Category / Songs

by nflanagan

The Problem with Jingle Bells

If you follow various chat groups and Facebook pages of music educators, this time of year is rife with the Great Christmas Literature Discussion, centered around whether to schedule a concert in December and, if so, what songs to play, while avoiding stepping on anyone’s cultural traditions.

I have written, often, about this conundrum—honoring the festive spirit of seasonal holidays (which is evident absolutely everywhere, in December, from the grocery store to TV ads) vs. avoiding any mention of Christmas at school, because it’s inappropriate to preference one religious celebration over others, in a public institution filled with diverse children.

From a professional education perspective, it’s thorny. You can play a Christmas-heavy concert, sending parents home in a rosy glow—some parents, anyway. You can try to recognize every winter/light holiday with a tune—or rely on “classical” pieces like Messiah transcriptions. You can try to take Jesus out of the equation, and end up with a lot of junk literature. Or you can avoid the whole thing and schedule your concert in January.

Increasingly, I’ve seen elementary music teachers bowing out of anything directly related to Christmas. They can articulate good reasons for this, distinguishing between music students are fortunate enough to experience at home and with their families, and what belongs in a solid music education curriculum. For teachers who are under pressure from administrators or parents to put on a holiday show, there are winter weather songs. Enter Jingle Bells.

A couple of weeks ago, Peter Greene reprinted his blog entitled The Jingle Bells Effect and the Canon. It’s a bit of brilliance comparing 30 different versions of Jingle Bells, 30 ways of taking a small collection of notes and rhythms and turning them into something unique and different.

It’s like literature, Greene says—there are multiple ways to teach a concept, theme or historical era through the same medium: the printed word. He makes the point that teachers should always be able to offer a cogent answer to the question: Why are we learning this? I agree.

And for many years, I found Jingle Bells a handy instructional tool. The chorus uses only five notes, so the tune appears in virtually every beginning band method book, just about the time kids are eager to play real songs. The lyrics are thoroughly secular—no mention of Christmas—so when kids are singing about a one-horse open sleigh, it’s kind of like the Little Deuce Coupe of its day.

It’s also one of those three-chord songs, simple to harmonize. Add some sleighbells and voila! First concert magic. For years, my middle school band (some 200 7th and 8th graders) played Jingle Bells in a local Fantasy of Lights parade. Because when you’re trying to get 200 young musicians to march and play at the same time, you need something easy.

As awareness of the racist roots and language in some of our most beloved folk and composed songs began to grow, in recent decades, elementary and secondary music teachers rightfully started pulling certain songs out of their teaching repertoire. Scarcely a week goes by without an argument about this trend, on music-ed social media sites. Do songs that sprang from minstrelsy, performed in a different era, for example, have a racially negative impact today? Or are they just tunes? A valid and important question.

I find these skirmishes encouraging, an example of teachers discussing–with some conviction–the beliefs that shape their own professional work. And sometimes, seeing things in a new light. As Maya Angelou said: ‘Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.’

I’ve read dozens of these “is this racist?” discussions on-line. And music teachers, given the chance to re-think the cultural value–or lack therof—in certain pieces of music, often are willing to choose something else, or share the origins of the work, the outmoded and biased thinking reflected in the lyrics, as an opportunity to teach cultural history associated with music. People will adapt.

Except when it comes to Jingle Bells.

Back in 2017, a professor at Boston University , Kyna Hamill, published a research paper, suggesting that Jingle Bells was first sung in minstrel shows. Research papers are not generally the subject of teachers’ lounge chat, but this one caught fire, and pretty soon, there were teachers arguing that the composer of the piece, James Lord Pierpont, was a fervent Confederate, and therefore a supporter of slavery. Out with Jingle Bells!

Pierpont was not a household name, in his own time. He was a struggling composer, organist and teacher. His father was an ardent abolitionist and Unitarian minister, as were his two brothers, all in Massachusetts. But Pierpont took a position as organist in a Unitarian church in Georgia and was there when the Civil War broke out. He wrote music and sold it to support his family—including songs that supported the Southern war effort.

