Christmas Memories–More Music

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Canada, Christmas, learning, mind, music

I wrote yesterday about my mom’s singing. She sang all year round, but Christmas brought forth a few more joyous sounds than usual.

I’d like to share today a record than I never heard anywhere but our home. It was called “Organ and Chimes”. If artist names are anywhere on the disk jacket, I never noticed them. This record was a celebration of Christmas played on, yes, one organ and one set of chimes.

I found the entire record on Youtube recently. Well, maybe. There are a couple of candidates. I think that the record I (almost) remember was recorded by Charles Smart and James Blades.

Who says memories have to be perfect to be worth having?

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Christmas Memories—The Music

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Christmas, Harry Belafonte, mother

So many of our childhood memories are associated with the senses, or with fragments of experience. For me, much of the Christmas preparation I remembered with my mother’s vinyl records.

My mom loved to sing. Any time she was awake was a good time to sing. But she didn’t listen to the radio or to records very often. Perhaps she enjoyed the freedom of setting her own tempo and letting nature give her sweet, natural alto the most comfortable key.
But there were a few LPs that came out at Christmas time. Youtube has given me a chance to engage the memories.
I want to begin with a single from a non-Christmas LP. Mom loved Harry Belafonte, and his rendition of “Mary’s Boy Child” remains by far my favorite.
Belafonte was born American, but spent much of his childhood with grandparents in Jamaica. He was a (perhaps the) central figure in the Calypso rage of the 1950s. Belafonte’s clear voice and crisp diction bring the text to the front of a gentle Calypso rhythm to create a song that simultaneously is humble worship, and infectious rhythm.
Enjoy.

 

Mom, wherever you are, let’s enjoy Harry Belafonte together again this year. Merry Christmas.

Leonard Cohen recites “In Flanders Fields”

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In Flanders Fields, John McRae, Leonard Cohen, November 11, remembrance day

November 11. A day for sober reflection.