Music for Clayville Spring Festival ** UPDATED x2 **

Blast email sent to the Clayville and Prairieland dulcimer club lists … updated with: (1) new link to dulcimer tablature for John Stinson's No. 2 on the Bellingham (Wash.) Dulcimer Club's website at http://bellingham-dulcimer-club.blogspot.com/p/music.html (scroll down to "John Stinson #2" to open PDF file); and (2) some more thoughts on making a tune your own at a festival. ...

Hi everybody --

Here are links to some tunes we decided we'd like to play at the Clayville Spring Festival, plus a couple of others I think we'll enjoy. I'm home from St. John's now, but I had a nasty little infection in one of my lungs and I'm "homebound" getting supplemental oxygen. Which means we'll be able to have the Prairieland Strings at my house, but I won't be able to make Saturday's Clayville Pioneer Academy of Arts jam in the barn at Clayville. Don't know yet about the festival May 17-18.

I'll post the Prairieland Strings schedule below, along with directions to my house. And I'll copy this message and some tips on jam sessions, festivals, etc., with working links to my blog at:

In the meantime, here are the links to the music:

-- Soldier's Joy http://www.oldtimeozarks.com/Music_Roots.html (tab for dulcimer and other instruments in directory)

-- Go Tell Aunt Rhody http://oldgleaner.com/images/music/AuntRhody_D.jpg

-- Gray Cat on a Tennessee Farm http://rlwalker.gulfweb.net/dogwood/dogwood.html (scroll down right-hand column)

-- Five Pounds of Possum http://rlwalker.gulfweb.net/dogwood/dogwood.html (scroll down left-hand column)

-- Shall We Gather at the River http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/tab/Shall-We-Gather-at-The-River.pdf

-- John Stinson's No. 2 http://bellingham-dulcimer-club.blogspot.com/p/music.html (scroll down to "John Stinson #2" to open PDF file)

TIPS ON PLAYING AT A FESTIVAL

If you haven't played for the public before, don't be intimidated. At a festival, our main goal is to enjoy playing together and demonstrate how much fun it is to make your own music by, well, making our own music! IT IS NOT A CONCERT PERFORMANCE. Most festival-goers will hear us because our music is part of the ambiance of the festival, and some of them may stop and watch us for a minute or two, maybe ask a couple of questions. But they'll move on after three to five minutes.

Here are a couple of tips I posted to the blog before last year's spring festival:

• It isn't a concert performance. We'll have a card table set up (or an instrument case) with a flier about the Clayville beginners' jams, and festival-goers will typically come up and listen for a minute or two. If they like what they're hearing, they'll stop and chat us up for a minute or two. I like to tell them how easy it is to get started playing the dulcimer, and how much fun it is.
• Bring chairs.
• Festivals are the very best way for newbies to get experience playing music in public. Most of the festival-goers aren't paying a bit of attention to you, but they like hearing music off in the distance. So we can recycle the same tunes through the day. I know people who have survived entire festivals playing "Bile 'Em Cabbage Down" and "Go Tell Aunt Rhody."
• Bring chairs.
• Since it's a festival, there will be distractions. […] But since it's a festival, you should feel free to get up and walk around.

There's more, including some jam session tips on learning tunes as you hear them "on the fly" from the Small Circle Tune-Learning Session in the Denver area at:

http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2013/05/prairieland-strings-getting-ready-for.html

Wouldn't hurt to bring chairs to our Prairieland Strings sessions at my house, either, come to think of it!

UPDATE: Additional email sent at 2:30 p.m. Friday, May 2 …

Just a quick note to confirm what you're probably already guessing -- I'm not going to be able to make it out to Clayville in the morning.

But the Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music jam session will go on fine without me! 10 a.m. to noon in the barn at Clayville, off Ill. 125 at Pleasant Plains. One suggestion, though -- as you play the songs, play each of them through five to 10 times and change 'em up a little each time. Play up an octave, down an octave, improvise some harmonies …

(If you play up two notes above the melody, or two notes below, you've got a "third" interval, and it'll probably sound pretty cool. If it doesn't, try something else! We're jamming, not conducting a Bach cantata.)

But you know to do that without my telling you!

We'll meet from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday at my home, 2125 S. Lincoln Ave., in Springfield. We're three blocks west of MacArthur between Cherry and Outer Park (the same block as the construction site for the new Hy-Vee store). Hope to see you then!

