I shamelessly copied and pasted to get those Bohemian diacritical marks. LOL! I used to use a dandy program called Keyman in my translating work. It’s basically a keyboard mapping and input utility. Some of the old German transliterations I had to word process stacked multiple diacritics atop a single vowel, and there were others that spanned above and below pairs of characters with stacked diacritics. I had to use Open Office and a Unicode typeface called Charis SIL (both were open source and free of charge) to pull off the typesetting gymnastics. MS-Word was unable to correctly align, stack, and render the diacritics. I continue to use LibreOffice, one of the open-source successors to Open Office. Charis SIL is a beautiful, full-fledged Unicode typeface (for display & printer) with italic, boldface, and italicized boldface fonts; its sister, Gentium, is also gorgeous and easy on the eyes, but did not have all the fonts I needed at the time.
Re: Roots of “From the New World” by Antonin Dvořák. You may be correct about his visit to the wide open spaces of Iowa influencing the images of America he conveyed via the music. He didn’t just stay in NYC during his 1892-1895 stint as director of the National Conservatory of Music of America. He drew upon African-American spirituals and indigenous music, as well as Bohemian folk rhythms. I was interested to read that pupil William Arms Fisher wrote lyrics for, and adapted the theme from the Largo movement into, “Goin’ Home.” It’s got pizzazz. In addition to details on American influences, there is a link to a bang-up instrumental performance of “Goin’ Home” by the US Air Force Band on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._9_(Dvo%C5%99%C3%A1k http://www.dvoraknyc.org/dvorak-in-america/
Interestingly, Choctaw freedman [black slave manumitted by a Choctaw owner] Wallace Willis, originally from Mississippi, but forcibly relocated to Oklahoma, composed “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” among other spirituals. They were popularized by the Fisk Jubilee Singers (see link to a recording via the second URL below). I got the impression from the above article that Dvořák did not use actual melodies from spirituals, but conveyed similar emotional color in “From the New World.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw_freedmen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Low,_Sweet_Chariot
How exciting! Dvorak’s assistant and student Burleigh sang spirituals to him that he had learned from his parents and grandparents. He also worked “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” into one of the movements… along with bits of other African-American music: http://www.dvoraknyc.org/african-american-influences
Aside: Something you have to know about the Choctaw: When they arrived in the Oklahoma Territory after losing so many on the Trail of Tears, the southeastern Indians received news of the potato famine in Ireland. Understanding dawned. “Ah, they do it to white people, too.” Whereupon the Choctaw took up a collection and donated their pittances to Irish famine relief. To this day, there is a close connection between the Choctaw and the Irish. Why the heck was that left out of my history books?! I had to hear it from the former editor of The Cherokee Voice, who looked like a strapping blond viking – with a Scots surname.
I can’t help but wonder if that other indigenous American musical tradition, shape note singing from the Sacred Harp and similar tunebooks in the fasola scale of itinerant New England singing masters, might also have exerted an influence on Dvořák. It was carried westward to the frontier, and also found a home in the South, where it was preserved in rural communities. Shape note singing has been enjoying a global resurgence in interest in the past couple of decades. I suspect that it had been brought by New England missionaries to Samoa, whose church choirs are famous for their astounding virtuosity. I think I can hear traces of the startling four-part harmonies in the church music there and in Hawaii, and possibly in other parts of Polynesia and Micronesia where Boston Missionaries have made landfall.
EFFING FANTASTIC!!! 😁😁😁 I love you ❤️❤️❤️ I want to talk about shape note singing and how it relates to Bulgarian nun choir-Eastern European type church singing but that will require me to do some research and I’m running off right now so . . . To be continued? I’m so jazzed!
Oh! And yes, I’ve heard the Polynesian singing in Tahiti as well, where there is an annual singing contest on Bora Bora.
