Changing and shifting times, indeed.
As we often remind you on this series, community and connection can be sources of strength in such times.
Music can be a reminder of community and connection. It can at times offer a gateway into ideas about these things, too, or a reminder of connection and shared ideas and values even across distance and time.
In her song Love Is On Our Side, Tish Hinojosa was thinking about people facing hard times, people facing danger.
How to cope with these things?
“We’re all on this train,” Hinojosa sings. “Here’s where hope begins...” Later in the song, she continues, “When the storm gets closer, we realize that love is on our side.”
Tish Hinojosa grew up in Texas, first generation daughter of parents who ha come form Mexico. In those days, she heard songs from Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris that her brothers and sisters brought home, as much as she heard music from Mexico that her mother loved and had playing on the kitchen radio. Both of these things, as well as landscapes and lifeways of Texas, New Mexico, and other parts of the US southwest where Hinojosa has lived, form elements she often draws on in her music.
Love Is On Our Side is one of her earlier songs, and this is a somewhat vintage clip of her singing it. Tish Hinojosa has released a number of albums in English in Spanish, and most often with both languages included as part of the same album...and often, as part of the same song.
Lo How A Rose E’er Blooming is often sung at Christmas time, and often in dramatic, operatic, or choral ways. It works in other seasons and in other ways, though. That is something Rani Arbo investigates in her take on it here, offering just her voice and a quietly plucked banjo to back her singing.
It almost becomes a lullaby, which in fact it did: when Rani’s son was small, this was one of his favorites to sing him to sleep, whatever the season.
At times, adults need to peace of a lullaby too, which is one of the things Rani and the men who join her in the band Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem were thinking about when they were choosing songs for their album of songs on the many aspects of winter. Scott Kessel on percussion, Anand Nayak on guitar, Andrew Kinsey on bass, and Rani. All live in New England, which means they all know a good bit about winter. They have interesting things to say about it, too, through the music in their album called Wintersong.
Instrumental music, that is music without words included, can be a source for connection and an invitation to reflection.
Quebec-based fiddle player, composer, and educator Laura Risk wrote the tune called Jane Risk to honor her mother, a lifelong teacher.
In the sleeve notes for Traverse, the album on which the tune appears, Laura Risk writes, “She understood teaching to be a space for profound caring and therefore justice.” You do not need to know that to enjoy the music, of course, but given the nature of the shifting times we consider here, I though you might appreciate the connection.
Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote loads of songs, about all sorts of subjects. You will know and perhaps have sung some of them. Most certainly you’ve heard a few: Auld Lang Syne, for instance, or My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose, or Comin’ Through The Rye.
They are songs which invite singing along, whether you do that with others or on your own to yourself, at the time of year in January when Burns is especially celebrated. That is another way music helps with community and connection.
All that said, perhaps you will find yourself singing along to this one, too. The singers here are members of the family band The Barra MacNeils, who come from Cape Breton in Atlantic Canada with strong family roots in Scotland. The song is My Heart’s in the Highlands.
Winter is a season of change of all sorts. One winter several years back, musician Emily Smith got to thinking about this when an unusually heavy snowfall found her snowed in at her home in Dumfries and Galloway in the southwest of Scotland.
One result was Winter Song, in which Emily traces aspects of winter from end of new year celebrations to first signs of spring. There's wisdom from elders and things to learn from the natural world, too.
May the creativity of these artists be good companion to you as times continue to shift.
Thank you for staying with us through this journey. Below, you'll find a link that will take you to an article which has a bit more backstory on the series. It also has links to a number of the stories, including ones called Listening for Community, Music for Winter's Changes, and The Geography of Hope.
Kerry Dexter is Music Editor at Wandering Educators.
You may find more of Kerry's work in National Geographic Traveler, Strings, Perceptive Travel, Journey to Scotland, Irish Fireside, and other places, as well as at her own site, Music Road. You can also read her work at Along the Music Road on Substack.