Panorama of lunch and fish murders in Darkhad Valley, Mongolia
No roads in Mongolia. Just tracks. Bone-jarring, informal, braided tracks wandering over slopes, boulder fields, and deeply potted glacial kettle terrain. After hours of driving, we’d invariably stop for lunch so we could depopulate the rivers of their fish. The adults were veteran, serious fishermen with trunks full of gear, complex strategic campaigns for each site, and the patience of saints. Roman, the amiable youth, therefore always caught the biggest fish, often on the first cast, then relaxed with dinner and an amble among herd beasts who came to our camps for drink and ford the river.
What is not obvious during the panorama is the spectacular jagged mountains surrounding this vast basin. Rivers meandered peacefully through the vast flat basin, with occasional herds of cattle, yak, horses, goats, sheep, and other horrors [including the odd lonely-looking Bactrian camel] ambling here and there,
Team Mina [John, Ava, Tony, and Roman Mina] with auxiliaries Ken Rolston and Bruce Wright recently visited the Extra-Outback of the Darkhad Valley of Mongolia. The video above is marred somewhat by Ken’s misguided attempts to add harmonies in the Western folk style. I blame the vodka. [Click the hyperlinked title on the embedded video to go directly to the youtube video, which has more annotations and a larger, more readable version of the video.]
As time permits, I’ll post more pictures, videos, and journal entries.
Finally got around to processing my iPhone videos from this 2010 Village Harmony session at St. Benedict’s Lodge, McKenzie River, Oregon, located on the McKenzie River at the edge of the Willamette National Forest. These videos capture review rehearsals, with cheerful informality, teacher corrections, and only modest performance ambition.
It’s a lovely stroll down memory lane to see all your happy faces and hear your voices again.
“Kiwi Fruit” a playful, cheerful round celebrating the signature fruit of New Zealand.
Kiwi Fruit
It’s the fruit that makes you cute
Kiwi, kiwi,kiwi is the key
Kiwi, kiwi, you and me
It’s kiwi, kiwi, kiwi, kiwi fruit
There are lots of tiny seeds on the inside
Lots of tiny hairs on the outside
Oh… how… I love my kiwi fruit
Ki…wi…ii… kiwi-kiwi-ay
You and me and ki…wi… fru-uit
Tsapiruz [‘Sapphire’]
Windy Ridge – a Sacred Harp song of recent composition
“My former hopes are fled / My terrors now begin…”
“Vengeance at the door… I’ll gaze upon it as I run…”
Psalm 33 – “Let All the Just” – English West Gallery – early 19th C
Manana… “Love makes me feel bad”
Meaning:
Love makes me feel bad.
I hate her.
I break her heart!
What can I do?
Maybe I can love her again?
And, again…
Love will make me feel bad AGAIN!
The Day of Resurrection – sacred Georgian song
Imeruli qanuri – Imereti worksong
Divided into two choirs. With charming yodeling.
Ut’us lashkruli – Georgian song celebrating 19th century peasant uprising led by Ut’us against Czarist rule
Initially, Malkhaz told us we had sung lustily enough to defeat an army of chickens. However, as we warmed to our task, we said we might have defeated tanks. Maybe.
While in South Africa, we visited a colony of Jackass Penguins near Simons Town, south of Cape Town. Here are some informal reflections on the nature of penguins occasioned by this brief but eminently hospitable visit to their colony.
Penguins just look silly. They waddle. As though they were corpulent and ungainly. They are not corpulent. They just forgot to have long legs. Or long arms. Yes, having flippers instead of arms is a bit silly, too, but forgiveable, seeing that they get busy a lot in water. But the short legs bit is the real issue, and the flippers busily pinwheeling for balance as they waddle is certainly not helping matters.
Another problem is that the SEEM so serious. If they pitched about drunkenly as they waddled, or stared stolidly straight forward as they scooted forward, that would seem a bit more in keeping with the waddle. But they look about them as they travel, peering interestedly and intelligently at their surroundings. As they waddle.
When they totter up to you, they lift their faces to you so earnestly. They tilt their heads thoughtfully, as if straining to penetrate the deep mystery of your tall upright stance. Their eyes lazily wink, as if the mystery were curious, but not of immediate personal interest. They are friendly, but graciously unwilling to intrude.
And then, again, off they go, waddling.
They never seem lazy. In repose, they have dignity, standing straight upgright, or resting comfortably on their bellies. When standing, they keep glancing about, alert, casually monitoring their surroundings.