Of course Dvorák was in Chicago with all those Bohemians 😁
You’re on! My voice is shot, so I only barely got my feet wet with the Sacred Harp, but I really enjoyed it, and I still love hearing it. I had never gotten the hang of reading music, and faked everything by ear. Starting in high school, I studiously avoided music classes and performance activities like the plague because of my deep, dark secret. I did not want to destroy my grade point average, so tried to play to my strengths. I avoided home economics for the same reason: I was pretty good at cooking, but terrible at sewing. So I wangled my way into metal shop instead, which was great fun, very empowering, and something I could not do at home… but that’s another story.
Re: Bulgarian choral music. This is ringing a faint bell. Does it have something to do with different modes or scales from modern Western music? One of the links on Dvorak said something about a connection between African-American spirituals, Native American music, and Scottish music — and the writer said something about all three of them being pentatonic. I don’t know if that has a bearing on the Eastern European / Bulgarian music. I seem to recall reading somewhere that Russian Orthodox church music is in a mode that sounds odd to Western ears.
That brings to mind the Norwegian hardanger fiddle. I used to (attempt to) do Scandinavian folk dancing many moons ago. I could never get the hang of the timing, which seemed to change constantly. This may not be quite the right music — but it sure is interesting to listen to it.
Re: Polynesian singing in Tahiti and the contest on Bora Bora — Wow! I got to hear live Marshall Islands singing in Hawaii. Got to the Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu, which was very interesting for the comparisons between the main archipelagoes. About 25 years ago I stumbled across a CD of traditional vocal music from Rapa Iti (Little Rapa, as opposed to Rapa Nui — Easter Island). The music sounds as if it goes flat. It is the darnedest thing I’ve ever heard.
Okay. Holy crap, where to even start? I’m completely skipping over the fiddling and the typing/accent marks stuff because I’m too full with everything else. I’m severely handicapped by a tetchy iPad that slows to a crawl and doesn’t let me hop around and link the way I’d like, so this may be ugly.
So, I’ve spent a lot of time since Friday on shape-note singing which I’d only known before as Sacred Harp singing. I never heard of shape notes before and had thought solfege was something else that I actually understood. I still can’t comprehend how people read shape notes, but I had a head start on reading music. Because, my friend, I am a singer and the opposite of you, one who took multiple performance credits whenever possible because they were guaranteed to shoot up my GPA 🤣 (Also, Advanced Tailoring but we can talk about that later.) So I’ve sung in a lot of choirs since childhood through adulthood, even with symphony orchestras and at Carnegie Hall and I know a fair amount about choral singing and it’s my favorite thing. But I haven’t been able to do it in 20 or so years because I have a partially frozen vocal cord (or something) and my voice can’t be properly controlled any more. Anyway, all kinds of group singing has always interested me, from African tribal welcome songs to the Tahitian church groups, the Bulgarian women’s choirs, and those nutty folks in the American South who seemed like they were facing and almost yelling hymns at each other. I did find one or two references that someone else thinks some of those four things share common components (ha!) but it’s pretty threadbare. My music theory is so poor that I can’t talk about pentatonic and other scales and anything like that.
One interesting thing about them all is that they create overtones that are somewhat electrifying. It has something to do with predominantly minor keys and flatted sevenths, I think, but don’t hold me to that. How on earth you keep all this stuff in your mind is beyond me, I can’t even hold it for two days.
I’m afraid to exit here to go get links for fear this comment will disappear, so I’ll do that separately. But net-net, because of you I may have discovered that Sacred Harp is a type of singing that I can still do. Because you don’t have to be good! And the St Louis group meets tomorrow, in my town. That seems like a bit of a message.
Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgaires: (skip to anywhere) https://youtu.be/AFgzzWT3zX4
Upon review, I no longer think the Eastern Europeans are related to the Sacred Harpers! A whole different kettle of fish 🤦🏻♀️
Oh, and I can’t find anything about a singing contest on Bora Bora, so … ? I dreamed that? But there’s a song Heiva on Tahiti? And maybe one for dancing on BB. Mollah. I’m confused.
I am thrilled out of my shoes that you reconnected with Sacred Harp. I am so happy for you, and hope that you sang your lungs out on Sunday. Being immersed in the sound while helping weave it is one of the most sublime experiences of my lifetime. I’ve met lovely folks in the process. The world is a better place when Sacred Harp is sung, much as it is a better place when Beanies from around the globe gather to discuss Kdrama — and everything else under the sun. 😉
You’ve had a lifelong blast with singing, and amazing experiences of singing in groups. And now you can return to singing. What a blessing. Manseh!
