Category: Music

There’s a bit in the final episode of Babylon 5 where Vir recounts a time when he and Londo (who is dead now) once heard the Pak’ma’ra singing.

The Pak’ma’ra are a vile, disgusting, Cthuloid race that nobody likes, and nobody knew they could sing, but they do–rarely and for religious reasons. Vir says that it was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard,
full of sadness, and hope, wonder, and a terrible sense of loss. Londo was moved to tears.

He concludes:

When it
was over, Londo turned to me and said "There are
forty-nine gods in our pantheon, Vir; to tell you the truth I never
believed in any of them. But if only one of them exists, then God
sings with that voice." It’s funny. After everything we have been
through, all he did… I miss him.

I recently ran across a song that I hadn’t heard in ages: "Ashokan Farewell."

This song became famous in 1990 when Ken Burns used it as the main theme of his series The Civil War. It is a staggeringly beautiful theme, filled with sadness and hope and wonder and a terrible sense of loss.

Together with "Some Day Never Comes" by Creedence Clearwater Revival and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, et al., it’s one of the three saddest, most beautiful songs I know. (Though some of Mark Herd’s stuff comes close.)

Unlike the rest of the music Burns used in The Civil War, "Ashokan Farewell" is not a period piece. In fact, it was written in 1982 by a gentleman named Jay Ungar, who conducted a series of summer fiddle and dance workshops in Ashokan, New York. He describes how the song came about:

I composed Ashokan Farewell in 1982 shortly after the summer
programs had come to an end. I was experiencing a great feeling of loss
and longing for the lifestyle and the community of people that had
developed at Ashokan that summer. The transition from living in the
woods with a small group of people who needed little excuse to
celebrate the joy of living through music and dancing, back to life as
usual, with traffic, disturbing newscasts, "important" telephone calls
and impersonal relationships had been difficult. I was in tears when I
wrote Ashokan Farewell . I kept the tune to myself for months, slightly
embarrassed by the emotions that welled up whenever I played it.

Ungar’s tears have been mirrored in the eyes of thousands of others who have heard the song. Softer-edged than "Someday Never Comes" and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," whose lyrics sharpen the sense of loss these songs convey, "Ashokan Farewell"’s lyricless-melody perfectly captures the bittersweet of nostalgia–the sense of beauty and loss, the desire to go back and experience things again–to see old friends and loved ones–as a rush of memories comes flooding back. Since the song in its original form has no lyrics, it is not bound to any particular plot. Your memories fill in the detail as the song moves you to contemplate what was . . . and no longer is.

But which may be again.

When Christ makes all things new.

LISTEN TO THE SONG (midi version, not fully orchestrated).

READ ABOUT THE SONG.

LYRICS TO THE SONG.

DOWNLOAD THE SONG.

The banjo-playing historian I mentioned the other day who I met on a train was Mark Gardner (left, though he wasn’t in full regalia when I met him).

He told me about a recent CD he had made with his partner Rex Rideout using period instruments. It’s called Frontier Favorites: Old-Time Music of the Wild West. Afterwards, I bought a copy from CD Baby.

I was very pleased.

Mark plays banjo and Rex plays fiddle, and they are the only musicians on the CD, but despite this the songs never sounded weak or threadbare. I was, frankly, amazed at HOW MUCH MUSIC two men can make using only one banjo, one fiddle, and their voices.

LISTEN HERE FOR AN EXAMPLE.

The fact that they were using period instruments (i.e., not a modern,
steel banjo or modern fiddle) also had a major effect on the sound. (You can see Mark holding such an "organic" banjo in the picture.) Not being a music critic, I don’t know how to articulate the difference, but there is a more raw, natural sound to the instruments they are playing than what you would hear on a contemporary instruments CD.

The experience generated by the CD is the closest approximation of what it would be like to hear real 19th century musicians playing. It transports one back in time more effectively than any similar old-time CD I’ve heard, and I heartily recommend it.

One of the fascinating things about the songs of this period that can’t go without mention is their lyrics. Contrary to contemporary chronological snobbery, the folks who lived in the 19th century weren’t a bunch of dummies. In fact, they were more highly educated in some subjects than we are.

For example, how many times recently have you heard Latin used in a song? Well, you will in Mark & Rex’s "Old Dan Tucker" (a 19th century comedy song about a buffoon who behaves oddly and can’t do anything right). One of the verses goes:

Here’s my razor, in good order!
Magnum bonum, just have bought ‘er!
Sheep shell the oats; Tucker shell the corn.
I’ll shave you, son, when the water gets warm!

Magnum bonum is Latin for "great good," here meaning something like "very good" or "excellent quality." It says something about the people of the time that they could be expected to understand the phrase and recognize its relevance to a just-bought straight razor in a comedy song.

This isn’t the only time that the lyrics presuppose knowledge that moderns may not have. For example, the song Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines is filled with such references. This song, which was the wildly popular after it was first introduced (though it didn’t always have the patter that Mark and Rex include–and Mark is the vocalist on this one), is a treasure trove of cultural references. Also a comedy song, it concerns an incompetent military man (Capt. Jinks), who is the origin of the modern word "jinx" (meaning, a cursed or unlucky individual).

The refrain of the song goes:

I’m Captain Jinks of the horse marines.
I feed my horse on corn and beans.
And often live beyond my means.
Tho’ a captain in the army.