He also enlisted in the Confederate Army and served as a clerk. His father, the Reverend John Pierpont, was a Chaplain in the Union Army—one of those families split by a tragic war. There are plenty of families in the same situation right now, in this country—split by politics, influenced by cultural context. Something to think about, as we evaluate and banish Pierpont, 150 years after he wrote his most famous sleighing ditty.

Even Kyna Hamill, arguably the genesis of the anti-Jingle Bells movement now says this:
My article tried to tell the story of the first performance of the song. I do not connect this to the popular Christmas tradition of singing the song now. “The very fact of (“Jingle Bells’”) popularity has to do with the very catchy melody of the song, and not to be only understood in terms of its origins in the minstrel tradition. … I would say it should very much be sung and enjoyed, and perhaps discussed.”

There are teachers and schools that have taken Jingle Bells out of the curricular mix—and good on them for having that thoughtful discussion in the first place. And there are teachers who have decided they have bigger curricular fish to fry than banishing the bells on bobtails—they’ll save their firepower for songs with overtly racist lyrics and intentions.

Again– these are valid and important questions. The trick is to keep the conversation going, and refrain from condemnation of well-meaning peers.

Are those sleighbells I hear?

by nflanagan

Teaching Music in the Digital Age

Story from my band room, a couple of decades ago:

I am discussing auto-tune, a relatively new invention, with one of my students, an uber-smart trombone player. I have serious doubts about whether auto-tune is a good thing for recorded music, as a concept. It means, I tell him, that the focus on all kinds of music will shift from genuine musical talent to production values. Singers who have limited range and vocal appeal, but look hot, can be made to sound hot, too, even when a raw recording of their voice reveals pitch problems and dubious vocal quality.

But, he says—aren’t you always pushing us toward perfection, in band rehearsal? We use machines to improve our tuning. We use machines to regulate tempos. And our entire goal is to sound flawless—the pursuit of excellence and so on. (That’s actually a thing I say, pretty often, in rehearsal.) Why wouldn’t it be OK for record producers to use technology to achieve the same ends?

I told you he was smart.

There are other reasons to make music, I reply. What about the joy of playing with others, like our community of kids here, who find great satisfaction in playing Russian Christmas Music, even spending lots of time tuning the unison brass opening, because nobody can fail to be moved by the solemnity and glory of the music? Even the beginners who can only play six notes experience immense pleasure in playing that first concert, despite being out of tune and rhythmically inaccurate. And their parents love it, too.

He wrinkles his nose. Maybe they’re just pretending to like it, he says.

My career as a music teacher was varied. I taught secondary band and choir, and elementary music. I taught some other stuff, too—seventh grade math, and a dumping ground class that gave me kids who didn’t speak English well enough to know how to do their homework—but I taught music across the K-12 spectrum, vocal and instrumental, in five different decades.

Although the world of recorded music, available to everyone on the planet, pretty much, changed radically in that span from the 1970s to the 2020s, music education looked much the same: elementary schoolchildren singing and moving to the beat, and selected secondary students peeling off into performance ensembles—bands, orchestras and choral groups. Competition remains popular with secondary teachers. The tyrannical band director is still a thing—and often admired.

Now, and perennially since the rise of musical performing groups in schools early in the last century, music programs are often considered expendable, subject to funding vagaries. There are lots of school band programs that depend on fund-raising and Boosters organizations. I myself was a poster child for funding your own program. Which means that parents and teachers believe so strongly in the power of school music programs they’re not willing to let them go.

There’s even talk about the ability of music and other arts to bring divergent perspectives together. There’s research about how music develops executive function, the “CEO” of the brain.  Music builds communities—in schools, and after formal education is over.

So why would any school think that music is an add-on, nice but not central to their mission of (here it comes) creating 21st century citizens? The New York Times takes a stab at this with an article entitled We’re Teaching Music to Kids All Wrong.

