The Angel Rolling The Stone Away From The Sepulchre William Blake, ca. 1808 |
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Christ As The Redeemer Of Man Blake, ca 1808 |
Sources
Photos and Illustrations:
Observations on American culture and experience And much like that experience you never know what to expect from its participant/observers.
The Angel Rolling The Stone Away From The Sepulchre William Blake, ca. 1808 |
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Christ As The Redeemer Of Man Blake, ca 1808 |
Holy Saturday . . . is the sound of perfect silence. Yesterday's mockery, the good thief's prayer, the cry of dereliction - all of that is past now. Mary has dried her tears, and the whole creation is still, waiting for what will happen next.
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Christ in the Sepulchre William Blake, 1808 |
For contemplation on this day...
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Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus Salvadore Dali, 1954 |
In fifty years singer-songwriter Emmylou Harris has won fourteen Grammy Awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. Her career first gained traction in small clubs and coffee houses in Washington and its suburbs. I was only a few miles from most of the venues but sadly never saw her perform. Still, it was impossible not to see and hear the advertising in and around Georgetown in DC and the Maryland suburbs of Bethesda, Chevy Chase and Silver Spring. By the early '70's she moved to Los Angeles to work with Gram Parsons and his band, The Grievous Angels. When Parsons died in 1973 the devastating event led her to focus on Parsons's search for the fusion sound he called "cosmic American music." The sound Harris and Parsons produced in their short time together , in addition to her life-long dance with experimental sounds in folk, blues and country music would have a significant impact on decades of American music.
Today, Harris continues to produce innovative and award-winning sound. In 2016 her album of duets with Rodney Crowell - The Traveling Kind - was her latest Grammy winner. Here is a track from the album:
I don't want to hear a love song
I got on this airplane just to fly
And I know there's life below
But all that it can show me
Is the prairie and the sky
And I don't want to hear a sad story
Full of heartbreak and desire
The last time I felt like this
It was in the wilderness and the canyon was on fire
And I stood on the mountain in the night and I watched it burn
I watched it burn, I watched it burn.
I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace.
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face.
Well you really got me this time
And the hardest part is knowing I'll survive.
I have come to listen for the sound
Of the trucks as they move down
Out on ninety five
And pretend that it's the ocean
coming down to wash me clean, to wash me clean
Baby do you know what I mean
I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace.
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face.
Sources:
Photo, emmylouharris.com
Lyrics: play.google.com
I was introduced to the music of J.S. Bach as an infant at Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in my little hometown in the mountains of Maryland. The church already had been baptizing members of my father's family for over seventy years. We were a large family within the larger church family. One aunt was the principal organist while several aunts, uncles, and cousins held various position in church administration and in the choir. In the summer of my ninth year our family moved leaving behind not only familiar people and places but also family linkages to my beloved church. I left with a strong faith reinforced in part by Bach's profound music. In time I faced some challenges with faith in my revolutionary days but the awe and appreciation for Bach never waned.
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J.S. Bach portrait at age 61 Elias Haussmann, Germany, 1746 |
Music’s ultimate end or final goal…should be for the honor of God and the recreation of the soul.
Johann Sebastian Bach - Leipzig, 1738
Paul Whiteman was born on this day in 1890 in Denver. Once known as the "King of Jazz," but now almost forgotten outside of tight circles of music history, he was primarily responsible popularizing the integration of jazz in popular music throughout the United States. Historian Glenn T. Eskew says this about him:
Alert to the emerging style, Whiteman pioneered standardized settings of the songs, capturing the melodies on paper and leaving room for improvisation while making jazz appear "respectable" for dancing by using symphonic arrangements. Whiteman made recordings in 1920 of "Avalon" and "Whispering" songs that inspired Johnny Mercer. By 1924, in a bid to blend the "serious" with the "popular," Whiteman conducted his Palais Royale Orchestra in the world premier of George Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue,' which revealed the omnipresence of syncopation. Indeed, Whiteman's various approaches to jazz gained him his crown, for he mastered a jazz-inflected light-sweet music that while never the hot music of [Louis] Armstrong nonetheless popularized the genre in the United States. From the cabaret to the symphony hall, musicians embraced the rhythm and blues of playing as Americans consumed Whiteman's liberating jazz.
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Whiteman pictured in 1934 in the magazine, Radio Stars |