in German, at http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/ADB:Schenk,_Hartmann.

This quote from Hymnary.org, copied and pasted from my Sept. 7 post, spells out the relationship:

LlEBSTER JESU is a rather serene German chorale that is ideally sung in three long lines and in parts with light organ accompaniment. In rounded bar form (AABA') LIEBSTER JESU (also called DESSAU and NURENBERG) was originally one of Johann R. Able's “sacred arias,” first published with Franz J. Burmeister's Advent hymn text “Ja, er ist's, das Heil der Welt" in the Mühlhausen, Germany, Neue geistliche auf die Sonntage . . . Andachten (1664). The tune was later modified and published in the Darmstadt, Germany, Das grosse Cantional (1687) as a setting for a baptism hymn by Benjamin Schmolck that had the same first line as Clausnitzer's text: "Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier." Because several sources say that LIEBSTER JESU was first associated with Clausnitzer's hymn in the 1671 Altdoifer Gesangbuch, it seems probable that the tune name derives from that hymn text.

http://www.hymnary.org/hymn/PsH/280

Otto Malmberg -- & mp3 files of Swedish hummel player in 1980s

Otto Malmberg, of Småland, is considered the last traditional Swedish hummel player. He performed at the Skansen outdoor museum in Stockholm in 1908 and 1917, where sound recordings were made and an iconic picture was taken.

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Photo at left shows German luthier Wilfried Ulrich playing a hummel with picture of Malmberg in the background during Ulrich's 2011 hummel exhibition at Cloppenburg Museum in Lower Saxony.

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Brief notice below of Malmberg's 1917 recordings for Skansen in Fataburen magazine available in the Runeberg digital text collection.

Fataburen / Redogörelse för Nordiska museets utveckling och förvaltning år 1917 / 22 http://runeberg.org/fataburen/1917r/0022.html

Detta är Projekt Runebergs digitala faksimilutgåva av Fataburen, en kulturhistorisk tidskrift eller årsbok som utges av Nordiska museet i Stockholm sedan 1906.

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"Anders Eklund spelar hummel." Södermanlands Spelmansförbunds samlingar. http://www.samlingarna.sormlandsspel.se/?page_id=1184

Eklund was a folk musician, was recorded playing the hummel on Swedish radio in the 1980s: "… 1984 sände SR ett program om hummeln. Magnus Gustavsson och Anders samtalar och Anders spelar låtar på sin hummel. | Dottern Clara Frohm har försett arkivet med en inspelning av radioprogrammet." 20-minute mp3 file w/ interview in Swedish and several tunes. Has nice polska from Småland at 22:55. Also, this info on Malmberg:

Hummel – den äldre folkliga cittran – har få nutida utövare.
Traditionen levde längst i Småland och Otto Malmberg från Ljungby brukar anges som den siste traditionsbäraren. Han spelade på Skansen i 1900-talets begynnelse och var kanske inte var den siste traditionsbäraren, men han var den tidigaste som dokumenterades med en ljudinspelning (Yngve Laurells fonografinspelning).

Links to articles by Anders Eklund(h), "Hummeln – ett bortglömt folkinstrument" in Sörmlandslåten nr 1 1983; and Gösta Klemmings i Sörmlandslåten nr 2 1983.

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Polonäs ur en notbok från Sexdrega. Published on Jan 27, 2013. Anders Eklundh (1947-2007) spelar på hummel. / Anders Eklundh plays on a "hummel" a melody from a notebook from Sexdrega, Sweden. From the LP "Gammelharpa, säckpipa,hummel", 1986. [Uploaded by YouTube user silverbasharpa -- directory w/ several Swedish folk tunes at https://www.youtube.com/user/silverbasharpa/videos.

Pope Francis in Bethlehem ** UPDATED x1 ** footage in Manger Square and Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem

Some fascinating unedited video available of Pope Francis' visit today to Bethlehem …

Welcome Ceremony for the Pope in the State of Palestine. Official Vatican live feed video of the entire ceremony in Manger Square: "Streamed live on May 25, 2014, Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pope Francis is greeted by Mr Mahmud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, at the welcome ceremony upon his arrival in the Country and meets the Palestinian highest personalities." (1:20:26)

Voiceover sounds like it's in Arabic. I'll try to find a description in English of the festivities, which include a mixture of traditional and what sounds like Christian contemporary with an Middle Eastern lilt to it.

