Category Archives: Music

Music, Uncategorized

Sea Shanties Are All Over TikTok, and Why Not

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Postman Nathan Evans of Glascow, Scotland has spent several months or more posting music to YouTube and TikTok. He sings some of his own songs, covers of popular songs, and also traditional Scottish folk. On December 27, he posted a video to TikTok with him singing a New Zealand sea shanty called “Wellerman.”

That’s the song that has been copied and harmonized with a thousand times over to make international media outlets write articles on everyone on social media singing sea shanties. It’s incredible. C|Net has a run down of it with some examples.

Evans told them he is as surprised as anyone with his suddenly popularity, and in a TikTok video posted yesterday he reports he has a record deal to release Wellerman as a single.

He has been planning to do more sea shanties. Fans have offered their recommendations. I thought to suggest “Leave Her, Johnny” and “Bully in the Alley,” but I see he has done these already. (Though TikTok folks may want to dwell on Stan Rogers’s version of “Leave Her, Johnny,” for inspiration. Oh, and I see The Longest Johns have already put together social media choir of “Leave Her, Johnny” with a million views since 12/30.)

Stan Rogers wrote “Barrett’s Privateers” himself, as he says in this video. That’s one worthy of taking social media by storm, despite the swearing in the chorus. Another contender would be John Kanaka, as Lars posted earlier. Here’s another that would light some people up, “Bonnie Ship the Diamond,” sung at the pace a Gaelic storm.

Music

‘Auld Lang Syne,’ with Sissel

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What shall we say about the year that is passing? If you’re reading this, you and I are survivors. Our Lord bids us live in hope. Sufficient unto the year is the evil thereof.

Blessings to you and your family, from the highly trained professionals at Brandywine Books.

Music, Religion

‘Glade Jul/Silent Night’

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It’s a Christmas miracle... sort of. You know how the movie “White Christmas” goes, when they’re all in the ski lodge, hoping/praying for snow so they can save the business, and they get a big snowfall on Christmas Eve? That happened here, in the magic wonderland of Minnesota. We’d gotten some snow early this winter, but a long stretch of warm temperatures and dry weather left all nature naked and ashamed. But last night the blizzard came in pure Hollywood style, depositing 8 or 9 inches, I guess. Today you could film a Hallmark special here. Something for the kids, anyway. If they have to remember a premature year without the grandparents, they’ll at least have memories of sliding and snowballs. And, of course, of delayed presents because the Post Office is backed up like the Donner Party.

As you no doubt deduced, the video above is the one and only Sissel, singing “Glade Jul,” which is the Norwegian version of Silent Night. Pretty much the same idea in the lyrics, except that we replaced the words for “Silent Night” with ones for “Happy Christmas.” Because we could.

And Glade Jul to you, too.

Music

3 Reasons Nat King Cole should Have a Biopic

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“I’m an interpreter of stories. When I perform it’s like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories.” – Nat King Cole

Nat King Cole, the stage name of Nathaniel Adams Cole (1919-1965), has always been one of my favorite singers. He won a Grammy for “Midnight Flyer” and had 28 Top 40 hit songs. Mel Tormé and Bob Wells’s 1945 piece “The Christmas Song” is a Nat King Cole piece in my mind; I don’t care who else has sung it.

Cole also made famous a beautiful lullaby by Alfred Bryan and Larry Stock, “A Cradle in Bethlehem,” written in 1952.

John Rowe notes the musician whose 100th birthday was last year should be on someone’s list for well-produced biopics. He offers these reasons:

  • Nat King Cole’s jazz style has drawn many followers and imitators.
  • He is one of the most popular singers of Jazz standards and class pop music.
  • He broke racial barriers with kindness.

(via Lars Walker on Facebook)

Music, Religion

The Word Was Made Flesh, Merry Christmas

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This is the real meaning of Christmas: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 ESV).

This does not mean God posed as a man for a few years, casting an illusion on everyone in order to influence them with well-spoken sermons.

It does not mean God sent his spirit into a man for a time, having found someone who was sufficiently humble to indwell for divine purposes.

It does not mean that God actually is a man who lives eternally on another plane but for a season he came to Earth to do things.

It also does not mean that Jesus was only a man who connected dots like no one before him and introduced some darn good principles to Western civilization.