Norwegians off Broadway

Look for this recently closed off-Broadway play to spin off a road show in the Midwest. It's not exactly "Church Basement Ladies," but it's bound to be a crowd-pleaser from Chicago to Minneapolis, the Dakotas and points in between.

"The Norwegians" has distinct echoes of "Fargo" (but without quite as much of those irritating ya-sure-you-betcha accents) with a pinch of Ole and Lena, a dash of Garrison Kiellor's news from Lake Wobegon and a great big dollop of the "Lillyhammer" series now in its second season on Norwegian television (NRK) thrown in. I saw it a couple of weeks ago, in what struck me as the kind of off-Broadway venue I've always read about but never experienced before -- up two flights of rickety stairs on West 78th Street in Manhattan.

Promo on the play's website at http://www.norwegians.us/main.htm:

"The Norwegians" by C. Denby Swanson is a strong, bitter comedy about women scorned in Minnesota and the really, really nice gangsters--Norwegian hit men--they hire to whack their ex-boyfriends. Olive is a transplant from Texas and Betty is a transplant from Kentucky, but neither of them was prepared for the Norwegian men they would fall in love with there: the practical, warm, thoughtful, destructive, evil, jilting kind. If you're a hit man in Minnesota, 83% of your clients want to take out their ex (Oofda!). Olive has referred Betty to Gus and Tor, a partnership in the whacking business. What Tor doesn't know is that Gus has been sleeping with the clients. What Olive doesn't know is that Gus is Betty's own ex, and she has already put out a hit on him with a Swiss firm. Can Betty call off the job in time to let Gus do his? Should she?

The play is the first outright comedy by C. Denby Swanson, a Texas native. In it, she applies film noir and mob movie genres to life in Minnesota, whose winters she endured for a few years. …

The play's website links to a New York Times review, "Hit Men and Hurt Lovers Meet Minnesota Nice," by Anita Gates that ran March 19, 2013. She concludes:

Who knows whether Ms. Swanson is an original theatrical voice? There is every chance that she wrote “The Norwegians” after falling asleep during a late-night rerun of “Fargo.” But this profane, playfully dark comedy is often hysterical. True, it’s a low-budget production up a steep flight of stairs, but you don’t find 90 minutes of good-hearted laughter at Off Off Broadway prices every day.

There was a carrying-coals-to-Newcastle quality about going to New York City to hear jokes about Norwegians and "Minnesota nice," but the audience was clearly enjoying it. And, after all, once upon a time Brooklyn had more Norwegians than Bergen and almost as many as Oslo. My cousins from Long Island and I may not have been the only Norwegian-Americans in the crowd, and the humor and acting were as universal as, well, disenchanted ex-lovers and nice guys in the wrong line of work.

Jonathan Slaff & Associates public relations firm has this at http://www.jsnyc.com/season/norwegians.htm:

Both audiences and critics have found the play hilarious, but some of its "legs" may be due to it riding a wave of Norwegian entertainment. "What does the Fox Say" by the Norwegian group Ylvis, is about to pass "Gangnam Style" as the most-watched video of all time. "Lilyhammer," the Norwegian-American television series starring Steven Van Zandt about a New York gangster trying to start a new life in Norway, is a solid hit that is now in its second season.

Adds Slaff & Associates: "The production, which began Off-off Broadway last season, has had over 160 performances so far. It played Off-off Broadway from March 8 to April 14, 2013 and re-opened October 3, 2014 on an Off-Broadway contract. The Off-Broadway run was suspended November 24, 2013 to accommodate a pre-existing commitment for the theater space. Encouraged by solid audience demand, The Drilling Company resumed the Off-Broadway production January 9, 2014 as an open-ended run." The show closed Sunday, April 27.

"The World in Creolization" by Ulf Hannerz / new link to "Global Sounds and Local Brews" by Paul Rutten

"The World in Creolization" Africa / Volume 57 / Issue 04 / October 1987, pp 546-559 / Ulf Hannerz

From the time when I first became entangled with the Third World, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I have been fascinated by those contemporary ways of life and thought which keep growing out of the interplay between imported and indigenous cultures. They are the cultures on display in market places, shanty towns, beer halls, night clubs, missionary book stores, railway waiting rooms, boarding schools, newspapers and television stations. Nigeria, the country I have been most closely in touch with in an on-and-off way for some time, because of its large size, perhaps, offers particular scope for such cultural development, with several very large cities and hundreds if not thousands of small and middle-size towns. It has a lively if rather erratic press, a popular music scene dominated at different times by such genres as highlife, juju and Afro-beat, about as many universities as breweries (approximately one to every state in the federal republic), dozens of authors published at home and abroad, schoolhouses in just about every village, and an enormous fleet of interurban taxicabs which with great speed can convey you practically from anywhere to anywhere, at some risk to your life.

