Zen Yardbird

Found while I was looking up quotes by Charlie Parker for a Humanities 223 assignment sheet, several that had a real Zen quality to them. Also some Zenlike impressions of the jazz saxophone player by others.

Among the quotes was the one I put at top of the HUM 223 syllabus:

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

And one that's especially poignant in light of Parker's addiction:

Any musician who says he is playing better either on tea, the needle, or when he is juiced, is a plain straight liar ... You can miss the most important years of your life, the years of possible creation.

Plus a couple of others that remind me of Eugen Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery:

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

And my favorite of all:

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That's when I was born.

All the above quotes taken from a website called Thinkexist.com.

Next I googled around and found a Jack Kerouac poem called "Charlie Parker." Kerouac compared him to the Buddha:

And his expression on his face
Was as calm, beautiful, and profound
As the image of the Buddha
Represented in the East ...

When Parker played, in Kerouac's telling of it,

You had the feeling of early-in-the-morning
Like a hermit's joy, or
Like the perfect cry of some wild gang
At a jam session,
"Wail, Wop"

Not Kerouac's best, but enough to suggest why Parker was so popular with the Beat poets.

Finally, and I think most remarkable of all, there's a reminiscence by jazz clarinet player Tony Scott ... not the filmmaker but the featured artist on a 1964 record called Music for Zen Meditation, who played in 2001 at a Buddhist temple in Japan:

I spoke, played solo, in Tokyo and in Kyoto Temples, and, going to Shikoku Temple, played with the Buddhist monk Booze-san, singer and composer about 40 years old. His father is 82 years old. The Zen Buddhist temple, gardens, buildings and school are owned by the family and it is 600 years old. Booze-san and his younger brother Yuri speak English perfectly.

I was thrilled when Booze-san turned to me and said in perfect English: "Buddha loves Charlie Parker!" That alone was worth the trip to Japan.

Booze-san talked and sang some prayers for Bird not always playing prayers for Bird's soul, and during the morning rehearsal I started to improvise on clarinet with him. During the afternoon Ceremony the villagers all together sang prayers for Bird not realizing who Bird was, I played clarinet with them. I am always playing prayers for Bird ...

Scott's Zen meditation album is considered a minor classic, also featuring koto player Shinichi Yuize and shakuhachi flute player Hozan Yamamoto. It is considered a forerunner of New Age music, which probably ought not to be held against it.

An American journey

An Oct. 5 story I found in The Observer, by the paper's New York correspondent Paul Harris on his trip to find family roots in Iowa. His background, involving a reverse emigration from America back to Europe, isn't typical. But his exercise of searching for roots is.

And so, I think, is his account of what he finds there: Hearing a train whistle in the distance over the prairie.

Harris said he is of Swedish heritage, and he looked up relatives in New London, Iowa, who stayed there when his mother married an Englishman and moved to Great Britain. In speaking with people there, he found "that many sometimes define themselves as Swedish, German, Danish or Norwegian: cracking rude jokes about the others and cooking food associated with these long ago former homelands." Rings true.

So does something else Harris said. Here's his account of visiting his grandparents' farm, which is no longer in the family, with a local museum director:

As we stood outside the farmhouse in which my fondly-remembered grandfather had grown up, we thought of a story he had often told. He was an urbane man, born to a farmer's lifestyle he hated. He used to say he had lain in bed at night as a boy, listening to the sound of a train whistle nearby, and wishing he was on it, heading to a big city, going anywhere but a prairie farmstead. As we stood on the grass outside the farmhouse we felt a disappointment that my grandfather's story now seemed untrue. The nearest train tracks were miles away and the sound surely could not have carried that far. Then, in the silence that only the prairies can bring, we suddenly heard a distant blast from a whistle echo over the fields. He had been telling the truth after all. It was a reminder that just as Americans can find some roots in Europe, Africa and Asia, so an Englishman can find them in America.

Harris had some interesting thoughts about what he calls "a quest for defining oneself by another part of the world that a long ago ancestor left behind." But it's that train whistle in the night that spoke to me. How American.

Documentary on WWII Aleut internment

Posted to the blog for future reference, a link to the website for The Aleut Story, a documentary on the evacuation and internment of Alaska Natives from the Aleutian Islands during World War II. The website offers a variety of reviews and other resources.

A capsule from the website:

In 1942, as World War II invaded Alaska, Aleut Americans were taken from their homes and removed to abysmal government camps 1,500 miles away. Death was ever-present in the camps. An estimated 10 percent of the men, women and children sent to the camps would die there—a death rate comparable to that suffered by Americans in foreign prisoner of war camps. As the Aleuts prayed for deliverance, "friendly forces" looted their homes and churches in the Aleutian and Pribilof islands.