Not a promising headline but the author, Sammy Miller, a Grammy-nominated drummer who started a music education company, actually gets this mostly right:

We need to start by rethinking how we teach music from the ground up, both at home and in the classroom. The onus is on parents and educators to raise the next generation of lifelong musicians — not just for music’s sake but to build richer, more vibrant inner personal lives for our children and a more beautiful and expressive world.

Miller notes that about 80% of all kids quit singing and playing in formal ensembles before they graduate. He points to the way we currently teach music—as a fully definable skill with pre-organized, grade-able steps to learning—as the reason for that:

A class that by definition is meant to be a creative endeavor winds up emphasizing rigid reading and rote memorization, in service of a single performance. We need to abandon that approach and bring play back into the classroom by instructing students how to hear a melody on the radio and learn to play it back by ear. Start with just one chord, a funky beat and let it rip — and, voilà, you’re making music.

I fully agree with Miller here—many music programs give up on creativity somewhere around the 5th grade–but I can see large ensemble teachers across the country wincing. Those of us who are teaching music are dependent on uniformity because when there are 50 students holding noisemakers in front of you, the last thing you want is experimentation, especially with a funky beat.

Besides, we’re always under the gun to develop programs that the “community can be proud of” and showcase continuous skill-building in our students. In doing so, we stick to the tried-and-true instruments, techniques and literature. The world of popular and commercial music, in which our students are marinating every day, is ignored, unless the band plays a Top Ten tune in a football show. And the pursuit of excellence in all aspects of performance is the core value. 

But Miller says:

We need to let kids be terrible. In fact, we should encourage it. They’ll be plenty terrible on their own — at first. But too often kids associate music in school with a difficult undertaking they can’t hope to master, which leads them to give up. Music does not have to be, and in fact, shouldn’t be, about the pursuit of perfection. Great musicians have plenty of lessons to teach students about the usefulness of failure.

Like every curricular/instructional issue in K-12 education in 2023, talk of failure, learning from our mistakes, is somewhere between frightening and verboten. All of us are judged, stacked up against auto-tuned perfection, when perfection can be achieved digitally if you have the money and the tools.

Motivating children and teenagers is something else entirely.

by nflanagan

Memorial Day 2023– Thanks, Band Directors

I’m not much of a flag waver, really. I always thought that author James Baldwin captured my feelings precisely in Notes of a Native Son when he wrote:

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

These days, perpetual criticism is essential. We are headed into dark times, I think, redefining the meaning of patriotism and sacrifice. It’s easy to lose faith in our government and the grand experiment—all men created equal—that founded this nation. It’s easy to let hope die when our rights have been systematically eroded by power-hungry politicians. When our children are not able to read certain books or study our actual national history, we’re in trouble.

I still believe, however, heart and soul, in the shining but imperfect ideals of a democratic education –equality under the law, the American common school, a free, high-quality education for all children, simply because they deserve it. Thirty years of teaching school have given me a hard crust of cynicism about many things related to education and America. But I never lost my enthusiasm for the Memorial Day parade.

For 25 years, my middle school band students marched through the small town where I taught and lived, in the Memorial Day Parade. There was a whole set of traditions around this event, which grew larger and more complicated every year: the aural passing down of our special drum cadences from the self-appointed 8th grade drumline leaders, mending the color guard flags originally purchased through a pizza sale back in ’88, and patching up hand-me-down snares and sousaphones scrounged from the high school.

There was never a budget for this–middle schools don’t typically have marching bands–but somehow there were always T-shirts, and cold drinks at the end of the parade route. We had a stunning handmade banner that two moms whipped up with lots of lamé and sequins. In my last year, we marched nearly 300 students, on a morning when the sky was a sapphire blue and Air Force jets flew overhead as we rounded the corner by the cemetery.

