Bill’s Midwinter Music – Dec 15; gentle and restful

Playlist:

1. Noël Lullaby Rindy Ross & The Trail Band 2:27

2. Come All Ye Faithful Kevin Connolly 2:21

3. Mary Had a Baby, Yes Lord Paul Robeson 2:15

4. Joseph and Mary Cori and David Connors 3:05

5. Suantraí na Maighdine Teresa Doyle 4:57

Music notes

Noël Lullaby The Trail Band was a 9 member ensemble formed in 1991 and commissioned by the Oregon Trail Council to provide entertainment for its 150th anniversary celebrations. In 1994 they began to perform annual pre-Christmas concerts with various guests on the side, creating a annual tradition for many regional residents. They continued to do so, and released periodic seasonal albums, until 2018. This song is from their 2001 Making Spirits Bright album.

I don’t know much about this song other than that it is sung by Trail Band member Rindy Ross and that it was written by her husband Marv, who sits in with the band here playing the harmonica.

Come All Ye Faithful I love how setting a familiar song to a new melody can bring attention to the meaning of its lyrics. This is an example of that, with Boston-based singer-songwriter Kevin Connolly's new setting of one of the world's most well-known carols. I got it from a 1994 Christmas sampler album that was released by Hear Music and sold by Starbucks called Snow Angels.

The lyrics are easy to recognize. They are Catholic priest Frederick Oakeley's 1852 English translation of Adeste Fidelis. At the time the Latin song was believed to be of medieval or even pre-medieval origin because it came from a 1743 manuscript written by a John Francis Wade, who was a Catholic-in-exile living in Douay, France (where the Douay translation of the Old Testament was developed). Wade primarily made his living as a music teacher and music copyist (the 18th century version of a human photocopier). It was not until 1947 that diligent historical research proved that the humble John Francis Wade wrote both the words and melody to what is now, except for Stille Nacht (Silent Night), probably the world's most famous nativity song.

Mary Had a Baby, Yes lord This is a 1931 recording by the great African American singer Paul Robeson. Before becoming a singer he was already a celebrity durring college as an All-American football star who played for Rutgers University (where he was the only Black student) and he went on to become first Black player in the NFL.

After that he got a law degree from Columbia but practiced that profession only briefly before renouncing that career due to its systemic racism. In parallel to all that he had been singing as a side-gig, but after leaving lawyering behind he became a professional singer. In 1928 he was cast to play “Joe” in the London production of the musical Show Boat, and his rendition of Ol’ Man River is considered by many to be the standard against which all others are measured. There is a lot more to his life story, including his social justice and political activism. A good place to start learning about him is his extensive Wikipedia entry.

This song was collected in the early 1920s from the isolated St. Helena Island, off the coast South Carolina, by a Black ethno-musicologist. Born in Africa, Nicholas George Julius Ballanta-Taylor was a graduate of New York's Institute of the Musical Arts (now known as the Julliard School of Music). He collected indigenous music from Africa and from sparsely-populated southern American locales where he believed that the inhabitants preserved unchanged the music from the times of slavery. The Black residents of St. Helena had a unique culture and spoke a creole language known as Gullah Geechee.

The reference in the refrain to “the train done gone” is believed to reflect the time of origin of the song. Spirituals that developed during the early introduction of the railroad in the 1830s and '40s frequently used the train as a metaphor for the journey to heaven or freedom. On the other hand, it could be that this question and answer spiritual evolved during that time from an older one.

I got this recording from a Living Era archival compilation CD called The Spirit of Christmas Past. Robeson originally recorded it in London at a new EMI facility that was still under construction. It is now known as the Abbey Road Studios.

Joseph and Mary Singer-songwriter Cori Connors lives in Farmington, Utah. I had a song by Cori on yesterday’s Midwinter Music posting. I felt bad about using songs from her on my samplers in back-to-back years in 2009, and I feel that way using it again here, but both of them are so wonderful that I can’t help myself.

This duet with her husband David is from her 2001 album Sleepy Little Town. It is another great song that I had been saving for just the right context. David isn’t usually a performing singer. He served as the Mayor of Farmington before being appointed to be a State District Court Judge.

Suantraí na Maighdine Although this Irish Gaelic song sounds ancient it is a relative newcomer. Both the words and melody are by Seán Óg Ó Tuama (1926-2006) who was a prolific poet, playwright, academic and songwriter in that language. The song's name translates as The Virgin's Lullaby, although the lyrics are a dialog between the mother and her remarkably eloquent newborn. She sings to him:

I adore my little child who came into the world
I adore his frailty and bareness
I love you lying in the manger
You are the saintly grace and the son of God.

The refrain line she repeats is: Codail, a linbh, go sámh – Sleep soundly, o child.

The singer is the Canadian Prince Edward Island based Teresa Doyle who I met in 2002 when she was the special guest performer for a concert by Victoria’s Gettin’ Higher Choir. I and about 250 other local residents were backup singers for her on a couple of songs at the concert. It is from her album Orrachan, subtitled The Divine Feminine in Gaelic Song. Orrachan (pronounced ora khan) is an archaic Gaelic word meaning rhymed prayer, charm or incantation.

Sampler-making recollections

My 2009 sampler was similar to my 2007 collection of instrumental pop music in that it too aimed for enough consistency in mood for it to make good background music, but in other ways it is the opposite of that one. My working title for it was “the lullaby sampler.” The songs portray the Nativity within a scene of peace and tranquility (i.e., little mention of the hustle and bustle of visiting angels, shepherds and kings) with gentle, restful songs reflecting the close relationship between the young mother and her miraculous baby.

The selections aren't all lullabies, but they are all soothing and relaxing, mostly with simple, intimate musical arrangements. I really did want it to be a CD that one could put on to help put a baby to sleep, but really it was intended to be one that I could listen to at night and perhaps fall asleep to.

Part of my sampler development process involves listening to the various full drafts and making notes about needed changes on a pre-printed playlist with triple-spacing. By 2009 there were usually about 10 drafts. The main things I would look for were:

1. Whether I still loved the selections. If I found that I was at all tempted to skip ahead the song needed to be replaced.

2. Whether selections would be more effective in another spot on the playlist. Until the very last draft my notes always included lots of arrows indicating where I thought songs or tunes could be moved to where they would work better.

3. Whether a song would benefit from being abridged. I always want to respect the integrity of the performers’ or producers’ choices, but some songs work better in the sampler if they are shortened. (I always indicate in the liner notes if I abridge a song or tune.)

4. Whether the volume levels make for easy listening. If I felt a need to raise or lower the volume while listening to the draft I would record how much adjustment I made in my notes and would make the same adjustment to the song’s MP3 file in my computer.

5. Whether the spacing between the songs sounded right. This is a surprisingly important factor for easy listening and even one more second after a song, or a slight fade-out at the end of the first song, can make a big difference. Not all spaces should be the same. The bigger the contrast from song to song the more important is the transition.

I would do these test listenings of the various drafts while lying on my bed, often at the end of the day. In this case, my aim was to produce a sampler which I got so relaxed that I did not want to take notes so that I could fall asleep and would have to complete the reviewing task the next day. When I was selling my CDs I would warn people not to listen to this one while driving.

Since all of these songs are almost all about the same topic, the mother and the baby, the sampler doesn’t have an elaborate structure. It does have a higher proportion of instrumentals than had been my habit since the cassette days, and basically it flows through degrees of peacefulness (all without ever being boring!) with a slight uptick of energy in the middle The last third flows from restful to more and more restful, with the last selection being a very delicate and slow four minute long piano solo of O Come Little Children.