Chris Rowbury's monthly music round-up (July 2021) issue #72
July 2021
Welcome to the July edition of my monthly music roundup.
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How to assess your vocal health
Article by Jennie Weyman on the Chorus Connection blog with tips for community choir singers to help to identify vocal health warning signs.
So Choir!
Looks like the idea of Toronto-based Choir!Choir!Choir! has made it over to the UK. "So Choir! is all about getting together with friends and soon to be friends and singing together. We put on regular turn-up-and-sing events in cool bars, music venues and even workplaces, to sing awesome songs in spine-tingling harmony."
Currently in Leeds and Wakefield and online, with more locations coming soon. Find out more on the So Choir! website.
Venn diagrams for musicians
Classic FM has summed up your life in these painfully accurate Venn diagrams. Something here for everyone.
Encyclopedia of US Folk Music
After 50 Years, Riley Shepard's Encyclopedia of Folk Music is finally available. Its full title is The Master Book of American Folk Song: an encyclopedia of the traditional music and folk songs of the United States.
Shepard was was an American country musician, songwriter, and folk music archivist. He began his encyclopedia in the 1960s and by 1976, had single-handedly catalogued and coded more than 43,000 folk songs, along with their derivative works and variant lyrics.
This is an amazing resource. A labour of love to list thousands of American folk songs. Worth reading the background story, then you can head over to the archive.
Read more ...
Gullah Geechee community finally credited with song "Kumbaya"
I'm sure we all learnt this song at school. The origins of Kumbaya ("come by here") have finally been attributed to the Gullah of the Georgia Sea Islands.
Who Owns an Ancestral Photo, Song, or Language?
"Jane Anderson is a professor in New York University’s Program in Museum Studies and Department of Anthropology, an intellectual property lawyer, and co-director of the intellectual property rights initiative Local Contexts. She has been working for decades with Native, First Nations, Indigenous, and Aboriginal communities all over the world to help them reconnect with cultural artefacts that have been lost, stolen, or misappropriated by a variety of entities, including museums and corporations."
Increasing your audience with Social Media
A slide show presentation by Unison Croatian Music Alliance.
Katie Melua sings Georgian
This is rather lovely and is from Katie Melua's 2016 album In Winter. It's a modern Georgian folk song called Tu Ase Turpa ("If you are so beautiful"). She is joined by the Gori Women's Choir.
A blog post you might have missed
Calm before the storm
There’s always a strange sense of calm that descends on the choir just before a concert. At the final run-through singers drift in slowly, seldom on time. There's an end of term feeling in the air. Singers chat with their friends and appear incredibly calm given that we have a concert in a few days.
I'm sure the singers are nervous inside, but strangely they don't seem to want to crack on with the work. Is it some kind of avoidance? Then after the concert, if there are a few weeks left of the term, numbers are always down. It's as if they've peaked and have no more energy left. Can anybody else relate to this?
Read more ...
Song of the month
As the nights are drawing in here in the northern hemisphere (!), I thought I'd share a bit of summer solstice joy. Here is the ethnographic ensemble Suitu sievas ("Suitu women") from the western Latvian Suiti singing a traditional song:
This was part of a fascinating project by Latvijas Radio 2 ("Latvia Radio 2"/ LR2) to celebrate the summer solstice in 2016: Gadsimta garākā Līgodziesma ("The longest lullaby of the century"). Based on the Latvian Līgo tradition (summer solstice celebrations from June 23rd to June 24th), LR2 broadcast Latvian songs from sunrise at 4:29 until sunset at 22:22, covering all the different regions and singing traditions of Latvia.
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