This took up a fair amount of teaching time. I would get on my knees and beg colleagues for 20 minutes on the Friday before the parade, to assemble five bands into a single marching unit and take a few spins around the parking lot. One year, as I was trying to get the back of the band to master pinwheel corners, the front rank (rambunctious 8th grade trombones) marched right up the sidewalk, opened the front doors, and led the band, playing America the Beautiful at top volume, through the school hallways. By the time I sprinted up to the head of the band (and the principal popped, red-faced, out of his office), marching through the school was a done deal–and became yet another annual tradition.

I was always clear with my students about the meaning and purpose of Memorial Day. They would occasionally whine about how boring America the Beautiful was–Mr. Holland’s band played Louie, Louie, right? I explained that they were old enough to dedicate a morning to thanking local patriots and acknowledging the sacrifices made by Americans over centuries. Older people, watching them march by, would be pleased to hear traditional music. It was about respect.

We do this, I told them, to remember and honor those who made it possible for you to live in this beautiful little town, in this safe world. People like my Uncle Don, who died in February 1945, part of the Fourth Marine Division which stormed Iwo Jima. Or Ray Shineldecker and Joey Hoeker, two high school classmates who lost their lives in Viet Nam. I had lots of funny stories to tell about Joey, who lived around the corner in my old neighborhood–a big, goofy kid who was what guidance counselors in the 1960s called “not college material.”

On our last band trip to Washington D.C., after performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, I was loading tympani onto the buses as my students toured the Mall. A few girls came running up, calling “Mrs. Flanagan! We found him!” Found who, I asked.

Joey Hoeker, of course–on the Wall. And I lost it, right in front of all those kids.

I thank those who served and sacrificed so I can love my country, and criticize it, too. A hat tip to all the band teachers and student musicians who help make Memorial Day meaningful this weekend. And to hero teachers and band directors everywhere– donating yet another weekend to the community –please keep teaching, in spite of everything.

And another hat tip to community bands, providing the same service. I’ll be in Northport, Michigan on Memorial Day–playing Taps from the porch of another flutist, then settling in the cemetery, to play the National Anthem, Sousa marches–and a tribute to the Armed Services. Join us at 10:30 a.m. You won’t be sorry.

by nflanagan

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and my Middle School Band

With the passing of Gordon Lightfoot, I have been surprised and touched by the number of folks posting Lightfoot lyrics and links. They’re not all aging folkies, either—lots of them are in their 30s and 40s, and some are my former students.

That’s gratifying. One of my best memories about teaching comes from a Gordon Lightfoot song—“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

It’s worth mentioning that the saga of the Edmund Fitzgerald is very much a Michigan story. When you grow up surrounded by the Great Lakes, you’ve probably spent a vacation or two watching freighters go through locks, or traverse the sightlines in front of your rented cottage. The sinking of the freighter—when the witch of November comes stealin’—has just the right combination of tragedy and seaborne terror to capture the imagination of schoolchildren.

But it is Lightfoot’s ballad, which was released in 1976, exactly one year after the vessel sank, that has kept the tale in memory. Lightfoot considered the song his masterpiece, and I agree. He captures the terrifying scene and the details of the voyage pretty accurately, while giving us lines like:

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
If they’d put fifteen more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

Listening to the song gives me chills, even today.

 When the song was released, I was teaching in Hartland (I was pretty much always teaching in Hartland…), and the students wanted to play it. I knew what was likely to happen, but when a band arrangement was eventually released—which often occurs years after the song was popular– I bought it.

The beauty of the song (and it IS beautiful) lies in the words. There are only four measures of thematic melodic material (in 12/8 time). There are some slight melodic variations in the intro and interlude, but it’s the same four measures, the same five-chord sequence, through the whole song. Musically speaking, it’s static (that’s a polite word). Lightfoot (and pop/rock artists everywhere) take these music fragments and make them come expressively alive with lyrics and production tricks—wailing guitar improvisations, synthesized backgrounds, strings. But mostly—people are listening to the words.

When the musical palette is “middle school band,” however, there’s not much you can do to vary what becomes the same short tune over and over and over. The kids, after learning the song (which didn’t take long), recognized that: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was repetitive and (here comes that word) boring. A whole lot of long notes.  