My melancholic, introverted temperament and mile-wide perfectionistic streak made the prospect of singing in school torture. But oddly enough, I somehow was okay with singing in church, and learned to play guitar in 6th grade so I could sing in the First Friday Folk Masses in parochial school. I learned by ear, and just played chords. Later, in college, I played at Mass on campus. When I was out in Hawaii, I responded to a call for singers for the Sunday evening Folk Mass, and enjoyed the fellowship of making a joyful noise. It wasn’t until I was a disk jockey in college that I encountered blues and gospel, the latter a mind-blowing switch from the Latin dirges I grew up with. Check out the film SAY AMEN, SOMEBODY (1982). Along with Mahalia Jackson, the Barrett Sisters of Chicago occupy a special corner of my heart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyPWiBmJ3x4
It wasn’t until later in life that I came to understand how important music was to me. It was too important to be graded on, for one thing. I think that the way it was taught was also not good for me. In our 30s, my sister and I took a weekend singing course for women at Rowe Camp in Mass. that was co-facilitated by Laurel Masse of the Manhattan Transfer, and it was an empowering and mind-blowing experience. She and her colleagues were incredible teachers. There was no printed music. It was all by rote as I recall. “Lone, Wild Bird” was one of the songs we learned — and it was gorgeous. I just confirmed my hunch that it is from both The Sacred Harp and Walker’s Southern Harmony. This version by the Honey Whiskey Trio uses modern pronouns, and is only in three parts, but it gives the flavor of what we sang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ5Ltn8sy7Y
268 David’s Lamentation – Second Ireland Sacred Harp Convention, 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwcAs0wIrik
One of my faves. Jean Seiler in the pink jacket, with her late husband George, was instrumental in starting the Garden State Sacred Harp Convention, which they recorded and made available on CD. (I no longer see it listed in the fasola.org resources.) I had the pleasure of meeting her at several NJ all-day singings.
Oh BALLS i had just typed out the longest reply to you and now it’s gone. How I hate that. 😤😤😤 Because I left to get this.
http://robertshawthefilm.com/film-trailer/
Anyway, this is a film made by my best friend that you can see on American Masters/PBS in Nov about Robert Shaw, the renowned choral conductor. Part of his fame is based on arrangements he made, with Alice Parker, of Appalachian folk songs like Wondrous Love or Shenandoah that were sung by school choirs for decades. If you had sung, the image of the music copies would be imprinted on your brain. He ended as the conductor of the Atlanta Symphony and founded their all-volunteer Symphony Chorus which is considered one of the world’s best. He was regarded as the God of choral conducting and trained other conductors annually at Carnegie Hall in seminars. It cracks me up to think that he started with one foot in the wild and woolly Sacred Harp songs and ended as Mr Rules King of singing.
I just listened at the singing I went to last night. I had trouble with the verses not being written under the notes and trouble loosening up enough to sing out that way. It was tiring to spend that long doing something I had no idea what I was doing, it’s been a long time since I’ve done that! I say that NOT like it’s a bad thing.
I don’t know squat about music theory, and my eyes glaze over when I hear talk about fifths (it’s enough to make me want to guzzle a fifth!), sevenths, etc. I don’t know the technical definition for “blue note,” and I don’t need it. I just know that I feel really good when I hear them, and that they resonate deeply with me, who is as Irish as Paddy’s pig.
Another life-changing music experience was chanting the open vowel sounds of the chakras with a wild and crazy geomancer and builder of labyrinths. It was held at a squash court, and the overtones and harmonics were incredible. I don’t recall how many folks turned out before breakfast during the course of the gathering, but it was more than a handful. Everyone found their own take on the pitch, as in shape-note singing, and it was stunning. The idea was to work up from the root chakra to the crown and back down to ground one’s ch’i. It made me feel like a million dollars. Sonic acupuncture that smoothed the flow of ch’i through the meridians and organ systems.