Holy Mass celebrated by the Pope in Bethlehem and Regina Coeli. Vatican feed. "Streamed live on May 25, 2014. Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pope Francis presides over the Holy Mass in the Manger Square in Bethlehem followed by the Regina Coeli Prayer. Groups of faithfull from Gaza and Galilee and migrants from Asia attend the celebration." Christmas carol "Angels we have heard on high" (to give it its English words) at 18:09 as mass begins. (2:02:31-28:38:00)

The live blog on the Times of Israel website has detailed coverage, from an Israeli perspective, with embeds of official Vatican video, including the welcoming ceremonies above and live feeds of:

• The mass in Manger Square; and
• A meeting outside the Church of the Nativity with youth from Dheisheh and other refugee camps.

Times of Israel blog is headlined:

Pope ends first day of visit with message of unity, brotherhood

Netanyahu commits to protecting ‘status quo’ at holy sites; Peres, Abbas agree to meet in Vatican; pontiff calls Israeli-Palestinian conflict ‘increasingly unacceptable’

Available at http://www.timesofisrael.com/pope-francis-to-touch-down-in-bethlehem-sunday-morning/#ixzz32l4CvZJw The live blog has other sidelights of the pope's visit to Bethlehem, his departure for Israel and arrival at Ben Gurion airport, for an official welcome to Israel and a helicopter ride with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials to Jerusalem.

Al Jazeera's English-language website has coverage from Arab perspective:

• POPE'S HOLY LAND VISIT CASTS LIGHT ON PLIGHT OF PALESTINIAN CHRISTIANS -- a pre-story at http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/24/pope-palestinianchristians.html
• POPE FRANCIS INVITES ISRAELI, PALESTINIAN LEADERS TO VATICAN -- roundup at http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/25/pope-francis-wallpalestine.html

Video of the pope's entire trip to the Holy Land is available on the Vatican's YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7E-LYc1wivk33iyt5bR5zQ.

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Pope Francis in Israel - The First Day. Video from live feed produced by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Service in Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre begins at 4:16.

Live Broadcast [above] from Pope's visit: http://on.fb.me/1jRqEHp

The first day of Pope Francis' visit to Israel began with an official ceremony upon his arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport. The Pope was greeted by President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ministers of the Israeli government.

The Pope then flew by helicopter to Jerusalem's Mount Scopus, where he was welcomed by Jerusalem Mayor, Nir Barkat.

Following his arrival in Jerusalem, Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew met at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to commemorate a meeting of their revered predecessors, Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, which took place 50 years ago in the Holy Land. The meeting of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Francis in Jerusalem is a strong symbolic confirmation of the commitment and determination to continue the path which the two great Church leaders inaugurated half a century ago.

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Ecumenical event on the anniversary of the meeting between Paul VI and Athenagoras. Orthodox religious ceremony begins at 1:05:00; Latin rite choir and recessional from 1:50:00. Streamed live on May 25, 2014. Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pope Francis and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew meet in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the meeting in Jerusalem between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras. (2:17:42)

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Lots of highlights on Times of Israel live blog at http://www.timesofisrael.com/pope-heads-to-temple-mount-western-wall-on-last-day-of-trip/. Head and subhead sum it up, again from an Israeli perspective:

Pray for us, Netanyahu asks Francis as papal visit ends

Pope flies back to Rome; PM defends security barrier to pontiff; Francis at Yad Vashem calls Holocaust greatest evil in history; makes unscheduled stop at memorial to terror victims

"Fill-A Me Up" by Pepper Choplin

A cool anthem we started practicing tonight for Pentecost at Atonement ...

As performed with baritone solo by the Motet Singers of Louisville, Ky.

Arrangement from the Netherlands (?) with hand drums backing choir and tenor solo

Sheet music at http://www.jwpepper.com/Fill-A-Me-Up/8060245.item#.U31xe82mebM". Pepper Choplin served 22 years as music minister at Greystone Baptist Church in Raleigh, N.C. He has a B.M. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and an M.M. in composition from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Bio at http://www.pepperchoplin.com/.

Latin American baroque, world music, etc.

While the word isn't mentioned in the YouTube notes, you can hear what creolization sounds like in this choral piece by 17th- and early 18th-century Latin American composer Juan de Araujo … it's on the cusp of Spanish renaissance and baroque, but performed with a distinct Latino beat …

Los Coflades de la estleya, by Juan de Araujo.
Crescendo [an early music group in New England] presented in concert in April 2011 works of the Spanish and Latin American Renaissance. This work, by Juan de Araujo (1646 - 1712), the concluding number on the program, is considerably later than most of the music on the program, and reflects the fusion of Spanish renaissance music with the music of the indigenous peoples of Latin America. Salome Sandoval, also playing the vihuela, Jordan Rose Lee, and Diana Brewer are the soprano soloists. [Blurb: Crescendo "brings rarely heard choral and instrumental music, sacred and secular, performed by professionals and talented amateurs, to the communities of northwestern Connecticut, from western Massachusetts, and from eastern New York State."