Those who survived would fight for their rights—in the nation's courts and on Capitol Hill. In a historic action—one that continues to influence our lives and our nation's ideals—Aleuts joined Japanese Americans in seeking wartime reparations from the federal government.

Aleut Americans ultimately prevailed.

Says Marla Williams, screenwriter for the film, quoting from the 1990s-vintage U.S. government commission that authorized reparations to the Aleuts and Japanese-Americans:

"Removal from their homeland permanently changed nearly every aspect of Aleut life," the special Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians concluded in a report to Congress. "The many who died in the camps were a huge loss to both family and community which also endangers the future of the Aleut as a distinct people. Evacuation meant irreversible cultural erosion ... America, proud of its cultural diversity, thereby lost a distinctive part of itself."

Only through the telling of the Aleuts' story will America ever truly regain that part of itself which was lost. As filmmakers, it is our hope this documentary will contribute to a more accurate understanding of our civil rights history and a renewed appreciation for the diversity of our nation.

'Starring' in Alaska -- MP3 radio show

Here's a link to a two-minute radio show on Russian Christmas in Alaska. It's narrated by James Metzger, executive producer of the Pulse of the Planet radio show, and it's titled "Starring: Alaskan Russian Orthodox Christmas." Playing in the background for ambience, according to the credits, is a Slavic carol.

Metzger quotes Father Benjamin Peterson, dean of Saint Innocent Cathedral in Anchorage:

"Starring is one of those ways in which these very remote communities that are very often isolated from each other, especially in the dark and cold of winter, how they manage to kind of keep together. It's kind of a social glue that keeps these communities together. Some of them are only, have seven hundred people. Some of them have less - 300 people. So starring becomes a way that people connect with each other, and in the giving of gifts, you know, kind of open themselves to each other. Its kind of a way of renewing communities. So it even sends out a sense of belonging to people who are away from home - and, and keeps these communities together."

Fr. Benjamin says as the carolers go around, "each home becomes an extension of the church, in a sense a kind of little church."

According to the show's website, Pulse of the Planet is broadcast over 309 public and commercial stations around the world and on the Voice of America and the Armed Forces Radio Network, reaching more than 1 million listeners daily. The series is presented by the National Science Foundation.

Music survey -- Humanities 223 class

Results from an informal survey I took this morning of the 25 students in my ethnic music class. It was beyond informal: I asked them to journal for a page or so on the role that music plays in their daily life. Some of their answers below, aggregated, anonymous and slightly edited ... with spelling and obvious grammatical errors silently corrected.

A couple of generalizations: Several HUM 223 students took piano lessons or played trombone, flute or other instruments in school, and a few still play guitar or piano for their own enjoyment. One practices daily. Says another, "I sing all the time, anywhere, @ restaurants, fesitvals, etc." Others say if they sing, they do it in the car. "The only time I ever sing is in the car by myself or in a large group of people who sound just as bad as I do," says one. "I used to sing in church choir and in school," acknowledges another. "Now I only sing in the car, which is for the best."

But music is part of the daily texture of their lives. "I absolutely refuse to drive anywhere without music on," says one, who also plays the guitar. "When I am not listening to music, I am looking up or downloading new music." Others just keep it on. "I listen to music every day in my car, my home, in class, and before I go to bed. I also listen to music and work ... every time my families and I get together, we listen to music. When I go out to eat, I hear music."

With little variation reflecting ethnic heritage or family background, most students reported enjoying the same kinds of music ... and for the same reasons.

"Music sets people apart from one another, gives [a] topic to conversation, unites you with friends, sets a mood. .... calms or shows my emotions ... shows beliefs in church songs ... puts me to sleep every night, pumps me up for volleyball games, makes me think of a person or memory, reminds me of a lost loved one. ... Music relaxes me, can get me pumped up before a game, rejoicing and praising, or helping the time go by. ... Gospel inspires me or lifts me up, R&B keeps me happy and relating to the artists, and rap keeps me either thinking about reality or gets me crunk for an outing with my girls! Music keeps me well rounded. ... Music has a huge purpose in my life. It's probably the thing I am the most passionate about.

"I love music, I have to listen to music when I'm driving. Music is something that puts me in a good mood if I'm having a bad day. It's like my escape from everything. ... Most of the music that I hear is in the bar, family gatherings, parties, work, and in the car. The purpose of music in my life is to relax me or put myself in a better mood. ... My baseball teammates and I listen it it while we are in the clubhouse. We also just listen to it when we are just chilling. ... Every social gathering I attend, there is music playing and people dancing. ... The reason I like rap & hip-hop so much is because of the beats, rhythms and bass lines. I like to dance, so I like songs with rhythm. ... Most social gatherings in Springfield consist of listening to music while consuming one's beverage of choice. I would truly be a completely different person without music in my life."