But–here’s the Lightfoot magic–we turned that band arrangement into a different lesson, around the two questions:

  • Why is the Gordon Lightfoot song so cool and moving, and the band arrangement so…static?
  • What could we add to or change in the band arrangement to make it more interesting, more like the GL song?

It was a great, inspired, discussion– resulting in percussion mallets on brake drums to add noises that sounded like ship’s gear. Someone brought in a ship’s bell, which we added to the intro and final measures. We improvised vocal noises like roaring wind. We fussed with the dynamics–to try to tell a powerful story without words, just moody chords and phrase shaping. We even put bits of the lyrics in the program, and two students read a verse to introduce the song to the audience. (It’s a long song.)

It was also a chance to learn about ballads, and music as storytelling. It turned into the most memorable piece on the concert, judging by parent and student feedback.

Rest well, Gordon Lightfoot. Michigan thanks you.

by nflanagan

My Life. Is Good.

It’s one of those Facebook things—asking ten people to post ten photos with the hashtag #MyLifeIsGood. No need to explain who’s in the photos, says the meme, but one assumes the pictures will be of family, friends, beautiful vacation spots and how one spends their me time.

If you run the exponential mathematics on that, assuming you have ten cooperative friends—and those friends likewise have ten cooperative–obedient? –friends, and everybody posts ten photos, there will, quickly, be tens of thousands of harvestable images on Facebook, all neatly tagged #MyLifeIsGood.

Now—this isn’t a scold-y post about all the innocent, family-oriented, grateful folks inviting us into their (good) lives: meeting the grandkids, marveling at a Lake Michigan sunset, riding their bikes—and being scammed by Mark Zuckerberg into telling Facebook’s algorithms which ads and promoted articles to send them.

Expensive Swedish pajamas for those darling children, perhaps. A new boat, maybe—or thick flannel sheets. Or perhaps something much darker, with the collected data about what someone considers a #GoodLife going God knows where.

Speaking as a person who once (perhaps naively) called Facebook and other social media sites “our new town square,” I post personal information, as well as shared articles, snarky cartoons and my own blog on Facebook, Twitter and (now) Post.

I ran a political campaign on a Facebook page (now taken down). I have also experienced obvious bots –why do people think older women want a retired Marine General in their life?–and eerily specific products that I swear I just thought about, but never looked for online.

The thing about #MyLifeIsGood, though, is that it feels weird, somehow, to craft a colorful little photo collage about what matters most to you. My own life, frankly, is great right now in a dozen different ways—but searching through my hundreds of photos to display how lucky I am is unsettling somehow. Maybe my life won’t be so great in 2023—who knows? Or maybe there are tender or tragic factors that #GoodLife participants feel they must hide, putting up a false front. None of that is healthy.

The first thing I thought of, getting tagged to take part in the #MyLifeIsGood juggernaut was Randy Newman’s song My Life is Good. Newman’s lyrics are biting—with the chorus, ‘MY Life is Good,’ being the worst sort of heedless braggadocio: Don’t get in my way, lesser personage. Because MY life—is good. Too bad about yours.

There’s a verse about teachers:

The other afternoon my wife and I took a little ride into Beverly Hills.
Went to the private school our oldest child attends.

Many famous people send their children there.

His teacher says to us:
“We have a problem here–this child just will not do a thing I tell him to.
He’s such a big old thing. He hurts the other children.
All the games they play, he plays so rough.”

Hold it teacher. Wait a minute.

Maybe I’m not understanding the English language.
You don’t seem to realize—

MY Life Is Good. My life is good, you old bat.

Unfortunately, veteran teachers recognize this dude (and his wife)—and their entitled child.  There’s something distasteful about the idea of simple gratitude for what one has, and pride over what one’s accomplished, morphing into boasts or competition, the antithesis of building genuine community in a classroom.

Or maybe I am way overthinking this.