Later, my metaphysical interest led to biodynamic farming and gardening — and projective geometry and its aural manifestation as the music of the spheres. Each planet has a tone, and the movements of the planets in relation to each other against the backdrop of the fixed stars of the constellations with their own connections to the four elements produces the “music.” By consulting an ephemeris, you know which planets are visible from your point on earth at any given time. You can turn that into vocal sound. Combine it with Eurythmy movement, and you can hear the cosmos moving. This is the kind of music that excites me, and was not to be learned in school when I was a tadpole. I think I would have been better off if I had gone to Waldorf school, but that was not possible when I was young. I encountered it much later in life, but at least my path crossed it.
How on earth you keep all this stuff in your mind is beyond me, I can’t even hold it for two days.
It helps to be kind of nuts, and an inveterate reader. My mind is a midden heap of trivia like a relational database. To be honest, I cheat. I don’t actually keep all the information in my mind. The important stuff I carry around in my heart. It might be backed up in my cells, too, especially the ancestral things. I’m convinced there are vikings in my family tree — which is not far-fetched given where my Irish ancestors are from. My maternal grandfather was from Kentucky, with roots in Virginia and Tennessee, so for me, Sacred Harp is a way of connecting with that side of the family, which I had little contact with owing to divorce.
Your links to Zulu, Bulgarian, and Tahitian music are great. What a treat for the ears. I have a copy of AWAKE MY SOUL, but still haven’t watched it. Kdrama snagged me.
There you go, amazing me again. I’ve been to a few seminars about chakras but just dabbling, which is more of what I do. I can imagine the resonance you got in a squash court, that would be interesting. A lot like singing in the shower, or a parking lot. I’ve had the good luck to hear lots of amazing spaces and it’s wonderful when there’s nothing to do but just let your jaw drop down in awe. I didn’t know you could sonically work up and down your chakras but now that you say it, it’s so obvious. Doing it “accidentally” is probably why we all sing in the first place.
Well, even though you cheat and keep it in your heart and even online you’re amazing 😁 I’m also an inveterate reader but mine has become almost completely politics, which really means it’s mostly the same thing repeated over and over with small twists each day. I’m luxuriating in being well-informed but it’s probably more stress than is necessary.
OF COURSE you have a copy of Awake My Soul 😉!
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PakalanaPikake
August 16, 2018 at 12:10 PM
THIRTY BUT SEVENTEEN, Ep. 14
New York Philharmonic: “Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95, B. 178 ‘From the New World'” by Dvořák
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HClX2s8A9IE
By composer of “Humoresque”
bbstl 🧹
August 16, 2018 at 7:09 PM
Dvorák (can’t get my r to do the accent) – a good Bohemian boy! And I’m thinking the New World was partly inspired by – Iowa?
PakalanaPikake
August 17, 2018 at 2:22 AM
@bbstl,
First, a typographical digression. 😉
I shamelessly copied and pasted to get those Bohemian diacritical marks. LOL! I used to use a dandy program called Keyman in my translating work. It’s basically a keyboard mapping and input utility. Some of the old German transliterations I had to word process stacked multiple diacritics atop a single vowel, and there were others that spanned above and below pairs of characters with stacked diacritics. I had to use Open Office and a Unicode typeface called Charis SIL (both were open source and free of charge) to pull off the typesetting gymnastics. MS-Word was unable to correctly align, stack, and render the diacritics. I continue to use LibreOffice, one of the open-source successors to Open Office. Charis SIL is a beautiful, full-fledged Unicode typeface (for display & printer) with italic, boldface, and italicized boldface fonts; its sister, Gentium, is also gorgeous and easy on the eyes, but did not have all the fonts I needed at the time.
