Left Coast Cowboys

No one has yet mounted a credible challenge to my assertion that I have the world’s largest, most eclectic and eccentric Christmas music collection. So I still hold the crown, and I’m uniquely qualified to steer you away from the tried and true, the boring and overplayed to the fresh, the different and the undiscovered in holiday music. So far I brought you a cross-genre selection of undiscovered gems, a full shaker’s worth of songs for Christmas cocktails and Christmas: The Dance Edition. Today is a complete change of pace, bringing you full circle and back to the beginning. Yes, it’s religious and spiritual Christmas songs. Even if you are a professed agnostic, you can’t deny the power of the story. And c’mon, you know you get all choked up in The Charlie Brown Christmas Special when Linus recites the Bible passage about Jesus’s birth to tell Charlie Brown the meaning of Christmas. So park your skepticism. These picks aren’t your standard boring hymns. These artists sing out loud and proud and sincerely enough to get even as famous an atheist as Bill Maher testifying.

As an added bonus, each of these songs comes from an album of gems just as magnificent. Don’t stop at ten song recommendations, buy all ten CDs.

So open your mind and heart and get reacquainted with the spiritual Christmas classics — but performed better, more uniquely and in a more heart-felt manner than you’ve probably ever heard them done before:

1. Walkin’ To Jerusalem by Mahalia Jackson from Christmas with Mahalia Jackson

Not ready to come to Jesus? Mahalia will get you there. Even Jewish and atheist friends have said her voice is powerful enough to convert. This song was also a surprise addition to my Dance Party Edition, because no one can get you moving like Mahalia Jackson, arguably the greatest Gospel Singer EVER. Oh, she’ll get you moving all right. Maybe swinging your hands over your head Southern Baptist style and movin’ down to the creek for a good ol’ Baptising.  Yes, she’s that powerful.

2. Shout for Joy by Odetta from Christmas Spirituals

Just an aside here, if I ever joined a church fulltime it would have to be an African American church. Hands down, they have the best music. If you don’t know the great Odetta, voice of The Civil Rights Movement and the folk singer who influenced Dylan, Baez, Carly Simon and so many others, read this and believe. Here, Odetta gives a Gospel classic a Jazzy/Bluesy turn, helped by her Bass player Bill Lee (Spike’s dad).

3. Beautiful Star of Bethlehem by Emmylou Harris from Light of the Stable

This lovely Appalachian folk carol is given a soaring treatment by Emmylou’s crystalline soprano. Pals Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton often show up uncredited on Emmylou’s albums and I suspect theirs are the backing and counterpoint vocals here. The fiddle, dulcimer and guitars add the perfect touch of homespun authenticity.

4. Who Kept the Sheep by Johnny Cash from The Christmas Spirit

There are only a handful of singers I can name with as authentic an American voice as Johnny Cash (and most of them appear on this list). This gentle song uses almost the tone of a children’s song to point out one of the smaller miracles of the Christmas story. Johnny softens his rough-hewn voice to ask the listener, who kept the sheep from harm when the shepherds left to witness the birth of Christ. A beautiful parable in song sung by a man with the voice of an Old Testament prophet…by way of Arkansas.

5. Hark the Herald Angels Sing by Kathleen Battle from Kathleen Battle: A Christmas Celebration

I know you’ve heard this song a million times, but you’ve NEVER heard it like this. Great coloratura soprano Kathleen Battle sings out with a full chorus and orchestra including horns that you’ll swear are being blown by those Herald Angels.  In fact, I highly recommend the album this came from as a source for many wonderful Christmas songs, some are spirituals, some are well-known carols, many are from other countries. All are wonderful.

6. Gaudete by the King’s Singers from King’s Singers: A Little Christmas Music

As long as we’re getting back to fundamentals, how about a ringing carol in Latin? You won’t think it’s a dead language when you hear this great group from Cambridge England belt out this Medieval crowd pleaser, complete with the ringing trumpets of the London Sinfonia Brass Quintet. They sure knew how to get people on their feet in Merrie Olde England back in the day!

7. Hosanna in Excelsis by Placido Domingo from The Greatest Christmas Show On Earth

I probably shouldn’t even tell you that this ringing Latin number is from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem. Yes, that Andrew Lloyd Webber and, yes, I find him insufferable, too. But when I first heard this, I thought it was an undiscovered Medieval masterpiece. Maybe it’s Placido Domingo who puts it across. I can’t vouch for the rest of the Requiem. I got this off a compilation album.