I am going to post one photo. It’s a photo of my dog, Atticus, who is aging, in his first (and last) Christmas sweater. He is one of the reasons my life is deeply satisfying—and good.

by nflanagan

That Infiniti Commercial

Several years ago, I wrote a blog entitled “I Hate American Idol” for Education Week. EdWeek changed the title to “Music Teacher Hates American Idol”—lest they be accused of trashing one of America’s iconic entertainment boondoggles—and it drew thousands upon thousands of readers and a whole array of nasty comments, which could be summarized thusly: Grow up, whiny music teacher.

Here’s the lede:
I hate American Idol. I really do.

I think it’s an insidious and destructive force on the American media culture (which– let’s be honest–needs all the help it can get), an omnipresent televised influence causing Americans to believe that unless your voice and public persona meet some amorphous standard of style and quality, you should just shut up and stop singing.

Or maybe I should just lighten up. But still.

Everyone who can speak can sing. Really. Singing is just extended, rhythmic speech. Singing is a great gift–a fun, wholesome activity that builds community, expresses joy, sorrow and humor, entertains and binds us together in life’s transitional moments. There is no activity that is not made richer or better illuminated by music.

Community singing around a campfire got ragtag groups of settlers across the prairie, and singing has comforted those who remain behind, bereft, when lives are lost. Music releases emotion far more effectively than words. While it’s wonderful to listen to exquisite vocal harmonies, nothing is more satisfying than actually singing yourself. It’s what we were meant to do as human beings.

And that’s what I tell my students– they are born singers.

If you watch television, you’ve seen the Infiniti commercial where Rich White Lady inexplicably drives her luxury vehicle into a tiered room where children are filmed simply holding—often incorrectly—orchestral instruments. There is a soundtrack marked by significantly scratched tone and seriously out of tune chords, unpleasant to the ears of 21st century consumers who are used to perfect (and often auto-tuned) music. RWL rolls up the window, shutting out the sound, lowers her seat, adjusting the rear view mirror so she can see her adorable daughter, who later rides home in the back seat.

Message: Owning the right car will shut out the cacophony of life. Including the disgusting sounds your children make.

Music teachers universally hate this commercial. Many took time out of preparing for spring concerts, the school musical and recruiting musicians for the 2022 marching band (something everyone in the bleachers on Friday night expects) to comment. There’s plenty to say.

For starters, the piece the students are pretend-butchering is Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, a tone poem based on a literary work by Friedrich Nietzsche, which incorporates the idea that God is dead. So there’s that.

There’s also the fact that the children portrayed are not actually playing the piece (something that’s obvious to instrumental music teachers)—or even attempting to play an instrument. Shots of cute children incorrectly holding musical instruments are commonplace in advertising (see below).

It’s this ‘cute’ angle that’s most annoying. Children, as previously noted, are born to make music—to sing, to move, to create. Teaching them to appreciate a delicate instrument, to persist through the difficult challenge of making good sounds, learning to work together to create something magnificent—isn’t this the critical essence of authentic education?

I found the commercial insulting to my life’s work.

 And I’m wondering:

What if RWL had rolled up her window and ignored her little soccer player, averting her eyes in embarrassment because he was running, knock-kneed, toward the wrong goal?

What if she was scrolling on her phone while her daughter was on stage at a dance performance—unable to watch because the dancing was so painfully inept?

What if she told her 4th grader that her artwork—on display at the school’s art show—was ‘amateurish?’

Parents who reject their children’s efforts at anything because those efforts are clumsy, childish or hard to hear are doing damage. Telling your child that they shouldn’t do something unless it comes easily or can’t be done perfectly is personal vandalism.

I’m not suggesting kids be praised when praise isn’t warranted. I have had literally hundreds of parents joke about their kids’ early efforts at playing an instrument: Moose mating (low brass). Geese honking (oboes). Pigs squealing (clarinets). If accompanied by encouragement and tolerance, these moments can be light-hearted.

One parent remarked: I have sat through a lot of kid concerts and some of them were painful. Let’s face it, when kids are learning, they often do suck.