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Excerpt from Simon Broughton. "Baroque: The Latin American Way." Sinfini Music. 15 March 2013. http://sinfinimusic.com/uk/features/series/classical-connections/latin-american-baroque.

At first the music was dominated by the sacred, polyphonic music of the leading composers from Spain, like Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) who never visited Latin America. Hernando Franco (1532-85), born in Spain, was probably the first notable composer to move to the New World where he became chapel master in Santiago de Guatamala, and, in 1575, in Mexico City. Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (1590-1644), also born in Spain, became chapel master in Puebla in 1629. The polyphonic music is gorgeously beautiful, but at first belongs very much to the European tradition. Things start to get interesting when the Latin and indigenous music starts to mix.

Colonisation was underway all over Latin America, with the Jesuits leading the missions into the areas that are now Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. In the mid-16th century, a Jesuit missionary wrote to his superiors in Europe that with just one orchestra he would be able to convert the whole continent to Catholicism. Sacred music starts to be sung in languages like Quechua (the language of the Incas in Peru) and Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs in Mexico), local dance rhythms start to be heard and the harp takes over from the organ as an instrument of ecclesiastical music.

A new musical identity

You can hear these changes in the music of Juan de Araujo (1646-1712), born in Spain, but who grew up in Lima, Peru and also worked in La Planta (now Sucre), Bolivia. His ‘Los coflades de la estleya’ is fast, rhythmic and clearly related to what would become Afro-Cuban rumba. This piece is a villancico, which exists in both sacred and secular forms, but was often accompanied by local instruments such as rattles and drums.

This Sinfini feature story is a pretty good portal to the whole genre, BTW, with several YouTube clips embedded. The piece titled "Florilegium and Arakaendar Bolivia Choir recording Bolivian Baroque [Vol. 3]" highlights contrasting Spanish and indigenous pronunciations of the word "virgin" in a bouncy little song dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Links to background on period Bolivian music.

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Interview with Broughton on Brian Q. Silver's blog World Music From The Voice of America at http://www.voaworldmusic.com/2010/10/interview-with-simon-broughton-editor.html. Broughton, who is an editor of the Rough Guide to World Music and Songlines magazine in London, draws a useful distinction between world music and "'ethnographic music' -- that is, music in the purely traditional styles of the countries of origin, without undue influence from "world music" and its tendencies toward blending and integration." French are big on ethnographic music.

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Music and Urban Society in Colonial Latin America. Ed. Geoffrey Baker and Tess Knighton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Amazon blurb: "The fields of colonial history and urban music history are growing areas of interest within musicology. This collection of essays proposes a new view of the history of music in colonial Latin America, and will be of interest to social and cultural historians as well as musicologists. Geoffrey Baker is a Senior Lecturer in the music department, Royal Holloway, University of London. … Tess Knighton is a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and is Editor of the Boydell Press's Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music series. …"

Comparative lit scholar from Mauritius on creolization, Germanic languages, St. Augustine & other things that matter

Christopher J. Lee. "Creole: The Original Language" [interview with Françoise Lionnet]. Mail & Guardian Online. 4 Oct. 2013. http://mg.co.za/article/2013-10-04-00-in-celebration-of-creolisation

"Françoise Lionnet is a professor of comparative literature and director of the African Studies Centre at the University of California in Los Angeles. Originally from Mauritius … a Mellon distinguished visiting scholar at Wits University, where she has delivered a series of lectures summarising her work. * * * Christopher J Lee is a lecturer at the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa and in the department of international relations at the University of the Witwatersrand." * * * Mail & Guardian is an online newspaper in South Africa.

Some excerpts:

One of your most recent books is entitled The Creolisation of Theory. What draws you to creolisation as a concept?

The concept of creolisation first emerged in the field of linguistics to describe the creation of new contact languages under colonisation and slavery. It was initially limited to the study of "dialects" and "patois", which were believed to be bastardised forms of communication developed by slaves and indentured servants using the European languages of their masters in the New World. Today, linguists agree that creolisation is a universal phenomenon.

All English and Germanic languages began as creolised languages that continue to absorb new idioms. Globalisation is accelerating this process in new and unforeseen ways. In Africa, Afrikaans and Swahili can be considered "creoles". Swahili is the lingua franca of the Indian Ocean coastline, from Somalia to Mozambique and the Seychelles. It is a language of hybrid cultures, has a 100-year-old poetic tradition, and draws its linguistic resources from other languages.

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Being from Mauritius, how has this background informed your scholarship?

The languages, literatures and oral cultures of my native island have always been a major interest of mine. I was trained in comparative literature and in my first book I wrote about the genre of autobiography, starting with St Augustine of Hippo and ending with contemporary Caribbean, African-American and Mauritian writers.