PakalanaPikake
August 17, 2018 at 2:24 AM
@bbstl,
Re: Roots of “From the New World” by Antonin Dvořák. You may be correct about his visit to the wide open spaces of Iowa influencing the images of America he conveyed via the music. He didn’t just stay in NYC during his 1892-1895 stint as director of the National Conservatory of Music of America. He drew upon African-American spirituals and indigenous music, as well as Bohemian folk rhythms. I was interested to read that pupil William Arms Fisher wrote lyrics for, and adapted the theme from the Largo movement into, “Goin’ Home.” It’s got pizzazz. In addition to details on American influences, there is a link to a bang-up instrumental performance of “Goin’ Home” by the US Air Force Band on this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._9_(Dvo%C5%99%C3%A1k
http://www.dvoraknyc.org/dvorak-in-america/
Interestingly, Choctaw freedman [black slave manumitted by a Choctaw owner] Wallace Willis, originally from Mississippi, but forcibly relocated to Oklahoma, composed “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” among other spirituals. They were popularized by the Fisk Jubilee Singers (see link to a recording via the second URL below). I got the impression from the above article that Dvořák did not use actual melodies from spirituals, but conveyed similar emotional color in “From the New World.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw_freedmen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Low,_Sweet_Chariot
How exciting! Dvorak’s assistant and student Burleigh sang spirituals to him that he had learned from his parents and grandparents. He also worked “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” into one of the movements… along with bits of other African-American music:
http://www.dvoraknyc.org/african-american-influences
Aside: Something you have to know about the Choctaw: When they arrived in the Oklahoma Territory after losing so many on the Trail of Tears, the southeastern Indians received news of the potato famine in Ireland. Understanding dawned. “Ah, they do it to white people, too.” Whereupon the Choctaw took up a collection and donated their pittances to Irish famine relief. To this day, there is a close connection between the Choctaw and the Irish. Why the heck was that left out of my history books?! I had to hear it from the former editor of The Cherokee Voice, who looked like a strapping blond viking – with a Scots surname.
– Continued –
PakalanaPikake
August 17, 2018 at 2:25 AM
Part 2 of 2
I can’t help but wonder if that other indigenous American musical tradition, shape note singing from the Sacred Harp and similar tunebooks in the fasola scale of itinerant New England singing masters, might also have exerted an influence on Dvořák. It was carried westward to the frontier, and also found a home in the South, where it was preserved in rural communities. Shape note singing has been enjoying a global resurgence in interest in the past couple of decades. I suspect that it had been brought by New England missionaries to Samoa, whose church choirs are famous for their astounding virtuosity. I think I can hear traces of the startling four-part harmonies in the church music there and in Hawaii, and possibly in other parts of Polynesia and Micronesia where Boston Missionaries have made landfall.
Aside: During REBEL, in a discussion of the lyrics of the song that Gil-dong sang with Nok-soo before she headed off to court to be a musician, I mentioned the color of the mountains, including “purple mountain majesties” in “America the Beautiful,” starting in this post:
http://www.dramabeans.com/2017/02/rebel-thief-who-stole-the-people-episode-7/#comment-2712309,
and continuing here:
http://www.dramabeans.com/2017/02/rebel-thief-who-stole-the-people-episode-7/#comment-2712846,
and here:
http://www.dramabeans.com/2017/02/rebel-thief-who-stole-the-people-episode-7/#comment-2713033,
which deals with the writing of the poem and the impressions Wellesley College English professor Katharine Lee Bates took in on her way back from Colorado via the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. That was contemporaneous with Dvořák’s residency in NYC. Doggone if he didn’t conduct a concert at the White City!
http://www.dvoraknyc.org/spitville
bbstl 🧹
August 17, 2018 at 8:59 AM
EFFING FANTASTIC!!! 😁😁😁 I love you ❤️❤️❤️ I want to talk about shape note singing and how it relates to Bulgarian nun choir-Eastern European type church singing but that will require me to do some research and I’m running off right now so . . . To be continued? I’m so jazzed!
Oh! And yes, I’ve heard the Polynesian singing in Tahiti as well, where there is an annual singing contest on Bora Bora.