Nope. That’s the response of an adult who misunderstands the role of persistence and effort. If it’s ‘painful’ to listen, imagine the pain of a child whose parent shuts out their first steps in any endeavor by rolling up the metaphorical window.

Another comment, from a fellow musician: In my band directing days, when parents and staff would joke or complain about the first beginners concert, I’d tell them it was my absolute favorite concert. Four months ago, they didn’t even know how to assemble their instruments. They might not even have known what instrument it was. And now we’re making music.

The first concert was my favorite, too. All six notes, and all the shining faces.

And pretty soon—with time and effort—they can sound like this, taking those skills and friendships into the adult world. No matter what kind of car they’re driving.

Because we’re all born to make music.

by nflanagan

Thirteen Songs

The headline made me laugh: Is Old Music Killing New Music?

The news, it seems, is dreadful:
‘Old songs now represent 70 percent of the U.S. music market, according to the latest numbers from MRC Data, a music-analytics firm. Those who make a living from new music—especially that endangered species known as the working musician—should look at these figures with fear and trembling. But the news gets worse: The new-music market is actually shrinking. All the growth in the market is coming from old songs.’

I find this interesting, as a musician and sometime music scholar. I spent many years doing lessons with my middle school and high school musicians, pointing out that centuries went by with human beings presumably making music that we can only guess about now—and lots more centuries went by where we have written scores, but no audio confirmation of what folks were listening to.

The earliest wax cylinder recording of music dates back to 1888, Arthur Sullivan’s ‘Lost Chord.’ Upon hearing his own composition played back, Sullivan said he was ‘terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever.’ Well then.

Commercial radio has been around for about 100 years, accompanied by lots of argument about the best and highest uses of broadcasting. Records—discs, that is, spun at varying speeds and available to the general public—have also been available for about a century.

I am presuming that the ‘old’ music that is slaying new music does not include that vast sweep of music-making prior to the 20th century, even though it’s a pretty large, um, catalog. Also—and this is a simple math problem—doesn’t the growing body of archived music necessitate that newly created music will represent a smaller portion of the whole?

In other words, while I am a strong supporter of music creation, I don’t think the popularity of old music (defined as something released more than 18 months ago) threatens the human compulsion to generate new music. I think it means that music is that rare thing—something that can be experienced repeatedly without growing old or worn out.

This blog was inspired by two things I ran across lately: A thread on Anne Helen Petersen’s Substack, Culture Study which asked readers to name a ‘perfect’ album. And a post from my friend Bill Ivey wherein he suggests his readers ‘create a playlist/compilation album that would be your autobiography through song.’

This is the kind of thing I love to do—I keep a folder on my computer entitled My Songs where I dump recordings that move me, and notes about music that I want to hear again, and again. It’s a mixed bag, pages and pages long, going all the way back to medieval chant, the first stuff that was written down. It’s comfort food for my inner life.

And lately, I have needed some comfort. My husband and I lost a good, good friend a couple of days ago and I needed to wallow in the (old) music that has been the soundtrack of all my life events and friendships.

As I was listening, rambling through the list, simultaneously wiping my eyes and laughing at shared memories, I thought that this might be that autobiographical playlist. Heavy on the sad and the spiritual (not religious, but metaphysical). But also about love. Which never gets old.

So—thirteen songs.

Gathering of Spirits (Carrie Newcomer)

There’s a gathering of spirits
There’s a festival of friends
And we’ll take up where we left off
When we all meet again

I cannot remember who introduced me to Carrie Newcomer, but her entire catalog, IMHO, is something close to genius.

Into the Mystic (Van Morrison)

Hark now, hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly
Into the mystic

I played this once, on my flute, for a funeral—but it’s not about the tune, which is kind of pedestrian. It’s about the words and it’s about Van Morrison. I know Van has been a jerk lately, but his gypsy soul is still present in his music.

