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BBC Music Magazine Christmas 2006 Rob Ainsley This is the text from the article. Obviously the published version in the magazine has some nice pictures. Order your back issue from the BBC Music Magazine website at www.bbcmusicmagazine.com. INTRODUCTION Christmas comes but once a year. Just as well, those of us doorstepped by carollers might feel. But itinerant yuletide musicianship is not unique to Britain. In Georgia they go singing for wine, thereby combining the country�s two specialities. In Italy, the shepherd-bagpiper wandering the countryside is as much a signifier of the Nativity Season as the office-Christmas-partygoer wandering the street is here. Now Russia does the carols thing again, after seven decades of wassailing blackout, except they do it in January; Argentina does it too, but in summer. Christian missionaries enjoyed success with Canadian Huron Indians, who loved carols. They had less success with the Sami, northern Scandinavia�s native herders, who kept their animistic beliefs - ones that have partly filtered down into 'our' Santa Claus legends. In India and Asia, where Christmas is a small-scale commercial curio, their traditional music can represent the spirit of midwinter in a more spiritual, emotional way. So let's sing the praises of carols round the world... Georgia Wedged between the Caucasus and Black Sea, chaotic but hospitable Georgia is known for its robust and straightforward lifestyle of food, drink � and a unique style of three-part singing, thousands of years old and still going strong. Even outside Tbilisi�s swish restaurants on Rustaveli St you might hear traditional toasting songs wafting from the tables. It may sound out of tune, but don�t blame Georgia�s plentiful wine (which they invented): one of their scales has perfect C and G, but flat D, E, A and B, and sharp F � making deliciously dissonant harmonies that contrast their glassy parallel fifths. Strongly Christian Orthodox since the 300s, Georgia celebrates Christmas with a range of seasonal songs: Alilo is sung by Christmas-Eve carollers who are rewarded with drinks. To hear the country�s breathtakingly beautiful sacred music in situ, visit a church on Sunday morning (Anchiskhati in Tbilisi has the most authentic choir). CD suggestion Rustavi Choir: Between Orient and Occident: Chakrulo � 22 Georgian folk songs including two regional Alilos. Beaux Records 5
Russia The Troika from Prokofiev�s Lieutenant Kij� is a kind of unofficial Christmas tune in the West, and conjures up appropriately wintry images of sleighs, fur hats, and snowscapes eleven time-zones wide. But for the soul of Russia we should look at its extraordinary a cappella choral tradition. Stirring, immediate, and often unsettlingly moving, the works of composers such as Bortniansky, Arkhangelsky, Chesnokov, Kastalsky, Gavrilin and many others deserve to be much better known in the West. Christmas was effectively banned in Soviet times; but post-Communism, sacred choral music has fast revived. Search the music samples on the excellent Russian music resource musicarussica.com for songs related to �Christmas� or �Nativity� for an idea of the soundworld. Because of the Orthodox calendar, Christmas Eve is celebrated on 6 January with wheat porridge and carols � and maybe a vodka or two to help lubricate those gloriously dark Russian bass voices. CD suggestion Olga Borodina, St Petersburg Chamber Choir: A Russian Christmas � 20 sacred choral works. Philips 454 616
Canada Vying for wintry popularity with Frosty the Snowman is the �Huron Carol�, or Jes8s ahatonhia (yes, �Jes8s�: the eight represents a vowel peculiar to the Indian language). It was probably written by Jesuit missionary Jean de Br�beuf in 1641, setting Huron words to the traditional French tune Une jeune pucelle. Canada�s natives proved keen to be converted, and even keener on European music, which they became very good at. A hundred years later, incomers were surprised to hear �their� music had become part of Indian tradition. In the Huron version, Jes8s is born in a hut made of bark, and swaddled in a rabbit-pelt. The shepherds become hunters; the wise men bring not gold, frankincense and myrrh, but fox- and beaver-skins. And perhaps s8cks. Canada�s Christmas No. 1 � in terms of being first, at least � is also sung in French and English versions, and many might know it as �Twas the moon of wintertime. CD suggestion Aquabella: Kykellia � five-woman a cappella group sing 19 Christmas songs from around the world including Jes8s Ahathonhia. Jaro 4262-2
