music

Brass is best

13 February 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral music, music

Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote a poem about them. Novelist Amy Tan’s mother was serenaded by them as she lay in state. Muckraker Jessica Mitford’s memorial procession was led by them. And more than 300 Chinese families a year hire the Green Street Mortuary Band to give their loved ones a proper and musical send-off through the streets of Chinatown.

The band traces its roots back to 1911 and the Cathay Chinese Boys Band, the first marching group in Chinatown. For more than 50 years, this amateur band performed for its community at nearly every big event: Chinese New Year’s, the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge, Confucius’ Birthday, the 1939 World’s Fair and many elaborate funeral processions. [Source]

If you enjoyed the brass band in Saturday’s film of a Catholic funeral in Tonga here, you’ll love the Green Street Mortuary Band. It plays for Chinese funerals in San Francisco. The repertoire is Christian hymns accompanied by strong percussion and sporadic outbreaks of gong-smiting to frighten off evil spirits. 

What, Christian hymns at a Chinese funeral?

Yes. Years ago the Chinese heard British military bands in Hong Kong. They liked the sound. Enough said. A marvellous, mildly crazy custom was born. 

We last featured the Green Street Mortuary Band back in 2008, when our readership probably didn’t include you. 

Ain’t it brilliant?! 

The unquiet grave

8 February 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: music

Posted by Vale

How pleasant is the wind tonight
I feel some drops of rain
I never had but one true love
In greenwood he lies slain
I’ll do so much for my true love
As any young girl may
I’ll sit and mourn all on your grave
For twelve months and a day

The twelve months and a day being up
The ghost began to speak
Why sit you here and mourn for me
And you will not let me sleep
What do you want of me sweetheart
Oh what is it you crave
Just one kiss of your lily white lips
And that is all I crave

Oh don’t you see the fire sweetheart
The fire that burns so blue
Where my poor soul tormented is
All for the love of you
And if you weren’t my own sweetheart
As I know you well to be
I’d rend you up in pieces small
As leaves upon a tree

Mourn not for me my dearest dear
Mourn not for me I crave
I must leave you and all the world
And turn into my grave

Vicar says no

23 January 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral music, music

“The only time I have turned any request for a song down was the occasion I was asked to take a funeral for an elderly gentleman and they want to play “Relax” as he was brought in. I reckon I am about as liberal they come on some issues but even I could not maintain my dignity walking down the nave to such interesting lyrics.”

Clerical Guardian commenter Stiffkey here.

Quote of the day

9 January 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral music, music, Quotes

“The music-loving world, temperamentally, seems to divide neatly into two. There are those who spend their idle hours thinking about which songs they would like to have played at their wedding; and those who spend their idle hours thinking about which songs they would like at their funeral …  Planning one’s funeral suits the auteur in me: as the sole honoree of that ceremony, I shall choose what music (and what readings) I jolly well like. I incline to the melancholy yet uplifting: music designed to induce a grave contemplation of my good taste, spiritual heroism and sensitivity. I’d like to pretend that I’m the sort of person who wants their funeral to be “a celebration of life”, but really I want people crying awfully hard.”

Sam Leith here. 

What Adele teaches us about grief

14 December 2011
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral music, music

I first heard Adele’s song at the funeral of a young boy who died by suicide earlier this year. Songs are like that. They can become woven around memories of events that made a strong emotional impact on us. The depth of grief I witnessed among his friends was heartbreaking. One of them who spoke buy cialis tablets australia during the funeral could barely hold himself together. The life he had known was shattered; the future he might have had with his friend had been stolen from him. Grief had wounded him in a way he had possibly never known until that moment.

Read the whole article in the Irish Times here. 

Psych-Vikings

10 December 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: ashes, funeral music, music, viking funeral

Here’s some text from Consequence of Sound: 

Everyone deals with death in their own personal way, but psych-rock outfit Crystal Antlers offers a unique perspective on the topic in their music video for “Dog Days”. In said clip, a group of friends commemorate a dead friend by carrying around his/her ashes in various cups and cookie jars, as if said friend is still “one of the guys.” For a final tribute, they channel the Vikings by setting up a funeral pyre and spreading the friend’s ashes throughout the woods.

The song is called Dog Days. Find Crystal Antlers’ website here.

Pauper funeral

18 November 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: music, Pauper funerals

From the Toronto Globe and Mail:

I was standing in the parlour of a Toronto funeral home, waiting for the friends of the homeless man we were about to bury. The funeral director was supposed to be retired, but he had stayed on to see the business through the transition to a new owner. Together, we looked through the stately front window toward the strip club across the street offering “the finest in adult entertainment.”

In Toronto, the city pays funeral costs for those without assets. But the stipend for clergy is so paltry that the funeral director had trouble finding a minister who would agree to perform the service.

I had said yes, but on one condition: I wanted to meet the family of the deceased. I was not willing to perform a cold and impersonal service for a man I knew nothing about.

The only contacts he had were other homeless men and women. I arranged to meet some of them at a coffee shop to discuss their friend. Our conversation was rich and heartfelt, and I was honoured to be a part of it. Together, we planned an informal, simple, yet personal service to honour the deceased.

Just as I prepared to begin the service, a woman stood up and said that a medicine man had called. He was coming, but was stuck in traffic. Could I wait?

I could.

Twenty-five minutes later, a first nations healer walked into the room. He performed a sacred smudging ceremony to open the service. The next 30 minutes included readings from Leonard Cohen and Ecclesiastes, several eulogies, a toast to a friend and the rosary.

Then the funeral director stood up and said he would play the CD of Sanctus and Benedictus conducted by Eugene Stewart and the St. Matthew’s Choir, recorded live at the funeral of President John F. Kennedy. I still remember his exact words as he pushed the CD into the slot: “It is my firm belief that every person deserves such a sending off.”

Whole article here. 

Quote of the week

15 November 2011
Charles
No comments
Categories: music

 “Well, there’s me Nana’s funeral song sorted.”

Commenter Tipatina on the Guardian X Factor order cialis online uk liveblog after hearing Janet Devlin sing ‘Somebody to Love’. 

High profile life, low key death

8 November 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: music

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

I know, I know, 120 years is not a significant anniversary like a centenary, but can we spare a thought for Cole Porter, born in 1891? Two of the great American composer’s many classics, I’ve Got You Under My Skin and Just One Of Those Things, are popular secular choices at funerals. His own funeral instructions are quite interesting too.

The son of wealthy Indiana parents, he learned to ride on the family ranch at the age of six, a leisure pursuit that was to be his ultimate undoing. Attending prestigious educational establishments including the Harvard School of Music, his talent was clear early on.

After serving in the First World War, he stayed in Paris with his new wife, Linda, where they enjoyed lavish parties. Returning to the US, he fell from his horse, smashing his legs and making him wheelchair bound for five years, and enduring buy generic tadalafil online cheap many operations during the next two decades.

But it was during these years when he wrote wonderful songs from Every Time We Say Goodbye; Night And Day; Miss Otis Regrets, You Do Something To Me, and many more.

Then his wife died and his right leg was eventually amputated, after which he wrote no more as his health declined, and he fell into deep depression. He became a reclusive drunk in his apartment in the Waldorf Astoria in New York, refusing to attend a ‘Salute to Cole Porter’ night at the Metropolitan Opera House.

He died in 1964, and instructed for no funeral or memorial. He has a simple gravestone at home in Indiana where he’s buried next to his wife and father. His legacy lives on. He composed over 1,000 songs, and his hit musicals include High Society and Kiss Me Kate. He’s playing on my iTunes as I write.