This is a spoken word radio piece – http://www.forward.com/workspace/assets/audio/BESHKIN_SACRED_HARP.mp3.

About a year-and-a-half ago, I went through a devastating breakup and, soon after, began a love affair with perhaps the strangest hobby an ex-yeshiva girl could imagine: Sacred Harp singing.

Surely, in 1759, when Joseph Hart wrote the words “Speak and let the worst be known, Speaking may relieve thee,” in the hymn that later became “The Grieved Soul,” he did not mean, “You may feel better if you call your Upper West Side therapist.” But that was what I heard. The song “Poland,” with the words “God of my life, look gently down, Behold the pains I feel,” was not really about a breakup. But from the depths of my grief, it sounded as if it was written just for me. After awhile, however, all this comfort I was taking in Sacred Harp music began to make me a little uncomfortable.

What was I doing? There is no doubt that I have managed to lose my place in the Jewish world, and each year it gets harder to return. I’m nearing 40. I don’t have kids. I always figured I would stake my claim somewhere in the Jewish community. Instead, here I was, singing about salvation in a dimly lit church, a few feet away from a granite bowl of holy water.

Sleep? Wha? #sorryboutthat #jetlag

The tune is http://www.paperclipdesign.com/19ctunes/japanesa_1m.gif

1930s publicity shots, 1870s make believe.

From the photo book Vintage Photographs of Arcane Americana

This song was popularized in 1846 by a dance instructor named Allen Dodworth, who is also responsible for inventing a way to waltz in 5/4. Here’s that 1852 original in the Library of Congress. I recorded a composition for dancing his waltz, a pice called “Dodworth’s Five Step”, on three occasions, including once in my Ghost Solos EP. I learned Jenny Lind Polka from a relatively modern transcription in “The Fiddler’s Fake Book.”

In case my transpositions are useful to others, here is my sheet music:

Jenny Lind Polka (pdf)

That’s a single multi-page PDF with a different key on each page. It has the following parts:

For people who work with digital instruments, here’s MIDI:

Jenny Lind Polka (MIDI)

For people who might want to edit the original Sibelius source file, here’s that:

Jenny Lind Polka (Sibelius)

Here’s a version I found on YouTube that’s not exactly the same but close enough:

Hint:

Here’s the source book, including the old sheet music:

I brought my old tater bug mandolin to the meeting with the artist, a young french woman. We met up at a forgotten block that feels like nature really is taking it back.

She put a little audio recorder in a patch of weeds and went across the street to shoot video with a Flip camera. It didn’t take long. We did one take each of two songs, parted on the spot, and I never heard anything else about it until just now when I stumbled across it on YouTube, under the title Rewilding With Intention.

It’s not my best singing, but the feeling of the place makes it worth tolerating.

There is work for you in the sky: see Mars! from Antonino Valvo on Vimeo.

I learned about it from this warm email titled “About your job”:

Hello Lucas

My name is Antonino and I’m writing from Italy. I am a young filmmaker and I am writing about the history of my project. 

I’ll be brief: some time ago an actor friend of mine asked me to make a video of his monologue that he had brought as a final exam in his drama school in Bristol. The text was taken from “The Martian Chronicles” by Ray Bradbury, in particular a novel called The Off Season. 

I made  the video trying to complete an original work and self-sufficient rather than a simple recording of a dialogue. The result was a ten-minute short film rather special, not particularly beautiful or great, but I think an interesting experiment. 

Anyway while I was working in post production, I tried, just for fun and curiosity, some music that could accompany him and help create the atmosphere of this sci-fi Western.

During my research on a free music site I found your songs from your album”Ghost Solos” and I found these really perfect for what I had in mind and I mounted on the video. The effect was amazing. Now that the video is complete I would first like to apologize if I have done this without your permission, but I honestly did not believe that the video had any visibility or was seen by some other person of my friends. 

But now I’m writing because so many people tell me that the video may be interesting for some kind of sci-fi film festival, and I would not miss this opportunity also to thank the many people who helped me for free to realization.Obviously I will not do it without your knowledge, and I’m writing to ask permission to use your own sounds for public screenings.

As you might have guessed the film has no budget production or distribution, and I can not afford to pay the rights, so I’m asking you a favor.

You do not know me and I do not know you, but I think you understand, because your work has given me this impression, I’m not doing this for money. I have ambitions and projects, but it is not business, it is passion. I hope that you agree to grant use of your two songs and I’ll share with you every success this project were to obtain.

The video you can see on my vimeo channel, here’s the link:

I hope you do not be offended if I uploaded on the Internet, I assure you that I have kept the private link.

Aspect of your news and thanks for your attention.

Anthony Valvo

To make restitution I dug up a better source and clipped out the image for myself and am herein sharing a version that will not cause you to go blind:

I found it on page 57 of a PDF at imslp of Volume 1 of James Aird’s 1782 music book “A SELECTION of Scotch, Englith, Irith, and Foreign AIRS Adapted to the FIFE, VIOLIN, or GERMAN-FLUTE”

Some funny song titles from that book:

• Bung Your Eye
• Carlen Is Your Daughter Ready
• The Widow’s Rant
• Had the Lafs till I win at her
• My Wife’s a Wanton Wee Thing
• For a’that and a’that
• My Mother’s aye Glowring o’er me

And my favorite:

• I’ll Touzle Your Kurchy

Eph Got a Coon
Buckdancer’s Choice
We’ll All Go to Heaven When the Devil Goes Blind
Black-Eyed Susie

These mp3s are deep links to his site so will go 404 sooner if not later.