And then, suddenly, they busily toddle off, rocking side to side, blithely shedding any residual dignity they might have accumulated while formally posing in aspects of high diplomatic solemnity.
Boulders And Penguins
We had already visited the penguins, and had been quite satisfied, but then returned for a second visit to Penguin Colony because Monika Suisse had missed them, arriving late from Switzerland. We intended simply to graciously accompany Monika Suisse, having already seen penguins. But it turned out the return visit was glorious and surprising. Because there was no crowd, and we gained access to the bathing beach section. The giant watery boulders section. With insanely beautiful beach sand.
And though the initial part of the beach was pretty crowded [not at all packed, but well-populated], a secret crawling passage beneath giant boulders opened out on an entirely new section of beach… SWARMING with lazy penguins. Scramble over a few boulders, and you are among clots sleeping near warm reflecting rocks. From time to time a penguin will appear from under the boulders, amble across your path, energetically off on some mysterious appointment.
I stood in a clear pool, feet in white sand, the sound of surging water pushing its way through massed dark brown kelp between the stacked, tumbled, and massive granite boulders behind me. And three penguins, suddenly noticing me, rose from lolling on their bellies, and marched right up to the water’s edge, paddled their feet in preparation, then plunged out into the shallow water to inspect me more closely. Gliding along gracefully, paddling like ducks, they came and peered at my legs as if considering if they could take me down at the ankles.
Another penguin appeared on a high boulder, some eight feet above the sand. He seemed perplexed. He scampered to one end of the boulder, only to peer down doubtfully at the eight-foot drop to the sand. He began to ease slightly down the slippery granite… immediately thought better of the project, then scrambled energetically back up the rock.
He once again stared down, then ambled along to the other end of the boulder, leapt perilously to another prominences, and arriving at the other end of the huge granite boulder, gazed down with equal discomfort at the drop from that end of the rock. This sequence was repeated, over and over again, gathering a great crowd of concerned bathers, including a local uniformed naturalist. Much speculation was sahared about how the penguin got into this predicament, and many agreed he’d arrived there at high tide, and that he’d be best waiting another three hours for the next high tide. All this time, the forlorn penguin continued to shuttle back and forth, often ALMOST taking the jump [it looked like the water below was deep enough. if he shallow-dived], then scrambling back when his nerve failed.
At last, he noticed another penguin paddling about the water below him, and he seemed to lean a bit too far forward to look down… and found himself suddenly skidding down on his ass off the rock. He plunged most ungracefully, but bottom-first, feet scrabbling industriously, resulting in a clownish but ultimately perfectly comfortable splash landing. Then, apparently humiliated by his performance in front of so many onlookers, he zoomed underwater to a remote part of the pool to reflect on his misadventures.
Rough edits from my iPhone recordings. My only iPhone recordings from our tour. And the concert was sort of ‘informal’ [ie, ragged]… more along the lines of a spirited rehearsal. Nonetheless, the music and the spirit of the later, more polished performances are detectable. And this is all I can offer… until some other persons can share their concert recordings or videos.
Recordings are in an archive format. Download the ‘zip’ file, then uncompress using WinZip or Stuffit or whatever archive utility. [Double-click on the downloaded file. Then, if nothing happens, or you don’t understand what happened, send me an email, and I’ll try to help.]
My special thanks to Julianne, Emma, and Monica the Viking for sharing their excellent photos on Facebook. And Babs [ehr, Barbara] for her excellent blog. http://barbinsouthafrica.blogspot.com/
Please… anyone else on Facebook who has not… at considerable risk to their reputations and sanity… Friended me on Facebook and shared their South Africa photos and videos… please do so! I have also posted a few photos and videos on Facebook, and am willing to Friend and Share.
Many thanks to Julian and Nick, who have also shared some lovely bits. To you in particular, and to all in general, I hope to catch up with work and begin collating and reviewing my South Africa notes and recordings real soon.
Thanks to Patty, Larry, and Matlakala, to all my singing and traveling companions, and especially to all my new South African friends… in particular, my newly-acquired twins.
The intersection of two interesting pieces in the media offers a vision of the future.
Only the Foreign Affairs article suggests the ‘Brave New World’ perspective on the risks of the governments becoming adept in the manipulation of social media.
But the ‘On the Media’ broadcast actually impelled my wife to ask me questions about gaming. Which is a significant outcome in its own right.
Battlespire. My first computer game as a designer. 1997.
To celebrate the holiday [ie, profligately squandering idle hours], I’ve figured out how to get this ancient DOS game running again. Haven’t seen it in years.
And, to my delight, I got myself killed, and was presented with this ‘death screen’. Which I scribbled, lo, these many years ago.
