Frabjous Shchedryck

I’m finally coming out from under the piles created by two weeks away, and I just remembered that I’d failed to create a “picture blog” from the trip. Then, last night, we went to hear Sound Circle, which planted a couple of new ideas. So the following is a sort of mash-up of my vacation on the east coast and Sound Circle’s magnificent Solstice concert.

I’ve written before (several times) about Sound Circle, so you already know how much I love their music—both for its artistic excellence and for its varied message. Last night’s concert had some really playful parts that I found delightful. Among those was a piece based on Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jaberwocky.” You remember …

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

Well, one of the “nonsense” words in that poem caught my ear. It was in this phrase: “O frabjous day!” What a great word: frabjous! The brief lexicon given in the program explained that “frabjous” is a combination of “fabulous” and “joyous.” (If you’re curious about possible meanings of other nonsense words in Jaberwocky, read this.)

What a perfect word to describe an especially fine day: frabjous! I tucked it away, wondering how I might use it one day. My experience with new words tells me that if I want to make them my own, I have to use them. So I vowed to find an opportunity to find something totally frabjous.

And here’s that opportunity, just a day later: a link between Sound Circle’s Solstice concert and pictures from my recent vacation – which had many frabjous moments.

Like the the discovery of lavishly decorated cows scattered about the University of North Carolina campus. (Night pictures, but you get the idea) 

               

How could you not think these multi-hued bovines frabjous? These bulls seem to be some sort symbol of UNC since they're everywhere. But why bulls? The team (and UNC students) are called “Tarheels,” a reference to the huge tar and turpentine industry in the state, along with Civil War stories of North Carolina soldiers’ having tar on their heels that made them tenacious and immovable. No bull there. And the school mascot is a ram, apparently because a favorite football player was nicknamed “battering ram” about the same time the school decided it needed a mascot. No bull. So I asked around about the relationship between bulls and UNC, and the best guess seems to be some obscure link to Bull Durham tobacco, probably the best-known local product. Anyhow, the painted bulls are definitely cool, so discovering them along my evening walk was a most frabjous moment.

And, obviously, frabjous is the perfect word to describe our sunrise walk on the beach near Wilmington, NC, between a gig at the U of North Carolina, site of the bulls, and the drive north to MD. Fabulous and joyous.

Then, we spent some time in southern MD, from whence we took a day trip to DC to visit the Smithsonian. I had a totally frabjous day there, swallowed up by the new exhibit on evolution, which I already raved about in an earlier blog. But what I didn’t do before was show off these pictures from that frabjous day.

     

And for another frabjous moment, consider this view of the late evening sky out the gabled window of our hotel in Port Jefferson, NY.

… and of the ferry (which I didn’t get to ride) emerging from the fog.

And finally, imagine my frabjous delight when my dear old gull friend Mildred (whom you met before and before that) stopped by the Port Jefferson pier to say hello.

So, back to Sound Circle … In addition to gathering the word frabjous into my vocabulary, I also learned something new at the concert that served as a reminder of easily we appropriate others’ lives in order to adorn our own. In this case, I learned about the appropriation of a song.

The guest musician for the evening, Beth Quist (BTW, if you have a chance, go see this woman!), performed a piece that she introduced something like this (not a direct quote, but close): “This is not a Christmas song,” she began. “It’s pagan,” she continued, smiling. So far, no surprise. This was, after all, a Solstice concert, not a Christmas concert. “It’s a new year’s song,” she went on, “but in this case, ‘new year’ refers to spring—the emergence of new life and the beginning of the planting season.”

The song, called “Shchedryk” (from the Ukrainian Щедрий вечiр, meaning bountiful evening), is based on an old Ukrainian folk chant from pre-Christian Ukraine, when the new year was celebrated in April. The song is about a swallow who flies in through the window of a farmhouse, announcing the arrival of spring and promising a bountiful new year.

Now, to make this really cool, you need to listen to the original song before you read on. In this recording, it is sung by a Romanian chorus in its original form. Just click on the title to hear Shchedryk. Be sure to listen before you read on.

Recognize the tune? Here’s the story: When Ukraine became a Christian country in 988 AD, the celebration of the new year was moved from April to January to match the Christian calendar. You recognize it because the melody of Shchedryk was adopted as the tune for an English Christmas carol. After the Ukrainian National Chorus performed the original version at Carnegie Hall,  Peter J. Wilhousky, an American composer of Ukrainian/Russian ancestry, wrote English lyrics that transformed the song into “Carol of the Bells.” The rest is history.

For any hard-core music buffs out there, here’s the musical score (with audio).

So what does this have to do with my vacation? Well, for reasons that I'm still sorting out, when I learned about this connection … this appropriation … I thought immediately of the Dickens Festival in Port Jefferson, NY, the last stop on our trip.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, Port Jeff holds an annual Charles Dickens Festival, which includes a performance of Dickens' “A Christmas Carol.” For several days, townspeople stroll around town dressed in very fancy Victorian garb. They wander through restaurants and coffee shops, speaking in quasi-British accents and posing for photos for (and with) tourists.

     

 

The link between Shchedryk and the Dickens Festival is complicated. I actually wrote paragraphs about it, only to decide it was too obscure (and even cranky) to post. So let me leave it at this:

Charles Dickens was a social critic, and “A Christmas Carol” challenged rich folks to recognize their common humanity with poor people and people with disabilities folks. Yet, the “dress-up” part, at least, of the Dickens Festival seemed to be steeped in wealth. Who could afford a full-length velvet dress, new for each year’s festival? How different it would be to devote the same funds to feeding the Bob Cratchits and Tiny Tims of New York ... especially given that this was right after Sandy blew through.

I wonder if it’s too much of a stretch to draw a parallel between this event and Shchedryk. In both cases, the meaning of a work of art has been altered to fit comfortably into the lives of the folks who claim it for themselves. Shchedryk, a pagan song about spring, has been claimed as a Christmas carol. Dickens’ work, a critique of class and ability privilege, is celebrated by an exercise in excess. Obscure? Cranky? Maybe so.

The less contentious point (but one that wouldn’t allow me to post pictures from my trip) is that I so often learn stuff from Sound Circle’s music. Sometimes it’s overt, sometimes more subtle. Often, it stays with me and makes me think. Shchedryk (a.k.a. "Carol of the Bells") definitely did that.