8. A Star in the East by Harry Belafonte from To Wish You a Merry Christmas

I featured another song from this album, Mary’s Boy Child, on my Undiscovered Gems list. I wish I could include every song because this album is that good. Only once in a while does an artist produce a Christmas album that isn’t just a retread of a bunch of holiday numbers, but really redefines Christmas songs through their own particular musical lens. Harry Belafonte does that. Many of the songs are spirituals done with his particular Bahamian lilt. But even European standards such as Silent Night or old English carols such as “Christmas is Coming” are given such a personal stamp that, after hearing them, you’ll never think they’re done quite right when done by other artists. The song I’ve chosen here is a traditional spiritual given a bluesy, Caribbean Belafonte spin.

9. Es Hat Sich Heut Eroffnet by The Trapp Family Singers from The Sound of Christmas

Yes, that Trapp Family. They didn’t have Julie Andrews, but they did have a lovely traditional choral sound. And the Germans really gave us what we think of as Christmas when German Prince Albert brought all his traditions such as trees and Santa with him to his marriage to Queen Victoria. So the Trapps are Austrian. Close enough. It’s not really a traditional Christmas without some Germanic singing. Make those singers a famous ski lodge owning singing family and all the better. All the songs on the CD are traditional; not all of them are German. In fact, they do a beautiful version of the Spanish carol A La Nanita. After years of searching, I finally discovered this in a bargain CD bin. So good luck finding it. 

Here are the Von Trapps singing a German folk song, not a carol, but Trapp family videos are thin on the ground, so this may have to do.

10. Angels We Have Heard on High by The Brian Setzer Orchestra from Christmas Rocks!

Just because a song is about Jesus, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to rock out to it. Here Brian infuses a classic with that Big Band Sound, ringing Christmas bells, plus a generous dollop of Rockabilly and a full chorus. The results are magical. You’ll never want to hear this song played any other way.

Merry Christmas, keep the faith and buy these CDs!

Titian’s Holy Family with Shepherd from the website of the National Gallery London.

I live with a British husband, so I have daily reminders of how eccentric the British are. Which leads me to my not-so-secret hobby of collecting examples of British eccentricity. This habit is “not so secret” because it is largely used as ammunition against said husband. “Hey what would you know, you come from an island that DEEP FRIES MARS BARS!” (Actually that’s the Scottish, but I’m not too particular when I find a good example.)

So I couldn’t resist this item: the last bastion of feudalism in Europe has been toppled. The Channel Island of Sark staged its first election under their newly democratic government. This is the first change of government they’ve had since Queen Elizabeth (that’s I, as in Cate Blanchett, not II as in The Queen) made Sark a feudal fiefdom, no doubt to reward some loyal retainer. Actually, before that Sark was positively crawling with monks and pirates. One particularly nasty character was the pirate Eustace the Monk. Besides straddling both camps, the brigandly and the monastic, Eustace had a nasty habit of changing sides, depending on who was offering the best deal. He was an equal opportunity pirate who was alternately on the payroll of John of England and Louis of France, but mostly served himself (as pirates will).  By the time Elizabeth came around to awarding Sark to someone, she had just one request of her new Seigneur: keep Sark free of pirates. Sarkians (or Sarkesians?) seem to have fulfilled this duty well, although I don’t know if they also cleaned out the monks. Since that time 450 years ago, a few families and the Lord have ruled the Island as if it were still the Renaissance.

Cars are still banned on Sark. But for how long now that feudalism is kaput?

Among the big changes: the Seigneur of Sark, or Lord Sark or whatever he’s called, will lose his privilege to be the only person on the island who can own pigeons and unspayed dogs. Apparently, now NO ONE on the island can own an unspayed dog. So there goes the Sarkian Dog Breeding industry. No word on the pigeons. I’m telling you, you can’t make this shit up.

I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad about the democratization of Sark. Despite having lived and travelled extensively in Britain, I’ve never been to Sark. Part of me wants to believe feudal Sark is like one giant Renaissance Fair full of people in caps and bells and velvet outfits singing “Hey Nonny Nonny” and Morris Dancing down the streets. Or maybe it is more like the weird pagan island in The Wicker Man. What will happen in Sark under Democracy? Will Sark become just another British area watching the slow infiltration of Tescos, Boots and chain stores choking out the family butcher, the fish monger and the public green where the happy villagers can graze their livestock? (Such places still exist. My in-laws live in one: Bures on the Essex-Suffolk border. The village still looks like something out of a Constable painting. If you eliminate the cars and traffic signs.)