Here’s the liner notes for the traditional Rolston Yuletide compilation CD.
And since you’ve gotten this far, you may also want to know that this is our very-occasional blog for archiving and sharing music and travel and other odd bits.
But before you even think of trying to wander around in the blog, here’s the 2010 CD liner notes…
1. Hard Times Come Again No More – Eclipse
I discovered this lush arrangement while researching on YouTube for our Headlong Retreat ‘Hard Times’ program. The CD contains the original performance by the arranging group, Eclipse. But I particularly like this video of a bunch of young men in a men’s room singing.
2. Requiem by Eliza Gilkyson – Peace Lutheran Church
This is a powerful song in Gilkyson’s original performance on her album, Paradise Hotel. [I also love the title track on this album.]
The choral arrangement is by Craig Hella Johnson. There are other fine performances on YouTube, but I was particularly touched by this version.
3. Windy Ridge – Northern Harmony 2008
Pat and I and Karyn Grunwald sang this glorious song of impending doom at the Village Harmony camp in Oregon this year. This is one of the recent Sacred Harp songs composed by young folks inspired by the Sacred Harp revival. What a blast to sing this vigorous marching song, ‘… the law proclaims / destruction nigh / and vengeance at the door’.
When I review my ways,
I dread impending doom;
But sure a friendly whisper says,
“Flee from the wrath to come.”
4. Don’t Stand Between a Man and His Tools – Spooky Men’s Chorale
In particular I have Anna-Christine to thank for discovering this group. AC was a most charming colleague on the Village Harmony Corsica trip. She knew instinctively that I would like the Spooky Men’s Chorale. John Mina, his son, roman, Pat, and I performed this at the Fall Festival, and had a ball with it. I append here a wonderful video of the track from the CD, and a couple other fine spooky entertainments on YouTube.
Spooky Men’s Chorale – Don’t Stand Between a Man and his Tools
Spooky Men’s Chorale – Mraval Jamier
Spooky Men’s Chorale – Dancing Queen – Radio studio performance
5. Falling In – Red Molly
Easy on the eyes and the ears. Three women with strong, expressive voices, lovely harmonies, and fine arrangements and instrumentation. We’ve seen them several times are the Minstrel, and they are great live performers.
Falling In – Red Molly
Susan Werner and Red Molly in an a cappella version of Susan’s beautiful “May I Suggest. ”
6. Why Must We Die? – Kate and Anna McGarrigle
Bill Bly shared this wonderful song with us during our research for the Hard Times Headlong Retreat project.
Kate and Anna McGarrigle: Why Must We Die? – TV Ontario’s “Studio 2” (July 23, 1997)
7. Kinetsa – Throw Down Your Heart – Bela Fleck
This beautiful piece is from an album of Bela Fleck’s music travels in Africa. Every cut is a dlight, and the documentary film is wonderful… great stories, and great songs and voices… and available to ‘Watch Instantly on Netflix.
8. Nongqawuse (South Africa) – Northern Harmony 2010
This song was arranged by Matlakala Bopape, of Polokwane, South Africa, the director of Polokwane Choral Society, and one of our song leaders on my upcoming Village Harmony trip to South Africa.
The song is about Nongqawuse (c. 1840s – 1898) the teenaged Xhosa prophetess whose prophecies led to a millennialist movement that culminated in the Xhosa cattle-killing crisis of 1856–1857, in what is now the Eastern Cape Province of the Republic of South Africa. An amazing story, and a truly wonderful piece of music, beautifully arranged.
Theatre with actors and puppets about the false prophetess Nongqawuse and the Xhosa Cattle killing movement. A tragic episode in the history of South Africa. Produced by Speeltheater Holland and Sisonke Arts. More info: www.speeltheater.nl
9. Tonada de la Luna Llena (Colombia) – Veronica Condomi
Juan Saldarriaga, a double Colombian [a native of Columbia living in BRITISH Columbia] sang this song solo, a cappella, for us at the Village Harmony Oregon Camp this year. I was fascinated… and Juan graciously helped me track it down, bless his soul. Pat and I are delighed by the tight, mercurial parallel harmonies in the version on the CD… but we have not begun to scratch the surface of the complex rhythms suggested by this Columbia song in the ‘cumbia’ style.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxagTf9xGnI&feature=related
Here’s a completely different arrangement that suggests the rhythmic complexity of Caetano Veloso’s composition.
10. Terzina (Corsica) – Village Harmony Oregon 2010
This and the following are recorded from our Village Harmony oregon camp concert. Pat, I, and Karyn Grunwald are singing here, along with our other Village Harmony singing companions.