It does not mean that a uniquely spiritual man called on divine power to perform marvelous works and speak with wisdom beyond the scope of mortal reason.

Those ideas are a bit easier to understand. The truth is beyond us. Christ Jesus, born as a child to a poor, virgin woman, was the Word of God from the beginning, both with God and actually God. The invisible, eternal God became a mortal man. That doesn’t make complete sense to us, but it is the only hope for ourselves and all the world.

Merry Christmas.

Music

Christmastime: Let Us Be Merry; Put Sorrow Away

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In a week, we will be set upon by Christmas. I hope you, your friends, family, and neighbors will receive God’s transforming grace to know with confidence what the Lord has done by taking on flesh and living as one of us.

The Christmas carol in this video, “A Virgin Unspotted,” used to be very popular and can be found in many variations. The music, “Judea,” was written by William Billings in 1778.

Billings was a tanner who taught himself music and was friends with men you know from the American Revolution. Britannica states, “His music is noted for its rhythmic vitality, freshness, and straightforward harmonies.” That’s what I love about this song. The joyous chorus that dances round the room.

The words come derive from a 1661 carol called “In Bethlehem City,” which appears in many versions and was originally paired with a tune that has been lost. The writers of Hymns and Carols of Christmas state, “The carol has appeared in one form or another in most of the old collections of songs, and was a popular subject for the broadside trade. Interestingly, it almost never appears in hymnals.”

I came to know the song through The Rose Ensemble album, And Glory Shown Around.

Music

Some Children See Him like Themselves

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“Some children see him bronzed and brown,
The lord of heav’n to earth come down;
Some children see him bronzed and brown,
With dark and heavy hair.”

I appreciate artwork depicting Christ Jesus as someone in a different ethnic context than he lived. I suppose that should go without saying, since we tend to understand Jesus of Nazareth did not look like the Romanized figure we most recognize. If we depict him in a painting at all, we’re going to depict him as we are.

Alfred Burt wrote the music to this Christmas carol for his family Christmas card in 1951, a tradition his father started in 1922. Alfred wrote fifteen such carols, including “The Star Carol” and “Caroling, Caroling.” You can see all of the cards and songs on this tribute page.

The carols were known primarily to those who received the cards until Burt was invited to the King Family Christmas party and introduced a various Hollywood people. That emboldened him to get enough material together for an album, which was released in 1954.

The King family was something of a big deal last century. I haven’t heard of them, but they sang as an ever-growing family for decades and had their own variety show in the mid-60s. In 1967, they put together a live Christmas special that offered viewers this special moment of a son returning from Vietnam while she sang of him on stage.

Music, Religion

‘Det Lyser i Stille Grender’

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I’m pretty sure I’ve posted this number by Sissel here before (though not this performance, which conveniently includes subtitles). But it’s high on my list of Norwegian Christmas songs that deserve to be known outside the neighborhood.

According to this Norwegian account, the lyrics come from a poem by Jakob Sande. It was first published in 1931, but the author didn’t think much of it. When Lars Soraas, who was putting a Christmas songbook together in 1948, asked him for permission to use it, Sande had forgotten about it completely. Since then it’s become his best-known work.

Music, Religion

‘Mitt Hjerte Altid Vanker’

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Wrote a sizeable chunk of text for the next Erling book last night, and today I’ve been working on what I think might be a clever piece for The American Spectator Online. Which left me little mental capacity for fresh ideas for posts. You know me well enough to guess what that means, especially during Advent: Sissel with a Christmas song:

This is one of Sissel’s most popular Christmas numbers, original a Danish song, done here in a concert in Iceland. The title means, “My heart always lingers,” and if you’re interested in an English translation, a kind soul in Norway has provided us with one here.

I note that the translator, judging by the coat of arms on his profile, seems to come from the island of Karmoy, my ancestral home.

Music

John Kanaka

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Apologies for not posting last night. I had a technical problem with Word Press, which has now been solved. Or worked around, anyway.

I can only post in haste just now; a big translation job fluttered in, to dominate my time for a few days. So, music.

The other day I reviewed the movie, Fisherman’s Friends, about the famed sea shanty group from Cornwall. The clip above is the real group (not the guys in the movie), singing a song that’s also in the film, John Kanaka.

No doubt the lyrics conceal some obscene meaning of which I am unaware. If so, don’t tell me about it. If I’m corrupting you, I’d rather not know about it.