Sunday, December 23, 2018

Evolution of a Little Drummer Boy

   
 Isn't it one of life's minor irritations when some mediocre talent performs a favorite song and destroys it with individual flourishes?
   
Think of the "Star Spangled Banner." If you watch enough sports events sooner or later you will encounter some singer attempting to add a personal touch to the song and doing it badly. It's the national anthem for crying out loud, sing it the regular way.
    For some of us anyway, the same thoughts hold true for Christmas carols. I was raised Lutheran, not that I stuck with it, but the music stuck with me. Lutherans don't have any music newer than 200 years old. Something from the same century might as well have been rock and roll. I mentioned to a devout Christian friend one time how I only like the traditional carols. Her response was,"Yeah, we have the best music."
    I don't even want silver bells, or jingle bells, or even a white Christmas, I don't care if mommy kisses Santa Clause or if there is a red-nosed reindeer. Give me "Silent Night," (but not used to sell diapers in a Pampers commercial); "The First Noel," "Hark the Herald Angels Sing;" and oh so many others. And if you don't know where to go to hear them the way they should be sung, look no further than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir as a place to start. The Mormons do carols right. There is a version out there of "Oh Holy Night," with a soprano soloist who will give you goose bumps.
    However, looking further, now here comes the change of direction. Few new songs enter the category of traditional. The first one I knew about was "The Little Drummer Boy." It was written by the American classical music composer and teacher Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941, first recorded in 1951 by the Trapp Family Singers, according to Wikipedia.
TRAPP FAMILY SINGERS
  
 There is some disagreement but let's go with that. It is a for-sure new carol by carol standards given many of them are hundreds of years old and this one is little more than 70. The first I heard it or even heard of it was when we had to sing it in a high school chorus in the 1950s. It had become popular at that time due to a 1958 recording by the Harry Simeone Chorale.
     This is it with the original tune entrenched.
HARRY SIMEONE  CHORALE

    Fortunately no recording I know of exists from our school Christmas concert. (Yes, children there was a time before camcorders, and smart phones (camcorder?)).
     Over the next few years it became a part of the repertoire of any self-respecting musicians who wanted to do traditional religious Christmas music.
     However, looking further, now here comes the change of direction. It didn't take too long before the Mormons discovered it and like they do with so many songs, just about made it their own.
MORMON TABERNCLE CHOIR
     
     Further yet,the song evolved, or at least the singers did. Over the next couple of decades, I heard several versions, some OK, some so messed up I had to turn them off.
     Then three or four years ago I came across a version by a group called Pentatonix, four men and a women. Honestly it knocked my socks off, not a good thing at this time of year in Alaska. They held true to the origin but the way they melded their diverse voices into a harmony of respect for the original was impressive. This is that version.
PENTATONIX

    And then as we used to say in the 60s "far out." Let a couple more years go by until last year, when I heard a totally new version. Who would ever have thought to feature drums in a performance of "The Little Drummer Boy?" Loud ones. Well these guys did and it's dramatic. Still they maintained the reverence for the origial song, just presented it a little more dramatically. You might want to adjust your volume level, lower if you don't like loud drumming, but higher if you like the full effect of good drumming.
FOR KING AND COUNTRY

    How far out can the progression go? Who knows, but I expect a new version one of these years. I know a couple of people who really detest "The Little Drummer Boy. Maybe one of these selections will appeal to them more. If not, as far as I am concerned you can drive your sleigh over the river and through the woods on a carpet of white Christmas to ring silver bells while Mama kisses Santa Claus. (Oh, the temptation was strong to add a little to that last one.) Merry Christmas.



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  1. JanJanuary 3, 2019 at 8:34 AM

    It is Silent Night for me (or the German version Stille Nacht). My happiest memories of Christmas are stealing a look out the window at the silence of the night sky waiting to hear bells, falling asleep too soon to hear what I thought would magically happen. And the night sky of Germany or Austria where I spent five Christmases, the silence of Christmas night somehow magnified by snowfall and always that carol sung at the end of a Christmas Eve service with lit candles for each of us. But there is a 2005 movie called Joyeaux Noel that makes Silent Night more haunting for me. It is 1914 on the Western Front in France during the "Great War". In the midst of a Chrstmas Eve pause from fighting in the bloody trenches among German, Scottish and French troops, a pair of German operatic voices begins to sing to the German troops facing No Man's Land. The carol was Stille Nacht. From a distance a Scottish piper joins in. Not long after there is an unofficial truce, fraternization on the battlefield, an exchange of small kindnesses. Of course it is war and this cannot last. But for a moment, the guns were silent.

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