As artists moving into new phases of life, we find ourselves caught between nostalgia for the past and a mixture of excitement and uncertainty for the future. What can we learn from those who came before us, and what might their experiences reveal about what lies ahead? These questions feel especially resonant in a world where wars are fought for familiar reasons, where people continue to be displaced from their homes as they have been throughout history, and where forms of governmental oppression that seem shocking are, in truth, far from new. Perhaps, by understanding our place within a larger human and cosmic continuum, we can find reason for optimism, and faith that there is, indeed, a future before us.
The Circle Game Music and Lyrics by Joni Mitchell, arranged by Tristan Zaba
This arrangement of The Circle Game is a world premiere, with the arranger present. There’s no-one better to describe the context of this song than Joni herself, in 1968:
“This is a song that’s been recorded by a couple of friends of mine, so maybe you know it a little better than the other ones. And if you do – if you know the chorus, wow – just sing along, cause it’s a chorus about people and growing old and growing young and carousels and painted ponies and the weather and the Buffalo Springfield. I wrote it for a friend of mine named Neil Young who, at the time that I knew him was a Canadian ex-rock ‘n roll type turned folkie from Winnipeg, Manitoba, which is just about as bad as Saskatoon, Saskatchewan I guess.
Anyway he’d just turned 20 years old and was very, very depressed, because he said “You know, all my life I’ve been looking forward to being an adult. You know everything – everything that I wanted to do they kept saying “Well lookit, wait kid. You know, wait till you’re older.” And suddenly here I am and I’m older and I can do just about all those things except I can’t go into the pubs ‘til next year. But I can do just about anything I want to and you know what? I wanna go out and play skipping rope and play jacks and all that stuff that I missed and left behind.” He was really depressed, so I wrote a song for him.”
Tristan has this to say about this arrangement: As a Joni Mitchell fan, I was delighted when McKenzie and Danielle asked me to arrange Circle Game. However, not wanting to do a completely straightforward arrangement, I opted to maintain and accentuate what I love about the studio version while still putting my own stamp on it. The result plays with empty space and attempts to give the impression of time constantly speeding up, as described in the lyrics. It also uses Joni’s picked guitar line in various octaves and speeds throughout.
Yesterday a child came out to wonder Caught a dragonfly inside a jar Fearful when the sky was full of thunder And tearful at the falling of a star
And the seasons they go round and round And the painted ponies go up and down We're captive on the carousel of time We can't return we can only look Behind from where we came And go round and round and round In the circle game
Then the child moved ten times round the seasons Skated over ten clear frozen streams Words like when you're older must appease him And promises of someday make his dreams
Chorus
So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true There'll be new dreams maybe better dreams and plenty Before the last revolving year is through
Chorus
Silent Cries from Another Day Music by Abigail Richardson-Schulte; text by Alice Jeon
The poetry from Another Dayis taken from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and COSTI Immigrant Services Refugees and Human Rights Child and Youth Poetry Contest. The poet of Silent Cries, Alice Jeon, was 16 when she wrote the text. The fisherman in this song, originally held captive by his traumatic past, is able to break free of his metaphorical chains by inhabiting the compassion and kindness that was once extended to him in the past.
Reeking of old fish and dried blood, he stands Alone Playing tug-of-war with a worn fishing rod, Its shape etched into his calloused palm. His once smooth face, now buried in deep wrinkles, Gazes at the distant horizon as he waits.
With the jerk of the handle, he begins winding the reel but Pauses As he catches a glimpse of his past, A part of himself he had long tried to forget. The fish dangles desperately, Wriggling to unhook itself from the spring pulling it from above.
Like a marionette controlled by a puppeteer, he had been Manipulated. He was given no choice but to play the role of a man, Blind from the propaganda of strong powers Deaf from the piercing lies of forces so high But also mute, having no voice.
The flood of memories slowly drowns the fisherman but Suddenly He remembers a hand that reached out to him, shining as a his single strand of hope. Likewise, the man quickly clenches the fish and unhooks it, Watching it swim away into deep waters, Coming from its mouth, not an inescapable string but a joyous cry of freedom.
