Väinö Blomstedt: sketch for Japanese Reindeer textile (ca.1904)
Good evening, Kibitzers!
I had some snow here quite recently (just a little!), but now it’s warming up and getting ready to drop apparently an inch of rain tomorrow, possibly with thunder and lightning and almost certainly with wind gusts up to 40 mph. That goes on for a couple of days, and then it gets sunny and cold again. It’s almost like it doesn’t understand that you need BOTH the cold and the precipitation to happen at the same time.
Ryan Hall promises that all of this weather is setting me up for a big snowstorm, maybe around Christmas. While I would like that, I recognize it would be terrible for a lot of people who have plans involving travel or visiting or shopping, so I will state for the record that I would like a good snowstorm but not at Christmas, and/or I would like snow for Christmas but only a little. It’s abundantly clear that my wishes for the weather are not considered even a little bit, but I feel obliged to assert them anyway.
This is my annual winter-holiday song of the year diary. Amazingly enough, it is the tenth annual edition of this series started in 2015 (which I swear was just five minutes ago). As is my wont, I’ll add a list of links to previous years, but I think I’ll put it at the end this time, not up here.
This year, I’d like to feature a couple of different artists.
First, a 10-voice women’s a cappella ensemble from Santa Cruz, called Zambra. I did not know their work before YouTube showed them to me, but I think many here would like their arrangements of assorted world music. One paragraph from their website bio says this:
Besides being a performing ensemble, Zambra is also a close group of long-time friends bound together by their love of singing. The group, founded by Therese Hall Johannesson in 1994, began as a larger bilingual women's choir. It has since evolved into a smaller group of singers sharing the tasks of musical and logistical leadership, with an expansive repertoire encompassing many languages and cultures.
Here’s the picture of all of them, with names. I’ll actually be mildly surprised if no one here turns out to know any of these people. Their recordings are available here.
Don Oíche Úd i mBeithil is a traditional carol in Irish Gaelic. The translation and more information about the song and arrangement are on the YouTube page. (This is true of most of their songs.) [3:23]
Winter Charm of Lasting Life is a traditional Scottish waulking song. Waulking is a physical process done to newly-woven woolen cloth (see link for details) by a group (traditionally, of women) working together; such songs help set the necessary rhythm for the work.
One of the verses (full lyrics here): Now is waulked the web we've spun / Winter storms may rage in vain / Bless the work by which we won / Comfort from the wind and rain. [1:54]
Finally, Oy Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon (Ой ходить сон коло вікон) is a traditional Ukrainian lullaby, here dedicated to the children of Ukraine. I like the translated lyrics so much, I’m including them below, but there is more about this performance on the YouTube page. [3:27]
Ой ходить сон коло вікон
А дрімота — коло плота
Питається сон дрімоти:
Де ми будем ночувати?
Де хатонька теплесенька
Де дитинка малесенька
Там ми будем ночувати
І дитинку колиcати
Ой на кота та воркота
На дитину та й дрімота
Котик буде воркотати
Дитинонька буде спати
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Oh, sleep walks by the windows
And the dream by the fence
Sleep asks the dream:
Where will we spend the night?
Where the cottage is warm
Where the baby is tiny
There we will spend the night
And rock the baby
Oh, the kitten will purr
The baby will dream
The kitten will purr
The baby will sleep
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For Act II, we have Canadian musician and composer Joe Porter, whose YouTube channel, Joe Porter Percussion, explores numerous instruments that might not immediately come to mind when we think of playing percussion. Apparently he puts together a Christmas video each year with a sampling. Here’s last year’s. (He does NOT hit the elf with the mallets, no matter what the thumbnail may look like.) [1:41]
And here’s this year’s, which is even cooler. [1:50]
This closing piece is not a holiday song, nor is it a snarky political parody. Yo-Yo Ma did his best, at the re-opening of Notre Dame, to counteract the presence of our very worst citizen, just by being Yo-Yo Ma. He played the Prélude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, a performance that was pre-recorded in the empty cathedral, as were most, out of concern for the impending storm. Then he posted it on YouTube yesterday with the following statement:
I was so moved to witness the reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris. It’s an example of what the combined generosity, skill, and will of a people can accomplish, of humans choosing collaboration and creativity instead of division and destruction. I’m reminded that we always have that choice, that it’s a choice that has been with us since the beginning, a fundamental paradox of the human experiment.
I don’t usually read YouTube comments, but in this case I was rewarded by this one in particular:
This was the highlight of the ceremony for me. All the other musicians/instruments were great and well-recorded, but Mr Yo-Yo Ma does something more here: he actually plays the cathedral itself. He uses the acoustic in a way that you can hear the space. This felt more meaningful to me, as not just an offering, but really a dialogue with the reborn church.
[2:38]
By all means, share your songs, holiday or otherwise, in the comments!
Here’s that list of past diaries in this series:
- 2015 Pablo Casals: Song of the Birds
- 2016 Melissa Etheridge: O Night Divine
- 2017 Assorted songs about snow
- 2018 Eclipse 6: Hamildolph
- 2019 Songs by Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox
- 2020 Yo-Yo Ma and Alison Krause: Wexford Carol
- 2021 Allan Sherman/Straight No Chaser/Boston Pops: 12 Days of Christmas
- 2022 John Fahey’s Christmas albums, plus, Hanukkah medley by Shir Soul
- 2023 Songs of Ukraine and elsewhere in northern/eastern Europe, plus, Frosty the Snowman by Leon Redbone and Dr. John, AND Bill McClintock’s AC/DC-Brenda Lee mashup Dirty Deeds Around the Christmas Tree