"Well, I hear a lot of rap in my car, although I listen to a lot of country & rock. Every once in a while mother or grandpa will play a Frank Sinatra CD. ... I like to listen to music while I'm cleaning because it makes the job more fun and musical. ... If I am sad or in a bad mood, I will listen to music to either cheer me up or to show the way I feel that day. ... I do listen to specific genres of music depending on my mood. For example, if I'm wanting to get ready for a game I would want to hear a rock/rap song but not country. ... My main type of music genres are rap & hip-hop. I do like R&B and alternative rock. Some country is fine with me but not all the time. ... Most of my family can't stand my choice in music so we never listen to music together. ... I think the kind of music you listen to comes from how you grew up. Like I came from the country on a far, so I like to listen to country and bluegrass. But if you came from the city, you might like R&B or a little rap. If you grew up in the 70s, you probably like alternative rock."

"Many Years" -- PDF and MIDI files

At St. Raphel's Press, an Angelfire website on Russian Orthodox chant. According to the note at the top of the website," St. Raphael Press, named for St. Raphael of Brooklyn, produces Orthodox music from the Slavic Orthodox tradition." Music is in the public domain.

Music: '7 hogs on a windy day'

A wonderful quote in The Icon and the Axe, James H. Billington's cultural history of Russia, from the court of Tsar Alexei I Mikhailovich Romanov, who ruled in the 17th century when western polyphony was beginning to replace traditional Orthodox hymnody in and around Moscow. He writes

The overlapping of old and new sounds at the court of Alexis was linkened by his English doctor to "a flight of screech owls, a nest of Jackdaws, a pack of hungry Wolves, seven Hogs on a windy day and as many cats. ..." (147)

Billington's citation is to Samuel Collins, On the Present State of Russia (1671). Wikipedia has a brief biography of Collins, which I'm inclined to trust.

HUM 223: Lyrics to "John Henry"

There's kind of a funky little website called A Lebanese Tribute to Bruce Springsteen that I found when I was looking for lyrics to "John Henry" tonight. It looks like a fan's site, and the webmaster - who doesn't give his/her name - says it "is the first and unique Lebanese website dedicated to The BOSS!" and "is now the largest Bruce Springsteen lyrics archive on the Internet." Some of these fansites are great, others are shlock. This one looks like a good one, a labor of love with lots of detail.

(Have you noticed I like detail? I like it in papers, too, BTW.)

Anyway, I found a page with the lyrics to "John Henry," along with some information about the recording sessions for "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions and the song itself. It also includes notes about the song by Dave Marsh. I don't find them in my CD, but Marsh is listed as a researcher on the CD's credits. In any event, the notes look accurate to me, and they have some interesting details I hadn't known before.

HUM 223: Springsteen's 'John Henry'

On Friday (or sometime soon) we'll be listening to "John Henry" as performed by Bruce Springsteen and the eclectic group of musicians he brought together to cut his Seeger Sessions CD. We'll probably hear "John Henry" again - it's one of the most important single songs in American music history. For now, I want to concentrate on how a guy named Ed Ward writes about it.

Ward is a rock critic. He coauthored the Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll, and he's written for Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy and Creem magazines. He wrote an essay on the Seeger Sessions for WNET-TV, the Public Broadcasting System's flagship station in New York City. Notice how fluently he writes:

How is it that the songs Bruce Springsteen taps into for his latest project are so familiar? From "We Shall Overcome," of the CD's title, to "John Henry," these are from a body of songs that "everybody" of a certain age knew. You might have learned them at school, at camp, in church, or from television. You felt you'd just always known them, even though you had no idea where they came from or who wrote them.

Only much, much later might you have begun analyzing the songs. "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain ..." What is that, anyway? Who is "she"? Why is her arrival so important? Or, speaking of mountains, how about "Big Rock Candy Mountain"? Never mind the fact that rock candy isn't around much these days; all of a sudden it dawns on you that this is a song about hunger, hunger as experienced by people without a home, but yearning for one where there's no effort in obtaining life's basic needs, at last. You've stumbled upon an artifact of America's hobo class, as chronicled by singer Harry "Haywire Mac" McClintock -- something that both does and doesn't exist today, a social problem going back to, among other things, the federal government's treatment of Civil War veterans.

Which is just another way of saying that folk music is complicated but easy. Easy to learn, easy to play and sing, but complex in its content when looked at closely.