Port of Hamburg Music and lyrics by Gabriel Kahane
The morning after the 2016 presidential election, I packed a suitcase and boarded Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited bound for Chicago. Over the next thirteen days, I talked to dozens of strangers whom I met, primarily, in dining cars aboard the six trains that would carry me some 8,980 miles around the country. The songs on this album are intended as a kind of loose diary of that journey, and as a portrait of America at a time of profound national turbulence.
Port of Hamburg is a more personal song within this album, recounting his own grandmother’s escape from Nazi Germany.
After school They chant her name She runs home She prays
But caught because her father Couldn’t quite believe What ought to’ve been plain to see ‘Til broken glass was at their feet And now they could not wait Some clothes and letters in a crate; Left the cat and drove away
Steamship Wool sky All seasick The tide
She held her breath until At last they’d got across But they weren’t allowed to dock All because the country didn’t want To let those people through Ain’t that a familiar tune? I have to sing it back to you
History Don’t have a chance Drowning in the false, fat Present tense
And why would you need To know anything That happened any earlier Than late last week?
Lucky one She got in-- Some papers signed By distant kin
And every night she wrote Six postcards sent back home And when she read the brief replies My grandmother would start to cry The careful script it could not hide The fear in every one She read beneath the L.A. sun Until the letters did not come
History Don’t have a chance Drowning in the force-fed Present tense Why would you need To know anything That happened any earlier Than late last week?
Foretell my Destiny Music by Myroslav Volynsky; text by Taras Shevchenko
19th century poet, writer and artist Taras Shevchenko was born to a peasant family during the period of Russian rule over Ukraine, eventually becoming a leading figure in the Ukrainian National Revival. His writing, particularly his poetry, is considered foundational to modern Ukrainian Literature. Thus, it is no wonder that contemporary Ukrainian composer Myroslav Volynsky has set much of Shevchenko’s poetry, once writing “Before I came to music, my foremost passion was literature, something I inherited from my father. I have always been drawn to the word.” Although this poetry is deeply cynical, it is notable in its hope for better days in the face of certain doom.
Tell me my fortune, Sorcerer, My hoary-whiskered friend! Your own fate you've already sealed; Of mine I fear the end... I'm still afraid to bring to naught My dwelling scorched with fire; My heart I'm fearful to inter With all its warm desire!... Perhaps my hope will yet return With the life-giving flood -- The bracing water of my tears Upon the sullen mud; Perhaps the winter will pervade My roofless emptiness, With pleasant coverings of snow My fire-scorched hut to bless; Will sweep it, bring it tidiness, And radiant light will find; Perhaps it will restore again The children of my mind; Perhaps once more I'll shed my tears And wipe my children's eyes; Perhaps I'll see, as in a dream, The sun of justice rise! Rise, brother, rise to humour me! Tell me, beyond a doubt, If I should pray, or weep today, Or bash my poor brains out!
Translated by C.H. Andrusyshen and Watson Kirkconnell
Sapokanikan Music and lyrics by Joanna Newsom
Sapokanikan is the Lenape word for the Native American village that once stood in the area we know now as Lower Manhattan. In this song, Joanna Newsom utilizes allusions to everything from classic literature to poetry to historical events to get to the heart of a big question: what is history, and what should we choose to remember? (See a great analysis of the lyrics here).
Sapokanikan is a ragtimey encomium to the forces of remembrance, forgetting, accretion, concealment, amendment, erasure, distortion, canonization, obsolescence and immortality.
The cause is Ozymandian. The map of Sapokanikan is sanded and beveled, the land lone and leveled by some unrecorded and powerful hand which plays along the monument, and drums, upon a plastic bag, The Brave Men and Women, So Dear to God and Famous To All of the Ages rag.
(Sing: Do you love me? Will you remember? The snow falls above me. The Renderer, renders. The Event is in the hand of God.)
Beneath a Patch of Grass, her bones the old Dutch master hid, while, elsewhere, Tobias and the Angel disguised what the scholars surmised was a mother and kid (interred with other daughters, in dirt, in other potter's fields). Above them, parades mark the passing of days through parks where pale colonnades arch in marble and steel, where all of the Twenty Thousand attending your foot fall (and the Cause that they died for) are lost in the idling birdcalls, and the records they left are cryptic at best, lost in obsolescence:
the text will not yield (nor X-ray reveal, with any fluorescence) where the Hand of the Master begins and ends.
