h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When I was young, I often played church piano. If my mom happened to be planning the service, she took advantage of my vast knowledge of the hymnbook. She'd schedule 'Favourite Hymn Time', knowing that I could play any hymn they wanted.

Something Cactuscafe wrote got me noodling around in youtube, trying to find some of MY favourite hymns.

Now, a word up front: If you're British or German, the word 'hymn' will conjure up quite different musical imagery than it does for me.

Where I come from, 'What a Friend We Have in Jesus' is a HYMN. As is, of course, 'Eine Feste Burg'. Although fewer people know that one.

However, trying to find my favourite 'hymns', or 'gospel songs' - another misleading term - or whatever you want to call it, is a fraught experience on the old Youtube.

I refer not merely to the comments, which run to the 'praise GAWD' variety, but to the wide range of possible interpretations open to today's musicians.

I use this term loosely, you understand.

When I was growing up, this music provided me with much personal pleasure - I could play it for hours on the piano - and no end of comfort. The words frequently spoke to my condition, and that condition was often simply, 'I need a friend, and hope somebody out there understands.'

I tend to prefer these songs in their pristine condition. Without loud organ fanfares or too much body English.

So what happens? I look for a simple favourite, 'He Leadeth Me'. I get this country-and-western number:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwm7MlUtDa0

Fun, no? It has a certain je-ne-sais-quoi about it. Sort of yodelly.

This bluegrass rendition ofo 'How Firm a Foundation' sent us into gales of laughter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYAvVH1l3CM

Warning: avoid like the plague any rendition of anything that has the words 'Mass Choir' attached to it. That way madness lies. Look at the singers' names, too. Koreans are fond of hymns. They are also good musicians. However, they usually sing in Korean. This is fine, if you speak Korean.

How about this dramatically yearning rendition? It's not bad, but the drums at the start should serve as a warning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uxLUwZem0U

I like the group's name, too. 'Jars of Clay' has a ring to it.

What I really wanted to find, though, was a decent version of that great song, 'Thou, My Everylasting Portion'. I waded through Mass Choirs (too large and strident) and lovely Korean lasses (singing in tongues) and found this wonderful instrumental, recorded in South Africa by an international group. I thought you'd enjoy it, it's got the lyrics in English and what I suspect to be Swahili, though I couldn't swear to it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gREtzyQ7xOc

Okay, go back to whatever you were doing. But Saturday evening used to be my time for hymn practice, so I thought I'd reminisce.

Practising for NaJoPoMo, I guess.



PS whether you want to listen to 21,000 Mormons singing at once is up to you. However, they are using the wrong tune for 'How Firm a Foundation'. For most ironic use of that song EVER, go to the opening of the film 'The Day After'. The music starts about 2 minutes in. The TV film proved one thing: using hymn tunes ironically pays off. People really supported the antinuclear movement after that. Of course, the film also brought home the fact that nuclear war would not only kill you, it would make all your hair fall out. Nobody in the US wanted to die bald, like poor Jason Robards.

My blood ran cold when I read "21,000 Mormons"

You've reminded me (somehow) of a conversation in our house years ago.

"Anything on TV?"

"I'm watching this African preacher. He gives people a karate chop on the neck, and then they collapse cos of the holy spirit.

Actually I'm not sure how much the Holy Spirit has got to do with them collapsing!"

That's my laugh of the day. Thank you.



Tip: NEVER ask a Nigerian preacher to lead the closing prayer. Especially not if you have a roast in the oven.

Jars of Clay is great Not so much if you're looking for traditional hymn arrangements, though

Hi folks! Dmitri, yes that 'Thou, My Everlasting Portion' has Swahili subtitles. But I thought it was being performed in Kenya? Over here we don't really speak Swahili.

Splendid! This thread has me thinking deeply through my laughter. . In fact, it's a masterpiece.

I was just going on in my journal about how natural it was to sing about otherwordly presences, in hymns.

'The Angel of the Lord came down, and glory shone around'! Ahhhh, the essence of Christmas, and it didn't seem weird at all.

Those Christmas carols were like mantras to me, as a kid. My eyes still fill with tears when I hear them now. There was this picture of the Angel Gabriel in our carol book, he was so golden and shiny, I loved his wings.