And notice what he says about "John Henry." It's incisive. It suggests why the song matters, and it gives us something to think about:

And how about "John Henry"? A tune about an African-American martyr to the industrial system -- the giant who beat a steam drill and died from his mighty exertions -- has been sung for years and now will be introduced to a new generation, thanks to Springsteen's decision to include it in his SEEGER SESSIONS CD. Did John Henry exist? Who are the others in the story? And, come to think of it, why is it so much fun to hear about a guy killing himself with overwork?

His legacy doesn't stop there. Examine this song long enough and you realize that John Henry is black and the boss, the guy running the steam drill, is white. Is this one of the reasons that beating the drill is so important -- not just to John Henry but to the song's survival? Obviously, there's something affirming in knowing that the human body, the human spirit, can outdo the machine, but there's something more: behind the jolly tune and its story, this, like many folk songs, is a protest song.

Well, I think "John Henry" is more than just a protest song. I heard a lot of them in the 1960s, and most of them are just as well forgotten. But "John Henry" has been around since the 1800s, and I still admire what it says about the human spirit. The points Ward raises here are worth thinking about. And his writing is certainly worth using as a model for my own. At least trying to.

Willie Nelson, dancing about architecture

HUM 223 students (who will be called upon to write papers about music before the semester is over) take note --

Elvis Costello, an 80s punker who's reinvented himself as kind of an elder statesman of the British rock scene, once said, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Meaning you can't do it, it's the wrong medium, the wrong art form.

Well, rock critic Bob Gendron came pretty close in today's Chicago Tribune. He was reviewing a Sunday night concert by veteran country artist Willie Nelson at Chicago's Charter One Pavilion. "Playing to a multigenerational crowd that encompassed toddlers and grandmothers, it's easy to see why he lives for live shows," Gendron said. Here's how he described Nelson's singing and playing:

While his bedrock voice is slightly chipped, Nelson remains a skilled practitioner of subtle nuance and casual phrasing. Shading syllables, he brought fresh perspectives to universally recognized lyrics.

Nelson's zesty acoustic guitar playing formed the epicenter of the jazzy interpretations, his worn fingers moving according to feeling instead of note-for-note exactness. "Night Life" flowed like the Rio Grande, snarling as it sonically stretched amid craggy curves and narrow passages. Fluid and improvisational, the needle-and-thread style was reminiscent of Jerry Garcia's latter-era work and provided insight into why Nelson is embraced by jam-band fans.

Great descriptive writing. Architecture that's got a beat you can dance to.

HUM 223: 'music ... the new cotton'?

Two themes we will be studying in Humanities 223 (ethnic music) are expropriation and commodification of ethnic art forms. Want to know what they can feel like? Read Edmund W. Lewis' editorial column on Spike Lee's Hurricane Katrina documentatary in Louisiana Weekly, an African American newspaper in New Orleans. Lewis isn't complaining about Lee's movie, he's complaining about the way black music is exploited for the tourist dollar. Here's what he says about it:

New Orleans is still a town where the ruling minority gets wealthy off the genius, creativity and labor of people of color while treating tourists of color who come here for events like the Bayou Classic and Essence Music Festival like animals. It's a city whose world-famous hospitality and warmth are seldom extended to the black masses who barely make it in the best of times.

This is a city where it is crystal clear, as some revolutionary poets and others have suggested, that music is the new cotton. While there's an abundance of talent and creativity among the city's musicians of color, most of the money generated by the music goes directly into the pockets of those who own the majority of the city's record labels, music stores, nightclubs and tourist venues. Some of the best talent African America has produced has been reduced by bigotry to sharecroppers by opportunitists.

Music is the new cotton? The reference, of course, is to black slaves picking cotton for the white masters who exploited them.

How true is it? We'll be studying that in HUM 223.

For the record, Lewis liked Spike Lee's "When The Levees Broke" ... as far as it went. Lewis says:

The beauty and resilience of New Orleans shine through the documentary despite the ugly circumstances under which the documentary took place.

There is lots to laugh and cry about in the documentary, as well as ample opportunities for anger.

Watching Condoleeza Rice shop for shoes during this national disaster will certainly do nothing to endear her to people of color or increase her chances of becoming the first female or black president. And President Bush's legacy will always be tainted by his piss-poor response to Hurricane Katrina.

One of the more surprising aspects of the film was the outspokenness of some of the more successful people of color who appeared in the documentary. In New Orleans there is a long, sordid history of privileged people of color doing and saying as little as possible about racial inequity and injustice. Katrina obviously changed that as the haves and have-nothings suffered alongside one another.

Spike Lee did the best he could do. But those who know the history and reality of living in this city know that he didn't bring it the way he could have. It is impossible to understand what happened last August without fully grasping the history of New Orleans.

