Saturday 18 June 2016

June 2016


June's SingWiv was a real mix: Leonard Cohen, Croatian and Jewish. Can't see you don't get variety!

We did an arrangement by Chris of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on the wire". If you don't know the original, you can find Leonard Cohen singing it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8fT7rnRotY

A Croatian harvest song (with a double meaning!) called "Polegala". This is in a Croatian dialect so difficult to translate exactly.

Polegala trava detela = "Grass which has been flattened"
Crljena Kitica = "Red bunch of flowers"
Rumena rozica lepa moja livado zelen = "Red rose - my nice green fields of grass"
Jo mi zela gizdava djevoj = "Possibly something about somebody taking the flowers"

Finishing with a Jewish nigun round "Haida". According to a Hasidic saying: Silence is better than speech, but song is better than silence. Nigunim – wordless melodies – have their roots in 18th C Hasidic movement in E. Europe (considered radicals at the time). Melody is expressive vehicle of the soul, the addition of words interrupts the flow of emotion.

Chris has included a version of Polegala sung by the Croatian LADO ensemble.

Here is the link to June's recordings.