Tag Archives ⇒ song

Quaker sing song ministry

January 4, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Over on Mastodon (yes you should be there), Aus­tralian Friend Evan start­ed an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about Quak­er sing song. This is a form of deliv­er­ing min­istry that seems to date back to the begin­nings of our reli­gious soci­ety but which bare­ly exists any­more. To my untrained ears it sounds more like some­thing you’d hear in a small Catholic or Ortho­dox church. Many years ago Haver­ford Col­lege Library excerpt­ed a field record­ing on a page ded­i­cat­ed to Music and the Ear­ly Quak­ers:

Evan posts to a pas­sage on it from nineteenth-century Quak­er chron­i­cler Thomas Clark­son:

The Quak­ers, on the oth­er hand, nei­ther pre­pare their dis­cours­es, nor vary their voic­es pur­pose­ly accord­ing to the rules of art. The tone which comes out, and which appears dis­agree­able to those who are not used to it, is nev­er­the­less not unnat­ur­al. It is rather the mode of speak­ing which na- ture impos­es in any vio­lent exer­tion of the voice, to save the lungs. Hence per­sons who have their wares to cry, and this almost every oth­er minute in the streets, are oblig­ed to adopt a tone. Hence per­sons, with dis­or­dered lungs, can sing words with more ease to them­selves than they can utter th6m with a sim­i­lar pitch of the voice. Hence Quaker- women, when they preach, have gen­er­al­ly more of this tone than the Quaker-men, for the lungs of the female are gen­er­al­ly weak­er than those of the oth­er
sex.

I’ve always won­dered if lat­er oppo­si­tion to sing song might have been par­tial­ly moti­vat­ed by the fact that it was favored by women or sound­ed a bit too Catholic for Angli­cans like Clark­son or Quak­ers lean­ing that direction.

There’s a great 2011 post from the now-dormant Quak­er His­tor­i­cal Lex­i­con blog by Illi­nois Friend Peter Laser­sohn. The com­ments are also great.

Distant signals from the future

January 19, 2016
· Martin Kelley

radioI was in ear­ly high school when I got my first alarm clock radio. My par­ents were a bit old­er when I was born, so the LPs in the back of our hall clos­et were a generation-and-a-half out-of date: I remem­ber most­ly musi­cal sound­tracks like South Pacif­ic and West Side Sto­ry. My old­er broth­er had brought the Bea­t­les into our house but he had moved away for col­lege and adult­hood years before and the only trace of his musi­cal influ­ence was a Simon & Gar­funkel great­est hits 8‑track tape my mom had bought for a pen­ny from the Time-Life record club.

In my bed­room late at night in the ear­ly 80s, I explored the sounds inside my new radio. I would bury myself under­neath my Star Trek sheets, pull the radio inside, and lis­ten with vol­ume bare­ly per­cep­ti­ble. Three was no real rea­son for the secre­cy. I’m sure my par­ents wouldn’t have par­tic­u­lar­ly cared. But I was a pri­vate kid. I didn’t want to let on that I was curi­ous about the adult world. Pop radio and MASH reruns were my secret.

I had had a short­wave radio in mid­dle school and brought the thrill of long-distance dis­cov­ery to my radio explo­rations. Geog­ra­phy and sound had more mys­tery in those days before the inter­net. On a cold, clear night, I could tune in AM pow­er­hous­es half a con­ti­nent away.

One par­tic­u­lar­ly cold night, one of these dis­tant sig­nals played a song I had nev­er heard or even imag­ined. It was half-drowned out by sta­t­ic. The sig­nal drift­ed in and out in waves but I lis­tened mes­mer­ized. To a intro­vert­ed kid in a sleep Philly sub­urb, this song was a key to a yearned-for future. I was instant­ly cer­tain that that no one around me had ever heard this song. If only I could make out some words, maybe I could spend the next year scan­ning the dis­tant radio bands to hear it again. As I got old­er, I could go into the city to scour bins in the seed­i­est of indie record stores. This song no one knew would be a touch­stones to a new adult­hood I was con­struct­ing in the secret of my bedroom.

As the fade came, I bare­ly caught the DJ’s words through the sta­t­ic. “Hotel Cal­i­for­nia.” I vowed to myself that some­day, some­how, I would find this song and hear it again.

RIP Glenn Frey.