Then again, the brother only had four hours.

From all the reviews of the movie, including Lewis' in Lousiana Weekly, it's as powerful as "Do the Right Thing" (1989).

Shaggy dog story ...

I can't vouch for the science behind this, but it is nothing if not a shaggy dog story. Michael Heggen of Salem, Ore., who maintains entertaining website called the Heggen Report, defines them like this:

A seemingly plausible (usually) story of varying length (the longer the better, I say). As the story progresses, the listener/reader should become more and more intrigued, even if they know it's a shaggy dog story. The last line is always an absolutely hideous pun.

In what may be a classic example of the genre, Heggen also notes:

The art of creating a well-crafted pun is lost on many people unfortunately, so enjoying a shaggy dog story is sort of like enjoying a cigar -- the person smoking has a great time, but bystanders usually gag.

Anyway, here's the story:

A South Carolina farm wife called the local phone company to
report her telephone failed to ring when her friends
called -- and that on the few occasions when it did ring, her
dog always moaned right before the phone rang.

The telephone repairman proceeded to the scene, curious to see this
psychic dog or senile lady.

Upon arriving at the residence he climbed the utility pole,
plugged in his test set, and dialed the subscriber's
phone number.

The phone didn't ring right away, but then the dog
moaned and then the telephone began to ring.

Climbing down from the pole, the telephone repairman
discovered the following:

1. The dog was tied to the telephone system's ground
wire with a steel chain and collar.

2. The wire connection to the ground rod was loose.

3. The dog was receiving the volts of signaling current
when the number was called.

4. After a couple of jolts, the dog would start moaning and
then urinate.

5. The wet ground would complete the circuit, thus
causing the phone to ring.

Which demonstrates that some problems CAN be fixed by
pissing and moaning.

Pennsylvania scheitholt links

I'm posting this link to the blog because I'll never find it again if I don't. It's to the PDF file of Henry Mercer's paper "The Zithers of the Pennsylvania Germans" in A Collection of Papers Read Before the Bucks County Historical Society, Part 101, Volume V (1923). It's in the PA's Past Digital Bookshelf at Penn State.

The scheitholt, which Mercer's informants called a "zitter," is of course the direct antecedent of the Appalachian dulcimer. It was carried down into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where it got over into Scots-Irish culture and got to be known as the "dulcimore."

But, as I learned googling around this morning, the instrument may have been called that earlier.

An 18th-century "dulcimar" in Pennsylvania? While I was looking for a post to the Everything Dulcimer discussion group that mentioned the Mercer scheitholts, I googled instead onto this post by Greg Gunner of Riga, Mich., that cites a "dulcimar" in an 18th-century probate record in southeastern Pennsylvania. He writes:

In her master's thesis on the origins of the zither, Alissa Ann Teresa Pesavento quotes from a copy of the 1757 estate inventory of an early Mennonite settler in southeast Pennsylvania. The settler, Henry Ruth, emigrated to Pennsylvania before 1720. His estate inventory clearly lists a "dulcimar" among the items of his estate. According to histories of the area both Henry Ruth and a neighbor, John Clemens, were known to play the zither. The zither of the southeast Pennsylvania Dutch Country is none other than the scheitholt, which is thought by most experts to be at least one of the direct ancestors of the mountain dulcimer. To verify Ms. Pesavento's claim I contacted the Mennonite Meeting House in Bucks County and obtained a copy of Henry Ruth's estate inventory. The "dulcimar" is clearly listed as part of his estate.

Fascinating. Pretty convincing, too.

Early dulcimer brought to Illinois

Here's more on an antique dulcimer that was brought from West Virginia dulcimer to Illinois in the early 20th century. I mentioned it and posted a picture to this blog on March 7, quoting an email I received in 2002 from Les Williams of Orlando, Fla., who grew up in Hamilton, Ill. It has the general appearance of a Charles Prichard instrument, and the Williams family dates it to 1902. Now I've located a copy of another email from Williams, dated July 21, 2003, giving more details about the instrument and how his grandmother played it in response to my questions. He wrote:

She double picked, usually with a turkey/goose quill, and sang s well. My Grandfather played the dulcimer also but he only picked in one direction. I have seen him play it. My Grandmother also played the banjo but I am unaware of which kind, a plectrum or tenor. I do recall asking Mom about the violin peg, peghead and the fact that it slips from time to time. She said that Grandmother would have that happen, she would laugh, retune and continue! She did use a noter, most often a kitchen match since that was usually most handy. I asked if she had chorded as we do now and Mom said she had never heard/seen her use anything but a noter. The noter has been lost in antiquity.