Of course Dvorák was in Chicago with all those Bohemians 😁
PakalanaPikake
August 17, 2018 at 12:55 PM
@bbstl,
You’re on! My voice is shot, so I only barely got my feet wet with the Sacred Harp, but I really enjoyed it, and I still love hearing it. I had never gotten the hang of reading music, and faked everything by ear. Starting in high school, I studiously avoided music classes and performance activities like the plague because of my deep, dark secret. I did not want to destroy my grade point average, so tried to play to my strengths. I avoided home economics for the same reason: I was pretty good at cooking, but terrible at sewing. So I wangled my way into metal shop instead, which was great fun, very empowering, and something I could not do at home… but that’s another story.
Re: Bulgarian choral music. This is ringing a faint bell. Does it have something to do with different modes or scales from modern Western music? One of the links on Dvorak said something about a connection between African-American spirituals, Native American music, and Scottish music — and the writer said something about all three of them being pentatonic. I don’t know if that has a bearing on the Eastern European / Bulgarian music. I seem to recall reading somewhere that Russian Orthodox church music is in a mode that sounds odd to Western ears.
That brings to mind the Norwegian hardanger fiddle. I used to (attempt to) do Scandinavian folk dancing many moons ago. I could never get the hang of the timing, which seemed to change constantly. This may not be quite the right music — but it sure is interesting to listen to it.
Haakon Solaas plays Fanitullen on the hardanger fiddle [devil’s tune, per the comments]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di1F8GUvEtg
Ah, this is more like the funky timing I was recalling:
Hardanger Fiddle Assoc. of America
http://www.hfaa.org/Home/Dances
Sff: Hæge Manheim og Øystein Romtveit – Telespringar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkzEitcBvc0&feature=youtu.be
Telespringar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16XtK4y9khI
Re: Polynesian singing in Tahiti and the contest on Bora Bora — Wow! I got to hear live Marshall Islands singing in Hawaii. Got to the Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu, which was very interesting for the comparisons between the main archipelagoes. About 25 years ago I stumbled across a CD of traditional vocal music from Rapa Iti (Little Rapa, as opposed to Rapa Nui — Easter Island). The music sounds as if it goes flat. It is the darnedest thing I’ve ever heard.
Pacific Trip Leads to CD by Tahitian Choir
by Melissa Block
September 15, 200412:00 AM ET
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3919685
There’s an example of the downward slur.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tahitian_Choir
Enjoy!
bbstl 🧹
August 19, 2018 at 3:51 PM
Okay. Holy crap, where to even start? I’m completely skipping over the fiddling and the typing/accent marks stuff because I’m too full with everything else. I’m severely handicapped by a tetchy iPad that slows to a crawl and doesn’t let me hop around and link the way I’d like, so this may be ugly.
So, I’ve spent a lot of time since Friday on shape-note singing which I’d only known before as Sacred Harp singing. I never heard of shape notes before and had thought solfege was something else that I actually understood. I still can’t comprehend how people read shape notes, but I had a head start on reading music. Because, my friend, I am a singer and the opposite of you, one who took multiple performance credits whenever possible because they were guaranteed to shoot up my GPA 🤣 (Also, Advanced Tailoring but we can talk about that later.) So I’ve sung in a lot of choirs since childhood through adulthood, even with symphony orchestras and at Carnegie Hall and I know a fair amount about choral singing and it’s my favorite thing. But I haven’t been able to do it in 20 or so years because I have a partially frozen vocal cord (or something) and my voice can’t be properly controlled any more. Anyway, all kinds of group singing has always interested me, from African tribal welcome songs to the Tahitian church groups, the Bulgarian women’s choirs, and those nutty folks in the American South who seemed like they were facing and almost yelling hymns at each other. I did find one or two references that someone else thinks some of those four things share common components (ha!) but it’s pretty threadbare. My music theory is so poor that I can’t talk about pentatonic and other scales and anything like that.
One interesting thing about them all is that they create overtones that are somewhat electrifying. It has something to do with predominantly minor keys and flatted sevenths, I think, but don’t hold me to that. How on earth you keep all this stuff in your mind is beyond me, I can’t even hold it for two days.
