BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
SOMETIMES, just out of the blue, I can hear the congregation in the Scandia Covenant Church in Scandia, PA singing, mostly in English but sometimes in Swedish, during worship or special services, the beautiful harmonies along with the tone deaf, young and old, but all rising to God in Heaven in love, in praise and in supplication, and I am filled with a sensation of love and peace and gratitude for these experiences and memories. This Verse and Voice from Sojourners triggered these memories today, and I am thankful. And a while ago I stumbled across this haunting version of Idumea in Shape Note / Sacred Harp singing. Beautiful. From The Face Of Appalachia , reminds me of home.....
Verse of the day
O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! - Psalm 95:1
Voice of the day
We need moments where people can collectively sing through hellish circumstances and find joyful unity. - José Humphreys III, “Liberation Needs a Soundtrack”
Prayer of the day
Let us sing together, in times of trouble and times of joy. God, hear our songs of joy and our songs of lament.
Shape note singing is a way of reading music used to teach groups of folks how to sing who could not read traditional music scores. It was taught in traveling music schools and was used widely in Appalachia and popularized with the publication of books released in the mid-1800s. I read from a conversation from my book, Hands in Harmony, that I had with musician friend Laura Boosinger about shape note singing.
We'll hear the haunting acapella rendition of Idumea, by the Christian Harmony singers featuring Jerry Israel. It brings chills up the back of my neck every time I hear it. This tune is on my friend Sheila Kay Adams CD, "All The Other Fine Things," and is included on the music CD with my book, Hands in Harmony: Traditional Crafts and Music in Appalachia.
While this powerful and haunting shape note song unfolds you will see photographs from my books, The Face of Appalachia: Portraits from the Mountain Farm, On Earth’s Furrowed Brow: The Appalachian Farm in Photographs, and Hands in Harmony as well as unpublished work from the past 40 years. Be sure to check out our other videos and books at barnwellphoto.co
For more information on songs and acapella ballads by the amazing Sheila Kay Adams check out the following link:
Sheila Kay Adams – Blue Ridge National Heritage Area (blueridgeheritage.com) https://www.blueridgeheritage.com/art...
To learn more about the multitalented Laura Boosinger visit:
Laura Boosinger – Music of the Southern Mountains https://lauraboosinger.com
The poem was written by the British Methodist cleric Charles Wesley in 1763 and the music by Ananiais Davisson of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley in 1816. Wesley wrote the text of many hymns still in wide use today, probably most famously “Hark!
And am I born to die? To lay this body down! And must my trembling spirit fly Into a world unknown A land of deepest shade Unpierced by human thought The dreary regions of the dead Where all things are forgot Soon as from earth I go What will become of me? Eternal happiness or woe Must then my portion be! Waked by the trumpet sound I from my grave shall rise And see the Judge with glory crowned And see the flaming skies
MORE on the life and death of the glorious woman who was Maya Angelou. We have lost a great voice for faith, compassion, reconciliation, forgiveness, harmony, love, peace, social justice, laughter and life. Her words and her living what she wrote and preached, her example, will live with us forever. I remember hearing her read her poem at Pres Bill Clinton's first inauguration (I was there).
This is video footage of Maya
Angelou reciting her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the 1993
Presidential Inaugural. This footage is official public record produced
by the White House Television (WHTV) crew, provided by the Clinton
Presidential Library.
Date: January 20, 1993
Location: US Capitol. Washington, DC
I feel a loss with her death yesterday, 28 MAY 14. She was a blessing, and she is missed already. Godspeed Maya Angelou, and thank you. From +PBS NewsHour .....
Drawing on a childhood of abuse and segregation, writer and author Maya
Angelou moved the nation. Works such as her 1978 poem, “And Still I
Rise,” explored the effects of racism and sexism on personal identity,
with a voice that married oral and written literary traditions. Jeffrey
Brown discusses with Elizabeth Alexander of Yale University why the
voice of Angelou resonates so profoundly.
JEFFREY BROWN: And
with us now is Elizabeth Alexander, chair of the African-American
Studies Department at Yale University, and herself a prominent poet. She
read an original work at President Obama’s first inauguration.
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to you.
So, what made Maya Angelou such a unique voice? What stood out for you? ELIZABETH ALEXANDER,
University: What I think was extraordinary about Maya Angelou’s voice
is that it brought together the literary — you see influences from
Shakespeare, from Paul Laurence Dunbar, to all of those books she talked
about reading, with the incredible richness of the African-American
women’s oral tradition, that mother wit, that deep understanding, that
make a way out of no way that has gotten our people so very, very far.
She
married those and understood that poetry wasn’t only a written form,
but also a form that was meant to be spoken, to be recited, to be sung. I
don’t think there’s any writer who had a better understanding of what
those two traditions together could make possible. JEFFREY BROWN: And when and how did you first connect with her work? ELIZABETH ALEXANDER: I
read her work, I’m sure, when I was a child. I can’t imagine that was
ever not there. And I’m sure that I also first came to “I Know Why the
Caged Bird Sings.”
She was a prolific, prolific memoirist. She
wrote six memoirs which are now together in a really beautiful Modern
Library edition. And those memoirs, her telling her life story and
telling the truth about her life, telling the truth about what it meant
to go from silence to telling her story, talking about the pain, talking
about the struggle, talking about a history of the entire second half
of the 20th century in struggle, all of that is in those memoirs.