In an earlier email, I had asked Williams if he had seen one of Prichard's labels, and he said "there was nothing in the sound box to indicate the builder." He added:

The only thing unusual on this dulcimer, that I could detect, there were/are two small "T" units that were mortised together and then the top of the "T" was glued into the fretboard/sound board at the beghead end of the sound holes, and also at the picking hollow sound holes. This seemed unusual to me, as I have been studying some luthier methods for building dulcimers and there is NO mention of that sort of addition. The only string instrument that I can recall of having such an addition is the violin.

The Williams family hailed from eastern West Virginia, near Renick.

Willie Nelson on who's (not) a Texan

Willie Nelson says the Dixie Chicks got "a raw deal" when they voiced disapproval of President Bush in 2003. According to an Associated Press story published Sunday, he told Time magazine he's said as much or more about Bush himself:

"I said 'He's not from Texas and he ain't a cowboy, so let's stop trashin' Texans and cowboys.' It got a little chuckle, but I didn't get run out of the country," Nelson told the magazine.

The crossover bluegrass-country-pop group stirred up a firestorm of controversy when lead singer Natalie Maines said she was embarrassed both she and Bush were Texans.

Nelson, 73, said both he and Maines were out of the country when they offered their opinions of Bush.

Christian Harmony minutes, Brasstown, N.C.

Posted here are the minutes to this year's Christian Harmony singing at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, N.C. They were compiled by Dan Huger of Asheville, who keeps minutes and sends out schedules of upcoming singings in North Carolina and adjacent states.

Christian Harmony

John Campbell Folkschool Singing
Brasstown, Cherokee County, North Carolina
Saturday, 8 July, 2006

All selections “Alabama book”.

Bob Dalsemer welcomed the singers to the Folk School.
Laurel Horton opened the singing with 206-Prayer Meeting.
Opening prayer given by Ed Smith.
67b-Dundee, Wayne Richard
70b-Brown, Becky Walker
339-Samanthra, Steve Walker
20-Cranbrook, Guy Bankes
85b-Mercy Seat, Sharon Kellam
280t-Zion, Judy Mincey
51-Lonsdale, John Hollingsworth
110-Volunteers, Ed Smith
26b-93rd, June Spencer
185b-Corinth, Pete Ellertsen
187b-, Lee Rogers
117-Angel Band, Susan Schmidt
323-Holy Manna, Ralph Parker
35b-Boylston, Cora Sweatt
184-Never Grow Old, Andy Morse
109-Not Made with Hands, Ken George
282-Friendship, Mary Baumeister
367-David’s Lamentation, Mike Nichols
76b-Night, Robert Varkony
101-An Address for All, Eddie Mash
218t-, Chris Berg
81t-Maitland, Dan Huger
140-Edom, Laurel Horton
55b-Idumea, Wayne Richard
89b-Northfield, Becky Walker
88-Pisgah, Steve Walker
171-Sessions, Guy Bankes
47-Panting for Heaven, Sharon Kellam
Blessing, Dan Huger
DINNER

87-The Promised Land, Laurel Horton
Jan Davidson, Director of the School, welcomed the singers.
16-The Finest Flower, Judy Mincey
369-Easter Anthem, John Hollingsworth
131-Will You Meet Me?, Ed Smith
332-Babylon is Fallen, Jane Spencer
293-Lenox, Virginia Douglas
147b-[Hallelujah], Pete Ellertsen
264-Harwell, Lee Rogers
215-In That Morning, Susan Schmidt
82b-Gospel Waves, Ralph Parker
129-Coronation, Cora Sweatt
29-The Midnight Cry, Andy Morse
316-This Heavy Load, Ken George
24t-Volusia, Mary Baumeister
268-Come Ye to the Waters, Mike Nichols
128t-Hester, Eddie Mash
66t-Balerma, Robert Varkony
148-Leander, Chris Berg
52-Newburg, Dan Huger
11-Minster’s Farewell, Laurel Horton
255-Watchman, Jackie Elsner
41b-Ardor, Guy Bankes
49-Forever with the Lord, Sharon Kellam
340-Blue Vale of Naucoochee, Judy Mincey
1-Weary Rest, Ed Smith
274-Mother Tell Me, Ralph Parker
Announcements

200-Parting Hand
Closing prayer, Steve Walker

There were about 100 singers, and at least another twenty listeners.
The day was quite mild.
Thanks to the Folkschool for having us.

For more information about Christian Harmony singing, go to http://buncombe.main.nc.us/~mbbweb/harmony.html ... if you follow the links to the minutes of singings in 2006, you will find a link to pictures of the Brasstown singing.