I’m afraid to exit here to go get links for fear this comment will disappear, so I’ll do that separately. But net-net, because of you I may have discovered that Sacred Harp is a type of singing that I can still do. Because you don’t have to be good! And the St Louis group meets tomorrow, in my town. That seems like a bit of a message.
bbstl 🧹
August 19, 2018 at 4:35 PM
Some selections-
“Awake My Soul” Sacred Harp documentary trailer:
http://awakemysoul.com/
Welcome song from South African Zulu Tribe:
https://youtu.be/E0vmOggBlOQ
Tahitian Heiva:
https://youtu.be/we2sJL7_9S8
Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgaires: (skip to anywhere)
https://youtu.be/AFgzzWT3zX4
Upon review, I no longer think the Eastern Europeans are related to the Sacred Harpers! A whole different kettle of fish 🤦🏻♀️
Btw, I bought the Rapa Iti album, thanks!
bbstl 🧹
August 19, 2018 at 4:38 PM
Oh, and I can’t find anything about a singing contest on Bora Bora, so … ? I dreamed that? But there’s a song Heiva on Tahiti? And maybe one for dancing on BB. Mollah. I’m confused.
PakalanaPikake
August 20, 2018 at 4:47 AM
@bbstl,
I am thrilled out of my shoes that you reconnected with Sacred Harp. I am so happy for you, and hope that you sang your lungs out on Sunday. Being immersed in the sound while helping weave it is one of the most sublime experiences of my lifetime. I’ve met lovely folks in the process. The world is a better place when Sacred Harp is sung, much as it is a better place when Beanies from around the globe gather to discuss Kdrama — and everything else under the sun. 😉
You’ve had a lifelong blast with singing, and amazing experiences of singing in groups. And now you can return to singing. What a blessing. Manseh!
My melancholic, introverted temperament and mile-wide perfectionistic streak made the prospect of singing in school torture. But oddly enough, I somehow was okay with singing in church, and learned to play guitar in 6th grade so I could sing in the First Friday Folk Masses in parochial school. I learned by ear, and just played chords. Later, in college, I played at Mass on campus. When I was out in Hawaii, I responded to a call for singers for the Sunday evening Folk Mass, and enjoyed the fellowship of making a joyful noise. It wasn’t until I was a disk jockey in college that I encountered blues and gospel, the latter a mind-blowing switch from the Latin dirges I grew up with. Check out the film SAY AMEN, SOMEBODY (1982). Along with Mahalia Jackson, the Barrett Sisters of Chicago occupy a special corner of my heart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyPWiBmJ3x4
It wasn’t until later in life that I came to understand how important music was to me. It was too important to be graded on, for one thing. I think that the way it was taught was also not good for me. In our 30s, my sister and I took a weekend singing course for women at Rowe Camp in Mass. that was co-facilitated by Laurel Masse of the Manhattan Transfer, and it was an empowering and mind-blowing experience. She and her colleagues were incredible teachers. There was no printed music. It was all by rote as I recall. “Lone, Wild Bird” was one of the songs we learned — and it was gorgeous. I just confirmed my hunch that it is from both The Sacred Harp and Walker’s Southern Harmony. This version by the Honey Whiskey Trio uses modern pronouns, and is only in three parts, but it gives the flavor of what we sang:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ5Ltn8sy7Y
268 David’s Lamentation – Second Ireland Sacred Harp Convention, 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwcAs0wIrik
One of my faves. Jean Seiler in the pink jacket, with her late husband George, was instrumental in starting the Garden State Sacred Harp Convention, which they recorded and made available on CD. (I no longer see it listed in the fasola.org resources.) I had the pleasure of meeting her at several NJ all-day singings.
Sacred Harp 85 The Morning Trumpet HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lmd1tt8IALY
bbstl 🧹
August 21, 2018 at 5:02 PM
Oh BALLS i had just typed out the longest reply to you and now it’s gone. How I hate that. 😤😤😤 Because I left to get this.
http://robertshawthefilm.com/film-trailer/
Anyway, this is a film made by my best friend that you can see on American Masters/PBS in Nov about Robert Shaw, the renowned choral conductor. Part of his fame is based on arrangements he made, with Alice Parker, of Appalachian folk songs like Wondrous Love or Shenandoah that were sung by school choirs for decades. If you had sung, the image of the music copies would be imprinted on your brain. He ended as the conductor of the Atlanta Symphony and founded their all-volunteer Symphony Chorus which is considered one of the world’s best. He was regarded as the God of choral conducting and trained other conductors annually at Carnegie Hall in seminars. It cracks me up to think that he started with one foot in the wild and woolly Sacred Harp songs and ended as Mr Rules King of singing.