Lapland Santa Claus�s traditional home is the actual home of the Sami, the 48,000 or so indigenous people of far-northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Despite the missionaries, Sami remained pagan, with a traditional lifestyle based around reindeer, fishing, hunting and handicraft. (Some speculate that Santa�s flying reindeer are linked to Sami trances induced by magic mushrooms!) Traditional Sami music is the joik (in Sami, joiggus), a slow, deep-throated, unaccompanied personal chant, often specific to a person, place or animal. It evokes the object�s soul, and is often bleakly evocative of winter whiteouts where temperatures routinely plumb -30C. They are said to be pentatonic, though a traditional joik by an old Sami can wander in pitch as much as the nomadic herders themselves. Wimme Saari is one of the most renowned traditional joik musicians, while Mari Boine has made the form popular by combining it with jazz, rock and world-music elements. CD suggestion Mari Boine: Eight Seasons. Listenable jazz-world-yoik mix of songs featuring saxman Jan Garbarek. North Side Records 616072
Argentina Though dinner and the trimmings are similar, Christmas is in midsummer here, and winter in June � so what fits this exotic mix? Perhaps the eclectic music of Argentina�s famous musical son Astor Piazzolla. Through the 20th century he revived his native tango, taking it from bordello to concert hall by mixing the throbbing rhythmic powerplay of pimp-and-prostitute with a sophisticated western-style counterpoint, dissonance and jazz harmony. Las cuatro estaciones porte�as (�Four Seasons in Buenos Aires�) is a southern-hemisphere counterpart to Vivaldi�s famous musical calendar. No icy onomatopoeia here: Piazzolla�s seasons are urban, psychological. His winter is subdued and bittersweet, as if ruminating darkly in some steamed-up cafe; his summer is similarly reflective, but with relentless walking bass episodes that only succeed in traipsing us round the same old parts of town. He surely didn�t intend it as such, but hot and bothered Christmas shoppers will know the feeling exactly. CD suggestion Gidon Kremer et al: Eight Seasons. Piazzolla�s and Vivaldi�s Four Seasons on the same disc, played by the brilliant violinist. Nonesuch 79568
Japan The Christmas period in Japan sees lots of shopping glitz, but obviously no religious element � it�s remarkable how accurately they take up western ideas. But Japan�s ancient, solidly-preserved culture, including music, remains vibrant under any apparent western veneer even today. Seasonality is a central idea in Japanese artistic thinking; no wonder Vivaldi�s Four Seasons is so popular there. One of the best-known pieces for shakuhachi � the traditional bamboo flute, played vertically like a recorder � is Tsuru no sugomori (�Crane�s nest�). (Actually, group of pieces: there are several with the title.) Midwinter is part of the atmosphere, with the mother crane sacrificing herself in the bitter, hungry Japanese winter to let her offspring survive. With its imitations of birdcalls and fluttering wings, the piece reflects Japan�s musical emphasis on Zen-inspired sparseness and subtle changes of timbre; that austerity also vividly suggests the empty deep-freeze of a rural winter. CD suggestion Goro Yamaguchi: Music of the Shakuhachi. Virtuoso solo pieces including The Chill Winter Wind and a winter version of Tsuru no sugomori. JVC VIC G-5357
Italy Far from being exclusively Scottish, bagpipes are a traditional peasant instrument throughout Europe. Something to do with being remote, and having a captive audience of sheep, perhaps. In Italy, bagpipers � called zampognari � are a symbol of Christmas. Shepherds piped in baby Jesus at the manger, and Italian nativity scenes include a piper or two. Until recently zampognari were familiar figures in the countryside over Christmas, walking hundreds of miles and playing their sheepskin pipes at roadside shrines in return for food and board. Pipers still crowd into Rome�s Aracoeli Church on Christmas Eve to play traditional tunes, though they usually go by train or bus now. Handel�s Messiah refers specifically to the zampognari, in No. 9�s Pastoral Symphony � complete with bagpipe-like drone � and in No. 14�s �He shall feed His flock�. That�s said to be based on Canzone d�i zampognari, a traditional Sicilian bagpiper�s Christmas carol. CD suggestion Alan Lomax Collection: Songs of Christmas. 20 authentic seasonal folk songs recorded in the field, including Italian pipers. Rounder Select 1719
India In a country where tobogganing weather is rare (it�s generally 30C-plus in Mumbai in December) traditional music does not major on references to snow and ice. For a profound view on emotional winter, though, we can turn to the North Indian classical tradition. It usually features just a soloist (on sitar, perhaps); tabla player; and background string drone. Their massive, complex, mesmeric improvisations can easily last an hour or more. Each is based on one �raga�. (What constitutes a �raga� might be vaguely similar to the way a collection of riffs, scales and moods defines �blues� in the west, though there are hundreds of distinct ragas.) A raga can vividly evoke an emotion, time of day or season. Shri Raga is associated with November and December; complex, austere and introspective, it demands a highly skilled performer to exploit its wide leaps, and characteristic descent from very-flat D-flat to C. CD suggestion Nikhil Banerjee: Shree Rag. Mighty concert performance by the great sitar player from Munich 1976. Raga Records 225
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