There’s a small book in my bookshelf called “Canadian Vibrations”. Actually, it’s called “Canadian Vibrations Canadiennes,” a unabashedly bilingual collection of traditional Canadian folksongs along with songs by Canadian singer-songwriters. It was published in 1972 by the late, lamented MacMillan of Canada, back when Centennial euphoria was still in the air and it unashamedly wears its Canadian heart on its lumberjack shirt-sleeve. This book has no preface, no introduction; nor does it need one. Anyone who has opened a guitar case or a piano-bench and seen the dog-eared sheaf of song lyrics with chords scribble over the words will recognize it at once. It’s a published version of those stapled collections.
I thought of this book as I was listening to a new CD by the church choir of St. Paul’s Presbyterian in Caintown, Ontario. The choir is an eight-member group of women who have been singing together in various configurations for over ten years at weddings, funerals, parties, conferences, a telethon, and other local events. Its title is “Joyful Sounds from the Caintown Choir.” Like those guitar-case collections, this is an album of favourite songs by and for people who love to sing together.
The nineteen songs include a strong sampling of songs from the folksinger era, including
Kurt Kaiser’s “Pass It On”, Sebastian Temple’s “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace,” Miriam Therese Winter’s “Joy is Like the Rain,” and Jim Strathdee’s “I Am the Light of the World.” Others in the collection are also from the sixties and seventies: “On Eagle’s Wings,” “Surely the Presence of the Lord is in this Place” and Dan Schutte’s “Sing a New Song unto the Lord.”
“Joyful Sounds” also contains such church choir staples as “In the Garden,” and Septimus Winter’s “Whispering Hope” (which he composed under the pseudonym “Alice Hawthorne”). These are all sung in various groupings with solos, unison and part-singing, unaccompanied and with the piano of director Barbara Morrison.
It’s great (and still unexpected) to hear some songs from the global repertoire: Sing Amen (Amen Siyakudumisa), the Xhosa song resulting from the pioneering work of former priest and ethnomusicologist David Dargie; Siyahamba (which by now needs no introduction) and “When the Spirit of the Lord Moves in My Soul” and the lovely (but rarely sung) “You are Author and Lord of Creation,” Nepalese in origin, but very western in sound. These are all songs which bear witness to the Caintown Choir’s desire to explore musically. I would, however, offer the suggestion that the African songs not be accompanied with piano.
The album also includes Dennis Jernigan’s lovely “You are My All in All” and Melody Green’s “There is a Redeemer,” solid pop-based songs which invite simple, unaffected singing.
They’ve done their copyright homework, something you still can’t take for granted when you open a church choir CD. All the copyright information is printed in the fold-out, along with a history of the Caintown choir. It offers no contact information, for those who want to buy a copy, but you can find the church website here.
So to the good singers of St. Paul’s Presbyterian, Caintown: keep up the good work, keep learning new songs, keep improving your technique, and keep singing.
Now I think I’ll dig through my piano bench for my folder of favourite songs…
