We talked a lot more than usual, but it was excellent, and we still sang a lot, and danced!
It was an evening of music, connection, harmony, and spirit.
Here's the list of the songs we listened to and sang.
- True Colors by One Voice Children’s Choir, video with Holi theme
- Dooset Daram by 7th Band video, with English and Farsi lyrics
- I’m Coming Out DanceTHE D SORAKI video
- Christ the Lord is Risen Today by Amen Choir &National Philharmonic Orchestra
- Christ the Lord is Risen Today by PraiseCharts
- Power of the Dream by Celine Dion
- Nella Fantasia by Celtic Woman, and videos by YRCC, and Jackie Evancho
- Gabriel’s Oboe by Ennio Morricone
- Karma Chameleon by Culture Club
- The King of Wishful Thinking by Go West
- Wishful Thinking by China Crisis
- Someday by One Republic
- Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us by Starship
- Computer Love by Kraftwerk
- Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind & Fire
- Too Much Heaven by Bee Gees
- You Make My Dreams Come True by Hall & Oates
- All Out of Love by Air Supply
- Kiss From a Rose by Seal
We started off with the video of True Colors by the One Voice Children's Choir. We've seen that choir before, and they're amazing. We sang True Colors by Cyndi Lauper last week for PIE Day. This video referenced the Hindu festival of colour, love, and spring, Holi, which falls on Monday, March 25th this year (the full moon). Holi marks the end of winter, celebrates that light conquers dark, honours the triumph of good over evil. And, there's this, from Wikipedia: "There is also a popular symbolic legend behind the festival. In his youth, Krishna despaired whether the fair-skinned Radha would like him because of his dark skin colour. His mother Yashoda, tired of his desperation, asks him to approach Radha and ask her to colour his face in any colour she wanted. This Radha did, and Radha and Krishna became a couple. Ever since, the playful colouring of Radha and Krishna's faces has been commemorated as Holi." I love this! Love. Of course they loved each other no matter what colour. We talked about the coloured powder being natural and safe, hopefully. There are natural and synthetic dyes of course. These powders go into faces and into the environment. Surely they are safe?
We had to talk about the Persian New Year, Nowruz, which my family celebrates. Nowruz means new day, but it's a weeks-long festival that celebrates the beginning of the new year, the new cycle of seasons. The countdown to the new year doesn't happen at midnight but at the moment of the vernal equinox, which was March 19th at 11:06:26 this year. I've written about Nowruz traditions in other posts. What we talked about today was the love of dancing. Iranians celebrate everything with lots of dancing, in addition to lots of food and flowers and dressing up. We listened to some music that reminded us of other kinds of dance music and the words were so passionate, about love and heartbreak ("you're the reason I breathe... I die without you"), words we've heard so often in the songs we sing.
We listened to two very different versions of Christ the Lord is Risen Today. The first was a big, bombastic choral and orchestral recording. Trinity's beautiful organ can sometimes sound like an orchestra and this is the kind of Easter Hymn we're accustomed to. The second was a big, energetic "Praise" song. We wondered if our congregation would like it, or would only want the traditional version. We thought they probably would. It was excellent and full of the positive passion that Easter Sunday inspires. We've enjoyed lots of Contemporary Christian Music at our church, including some fun and energetic songs like My Lighthouse and Fix My Eyes. I think we're going to have to have more of that.
We talked about how the dancer THE D Soraki moved to the percussion part of I'm Coming Out rather than to the melody, which made it surprising and creative. It opened our eyes to the fact that we don't all experience music the same way. Some of us love classical music and others hate it, same with country music, or bagpipes. Electronic music, opera, musical theatre, bluegrass, folk, CCM, traditional hynms, traditional music from any other culture, all can sound pleasing or exciting or calming or upsetting. Something we felt strongly about was that to be inclusive, our church should include a variety of musical styles each Sunday, because people's taste in music is so varied. We can be turned off by some kinds of music just as we are empassioned by other kinds of music. And, we can't become bland or neutral and stay inspiring. Difficult.
Some of the music we listened to and sang reminded us of important life moments: a trip to Europe, falling in love at 18, when our young husbands had a moustache, and dancing dates. This is good for our cognitive function, remembering the past connected to music. We're keeping our brains working.
As often happens, we were surprised by the lyrics of some of the songs we thought we knew so well. We sang these songs, danced to them, heard them many times, without paying attention to the words, the meanings (or seeming lack of meaning, LOL!). This is a really interesting and fun part of our evenings. We didn't have the lyrics to all the songs back when we were young, and even if we did, we didn't take the time to think about them like we are doing now.
Something we often end up talking about is our current concerns about our health: knee surgery, hair loss, skin tags, pain and stress, dental health and mental health, our own and in our families. We worry about our spouses, our parents, and our children and friends too. We usually have a break, time for tea and discussion, and I often bake. This time, I had banana chocolate chip muffins that I had made earlier in the day. This aspect of our evening is a treasure too.
We love the little group of Thursday friends that we've got, but at the same time we wish we could share this experience with others. Other singing friends from church or choir and others in Newmarket and the surrounding communities would love this and could benefit from it. I'm thinking about how to get the word out that this is good and we welcome more people. I think we could rebrand, change the name, advertise, maybe change the format, announce the theme the week before with some titles? We're not meeting next week, so maybe I'll spend some time on that.
 |
| I love the accordion. If you don't, you haven't met the right accordion player. |
No comments:
Post a Comment