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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/21mRsjG:
I know this song from O Brother Where Art Thou, as performed by the Stanley Brothers, let’s be real here. I am not actually a folk ethnographer. The story of me and singing and folk music and so on is a long and disorganized one that is only intermittently entertaining, and that’s not what this series of posts is about.
Here we run into the problem that a lot of the songs I discover and like have been recorded by country musicians with aesthetics wildly incompatible with mine. (Stan bros are fine, but like, everyone more recent not so much.) It turns out I break out in hives at encountering country gospel. I did not know, it is an autoimmune response, I can’t help it, get it off me. No offense if that is your thing. I can’t handle it. YKINMK, only, music. (And don’t come at me with all-country-is-crap, that’s not what this is about.) (And oh, Jesus music, that’s a separate category.)
This version would be fine if these sisters were not functionally adults. You are a big girl, sing don’t murmur, oh my god. But. It gave me the idea that a children’s choir could sing this song beautifully; the sort of droning sincerity of children’s choirs suits it well. (please i was in like eleventy choirs i speak with love)
And so this song became plot-significant, because intermittently, the Organa-Solo family would come back to Yavin 4, which was a homey and welcoming sort of place, and they’d stay with the Bey-Dameron family for a little bit, and little Ben Organa would be given into the care of little Poe. Yavin 4 being a settlement of people who put down roots after the battle, it was a strange collection of people, and since Poe was already a toddler, he is older than the pack of children all born by new settlers. There are few to no kids close to him in age, but a whole lot two or more years younger. So Poe is very, very used to being the Responsible Older Sibling to a pretty big pack. And so he is entrusted, as no others really have been, with the care of the possibly-a-little-too-sheltered Ben, and takes it Very Seriously.
One of the places he’s allowed to take Ben without supervision is down to the community center, where the musical director has formed a children’s choir. And Ben has not really been taught to sing, before; Han is tone-deaf and Leia’s busy. So he learns to sing, with Poe, and the choir director is a kind of anthropologist of different musical styles, and teaches them part-singing, and it is Very Formative in little Ben’s mind, this idea that you can sing one note and someone else sings another and they are both better than either one, and the whole idea of harmony and resonance–
and so, twenty-five years later, when he has Poe at his mercy, and Poe tries to stonewall him by remembering this song as hard as he can, well.
It makes no-longer-Ben have some emotions, is all. But he’s not a POV character, so what precisely those emotions are? Honestly I haven’t even quite worked it out.
[OK I should address Jesus Music briefly– so religion isn’t a thing in the Star Wars universe? Come on, in a civilization of that age and size, it totally is, and there have got to be sacred singing traditions that have mutual influence with secular ones. I am not that into it for itself, so that’s as much into it as I want to get– there are various religions and most people just don’t really pay it that much attention. It’s a civilly secular society, as I sort of wish ours were. As personally as I care to address this, I was raised Catholic and gained a lot of my appreciation of music from the excellent music ministry in our church (I know the Catholics generally aren’t great musicians, but we have this little folk trio-quintet of genuinely faith-devoted people, a man and his wife and their rotating cast of friends, and I swear they really are holy people it’s amazing in this era of hypocrites), taught myself harmony and part-singing in those services, and I can’t bear the Church because of politics but the music can still make me cry regardless of beliefs. and sometimes I get so mad at the church and the hypocrites, but this isn’t the time or the place.]
I know this song from O Brother Where Art Thou, as performed by the Stanley Brothers, let’s be real here. I am not actually a folk ethnographer. The story of me and singing and folk music and so on is a long and disorganized one that is only intermittently entertaining, and that’s not what this series of posts is about.
Here we run into the problem that a lot of the songs I discover and like have been recorded by country musicians with aesthetics wildly incompatible with mine. (Stan bros are fine, but like, everyone more recent not so much.) It turns out I break out in hives at encountering country gospel. I did not know, it is an autoimmune response, I can’t help it, get it off me. No offense if that is your thing. I can’t handle it. YKINMK, only, music. (And don’t come at me with all-country-is-crap, that’s not what this is about.) (And oh, Jesus music, that’s a separate category.)
This version would be fine if these sisters were not functionally adults. You are a big girl, sing don’t murmur, oh my god. But. It gave me the idea that a children’s choir could sing this song beautifully; the sort of droning sincerity of children’s choirs suits it well. (please i was in like eleventy choirs i speak with love)
And so this song became plot-significant, because intermittently, the Organa-Solo family would come back to Yavin 4, which was a homey and welcoming sort of place, and they’d stay with the Bey-Dameron family for a little bit, and little Ben Organa would be given into the care of little Poe. Yavin 4 being a settlement of people who put down roots after the battle, it was a strange collection of people, and since Poe was already a toddler, he is older than the pack of children all born by new settlers. There are few to no kids close to him in age, but a whole lot two or more years younger. So Poe is very, very used to being the Responsible Older Sibling to a pretty big pack. And so he is entrusted, as no others really have been, with the care of the possibly-a-little-too-sheltered Ben, and takes it Very Seriously.
One of the places he’s allowed to take Ben without supervision is down to the community center, where the musical director has formed a children’s choir. And Ben has not really been taught to sing, before; Han is tone-deaf and Leia’s busy. So he learns to sing, with Poe, and the choir director is a kind of anthropologist of different musical styles, and teaches them part-singing, and it is Very Formative in little Ben’s mind, this idea that you can sing one note and someone else sings another and they are both better than either one, and the whole idea of harmony and resonance–
and so, twenty-five years later, when he has Poe at his mercy, and Poe tries to stonewall him by remembering this song as hard as he can, well.
It makes no-longer-Ben have some emotions, is all. But he’s not a POV character, so what precisely those emotions are? Honestly I haven’t even quite worked it out.
[OK I should address Jesus Music briefly– so religion isn’t a thing in the Star Wars universe? Come on, in a civilization of that age and size, it totally is, and there have got to be sacred singing traditions that have mutual influence with secular ones. I am not that into it for itself, so that’s as much into it as I want to get– there are various religions and most people just don’t really pay it that much attention. It’s a civilly secular society, as I sort of wish ours were. As personally as I care to address this, I was raised Catholic and gained a lot of my appreciation of music from the excellent music ministry in our church (I know the Catholics generally aren’t great musicians, but we have this little folk trio-quintet of genuinely faith-devoted people, a man and his wife and their rotating cast of friends, and I swear they really are holy people it’s amazing in this era of hypocrites), taught myself harmony and part-singing in those services, and I can’t bear the Church because of politics but the music can still make me cry regardless of beliefs. and sometimes I get so mad at the church and the hypocrites, but this isn’t the time or the place.]