Dimming of the Day(Richard & Linda Thompson)

You pull me like the moon pulls on the tide
You know just where I keep my better side

A song about love and need and fractured relationships that is both tender and ineffably sad; a once-good thing gone bad. I listened to a half-dozen covers (The Corrs, Bonnie Raitt, Alison Krauss), but settle, always, on Linda Thompson’s pleading original.

I Know You by Heart (Eva Cassidy/Nelson & Harrison)

We were like children, Laughing for hours

The joy you gave me lives on and on

‘Cause I know you by heart

Oh, Eva. Gone way too soon. Her ‘Over the Rainbow’ makes an entirely new song out of Judy Garland’s version—but I like this tune best.

The River Jordan (May Erlewine)  Jordan River, Michigan

When you fall in, baptized of all your sins
Oh we all take a swim on the River Jordan
From what I understand they say the promised land is on the banks of the River Jordan
And I must agree I’ve never felt so free
As you, me, the river and the morning

May Erlewine is a northern Michigan singer with a broad range of vocal styles and great songwriting chops. This is one of her older songs, often requested—but that hasn’t stopped her from writing many more and exploring new musical turf. So there.

The Parting Glass (The Choral Scholars @ University College Dublin)

Of all the money that e’er I had
I spent it in good company
And all the harm I’ve ever done
Alas, it was to none but me

And all I’ve done for want of wit
To memory now I can’t recall
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be to you all

This one dates back to the 17th century. I played this at another funeral (there should always be music at a memorial service). The local Ancient Order of the Hibernians were there to sing, and needed a pennywhistle to keep them ‘on the tune.’ I came into their rehearsal room to run through it—a large group of men in green sport coats and ties. I introduced myself–I’m Nancy Flanagan—and their leader said ‘Sure you are…’ and they all laughed.

God Only Knows (Beach Boys)

I may not always love you
But long as there are stars above you
You never need to doubt it
I’ll make you so sure about it
God only knows what I’d be without you

My favorite Beach Boys song. What’s amazing about this song is that there are so few words, but so much musical depth and infectious vocalizing.

Drift Away (Dobie Gray)

Thanks for the joy that you’ve given me
I want you to know I believe in your song
And rhythm and rhyme and harmony
You’ve helped me along
Makin’ me strong

Oh, give me the beat boys and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away

When I die, this is the song I want played at the funeral. (I want a funeral. Not everyone does.)

In My Life (Sara Niemietz, vocals; W.G. Snuffy Walden, guitar/Lennon & McCartney)

There are places I’ll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life, I’ve loved them all

Everyone knows the Beatles version. I picked this one to highlight the way a great, subtle guitar sketches the harmonies, which are the soul of this otherwise simple tune. The vocalist is superb, too.

Shovel in Hand  (Amy Grant)

Life can change in the blink of an eye
You don’t know when and you don’t know why
“Forever Young” is a big fat lie
For the one who lives and the one who dies

I’m not really a big Amy Grant fan—although I love her husband, Vince Gill. This song, however, is personally important to me. For reasons.  And it always, always makes me cry.

For a Dancer (Jackson Browne)

Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down

Perhaps a better world is drawing near
Just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found

Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around

This song is proof that Jackson Browne’s best work was his earliest work, mostly for the craftsmanship of the lyrics.

Say Hey (I Love You) (Michael Franti)

It seems like everywhere I go
The more I see, the less I know
But I know one thing–that I love you
I love you, I love you, I love you

I saw Michael Franti play in Grand Rapids and it was more like a religious experience than a concert. He came out with members of the band as we were waiting in lines in the hot parking lot, holding lawn chairs, and entertained us.

One Love (Koolulam/Bob Marley)

One love, one heart
Let’s get together and feel all right
Hear the children crying (one love)
Hear the children crying (one heart)
Sayin’ “Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right”
Sayin’ “Let’s get together and feel all right”

It would be hard to pick a single Bob Marley song, but this recording (at the Tower of David in Jerusalem, with a beautifully diverse crowd singing their hearts out) never fails to move me.