This is a Corsican ‘terzina’, normally performed only by a trio, but here performed en masse. Notice the delayed, layered entries of the different harmony lines, distinctive of this community harmony style.
11. Manana (Georgia) – Village Harmony Oregon 2010
Pat, I, and Karyn taught this song in a workshop for the Folk Project Fall Festival, and we then performed it with the workshoppers on the Sunday stage to great effect.
A rough translation of this sort-of romantic Georgian song follows…
If I love, will I feel bad?
Love makes me feel bad.
I hate her.
I break her heart.
What can I do?
Maybe I can love her again… and love will make me feel bad again.
12. Ladybird Polska (Sweden) – Blue Moose and the Unbuttoned Zippers
This amazing instrumental and vocal group performed at the Minstrel Coffeehouse and the Fall Festival. Wow. Great progressive arrangements in the ‘old-timey’ dance style, and celestial versions of Scandanavian folk music forms on the Hardanger fiddle and nyckelharpa.
Blue moose performs ‘Moose Schottis’, a dacne tune in the Swedish style. Here you can see the bizarre nyckelharpa, which looks like a giant mutant fiddle with lots of fingering levers.
13. Body & Soul – WSAG – Henry – Hunterdon NJ
This was a very long time ago. Eddie Jefferson put words to ‘Body and Soul’ as a tribute to Coleman Hawkins, and here Henry Nerenberg performs it to perfection.
14. House Where Nobody Lives – Brian Reynolds & Ken Rolston
This Tom Waits song is usually the next-to-the-last number that Brian and I sing on one of our evenings of musical raptures. I am so fortunate that Brian and I share the same comfortable immersion in songs of unrelenting sentimentality. And it’s great playing with such a fine piano player.
So if you find someone
Someone to have, someone to hold
Don’t trade it for silver
Don’t trade it for gold
I have all of life’s treasures
And they are fine and they are good
They remind me that houses
Are just made of wood
What makes a house grand
Ain’t the roof or the doors
If there’s love in a house
It’s a palace for sure
Without love…
It ain’t nothin but a house
A house where nobody lives
15. That Stephen Foster Song – Huxtable, Christensen, & Hood
This is another of our sentimental favorites, written by our old pal, Terri Huxtable, and sung by the delightful trio of Huxtable, Christensen, & Hood. A classic for the ages.
Roads and paths come overgrown
Lose the time and lose the way
Gather those around me now
I set a table of my own
Is someone left to know the way
Protect us, bring us home again
Sit at table one more time
Sing that Stephen Foster Song
16. Reconciliation – Headlong Retreat – Tabor Bethel
I learned this song from Tracey Gummow, a choir leader and fellow member of the Village Harmony Corsica chorus. A great song about the wonderful and scarcely believable possibility of reconciliation between the two halves of Ireland. A song of hope.
Now there’s a time to fight and there’s a time for healing
As the sun will melt the snow on clear bright April mornings
Our fight has run its course, now’s the time for healing
So let us both embrace sweet reconciliation
17. Stars – Herdman, Hills, & Mangsen
A beautiful three-part a cappella arrangement of a song Pat and I have always loved, and which at last finds its way to this compilation.
18. While Roving on a Winter’s Night – Dar Williams & John Gorka
Pat and I have longed loved the great singing, great arrangement of this traditional song.
19. We Have Fed Our Sea – Poor Old Horse
Words by Rudyard Kipling, music by Peter Bellamy. Performed here by Poor Old Horse, the late and lamented Tom Gibney, singing with Heather Wood and David Jones.
We have fed our sea for a thousand years
And she calls still unfed
Tho’ there’s never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead
We have strawed our best to the weeds unrest
To the shark and the sheering gull
If blood be the price of admiralty
Lord God, we ha’ paid in full
20. The Goodnight Song – Blue Murder
Blue Murder is an occasional English folk “supergroup”, consisting at various times of various members of Swan Arcade, Coope Boyes and Simpson, Waterson:Carthy and The Watersons. And this is a wonderful song of farewell to friends… that we’ll meet further on down the road.
Rough edits from my iPhone recordings. Reminders of our lovely week together until Val offers her video and Patty/Larry offer the Real Recordings.
Recordings are in an archive format. Download the ‘zip’ file, then uncompress using WinZip or Stuffit or whatever archive utility. [Double-click on the downloaded file. Then, if nothing happens, or you don’t understand what happened, send me an email, and I’ll try to help.]