I guess the globalization of communications, television, etc. has to homogenize us all. I’ve heard from travel writers that kids in Nepal know all the Simpson characters and catch-phrases. But I must say, the British have been particularly good at holding on to their insular, eccentric island sensibility. So Iet’s all shed one small tear for the end of one more bit of British strangeness.

At least they still have those deep fried Mars bars.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia. You don't think I'd make these and photograph them, do you??!!

Photo of Ripon City Morris Dancers courtesy Google Images.

I meant to write something about Odetta’s passing when I heard about it on December 3rd, but it’s taken me this long to process it. Time Magazine and the New York Times wrote wonderful obituaries and reviews of her work, her music and the people it influenced, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Harry Belafonte. She sang mostly gospel, spirituals and folk music, but she sang them in such a way that she sounded like a voice for an entire race, a race that was proud, had a long history in America, but was going to demand change. No wonder Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks called her their favorite singer. Maya Angelou summed up her talent this way:

“If only one could be sure that every 50 years a voice and a soul like Odetta’s would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time”

I first heard Odetta as a middle class white kid living in the North with limited, if any exposure, to African American culture. My babysitter, a rabid folkie, used to bring Odetta records over to play on my Dad’s stereo. I remember chills going down my spine as Odetta’s rich contralto filled the room. You could almost feel her voice reverberating inside your rib cage, even though she never “shouted” her songs.

Then, when my family moved to the South, in the midst of the turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement and George Wallace’s racially charged 1968 run for President, I still remembered those Odetta songs. My eight year old self used to wonder how African Americans could be denied anything if they had Odetta on their side. From the power of her voice, I imagined her to be about 10 feet tall with superhuman powers. Especially when she sang God’s Gonna Cut You Down.

Years later, I began to appreciate the music for what it was. A powerful folk history in tune. Odetta was classically trained in Lieder and Opera. She could have sung an Aida or Carmen that would have made everyone forget about any European singer. But she chose the vehicle of folk music for its truth and powerful simplicity. Even when she sang a song that was obviously written from the viewpoint of a man, prison songs such as “Take this Hammer”, she sang with such truth and verisimilitude, you believed she’d lived that song. Her Christmas Spirituals album is one of the first I put on to mark Christmas season.

It was interesting, that even when Odetta sang traditional English and Appalachian folk songs, she sang them with the same authority and truthfulness. The common denominator seemed to be pride and defiance against oppression, no matter who the oppressor was. Odetta herself said all the songs she chose to sing were “liberation songs”:

“You’re walking down life’s road, society’s foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can’t get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die or insist upon your life.”

How I would have loved to have heard Odetta sing at the inauguration of this country’s first Black president. Apparently, Barack Obama would have too. Word has it, he penciled her in as his preferred performer. How sad that she didn’t live to enjoy that logical bookmark to her contribution to the Civil Rights Movement.

I like to think, come January 20th, there will be concert somewhere in Heaven. Martin Luther King Jr. will be there, as will Bobby Kennedy, Miriam Makeba, Medgar Evers, Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. Barack’s beloved grandmother Toot will be in the audience.

Odetta will be headlining with Paul Robeson.

Sing out, Odetta, wherever you are.

Here’s a snippet of Odetta at the Newport Folk Festival.

Here is audio of Odetta singing God’s Gonna Cut You Down.

Watching the Barbara Walters interview with Barack and Michelle Obama, a relative, in town for Thanksgiving, piped up: “Well, I’m just going to admit it. I had a hard time voting for him because, well you know, the whole Black thing.”

“Uh, what Black thing would that be?”

“Well, you know, I know he’s smart and everything and will probably be a good President. But it was tough to vote for a Black man.”

The mind just boggles. I was so depressed by this admission I didn’t pursue it further.

I sort of didn’t want to know the answer to the obvious first question: “So you are presented with someone you think is smart and qualified, you like his views on the issues, but Race is a complete deal breaker?”

Or should I be encouraged that she eventually overcame whatever repulsion she felt for Obama’s race, actually voted for him and now thinks he’s going to be a great president?

Can I just set the record straight here that this relative did not grow up in a trailer park in Alabama.

She’s a University-educated New Englander.