Augustine was North African and raised under Roman rule. His relationship to Latin, in which he wrote, was similar to that of many other native writers who had to become literate in a colonial language, but retained strong links to their mother tongue. Such issues resonate with me as a multilingual Mauritian.

This question is linked to the fundamental linguistic rights of populations whose forms of oral expression are integral to their identities. These local cultures are not passive recipients of global influences. Rather, they are actively reworking influences from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, producing their own creolised mixes in the process, just as during the colonial era.

The problem, of course, is that "global" languages such as English, French or Hindi can easily displace smaller ones. So, there has to be a political will to support local languages, to encourage local forms of expression, from music to poetry and the visual arts. Kreol is now taught as a required subject in all the public schools in Mauritius. This is an important step toward the democratisation of education.

"Creolization" in Oxford Dictionary of Psychology ** UPDATED x2 ** w/ links on Latin American choral music -- and book review on Alaska creole (kreol) history

http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095647278

The process whereby a pidgin language becomes a creole language. decreolization n. A process whereby speakers of a creole language, co-existing in a community with a standard language that is associated with higher status, prestige, and wealth, come under social pressure to alter their speech in the direction of the standard. hypercreolization n. A reaction by creole speakers against the standard language of a community, motivated by a desire to protect and maintain their ethnic identity, involving the deliberate adoption and emphasis of distinctive features of the creole. See also Black English Vernacular.

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http://www.latinamericanchoralmusic.org/links/

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"Music in the Vice-Royalties of New Spain and Peru." Lynn Gumert. http://www.lynngumert.com/latin-american-colonial-period-music.html".

Gumert is Artistic Director, Zorzal Music Ensemble, Hightstown, N.J.

The vast Spanish territory in the new world was divided into two viceroyalties: New Spain, which stretched from the northern limits of the California territory to Costa Rica and from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean; and the Viceroyalty of Peru, which originally included almost the entire continent of South America. The Viceroys’ palaces in Mexico City and Lima were seats of civil authority as well as cultural centers, like European courts. Cathedrals and convents in these cities, as well as in Puebla, Cuzco, and Guatemala City, served as centers for musical instruction and performance in religious services. Although its actions were set against this backdrop of enslavement and abuse, the Catholic Church as an institution was dedicated to saving souls by converting as many non-Europeans as possible to Christianity; at the same time, many individual clergy made an effort to preserve native languages and artifacts. Indeed, one method the Spanish used to assimilate other ethnic groups was by incorporating their rituals into Christian festivals such as Corpus Christi and Christmas.

The most common musical form for both sacred and secular vocal music continued to be the villancico, which kept its lively rhythmic character into the seventeenth century, often expanding to include 5 or 6 voices and a new basso continuo line, a bass line with chord realization symbols beneath, used to guide performers in improvising harmonies. By late in the period many pieces used double or even triple choruses along with small orchestras. Spanish-New World composers integrated indigenous languages, Afro-Spanish dialects, and characteristic rhythmic elements into religious music, while also employing folk rhythms from various regions of Spain. These multicultural mixtures of European melodies and harmonic structure with New World rhythms and melodies are the roots of Latin American traditional music.

From "about" page: "Zorzal (Spanish for wood thrush) is a vocal and instrumental ensemble dedicated to the performance of Spanish and Latin American music from the 12th century to the present. We focus on works that reflect how musical elements from Spain are influenced by and influence other musical cultures, including those from African, Native American, Sephardic, Arabic and other European sources. We ourselves are a crossroads, bringing together a variety of musical backgrounds, education, and experience. Some of us are educators; several of us have extensive experience performing folk music, both American and Latin American. Our interpretations are based on ethnomusicological and musicological research, as well as on knowledge of classical and jazz composition. Our performance practice is at a crossroads between folk vernaculars and classical training, and our mission is at the crossroads of education and pure performance. As Artistic Director of Zorzal Music Ensemble, I research and arrange the music we perform, and also compose new works for the ensemble."

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The Choral Music of Latin America: A Guide to Compositions and Research by Suzanne Spicer Tiemstra Google books

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Review of Gwenn A. Miller’s Kodiak Kreol: Communities of Empire in Early Russian America by Emily Clark, blogger and grad student at Florida State (? verify school): "Miller’s book offers a colonial narrative far from the cities of Boston, New York, or Charleston that is both similar and different from the stereotypical westward European expansion model. For those of us interested in syncretism, cultural mixing, hybridity, colonial intersections, creolization, or whatever you want to call it, Kodiak Kreol provides another vantage point from which to theorize." http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2011/02/creolization-and-kreolization.html

Emily Clark. "Creolization and Kreolozation." Religion in American History. Feb. 18, 2011.