Here the jokes are densely-packed.

First, there was no such thing as the "horse marines." Marines are military men who travel by sea, and horses don’t usually do well on the sea. Classically, marines are either infantry or artillery. The idea of "horse marines" is a joke about a non-existent group (though completeness compels me to point out that some actual military groups have named themselves after this joke; there was a group of cowboys who patrolled the Texas coastline during the Texas Revolution who called themselves "horse marines" and also a group of U.S. Marines in the twentieth century in China who similarly styled themselves). The term "horse marine" thus came to refer to a member of a non-existent unit or, simply, to a misfit.

Second, nobody would feed their horse on corn and beans. In the 19th century those constituted "people food" and would be more expensive than what one would feed one’s horse on (hay, oats). Hence, Capt. Jinks often lives "beyond his means." A diet of pure corn and beans also wouldn’t be good for a horse nutritionally.

"Tho’ a captain in the Army," Captain Jinks is thus a very unfortunate and comical guy. The cards are stacked against him, and 21st century denizens may not fully appreciate the jokes at his expense.

Despite this, Mark & Rex’s CD is a terrific introduction to old-time music, as well as a fascinating re-creation of what it would have been like to transport back into the past and hear actual musicians of the period.

Highly recommended.

GET THE CD.

Just got back from Illinois
Lock the front door, oh boy
Got to set down, take a rest
On the portch.
Imagination sets in
Purty soon I’m singin’
Doo-doo-doo, lookin’ out my back door.

Or so says the song by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Actually, I was listening to this song on the Chronicle, Vol. 1 by Creedence Clearwater Revival when I was travelling through Illinois on my way back from the vacation I just took (finally, after ages and ages of not taking one).

This song perplexes me a little because it’s got a really toe-tapping tune, but if you read between the lines of the lyrics, it’s basically a ’60s-’70s drug song (“There’s a giant doing cartwheels, A statue wearing high heels. Look at all the happy creatures dancing on the lawn. Dinosaur Victrola listening to Buck Owens. Tambourines and elephants are playing in the band. Won’t you take a ride on the flying spoon?”).

I like the tune, and I don’t mind the psychedelic imagery, but don’t at all like the drug subtext of the song.

The way the song is written, the drug subtext is only required if you read between the lines. If you read the lines themselves, it isn’t there. In fact, all the bizarre things that the singer sees are explicitly attributed to the imagination of a road-weary traveller, not to drugs. This, no doubt, is a “plausible deniability” lyric included in the song to give kids listening to the song a defense to present to their parents (and also to keep CCR from getting in trouble for corrupting the youth–further than they already were, that is).

My solution is to enjoy the song by refusing to accept its subtext. In other words, to take it at face value and focus on the lyrics instead of what they would have meant in the socio-cultural context in which they were written. Yes, I know that the song was originally about drugs, but I don’t have to accept that just because it’s what the songwriter intended. I can take the song in whatever sense I want in the privacy of my own mind–especially when he’s put a harmless interpretation into the lyrics themselves.

It’s kind of like that episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 where Joel points out to the ‘Bots that you don’t have to accept the ending of the movie that the filmmakers give you. You can write your own ending, if you don’t like theirs.

I guess just about every conscientious Christian has to do something like this when appreciating items of popular culture that contain elements not in accord with the faith. Whether it’s a song, a movie, a TV show, a novel, or what have you, virtually everything has something bad in it. And that’s how it’s always been. It was the same in the Middle Ages, too. (In fact, when he was dying, Chaucer apologized for having included so much non-pious material in The Canterbury Tales). But that’s what we have to do, whether we’re dealing with art or simply with other people: “Test everything, and hold fast to what is good,” in the words of St. Paul.

So that’s how I handle “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.”

I was tickled to realize that, like the traveller in the song, I had “just got back from Illinois” (at least, I passed through Illinois). What was even more surprising to me, though, was something that happened with a different song on the CD: “Down on the Corner,” which is about a group of poor kids who have their own band. At one point in the song the lyrics say: “Poorboy twangs the rythm out on his kalamazoo.” I have no idea what this means. I suppose it was just John Fogerty being playful and needed a rhyme for
“kazoo” (which he uses in the next line of the song).

As it happens, I was listening to this song on my trip, looked up, and realized what town I was in at the moment: Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Weird, man. Weird.

Years and years ago, when I was a boy in the 1970s, I was watching Saturday Night Live and one week they had an all-female group as their musical guests. I don’t remember anything about their appearance except one thing: They sang the most beautiful version of the Hallelujah Chorus that I’d ever heard, made all the more striking by the fact it was sung a cappella.

The years rolled by, and that memory stayed with me. After the invention of Amazon.com, I did some searching and was able to find the song. It’s by The Roches, and it is absolutely stunning. I bought the CD, and was delighted by the song all over again. Unfortunately, the rest of the CD wasn’t so great. It has stuff on it that is morally repugnant, but this one song is window into heaven.

Because of the problems with the rest of the CD, and because of the inability to purchase just one song, I didn’t have a good way to recommend it to others.

Until now.

Wal-Mart now has an 88 cent per song music download service that is 100% legal, so let me encourage you to BUY THIS SONG!

First, to give you a taste of it, here’s a clip. The rest of the song is even better than what’s in the clip.

Now: BUY THE SONG! Click here to put it in your card, and Click here to view your cart afterwards.