Even worse, her husband was a career Army officer. You know, the US Army as in one of the FIRST institutions in America to be fully integrated. Back when the Civil Rights Movement was trying to guarantee African-Americans their rights to vote, her husband was serving beside and was friends with Black officers in the Army. He even went to West Point with African Americans. In other words, this couple, almost before most White Americans, had Black colleagues with whom they shared professional and social spheres.

So sorry, Obama, I know we’ve made progress, but I don’t think, as you said to Barbara, we’ve gotten beyond Race.

I bet that one slipped right by you. Some of my Black friends used to joke that, when they finally got a Black History Month, it was February, the shortest one. Now it seems, we’ve designated a month for Native Americans. And it might as well be February what with Thanksgiving and the fact that we check out and start thinking Christmas thoughts immediately after the turkey. In fact, it seems the government can’t even agree on what to call this month. Some sites call it Native American Heritage Month, others American Indian Heritage Month or even American Indian and Native Alaskan Heritage Month.

Well, whatever we are going to call it, I’ve got two great documentaries I’d recommend as good starting points to understanding what I guess we are supposed to get in touch with this month: the contributions and place that Native Americans have in our nation.

The first is The West, produced by Ken Burns and written and collated by Geoffery C. Ward who wrote all of Ken Burns greatest documentaries. While not strictly a documentary about Native Americans, this documentary features them heavily, since what examination of the West could leave them out. But their contributions, culture and tragedy is handled much more in depth than the usual examination of Western America which jumps from the Plains to the Reservation to the Wild West Show and drops the subject there.

And by the way, if you’ve found the pan and scan of old letters and photographs grew old in Baseball, Jazz and The Civil War, fear not. One of the incredible things about this documentary is that Burns & Co. take so much of it outside. To the real West, the West that — in spite of all the development, the exploitation and the abuse — still exists. There are incredible aerial shots of buffalo stampeding, and places like the Bad Lands, the Southwest and the Plains just being spectacular. A side benefit of viewing The West, is that you will find yourself calling your Congressman and demanding more protection of our western heritage sites. At least, I hope you will.

Another wonderful thing about this documentary is that it doesn’t attempt to relate history, although it does that very well. It’s main purpose seems to be to explain the dream of The West. What did it mean to the Anglo, the Spanish, the pioneer and the people who were already here. The usual all-star line-up of great actors brings historical words to life and larger-than-life characters like former Texas Governor Ann Richards are interviewed. The series begins with a quote from Kiowa poet N. Scott Momaday who posits that “The West has to be seen to be believed. But also may need to be believed to be seen.” The goal of this documentary is to make us believe in The West through the eyes of the people who were drawn to it. Almost disproportionately, the series shows us The West through the eyes of the people who believed they were placed exactly here by a higher power.

On a personal note, I’ll disclose that I own this series and watch it at least once a year or before every road trip into sites in the West. I always get something new out of it with every viewing.

The next series is 500 Nations, which has the direct goal of explaining the totality of the Native American experience. The most astounding lesson to be learned from this series is the massive diversity of the Native American world. There were Indians who built and lived in cities, those who were nomads, those with matriarchal societies and others with traditional hunter/gatherer lives and societies that were more advanced than those of their European invaders. Even tribes that inspired our Founding Fathers with a new idea of a Democratic government. What is also illuminating is how much interaction these widely diverse societies had. Tribes in Minnesota wore shells from the Gulf of Mexico, Aztec and Mayan nobility wore turquoise mined on Navajo land.

The series is produced by Kevin Costner and somewhat marred by his deadpan codas at the end of every chapter. But he’s a minor distraction. The series is a great, sweeping introduction to nearly all segments of the Native American experience, from East to West, from North to the South of Mexico. One of the strongest aspects of this series is the liberal commentary by contemporary Native Americans from a wide range of tribes.

I should note that both series come with companion books, both of which I own. Both are well worth the purchase price.

Obviously these two series are a starting point. I’d also recommend trying to attend a Native American Pow-Wow. There are a surprising number of them, at least in California. I’ve always found them simply by Googling just those keywords.

Both The West and 500 Nations are on Netflix. And both companion books are available on Amazon. Rent the series and read the books before Thanksgiving. And remember who saved the Pilgrims’ bacon as they starved in a land the local Wampanoag knew as a land of plenty.

Photo of Chief Joseph of the Nez Pierce by Edward Curtis.