Catching Up on Things...
Mood:  hungry
Topic: Music Reviews and Links
Hello, all!  I've gotten behind again, sorry.  It's late February, and I'm still in hibernation mode.  I like to tell people that I must have bears in my ancestry somewhere; literally all I want to do during the winter is sleep.  Trouble is, that means I don't get out too often in winter, and I really must get out more.  I want to do an open mic tour of the west coast as soon as feasible, or something.  Meanwhile, I'm too groggy right now to think of a recognizable theme for this post, so I'll just fish up whatever songs I can get to cooperate with the layout.  As always, click on the text or image links to check out these songs, all of which are presented here in digital/mp3 format...

 

 O Virga Ac Diadema (Praise for the Mother) by Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179); arranged and adapted by Richard Souther. Back in 1994, when Tower Records still existed, I stumbled across this album when sampling songs right around the Christmas season; and I decided that I absolutely had to get a copy of this for myself.  I'm not actually that much into Chant or other so-called "Early Music"; but as I reviewed this album elsewhere, this is a chant album for non-chant fans. There are a couple of modern instrumental compositions by Souther here and there; but all of the songs with words are over 800 years old. This song is the first and best track of this collection; and it happens to be the last song that Abbess Hildegard completed before her death in A.D. 1179. I'm not sure what the good abbess/composer would think of the worldbeat instrumentation and anachronistic harmony singing (not found in sacred music for another century or two); but we 21st century heathens can certainly enjoy these arrangements. And early music vocalists Sister Germaine Fritz (herself an abbess) and Emily Van Evera do the ancient composer proud with their devout immersion in the melodic leaps, which were highly unusual for 12th-century chants.

 

Dark Night of the Soul by Loreena McKennitt: This is a truly inspired adaptation of the devotional poem "The Dark Night" by Spanish poet and mystic St. John of the Cross (1542-1591). Both the original poem, and this new lyric adaptation, make strong use of near-universal mystical motifs of making one's way through the dark, fleeing one's home, and intimacy with one's beloved as a metaphor for mystical union with the Divine. There is also a heart-wrenching passion in McKennitt's melody, and even in the use of her voice, that illustrates how broad and all-encompassing the concept of love is in mystical traditions around the world. One can find the same spirit and feeling of reunion with the Divine of one's understanding throughout Sufi poetry, Hebrew Wisdom literature, and medieval Christian mysticism, as well as in esoteric poetry of eastern religions, and even in that of indigenous spirituality in many other parts of the world. This song itself may well make mystical seekers of a good many agnostics.

 

 

The Humours of Whiskey by Andy M. Stewart and Manus Lunny: From the Sacred to the Profane, you might think. Actually, not so fast. Intoxication is a mystical metaphor for spiritual ecstasy, as well as a physiological euphoria ending in a hangover. I don't know exactly who wrote this song; but it's been around in Irish music circles for a good many years now, celebrating the euphoria-inducing properties of poitín, the Irish-language term for illegal homebrewed whiskey, aka "moonshine." I just felt like including this song in this post, partly in honor of the late, lamented Andy M. Stewart; and partly to demonstrate how drinking songs can bridge the sacred vs. profane gap as well as any mystical love poem. With lines like, "What can make the dumb talk, what can make the lame walk/The elixir of life and philosopher's stone?", this song is surely not just about getting wasted in the woods on a Saturday night.

 

*****