Opening paragraph in Cambridge Journals Online http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7905202.

---

"Global sounds and local brews: Musical developments and music industry in Europe" by Paul Rutten. Soundscapes — Journal on Media Culture 2 (July 1999). http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/MIE/Part2_chapter01.shtml. This essay originally appeared in: Rutten, Paul (ed.), Music, culture and society in Europe. Part II of: European Music Office, Music in Europe. Brussels, 1996, 64-76.

… Moreover European metropolises have developed into melting pots of musical styles, providing ground to many multi-cultural music scenes to develop. For immigrants from many parts of the world, music has become a major focus in developing their identity in a strange world. This coming together of musical streams has led to processes of cross-fertilization which has produced and promoted numerous interesting forms. In a similar way as for instance Irish immigrants and Afro-Americans have left their mark on today's American music, immigrants from the Caribbean and the West Indies have left their traces in British music and immigrants from former French colonies determine the face and the sound of French rap.

Soundscapes is an independent media studies journal in the Netherlands. Their non-mission statement, or "colophon" (cf. the colophon at the end of a book) reads:

No mission statement? Soundscapes is an online journal on the history and social significance of media culture. That's all. No, this journal has no mission statement, nor does it have a corporate identity. It is non-profit and educational. In short, it's just an academic journal that likes to talk back to the load of fleeting media messages that are overflowing all of us on a daily base. What are these things doing to us and what are we doing with them ourselves? It is this question that, one way or another, all of our essays try to address by informing their readers about radio programs, television series, popular music, styles of presentation and representation, and all that's related to the sounds and images of media culture. If you also like to talk back to the media with comments or contributions of your own, please mail them to the editors.

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/HEADER/colophon.shtml ICCE (Department of Educational Technology) at the University of Groningen

Augustana Luther League, "Youth's Favorite Songs" -- bio of Claus August Wendell (co-editor of "Junior Hymnal")

Youth's Favorite Songs. OCLC WorldCat has Minneapolis, Minn. : Augustana Luther League, [19--?] at http://www.worldcat.org/title/youths-favorite-songs/oclc/221428849 … but 1962 on page showing all editions at http://www.worldcat.org/title/youths-favorite-songs/oclc/221428849/editions?referer=di&editionsView=true

Discussed in Preaching from Home: The Stories of Seven Lutheran Women Hymn Writers by Gracia Grindal

Also The Junior Hymnal Rock Island: Augustana Book Concern, 1928.

Augustana Synod Luther League Lets Remember filmstrip. A film strip looking back at the Augustana Luther League conventions in 1951 in Colorado Springs, in 1953 in Boston, and in 1955 in Calgary.

Hymnary.org has a hardbound edn. dated 1955 at http://www.hymnary.org/hymnal/YFS1955 w/ hymns apparently in alphabetical order.

---

Wendell wrote verses 3 and 4 of the Paul Gerhardt chorale "The Restless Day Now Closeth," No. 650 in 1926 Augustana Hymnal. B.A. Born 1866 in Västergotland, B.A. 1893, M.A. 1897 from Augie. Ordained 1905. Pastor of Grace Lutheran in Minneapolis, 1914-1947. Co-editor of Junior Hymnal 1928.

Bio in Gustav Lawrence Bongfelt papers, 1936-1949. Swenson Center, Augustana College, Rock Island. http://www.augustana.edu/general-information/swenson-center-/archives/finding-aids/gustav-lawrence-bongfelt-papers. Bongfelt was his biographer.

Creolization, hybridity, cross-pollination, crossover and/or all of above: "Give Me Your Hand" / "Tabhair Dom do Lámh" / "Da Mihi Manum" / "Gje Meg Handa Di" ** UPDATED x1 ** w/ dulcimer tab

D R A F T

Stumbled across this while I was looking for examples of folk hymnody … And it struck me, partly because I like the song, and partly because I'm not entirely comfortable with what I'm researching about creolization in immigrant communities in the upper Midwest and Chicago. I like James Leary's idea that creolization isn't limited to "tropical climes where European traders, soldiers, missionaries, and colonizers encountered African, Arab, and East and American Indian peoples" in the Caribbean but also occurs in "polkabilly" dance music of the upper Midwest, where "musical interactions have long been distinguished by egalitarianism, by freewheeling accommodation and blending across complex boundaries. Here reside North Coast creoles." (Click here for more.) But at least in the Illinois music I'm studying, the interactions have been complex.

