Album of the week: Ninth Ireland Sacred Harp Convention

I was asked to come up with an album of the week for my company's Yammer chat group. Here's what I wrote.

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Thanks for letting me choose this week's Album of the Week. I'm choosing the Ninth Ireland Sacred Harp Convention (2019, Sunday).

My choice is not actually a favourite album. It's a Youtube playlist of recordings from an annual event in Ireland in 2019. The people in the recording are singing from a book named the Sacred Harp, which has also become the name of this style of music.

This playlist is an excellent way of hearing Sacred Harp singing, but this is not how I usually experience this music - I sing with friends once a month. The in-person experience is close to indescribable, so I chose this playlist because it gives a great insight into Sacred Harp.

Sacred Harp is an early American singing tradition that has spread across the world. In Australia we have two regular Sacred Harp groups - one each in Sydney and Melbourne. Look us up on Facebook!

We get together and sing for the moment. It has a lot in common with punk: there is no audition, no rehearsal, no performance, no leader, and no audience. We drag the church pews into a hollow square so we are facing each other. The words of the songs are very Protestant Christian, and they are intense; we sing of grief, death, joy, sickness, love, and loss. We sing loudly and no-one tries to make their voice sound sweet.

If you want to come along, you'll be welcome, even if you think you can't sing. No-one asks your opinions on religion or politics. People will shuffle up to make room for you, hand you a book, point out which page we are on, and off you go.

When it's my turn to pick, I choose the song we'll all sing next. I call it out so everyone can hear: number 47! I get up and stand in the middle so everyone can see and hear me. I choose the pitch and sing the first notes out loud so everyone knows where to start – when I’m feeling nervous I ask someone else to set the key. I then lead the song at the speed I want it sung (I tend to like them fast). First we sing the song by saying the names of the notes instead of the words: Fa, So, La, and Mi (this is why you can't understand the singers's words in the first part of each song in the playlist). This is the only practice we get! Straightaway I launch us in to the actual song, which we sing once only. As the final note echoes, I sit down and the next person picks another song and it all starts again.

Sacred Harp is loud, occasionally dissonant, grim, sung by amateurs, rough around the edges, and over too soon for my liking. I hope you hear something here that speaks to you.

More about Sacred Harp:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Harp
• https://fasola.org/
• https://sacredharpbremen.org/en/frequently-asked-questions/

Tea experiment

The right cup holds Bushells Extra Strong Tea, and the left holds Madura Premium Blend.

Same temperature water, same time steeping,same number of jiggles.

They taste utterly identical.

Recipe for Rhubarb Chutney with Curry

Here is the link: http://www.gardenstew.com/threads/as-requested-curried-rhubarb-chutney.11328/

And here are the ingredients, in case the page disappears before I get to make it:

Still have more rhubarb than you know what to do with? Like Mango Chutney? Then you will probably like this. It comes from a recipe which is at least 30 years old, given to me by an elderly neighbour, who was given it many years ago by an elderly friend. This is half the original recipe as I prefer lots of variety rather than gallons of one type.

2Ib Rhubarb
1/2 Ib sultanas (I didn't use these as I don't like them in chuts)
1oz curry powder (I added just a touch more for some va va voom)
1 cup malt vinegar (I didn't have enough malt so it was 50/50 malt and balsamic)
2 large onions
2Ib sugar
1 tablespoon mustard powder
1 tablespoon salt (I halved that as I am trying to keep our salt intake low)

Chop the rhubarb into small chunks and chop the onion. Place all of the ingredients into a large preserving pan and cook slowely until everything is tender and pulpy which will take between 40 and 80 minutes. Bottle in sterile bottles and label when cold.

Because I missed out the sultanas I added an extra onion and a couple of extra stalks of rhubarb. It needs to mature to loose that raw curry powder taste if you can keep it long enough that is!

EJ Jul 21, 2008

Smarmy

Had to define SMARMY for the kids the other day. I was complaining about the ads in the Parliament Station, and groping for adjectives to describe how much I loathe them.

These ads are on three big TV screens on the other side of the tunnel. The screens are spaced along the platform so that there is nowhere I can stand to get away from their SMARM.

On these screens, we watch ads for holiday destinations, narrated by deeply authentic amateurs. Some dude tells us about his sea-change, in which he built a world-class golf course on rolling hills near the NSW coast. He hesitates in his speech, makes droll little remarks, and self-deprecatingly tells us that after finally taking golf lessons, he's improved to become a very poor golfer. Later, Glenn Gould talks about Bicheno, name-dropping tourist destinations in the area.

They are disarmingly sincere, sweetly innocent of motive, and utterly fake.

These more obvious ads are interspersed with short inspiring surfing videos (shot at sunset for maximum smarm).

We also see intermittent brief videos of beautiful young things instructing us about healthy living: kale smoothies, stress-free yoga, and the like.

Each video is a minute or two, with direct simple voice-overs. Some inspiring (there's that word again) backing music, some falsely casual chat, and it's over. On to the next one.

It drives me batty. Waiting at the station is a little moment of crowded solitude, joining my office day with the school pick up and ensuing shenanigans. These foul insidious ads creep into my head without my consent. Unwillingly, I watch the golden countryside and listen to the kind voices.

I tried standing with my back to the videos, facing the wall, but I could still hear the voice-overs  (and by now I've seen the bloody things so often that the visuals play in my mind as I listen). 

This arvo I tried standing in the corridor that connects the platforms. I couldn't hear the videos, but I was chilled by the underground wind forced through the tunnels by the battering-ram trains. I think this spot will work better on hot days. 

Roll on, summer!

Art projects that I can't possibly execute

I had an idea: arrange Smells Like Teen Spirit in the style of Sacred Harp.

And another Sacred Harp idea: in a multi-level carpark (the sort with a spiralling ramp for cars to whirl up and down), position each bench on a different level and sing as loud as possible. I'd like to hear how that works.

However I have no intention of actually learning how to arrange tunes, or getting a bunch of singers into a carpark for an asynchronous echoey singing. Which gave me another idea that I probably won't get around to doing: create a repository of art projects that I can't pull off, but that someone with the right skills and grit could manage nicely.

Off you go, internet. Make my dreams come true.

That cat

I am working at home at my desk in the loungeroom. I've just turned the heater off - the room will stay warm enough for an hour or two now.

The cat yowls at the door, and I let her in. She might like to bask in the warmth too.

I get back to work. Typitty type type.

I hear a gentle knocking sound from the other side of the room, and I rotate on my whirly chair to see what's going on. The cat is under the other desk. Is she tapping at the cables under there? Knock knock. She could be playing with a moth. Knock-knock.

I wheel over to get a good look, and she scurries away in that craven don't-hit-me way that well-treated cats still use.

It doesn't smell so good over here.

The bloody cat has just laid about ten small hard turds under the desk. They made gentle knocking sounds as they dropped, one by one, on the board floor.

Rare footage of trolleys mating in the wild

Ah Preston, it's great to be back from holidays.