Website preserves Dena'ina music

A valuable source on Dena'ina Athabascan music is the "Dena'ina K'eliga" (Songs) page on the Dena'ina Qenaga website put up by the Alaska Native Language Center at UA-Fairbanks. Its overview:

Dena’ina music remains a source of community pride and holds great potential in bilingual education. There are at least seven types of Dena’ina song: funeral songs, potlatch dance songs, paddling songs, hunting songs, good luck songs, gambling songs and love songs. Recently there have also been a number of English songs translated into Dena’ina. You can read more about Dena’ina Song Tradition by reading Music of the Tanaina Indians of South Central Alaska - found in the Dena’ina Qenaga Digital Archive.

(To see the papers on music and song traditions, written in the 1970s by Thomas Johnston of UAF, I'll let you go to the K'eliga/Songs page and follow their link.) There are several sound files linked to the page, including:

• "Qetitl' K'elik'a Ch'tunik'nasdzeden" or "Potlatch Song of a Lonely Man," composed and sung by Peter Kalifornsky. One of the last fluent native speakers of the Kenai dialect of Dena'ina, Kalifornsky worked with UAF linguists to establish it as a written language so it can be preserved for the future.
  
• "Chickalusion Mourning Song," in honor of a respected chief of Tyonek village, composed and sung by Shem Pete. One of the last speakers of the Upper Cook Inlet dialect, Pete was a gifted storyteller who passed on much traditional knowledge about the Dena'ina people.
  
• A traditional Athabascan gambling song and versions of "Down in the Valley," "Silent Night," "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" in the Dena'ina language.

In Dena'ina, by the way, the title of that last song is "Ggagga Dghili Jenghiyu." The word for bear is "ggagga." It's the only word I know in Dena'ina, but I think I'm likely to remember it because it reads exactly like what I said once when I got between a bear and her cubs in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Tuning a dulcimer (and an aside, dear reader, on how a blog is like the old-fashioned oak filing cabinet in my home office)

Copied from an email message I just sent out to members of the Prairieland Dulcimer Strings in Springfield on the theory (mentioned below) that a blog -- this blog, at any rate -- is kind of an electronic filing cabinet where I can tuck away information that would get lost otherwise.

Hi everybody --

I've got a couple of links below for the beginners, but I'm emailing everyone to remind you Bonnie and Ken Lawson have invited us (and our dulcimers!) to a picnic at their home for our regular August meeting, Thursday, Aug. 3, at 6 p.m. I'll forward their message with directions, etc., in a few minutes.

Something else I keep forgetting to mention: Mike Thomas of our group has several extra sets of strings he's willing to sell. If you're interested, contact him ... or contact me, and I have his email address so I can forward the message to him.

Now, about tuning ...

At the end of last week's meeting, we looked at some of our tablature and decided there isn't a whole lot that calls for playing the 6+ fret, so it's probably best for the folks with WalMart dulcimers to play in DAD. I'm going to paste below a primer on how to tune the dulcimer from Jerry Rockwell's website. He's a very talented player and luthier from Ohio, and his website is one I keep going back to. Very informative.

Here's how you can tune the dulcimer when you don't have an electronic tuner. You always start with the bass string, and tune the rest of them to it. If you're playing with someone else, get your bass strings in tune with each other. Then tune the other strings to it. Rockwell explains how:

D Ionian (D-A-A)
Step 1. Tune the 3rd or bass string of the dulcimer to the D below Middle C (this is the same note as the open 4th string of the guitar).

Step 2. Hold the 3rd or bass string just to the left of the 4th fret and pluck this note (A). Tune your middle or 2nd string so it exactly matches this pitch.

Step 3. Tune the melody or 1st string to the same note as the open middle string. Now play the Ionian mode from frets 3 through 10 and back down. Skip the 6+ fret!

D Mixolydian (D-A-D)
Steps 1 and 2 are the same as for D Ionian.

Step 3. Hold the 2nd or middle string down at the 3rd fret and pluck this note (high D, one octave above the open bass string). Tune the melody or 1st string to this note.

Here's a link to his page, which has some more information: http://www.jcrmusic.com/Learning.html

You might want to surf around his website sooner or later. He's got a page on improvising that I really like, and he knows a lot about music theory. Jerry Rockwell's website is one I keep coming back to.

-- Pete

I'm going to copy this message to my "Hogfiddle" blog, too, so I don't delete the information. It's at http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/ ... I use it as kind of an electronic filing cabinet.

Kolyadkas: Carols from Ukraine

Here's a website where you can access a four-minute sound file of a kolyadka from Ukraine by a vocal ensemble from Kiev called Drevo. Strong harmonies. A good example of Slavic choral folk music, and a tradition that was adapted by Native and "creole" Alaskans as part of their Christmas celebration. Liner notes from Drevo's CD explain:

One thousand years ago with the ward of Christianity to Ukraine the culture on these grounds did not begin anew, but its new page was opened. Alongside with the partially kept prior archaic layers and on their basis, Christianity has formed other original forms of culture, genres and styles.The influence of these processes on national music was especially expressive.