Here reside Prairie State Creoles? Well, yes, maybe, but …

Postmodernist students of cultural globalization find creolization a useful concept, but they also talk about "hybridity" (click here and here). "Crossover" fits, too. Doesn't sound all postmodernist and academic, either, but it applies to everything from Dolly Parton and Taylor Swift to http://www.classical-crossover.co.uk. Anyway, the influences and correspondences I'm looking for are subtle and complex, and I don't have a good word for them.

Cross-pollination? Plays off the same metaphor as hybrid musical genres. Might work. And we have a lot of hybrid corn growing in Illinois. Closer. Getting warmer. But not there yet.

Some clips from YouTube, which is what got me started.

Planxty in HD - Tabhair Dom do Lámh (1973 RTE). The legendary Planxty in concert at the national stadium in 1973, with "Give me your hand", is Tabhair Dom do Lámh. And Three Drunken Maidens. Banna ceoil traidisiúnta Éireannach é Planxty a bhunaigh Christy Moore, Andy Irvine, Donal Lunny agus Liam Ó Floinn i mBaile Átha Cliath sna seachtóidí.

Ensemble Passacaglia. Written in 1603 by Rory O'Cathan (Ruairi 'Dall' O'Cathain) a blind Irish harper, as a response to an apology by Lady Eglington of Ayrshire. "Ensemble Passacaglia [of Massachusetts] was formed in 2001 when Lisa Esperson, Tom Hanna and I became intrigued with the striking combination of winds, plucked strings and percussion. A mutual affinity for medieval and renaissance music brought us together as accompanists for the vocal ensemble the Solstice Singers, and soon thereafter we started performing as a trio. We began incorporating music from the Middle East into our concerts, finding richness in the cross-cultural influences suggested by the intricate rhythms and melodies. In 2007 Molly Johnston joined us, adding the warm and resonant sound of viola da gamba to the mix. http://www.solsticesingers.org/passabt.htm

Sondre Bratland and Annbjørg Lien. Traditional Irish tune with Norwegian lyrics ("Give Me Your Hand"). Annbjørg Lien plays the Swedish instrument nyckelharpa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyckelharpa). From a TV documetary on Sondre Bratland, 2005. So how, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning never would have thought to ask, do I creolize thee? Let's count the ways. We've got a song composed in Gaelic by an Irish harper for a Scottish patron popularized by an Irish traditional band translated from English into Norwegian and sung by a Norwegian vocalist backed by a Swedish instrument.

Kurt Nilsen og Helene Bøksle /m KORK - Gje meg handa di, ven. Minnekonsert fra Oslo domkirke lørdag 30. juli 2011. (KORK is the orchestra for Norwegian radio -- it's an acronym with the "K" from "Kringkasting," which means broadcasting, and "-ORK" from the Norwegian word for orchestra.)

Dulcimer tablature by Judith Giddings, a retired special ed professor who finger-picks MD arrangements of Carolan and other harp music.

• Dulcimer tab at http://pineyridge-music.com/judith-giddings/ -- 2 pages for MD tuned to DAD -- on Giddings' page on the Piny Ridge Music Artist Recognition Site.
• And a 3-page version @ http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/tab/GiveMeYourHand.pdf (Scroll down to "Give Me Your Hand.") Also in DAD.

Swoops, slurs and melisma -- especially in ballads and folk hymnody

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melisma

Melisma (Greek: μέλισμα, melisma, song, air, melody; from μέλος, melos, song, melody), plural melismata, in music, is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referred to as melismatic, as opposed to syllabic, in which each syllable of text is matched to a single note.

Some sound clips follow, in no particular developmental order.

