(HOST) For commentator Deborah Luskin, the best music of the season reflects the human heart around the world.
(LUSKIN) I don’t mean to be a Grinch, but if I never hear Jingle Bell Rock or Alvin and the Chipmunks singing their Christmas song again, I’ll have no regrets. I could even pass on Silver Bells – or any of the other classic carols transposed into Muzak. And if I miss the Christmas portion of the "Messiah," or Benjamin Britten’s "Ceremony of Carols" now and again, I’ll be okay. But I do like how music helps lighten the darkness that shortens our days this time of year.
It’s just that I’d rather sing Christmas carols than listen to them, so some years I join a group from the village who carol door to door. And for the past few years, I’ve made it a December tradition to attend the annual winter concert of the River Singers – a ninety-voice, multi-generational, community chorus under the direction of Mary Cay Brass. They perform "village music" – not the highbrow oratorios of the cathedrals nor the canned carols of the marketplace – but songs about ordinary life from around the world. Most of the songs don’t have anything to do with Christmas, or winter – and many aren’t even in English.
Many of the songs come from the Balkans, and the money from the concert helps fund Village Harmony, singing-based summer camps that started in Vermont and now include an international cultural exchange. Every winter, Mary Cay teaches the River Singers some of the songs she’s learned in distant villages over the summer. Every winter, I hear a new melody from some far-off corner of the earth. Members of the chorus take turns introducing each piece, explaining its background, translating it and introducing the instrumentalists and soloists.
Over the years, I’ve heard drinking songs from Britain, Macedonia, and the Republic of Georgia; love songs from Serbia and Albania; songs about civil rights from the American South and South Africa; chants, shape note music, rounds and gospel – all music that is sung in villages around the world, and right here in Vermont. I know about fifteen of the singers and most of the audience. So the concert also serves as an exchange of greetings and good will. We may not all be from the same village, exactly, but we’re all from the same thinly populated part of Vermont, where it’s good to greet and be greeted by the people with whom we live.
The concert takes place in an old church – a hall with little heat and fabulous acoustics. The music warms us – I shed my coat by intermission. I don’t think it’s just the physics of body heat, either, but also the heat of the songs, songs filled with passion, longing and lament.
These concerts have become a holiday tradition, including the final song, which the audience and chorus sing together. It’s arranged by Vermont’s own Peter Amidon and ends with the lyric, "come morning, come light, here is my home."