'From Greenland's icy mountains, from India's coral strand'

What was that hymn? I remember singing it in primary school. It was probably a bit dodgy, colonial or something, but you don't know that when you're five.

I just saw that icy mountain, that bright green huge crystal mountain, because I thought Greenland was Green-Land, where everything was green and shiny.

Oops, sorry, Willem, I must have been looking at two pages at once. I did wonder about Swahili showing up in SA.

CC, what a great thought - I remember 'From Greenland's Icy Mountains'. Yep, way too colonial. But a fun song.

Here are some interesting factoids about that song:

1. It must have been popular, because it got parodied. In the comic poem, 'Jes' 'Fore Christmas', Eugene Field has a bad little boy say:

'Gran'ma says she hopes that when I get to be a man,
I will be a missionarer like here eldest brother Dan,
What wuz et up by the cannibals that lives on Ceylon's Isle,
Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile...'

http://www3.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/eugenefield/poems/poemsofchildhood/jestforechristmas.html

2. Aleister Crowley - remeember him, the 'Beast 666'? - once claimed that, as a child, he had conjured up the Devil by singing 'From Greenland's Icy Mountains'. I found this as funny as the old sorceror probably intended it to be.

In case you would like to enjoy being colonial - or, alternatively, conjure up the Devil - here's the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7DNoPsMWL4

3. NOW, for something almost, but not quite, completely different:

Charles Ives, the world's most famous composer/insurance broker/certifiable American Nut, composed THIS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_oVPBBcsOA

It's called 'String Quartet No 1: From the Salvation Army".

Yes, yes, Ives was a great composer. That doesn't mean he's fun to listen to.

Really????

How strange to catch up with this song, all these years on. .

Ahhh Green-Land.

I shall consider all this, and return from the journey a little less green. Thanks friend! I appreciate the knowledge.

Colonial doesn't even begin to cover. It was hymns like this that obliged us God fearing white people to sail out and free the poor darker skinned heathens around the globe from their idols of wood and stone (plus their gold while we were at it, but that is of course a whole other game ).

In the bestest of all meanings we sailed up to Greenland's icy mountains and christened the Kalaallits without realizing for one second that in many ways they were already more christian than we had ever been.

The following is the Greenlander choir Aavaat singing during the television show "Christmas Greetings to Greenland" which is broadcasted from Denmark to Greenland every year shortly before Christmas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKA-Br9xWBs

Lovely music, Pierce.

I agree, missionary hymns inspired Mark Twain to sarcasm.

But, as CC pointed out, some of us kids were just inspired to read maps and wonder about other people.

Ah, speaking of maps (topic drift alert!)

Only yesterday I was presented to the to me surprising fact that Africa is nearly twice as big as Russia, 14 times bigger than Greenland and could easily harbour China, the US, India, most of Eastern and Western Europe and Japan.

I always knew our arctic colony wasn't as big as shown on Mercator's maps, but I never realized that Africa was this big.

Watch this clip and check out the map of Africa beneath it:

http://www.upworthy.com/we-have-been-mislead-by-an-erroneous-map-of-the-world-for-500-years?g=2&c=bl3

And then there is this:

http://www.upworthy.com/42-experimental-and-mind-bending-maps-that-you-wont-see-in-textbooks?c=ufb1If

Considering that I started this journal entry by talking about hymn tunes, this isn't topic drift, people - it's more like a teleporter accident.

However, why should I mind? That upside-down map is totally WORTH IT!

Thanks you for that!

Having Dr Phlox explain it - well, that's just icing on the cake.

Besides, I loved the actors talking about finding Brigadoon on the map.

You're welcome

I think the cartographers in the West Wing clip are right and I would like to add that when people say "oh there's always problems with/in Africa" one should answer "of course there is! But a continent of these proportions ought to have at least ten times more problems, so get over yourselves"

That's true. If Europe were as large, and had as many different languages, think about how much fussing there would be.

Over here most maps show Africa as being very big and right in the centre. The Mercator projection looks very very weird to me.

Also ... did you know Africa has almost the same surface area as the entire Moon?

I didn't know that, no.

Neither did I, Willem, but after checking those links it makes a lot of sense