• AFRICAN-AMERICAN
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRS2grauL4I Kim Chandler, http://www.kimchandler.com, creator of the Funky n Fun http://www.funkynfun.com vocal training series, reveals the meaning, origins and relevance of "melismatic" singing.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3RPE54-K-o Bruce A. Henry sings and explains melisma to Robbinsdale Middle School Students.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkbeNVVu7q4 "Angels In Heaven Done Signed My Name," sung by the St. James Missionary Baptist Church congregation; led by Kay Flemings. Shot by Alan Lomax, Worth Long, and John Bishop, Canton, Mississippi, August 1978.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CPJwt14d5E&list=PL7E44622E11A03C54 Belton Sutherland sings a brief holler at Clyde "Judas" Maxwell's farm in Madison County, Mississippi. Shot by Alan Lomax, John Bishop, and Worth Long, September 3, 1978.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccn6_60NhJI&list=PL7E44622E11A03C54 Belton Sutherland (vocal and guitar) performs an improvised blues on Clyde Maxwell's porch. Shot by Alan Lomax, John Bishop, and Worth Long at Maxwell's farm near Canton, Mississippi,
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhF2Vl8Vts0 "Come Out the Wildnerness," performed by Boyd Rivers and his wife Ruth May. Preceded by introduction of themselves and their music. Shot by Alan Lomax, John Bishop, and Worth Long, August 30, 1978, at the Rivers' home in Canton, Mississippi. (Song begins at 2:05)
• APPALACHIA -- REFORMED PSALMODY
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGQ5iCKdTeI Ralph Stanley - Angel Band. Roanoke Rapids Theatre, Roanoke Rapids, N.C., 5-30-08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3MzZgPBL3Q Gaelic psalms at Back Free Church, Isle Of Lewis- 20/21/oct/2003.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrDLj_dmugE The lined-out singing of "I'm Going Home" at the Thornton Old Regular Baptist church in Mayking, Kentucky. Shot by Alan Lomax and crew, July 24, 1983.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4aULiwXAdo Coal miner, union activist, and singer Nimrod Workman sings "Gabriel's Trumpet," also known as "I Want To Go Where Things Are Beautiful." Shot by Alan Lomax and crew at Nimrod and Molly Workman's home in Mascot, Tennessee, July 26, 1983.
• NORWAY
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNzSCnT1WiU Sondre Bratland & Kirsten Bråten Berg - Stev. From a Norwegian TV show. A "stev" is a very old four-line folk song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DedJ1PSiqYY Sondre Bratland & Nils Petter Molvær - Se, vi går opp til Jerusalem. Norwegian psalm ("Behold, we walk up to Jerusalem") to a traditional tune. Trumpet: Nils Petter Molvær. From a TV documetary on Sondre Bratland, 2005.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8q1jAkIX1I Bukkene Bruse - Eit barn er født i Betlehem. Moen Bergset (vocal, hardingfele / Hardanger fiddle, fiddle/violin), Annbjørg Lien (hardingfele / Hardanger fiddle, nyckelharpa), Steinar Ofsdal (flutes), and Bjørn Ole Rasch (keyboards). Recorded in Hakadal church, north of Oslo.
• IRELAND -- SEAN NOS
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JEiuM_eHuw LCaoineadh na dTrí Muire - Iarla Ó Lionáird - Caoineadh na dTrí Mhuire. (The Lament of the Three Marys) From the Highland Sessions.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ojy1W6r8L0 My Dashing Darling (Mo Ghile Mear) - Mary Black, iarla O Lionaird, Mary Ann Kennedy, Karen Matheson, Karan Casey, Allan MacDonald
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouf2brXEsiM Liam Ó Maonlaí performs Lakes of Pontchartrain at the second week of the Ruby Sessions 10 Year Anniversary Sessions. He pauses in the middle as there is someone behind the curtain talking on a phone and then gets caught out when his own rings during the performance. The Ruby Sessions is an acoustic club held weekly every Tuesday night in the intimate setting of Doyle's (across from the gates of Trinity college) of College Street,

"The Vicar of Bray"

Last night at a Lenten soup supper, the subject of the English Reformation came up (exactly how it came up is a long story), and I was reminded of a song -- I'm always reminded of a song -- so today I looked it up on line and found out more than I'd expected. That always happens, too. The song is "The Vicar of Bray," and it pokes fun at the twists and turns of English ecclastical polity during the 1600s and early 1700s.

Author is unknown. Apparently it circulated widely both under its present title and as "The Religious Turncoat; Or, the Trimming Parson." Wikipedia has the text, with a close reading and annotation. Also, especially of interest to dulcimer players, a JPEG file of the melody -- in D!