In pagan times the Kolyadkas [including track 1, the one that's linked to] and Shchedrivkas [track numbers omitted] were a component of sacramentals related with New Year Day and vernal equinox. In later time Kolyadkas and Shchedrivkas (Christmas carols) became a symbol of Christmastime and other biblical dates and events. Obviously, such reassess of function has served as the reason of a semantic and stylistic variety of Kolyadkas and Shchedrivkas, represented on the disk.

The kolyadka tradition is the basis for "Starring" celebrations among people of Aleut, Tinglit and Yup'ik heritage in Alaska. A press release from the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage explains:

Starring comes from the Ukraine where at Christmas time groups of people go from house to house carrying a decorated star singing “koyatkee” or carols. The star honors the wise men that followed a star to find the Christ child. An honored individual has the responsibility of spinning the star, which is made from wood and decorated with festive ribbons and colors that look similar to a pinwheel. The center of the star contains a picture or an Icon.

Starring is observed differently among the cultural regions of Alaska Native villages. Starring is held for three days and begins late in the afternoon and can continue through the night. In many villages, the singers follow the star as it travels from house to house and at each home, food is offered to the singers and guests.

Drevo, the choral group from Kiev, is worth listening to on its own merits.

An Alutiiq children's song

Lately I've been reading up on how Alaska Native and Russian Orthodox cultures influenced each other's music, and this weekend I found a sound file for an Alutiiq children's song that sounds to my untrained ear like its melodic contour is European in origin. It's called "Louse Song," and it was sung by Phyllis Peterson, an elder of Akhiok Native Village of Kodiak Island, at their Alutiiq Week in 2003. I like it because I see in it a mixture of Native and Russian cultural influences, but most of all I think it's a delightful little song and elder Peterson clearly enjoys singing it so much in the video clip.

The lyrics, in Alutiiq and English, are:

Neresta taarimallria
The Louse whisked himself
taaripiaguarluni
He whisked himself long and hard (showing off)
Ingqim yaamaat ciqiluki,
The baby louse (nit) splashed water on the rocks
neresta atunguarualuki
And the louse sang to his little self (for the heck of it)
Ru-ru-ru-ru, Uqnartuq!
Hoo-hoo-hoo, It's Hot!

Transcription and translation is by staff of the Alutiiq Museum and Archaelogical Repository in Kodiak.

I can't help loving the humor of a louse joining the people in the banya, a traditional Russian steam bath very much like a Scandinavian sauna or a Native American sweat lodge. The museum staff explain:

Villagers in the past were often bothered by lice from the many furs they kept in their homes; at that time there was little effective relief. Rather than ignore the problem, they made fun of their own discomfort with lively songs like this one, where even the louse gets to banya.

The museum's website is an excellent source of information about the Alutiiq people (also known as Aleut), and the National Museum of the American Indian has a fascinating profile of the people of Akhiok village and their culture with text by Alutiiq museum staff and lots of photographs.

A footnote.Lice have been with us across cultures as long as we've had cultures -- at least as long as we've had languages. Somewhere I've read that "louse" is one of the words we get from the Indo-European language, and it has had the same plural "lice" since the fifth millennium (in very round numbers) BCE.

LATER: I don't think I want to base a grand narrative on this, so I'll let it be another footnote. Reading Billington's Icon and the Axe, I came across this reference in his discussion of how life in the forests of 13th- and 14th-century Muscovy influenced Russian culture:

The very process by which the body generated warmth within its clothing attracted the louse to venture forth from the clothing to feast upon its human prey; and the very communal baths by which Russians sought to cleanse themselves provided a unique opportunity for the louse to migrate from one garment to the other. ... The peasant's wooded hut, which provided rudimentary protection against the larger beasts of the forest, served more as a lure to its insects and rodents. They hungrily sought entrance to his dwelling place, his food supply, and -- eventually -- his still warm body. (22)

This follows a discussion of the bears that also lived in the forest (21-22), including this: "Legend had it that that the bear was originally a man who had been denied the traditional bread and salt of human friendship, and had in revenge assumed an awesome new shape and retreated to the forest to guard it against the intrusions of his former species" (21). Again, I don't want to make too much of it, but the legend has counterparts in Athabascan (not to mention Cherokee and other Native American peoples') mythologies.

Billington, James H. The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture. New York: Alfred A. Knopf-Borzoi, 1967.