And I think that that is how most readers came to know her in the first place. JEFFREY BROWN: Well,
and those memoirs, of course, told of a remarkable story, a
larger-than-life tale. We listed some of the things she did, and also
intersecting with so many important figures and moments in that history. ELIZABETH ALEXANDER: Yes.
And that’s why I mentioned this six volumes all in one, because when
you read it through over 1,000 pages, you almost can’t believe the life.
And
yet it’s utterly credible, because she had that kind of dynamism,
certainly, and that kind of profound understanding of her own voice and
that if you, as she said, have a song to sing, you must open your mouth
and share it. Who are you not to share that song? And I think that
authenticity connected her with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, James
Baldwin, and so many other people who made change. JEFFREY BROWN: You,
of course, shared that experience of writing for and reciting at
inauguration. I wonder, did you ever talk to her about it? Did you share
that experience with her? ELIZABETH ALEXANDER: Well, an extraordinary thing happened. I never had the privilege of meeting her.
But
a few weeks of before the inaugural, after it had been announced that I
was to write the poem, she found me and called me. And the moment I
heard that voice on the phone, before she even said her name, I knew
that voice, I knew who it was.
And we proceeded to have a very
beautiful conversation, which I think for her had a sense not only of
kindness — I was in the throes of doing something that seemed
impossible, writing that poem — but also a sense of history, a sense of
continuity, and a sense that, as an elder, it was for her to make that
continuity.
I asked her at the end of the conversation if she was
going to come to the inaugural, to Washington. And she said, “Oh, no.”
She laughed. She said: “I have done that. I’m going stay at home. I’m
going to open a bottle of wine, and I’m going to enjoy a potage of my
own preparation.” And she said, “I will laugh, I will cry and I will
sing.”
So it felt to me like a real benediction. JEFFREY BROWN: All right, the wonderful and remarkable life of Maya Angelou.
Elizabeth Alexander, thanks so much. ELIZABETH ALEXANDER: My pleasure. Thank you for asking.
Maya
Angelou, one of the most respected cultural figures of her generation,
has died at the age of 86. Her debut memoir, “I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings,” made her one of the first bestselling African-American female
authors. Jeffrey Brown reports on how an early trauma made her turn
toward books and how she learned to use her voice to explore the effects
of racism and sexism on identity.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally tonight: remembering author, poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou.
Jeffrey Brown has our appreciation.MAYA ANGELOU: A rock, a river, a tree. JEFFREY BROWN: On
a chilly January day in 1993, Maya Angelou captured national attention
and, in her own special way, the spirit of the moment for the
inauguration of President Bill Clinton. The poem she read, “On the Pulse
of the Morning,” became a national bestseller. MAYA ANGELOU: But,
today, the rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, come, you may
stand upon my back and face your distant destiny, but seek no haven in
my shadow. I will give you no more hiding place down here. JEFFREY BROWN: Long
before that moment, Maya Angelou had become one of the most respected
authors and cultural figures of her generation, making a remarkable
journey from rough beginnings.
She was born Marguerite Johnson and
spent much of her childhood in racially segregated Arkansas. After her
mother’s boyfriend raped her at the age of 7, she retreated into silence
for years. In 2012, at the New York Public Library, she remembered how
books came into her life in those troubled times. MAYA ANGELOU: I
had been abused, and I returned to a little village in Arkansas. And a
black lady took me to — she knew I wasn’t speaking. I refused to speak.
For six years, I was a volunteer mute.
She took me to the library
in the black school. The library probably had about 300 books, maybe.
She said, “I want you to read every book in this library.” It seemed to
me thousands of books. JEFFREY BROWN: Angelou became a
single mother at 17, worked a variety of jobs, including at a strip
club, and even ran a brothel. Eventually, taking on a new name, she
became a singer and dancer.
In 1969, at the urging of James
Baldwin, she chronicled that early life in the first of what would
become a series of memoirs, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” It won
critical praise and made her one of the first African-American women to
author a bestseller.
Angelou used her new voice to explore the
effects of racism and sexism on personal identity. One such work was her
1978 poem, “And Still I Rise.” MAYA ANGELOU: Out of the
huts of history’s shame, I rise. Up from a past rooted in pain, I rise. A
black ocean, leaping and wide, welling and swelling, I bear in the
tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak
miraculously clear, I rise, bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave. I
am the dream and the hope of the slave, and so, naturally, there I go
rising. JEFFREY BROWN: Angelou never went to college, but
ultimately received more than 30 honorary degrees. She also became a
prominent civil rights activist, Tony-nominated stage actress, college
professor and frequent guest on television shows.
Along the way,
her life intersected, in work and friendship, with a number of other
well-known figures, from Malcolm X to Oprah Winfrey. In 2012, she spoke
in a profile by PBS affiliate KQED from her home in Winston-Salem, North
Carolina. MAYA ANGELOU: Friendship, it keeps you alive, it
keeps you awake, it keeps you trying to be the best. And in the middle
of the night, when you’re lonely and most — and feel most — most at odds
with yourself and with life and even with God, you can call a friend. JEFFREY BROWN: In 2011, President Obama presented Angelou with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor.
Today, the president called her a — quote — “brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman.”
Maya Angelou died this morning at her Winston-Salem home. She was 86 years old.