(A hat tip BTW to Berkley Moore of Springfield, who has a better ear for Samuel Bayard's tune families than I ever will. Berkley tells the melody is that of "An English Country Garden," the well-known folk song collected by Cecil Sharp and arranged for orchestra -- and high school band! -- by Percy Grainger.

(Somewhere I have DAD tablature from the dulcimer club in Crossville, Tenn. Another long story, involving a rest stop on I-40 during the 4th of July weekend 10 or 15 years ago.)

Richard Dyer-Bennet sings "The Vicar of Bray"

And here's an adaptation that plays too fast-and-loose with history for my taste, but features a tolerable performance of the song in period dress. It's from a 1937 movie set in Ireland during Cromwell's invasion. The first verse is true to the original, but the second invents a ditty about Cromwell.

Says YouTube user Michael Lampett, who posted the clip: "A film version of the tale (The Vicar of Bray) was released in 1937 starring Stanley Holloway as the vicar. In the film, the vicar (of Bray, County Wicklow in Ireland) is given a more positive character and events are placed at a slightly earlier period, during the English Civil War. He successfully protects his parishioners by adopting a diplomatic approach during the turbulent events and secures forgiveness for moderate rebels from the restored Charles II." I wonder if that's making light of Cromwell's reign of terror in Ireland, but I haven't seen the movie. And the clip is kind of fun.

The first verse gives the flavor of the original song:

In good King Charles's golden days,
When Loyalty no harm meant;
A Zealous High-Church man I was,
And so I gain'd Preferment.
Unto my Flock I daily Preach'd,
Kings are by God appointed,
And Damn'd are those who dare resist,
Or touch the Lord's Anointed.

And this is law, I will maintain
Unto my Dying Day, Sir.
That whatsoever King may reign,
I will be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!

The song was hugely popular. Not too many years later, it was reworked by Loyalists who supported the British during the American Revolution. Those lyrics (in C) are available on line on the Digital Tradition folk music website. Again, the first verse gives the flavor of the thing:

When royal George ruled o'er this land and loyalty no harm meant
For Church and King I made a stand and so I got preferment
I still opposed all party tricks for reasons I thought clear ones
And swore it was their politics to made us all Presbyterians

And this is the law that I'll maintain until my dying day, sir
That whatsoever King might reign, I'll still be Vicar of Bray, sir

A couple of notes are in order here. The "party tricks" don't refer to fun and games at a social gathering -- political parties were in their infancy, and the word "party" had disreputable, factional connotations. American patriots, to use another word that had *negative connotations at the time, were apt to be Presbyterians or others who did not conform to the Anglican established church. Other than that one reference, however, the American version of the song is wholly political and non-religious.

Sara L. Johnson, perhaps better known as "The Kitchen Musician" for her books and website on early American and Anglo-Celtic folk music, sketches in some history, first in 16th- and 17th-century England:

The vicars of Bray, in Berkshire, have been some of its most interesting characters, apparently all upholding the same principle as the most famous one, Simon Aleyn, of the mid-sixteenth century. “He was a Papist under the reign of Henry VIII, and a Protestant under Edward VI; he was a Papist again under Mary, and once more became a Protestant in the reign of Elizabeth. When this scandal to the gown was reproached for his versatility of religious creeds, and taxed for being a turncoat and an inconstant changeling...he replied, ‘Not so neither, for if I changed my religion, I am sure I kept true to my principle; which is, to live and die the Vicar of Bray.’ ” (He succeeded and is buried there.) The well-known song, however, was written about 1720 in the reign of George I, perhaps by a soldier in Colonel Fuller’s troop of Dragoons, of Dr. Francis Carswell, Vicar of Bray during the reigns of Charles II, James II, William III, Ann, and George I. He was said to have been “an old rich stingy turncoat and a curmudgeon of unsettled head.”

And of the American version:

The subject of the American version is unknown, but may have been the publisher of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, Benjamin Towne, whose newspaper, before, during and after the British occupation espoused the viewpoint of whoever was currently in power.

__________

* "Patriotism having become one of our topicks, [Dr. Samuel] Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.' But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest." James Boswell's Life of Johnson April 7, 1775 (1791). Qtd. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nationalism.