I just listened at the singing I went to last night. I had trouble with the verses not being written under the notes and trouble loosening up enough to sing out that way. It was tiring to spend that long doing something I had no idea what I was doing, it’s been a long time since I’ve done that! I say that NOT like it’s a bad thing.
Thanks for the great videos.
PakalanaPikake
August 20, 2018 at 5:55 AM
@bbstl,
I don’t know squat about music theory, and my eyes glaze over when I hear talk about fifths (it’s enough to make me want to guzzle a fifth!), sevenths, etc. I don’t know the technical definition for “blue note,” and I don’t need it. I just know that I feel really good when I hear them, and that they resonate deeply with me, who is as Irish as Paddy’s pig.
Another life-changing music experience was chanting the open vowel sounds of the chakras with a wild and crazy geomancer and builder of labyrinths. It was held at a squash court, and the overtones and harmonics were incredible. I don’t recall how many folks turned out before breakfast during the course of the gathering, but it was more than a handful. Everyone found their own take on the pitch, as in shape-note singing, and it was stunning. The idea was to work up from the root chakra to the crown and back down to ground one’s ch’i. It made me feel like a million dollars. Sonic acupuncture that smoothed the flow of ch’i through the meridians and organ systems.
Later, my metaphysical interest led to biodynamic farming and gardening — and projective geometry and its aural manifestation as the music of the spheres. Each planet has a tone, and the movements of the planets in relation to each other against the backdrop of the fixed stars of the constellations with their own connections to the four elements produces the “music.” By consulting an ephemeris, you know which planets are visible from your point on earth at any given time. You can turn that into vocal sound. Combine it with Eurythmy movement, and you can hear the cosmos moving. This is the kind of music that excites me, and was not to be learned in school when I was a tadpole. I think I would have been better off if I had gone to Waldorf school, but that was not possible when I was young. I encountered it much later in life, but at least my path crossed it.
How on earth you keep all this stuff in your mind is beyond me, I can’t even hold it for two days.
It helps to be kind of nuts, and an inveterate reader. My mind is a midden heap of trivia like a relational database. To be honest, I cheat. I don’t actually keep all the information in my mind. The important stuff I carry around in my heart. It might be backed up in my cells, too, especially the ancestral things. I’m convinced there are vikings in my family tree — which is not far-fetched given where my Irish ancestors are from. My maternal grandfather was from Kentucky, with roots in Virginia and Tennessee, so for me, Sacred Harp is a way of connecting with that side of the family, which I had little contact with owing to divorce.
Your links to Zulu, Bulgarian, and Tahitian music are great. What a treat for the ears. I have a copy of AWAKE MY SOUL, but still haven’t watched it. Kdrama snagged me.
Glad you got a kick out of the Rapa Iti music. 😉
bbstl 🧹
August 21, 2018 at 5:28 PM
There you go, amazing me again. I’ve been to a few seminars about chakras but just dabbling, which is more of what I do. I can imagine the resonance you got in a squash court, that would be interesting. A lot like singing in the shower, or a parking lot. I’ve had the good luck to hear lots of amazing spaces and it’s wonderful when there’s nothing to do but just let your jaw drop down in awe. I didn’t know you could sonically work up and down your chakras but now that you say it, it’s so obvious. Doing it “accidentally” is probably why we all sing in the first place.
Well, even though you cheat and keep it in your heart and even online you’re amazing 😁 I’m also an inveterate reader but mine has become almost completely politics, which really means it’s mostly the same thing repeated over and over with small twists each day. I’m luxuriating in being well-informed but it’s probably more stress than is necessary.
OF COURSE you have a copy of Awake My Soul 😉!