On a Monday, when there are still three weeks until the holidays, you need a happy song. Fortunately, The Drifters are here to oblige.
Tag: advent
Advent song for December 24: Auld Lang Syne, Scotland/Bedford Falls
I know it’s really a New Year song, but I couldn’t resist the chance to include a clip from the best Christmas film of all, and if they can sing it on Christmas Eve in Bedford Falls, then so can we. Also, I visited Scotland for the first time as an adult this year and fell in love with it, so it feels entirely appropriate to finish up with a little bit of Burns.
If you haven’t seen It’s A Wonderful Life then cancel your plans for the rest of the day and go and watch it immediately. If you have, remember that the following clip will make you cry, so don’t watch it on the train or at the office (and what are you still doing at the office? Go home!).
<A pause while you recompose yourself>
Together, all these songs provide about an hour of music, which as it happens is about how long you’ll need to eat the main course of your Christmas lunch, so as a Christmas present to you, here is a Spotify playlist of them all. Sadly Song’s song from Korea isn’t on Spotify (at least, it probably is, but I have no idea what it’s called so I can’t check), so in its place England finally gets a look-in with the King’s singers rendition of Adam Lay Ybounden. The clip from It’s A Wonderful Life is a bit longer and I’ve had to use different versions of one or two of the songs, but otherwise it’s largely the list you’ve already seen and heard here. Happy Christmas!
(If the embedded version doesn’t work for you, here’s a boring old link.)
Advent song for December 21: And now for something completely different…
Nollaig Shona from Dublin, whence I bring you a very special and personally dedicated Christmas song. A few weeks ago when I put out a call for Christmas songs from around the world, Tom (who also featured in this calendar last year) was in Korea, doing something artistic with the Korean National Dance Company, so he thought he’d get them to sing us a Korean Christmas song. As Tom put it:
Only one of them was capable/willing. Unlikely as it sounds, her name IS actually Song.
So here is Song from Korea, singing a song from Korea. I’m not sure what it’s called, but it’s AMAZING, and if you listen closely you will notice that it is also dedicated to all of you:
Advent song for December 20: Black Christmas, USA
It’s a mistake to put a song from the USA so close to a song from Canada, but I slipped up about a week ago and posted the wrong song, and since then my schedule’s gone out of the window and I’ve been making it up as I go along. I’ve also had to ditch the idea of including a song from England because I couldn’t find any good audio or video recordings of the Sheffield carols, which were what I wanted, and I couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to find an alternative. You already know enough English Christmas music anyway, right?
This is yet another song which I can’t tell you much about, even though it only dates from the 1970s. I can’t even tell you who it’s by or when it was written, but it sounds American, and the artist is the Harlem Children’s Chorus, so we can safely assume they are American, at least.
The song was suggested by@shacker and whilst it’s in a different mode from most of the rest of my choices, once I’d heard it I couldn’t not include it. Once you hear it I hope you’ll agree.
Advent song for December 19: Birjina gaztetto bat zegoen, Basque Country
You probably know this one better as “Gabriel’s Message”, but this arrangement is intended to replicate the original Basque version of this lovely carol, about the origins of which I have been able to find out almost nothing. And it’s another one whose title I can’t translate – “Birjina” is “virgin”, of course, but then I get stuck. If you should happen to speak Basque, do let me know what the rest of it means.
Something slightly odd happens in the last few seconds of the audio, but if you ignore that, this is a good’un.
Advent song for December 18: Jesous Ahatonhia/Huron Carol, Canada
We used to sing the 1926 English translation of this at school, when I had no idea that it was from Canada, or that it was so old, having been written in 1623 by the Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf and based on a French folk tune which is even older. (I also had no idea what a “mighty gitchi manitou” was, but I know now.)
I have chosen this gorgeous version because it uses the original Huron words, but if you have time you should also go and have a listen to this version by the Elora Festival singers, which is just as hauntingly beautiful in a completely different way.
There is a detailed explanation of the Huron-language words, with pronunciation guidelines should you want to sing along, here.
(Sorry this is so late today. I have just started a new job and it’s taking up all my hours.)
Advent song for December 17: Hajej Nynej Jezisku, Bohemia
This Czech carol has made it into English under another name, although we don’t tend to sing it at quite the clip these of these singers. It’s another one I’m going to make you listen to rather than telling you the English words – I was going to give you a clue by providing a direct translation of the title, but it turns out the internet is rubbish at Czech. I can tell you that ‘Jezisku’ means ‘baby Jesus’, but you could probably have worked that out for yourself, and if you can guess the usual English name for it from that, you win a mince pie.
Advent song for December 16: Tu scendi dalle stelle, Italy
The history of the Christmas carol is somewhat murky, but sources seem to agree that the first Christmas carols (as distinct from winter celebration songs, which are much older) emerged from Italy from around the second century onwards, and were always sung in Latin. Some early fragments of tunes or words survive (Veni Veni Emmanuel is a version of the Antiphons, which have been around since at least the eighth century), and of course we still sing some Christmas music in Latin, but from the thirteenth century onwards carols started to be sung in the language of the people. Tu scendi dalle stelle (usually translated as From Starry Skies Descending or From Starry Skies Thou Comest) dates from 1744, so it’s a baby compared to some Italian carols. There are versions by Luciano Pavarotti and Andrea Bocelli, among others, but I have gone for a simpler choral version.
Advent song for December 13: Nu tändas tusen juleljus, Sweden
Today’s post is going up a little later than usual, because yesterday was my last day at my old job and now I have a long weekend off before I start the new one, so instead of hurriedly posting from the office I am sitting in my pyjamas in front of the Christmas tree, with a cup of tea and a crumpet, watching a terrible movie about two neighbours in a deadly vendetta over who has the most extravagant Christmas lights. I am enjoying it a lot.
I had a lovely last day at work, and on my way home I was thinking how great my old colleagues were, and how I will miss them, and as I was thinking it I came up the escalator from the tube into London Bridge station, and the Salvation Army brass band were in the concourse playing The First Nowell, and I got ever so slightly tearful (in a good, Richard Curtis sort of a way). And listening to this performance of Nu tändas tusen juleljus, or “Now are lit a thousand Christmas candles” has had the same effect. It’s just so pretty! It was composed in Sweden in 1898 and is a popular carol there, and this is just a lovely video, even though it’s amateur and shaky. Enjoy.
Advent song for December 10: Pásztorok, Pásztorok, Hungary
This is another one I haven’t been able to find out very much about, although I have managed to work out that “Pásztorok” is Hungarian for “shepherds”, and that the first line means “Shepherds, shepherds rejoice” which is the sort of line many an English-language carol might start with.
But here’s the thing. I’ve listened to all of these songs so many times now, in so many variations, that I can no longer remember whether I already knew this tune before I started, or whether it was completely new to me. It sounds like a carol we might sing in English, but maybe all carols sound like that. So I need you, with your fresh ears, to tell me whether we have a local equivalent to Pásztorok, Pásztorok, or whether it’s just one of those tunes that sound immediately familiar:
(Have you found yourselves earwormed by any of these, incidentally? For me Tonttu, Musevisa and Florile Dalbe have taken up residence in my brain and seem disinclined to leave anytime soon.)
Glad All Over 