Two new tunes for Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music -- "River" and "Sumer Is Icumen In" (summer is a-coming in)

Blast email I sent out today to the Clayville list, edited to embed clips and fix minor illiteracies. -- pe

Hi everybody --

We're adding a couple of songs to our playlist when the Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music meets from 10 a.m. till noon this Saturday at Clayville Historic Site, Ill. 125, Pleasant Plains. Last night in Springfield, we played "River," a song by singer-songwriter Bill Staines, and "Sumer Is Icumen In" (summer is a-coming in) for the first time. And everyone enjoyed them so much we decided we want to keep working on them both in Springfield and Clayville.

In addition, "Soldier's Joy" is back by popular demand. We've already had a request for it, and last night we followed up on that request and learned it easily. So we decided it's a keeper, too.

I've attached dulcimer tab for "River" and "Sumer Is Icumen In" to this message, and links to dulcimer tab and lead sheets with the melody line and guitar chords for "Solider's Joy" below.

In addition, I'm linking to YouTube videos of "River" and "Sumer Is Icumen In" so you can *hear* the tunes. I'll post them to Hogfiddle, too.

"RIVER"

An old clip of Staines performing the song with singer-songwriter couple Aileen and Elkin Thomas at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1979

"SUMER IS ICUMEN IN"

It's an a cappella round that topped the charts in England about 1260 AD. Here it is as revived more recently by members of the English post-punk rock band the Futureheads:

And as performed by English singer-songwriter Richard Thompson backed by Debra Dobkin on drum and Judith Owen harmony vocal. When Playboy magazine asked Thompson to list the best popular songs of the last 1,000 years for a Y2K feature, he suggested this one. He never heard from Playboy again, but it gave him the idea for a successful night club act. Their grand entrance to the club starts at 1:33:

And -- my favorite -- a group of English folk singers and fiddle players (I think I also hear banjos playing the rhythm part) at Cecil Sharp House, headquarters of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London. I especially like this one because you can tell how much fun they're having with it:

There's more information about the song, and several more traditional YouTube clips performed by a cappella choirs and early music consorts, on Hogfiddle at:

http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2013/12/sumer-is-icumen-in.html

"SOLDIER'S JOY"

Dulcimer tab and a lead sheet with guitar chords are available in a directory on the Music Roots website out of Mountain View, Ark., at:

http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2014/03/soldiers-joy-prairie-land-clayville.html

I'll also copy this message to the blog.

Hope to see you at Clayville Saturday morning!

Flash mob in Odessa fish market: As international tension rises again in Ukraine, Beethoven and Schiller's "Ode to Joy"

From an off-topic post on Diane Ravitch's education blog today:

This is not an April Fools’ joke.

Russian troops are massed on the borders of Ukraine.

People are shopping in the fish market in Odessa, going about their daily life.

Then a flash mob appears.

What do you think they do?

Her link is to a recent item on Andrew Sullivan's blog The Dish, which embeds a YouTube clip of the flash mob. (It's also embedded below on Hogfiddle.)

Ravitch asks:

Why do these notes always speak of hope? Why do they stir us so?

Why do we hear this music and think of a better world?

Here's the original YouTube video:

Official (Официальное) - Flash mob (Флешмоб): Odessa (Одесса) Musicians Privoz (Музыканты Привоз). Published on Mar 24, 2014. Flash mob: Odessa Musicians for Peace and Brotherhood. / Флешмоб: Одесские Музыканты за Мир и Братство. (Официальное Видео). В флешмобе 22. 03. 2014 года на Одесском привозе приняли участие Национальный одесский филармонический оркестр и хор Одесского национального академического театра оперы и балета. Хормейстер Л. Бутенко, дирижер Хобарт Эрл. (Official Video). Saturday, March 22, 2014, 10:29 am. Odessa Fish Market ('Privoz'). Members of the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra and Odessa Opera Chorus, Hobart Earle, conductor, perform music from Beethoven's 9th symphony.

A reader of Sullivan's blog gives this background:

As World War I got underway, Romain Rolland and Hermann Hesse, two Swiss writers, appealed to their war-frenzied friends in France and Germany citing the lede to the choral movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! sondern laßt uns angenehmere anstimmen! (Friends, not these sounds! Let us rather make more pleasant, more joyous notes). And last Saturday, in Odessa, a Russian-speaking city of Ukraine, one of the cultural treasure-houses of Europe, the city that gave us Anna Akhmatova and Issak Babel, Sviatoslav Richter, David Oistrakh, Nathan Milshtein and Emil Gilels, performers from the Philharmonic flash mobbed a performance of the last bars of the symphony at the Odessa fish market. …