I fell. I tried to do well, but I won't be. Will you tell the one that I loved to remember, and hold me? I call and call for the doctor, but the snow swallows me whole, with old Florry Walker.
The event lives only in print.
***
He said, "It's alright, and it's all over now," and boarded the plane, his belt unfastened, (The boy was known to show unusual daring-- and called a 'boy', this alderman confounding Tammany Hall, in whose employ King Tamanend himself preceded John’s fall!)
So we all raise a standard to which the wise and honest soul may repair; to which a hunter, a hundred years from now, may look, and despair, and see with wonder the tributes we have left to rust in the park: swearing that our hair stood on end, to see John Purroy Mitchel depart for the Western Front, where work might count. All exeunt! All go out! Await the hunter, to decipher the stone (and what lies under, now). The city is gone. Look, and despair. Look, and despair.
I Will Greet the Sun Again, from I Will Greet the Sun Again Music by Pouya Hamidi; Text by Forugh Farrokhzad, trans. Sholeh Wolpé Some notes from Pouya about this song cycle:
I Will Greet the Sun Again was commissioned by Canadian Art Song Project, exploring the themes of night, family, and intimate love, moving from dark to light, using the poetry of four Iranian women writers…The cycle concludes with I Will Greet the Sun Again…offering a message of hope and renewal as the dawn approaches again.
…The musical composition draws inspiration from Hamidi’s recent studies of Iranian traditional music, particularly its melodic and rhythmic tendencies. Other influences include vocal works from composers Olivier Messiaen, György Ligeti, and Maurice Ravel.
The choice of poets reflects a deliberate effort to highlight the voices of Iranian women, who have historically been marginalized in the literary canon. In light of the ongoing struggles in Iran, this cycle serves as a tribute to their resilience and a call for recognition.
I will greet the sun again, greet the stream that once flowed in me, the clouds that were my unfurling thoughts, the aching growth of the grove's poplars who passed with me through seasons of draught. I will greet the flock of crows who gifted me the groves' night perfume and my mother who lived in the mirror and was my old age's reflection. Once more I will greet the earth who, in her lust to re-create me, swells her flaming belly with green seeds.
I will come. I will come. I will. My hair trailing deep-soil scents. My eyes intimating the dark's density. I will come with a bouquet picked from shrubs on the other side of the wall. I will come, I will come. I will. The doorway will glow with love and I will once again greet those in love, greet the girl still standing in the threshold's blaze.
Gracias a la vida Music and lyrics by Violeta Para; arranged by Christian Hurtado Carillo
Gracias a la vida is one of the most famous Latin American songs of all time, with covers by artists around the world. The songwriter Violeta Para was a member of the Nueva canción chilena, a movement in Chile in the 1960s combining lyrics that highlighted political and social themes with traditional Chilean folk music. This song rounds out our program as a reflection on all we have experienced. It explores the duality within the human condition, acknowledging and appreciating both the positives and negatives that come our way, and choosing our own path through it all.
Thanks to life, which has given me so much. It gave me two beams of light, that when opened, Can perfectly distinguish black from white And in the sky above, her starry backdrop, And from within the multitude the one that I love. Thanks to life, which has given me so much. It gave me sound and the alphabet. With them the words that I think and declare: "Mother," "Friend," "Brother" and the light shining. The route of the soul from which comes love.
Thanks to life, which has given me so much. It gave me the ability to walk with my tired feet. With them I have traversed cities and puddles Valleys and deserts, mountains and plains. And your house, your street and your patio.
Thanks to life, which has given me so much. It gave me a heart, that causes my frame to shudder, When I see the fruit of the human brain, When I see good so far from bad, When I see within the clarity of your eyes...
Thanks to life, which has given me so much. It gave me laughter and it gave me longing. With them I distinguish happiness and pain-- The two materials from which my songs are formed, And your song, as well, which is the same song. And everyone's song, which is my very song.