Episode 135 – Holy Music In America
I started out making a holy music episode. But when I was gathering records, I ended up having over 150 jams that I needed to play. Somewhere about an hour into pulling, I realized that this would end up being at least a two part episode, maybe even a series, so I just kept looking, trying to uncover every bit holy music music I could find in my library (this is where my extensive genre tagging comes in handy). Also, I’m pretty happy to say I didn’t rely too heavily on Folkways for this episode (probably will in later ones, though). There are only 2 songs from Folkways records here and I’ve got about 30 in the whole holy list. For no particular reason, I decided to start with a 160-minute episode for American-made music. From what I can tell, all of the artists here would probably call themselves “American” (whatever that means). There were a few things I wanted to include, like Cantor Abraham Brun, a Polish Holocaust survivor who immigrated to American after he’d lived about half his life overseas, but I figured that’s maybe stretching “American” a bit and regardless is probably better left for another holy episode. That being said, I didn’t dig too deep into people’s origins. I mean yeah, maybe some of the unidentified people in the Angola Quartet from Camp A aren’t “from here” but whatever. I tried to keep a broad enough definition of “holy” to include a variety of music beyond just the obvious gospel and hymns. This is A Thick Mist so I made sure to inject some black metal, hip hop, and drone. And it’s certainly not all Christian, plenty of it is just spiritual, like Vanum who sings “In return for tribute, a duty pledged. A mortal offering to divine ends.” Or evenly abstractly religious like the piece I played from Xela’s holy trilogy (The Illuminated, The Divine, and The Sublime) which is just a wall of sound, no lyrics. But of course there is stuff like the inimitable Reverend Gary Davis, the Handless Organist, Alberta Baker, (unironically?) singing “His Hand In Mine,” and the powerful acoustic soul of Pastor Champion. This goes all the way from 1929 (one of only two Frank Palmes songs ever recorded) up to April 2022 with Dälek’s newest dark beats and bleak verses. Something for everyone. 00:00:00 Reverend Gary Davis – I Want To Be Saved (from At Home And Church: 1962-1967) Davis is one of my all time favorites (along with another dude at the end of this episode). I love banjos, I love his voice. He has a ton of compilations/anthologies; this is one released by Stefan Grossman’s Guitar Workshop is fantastic but really they all are and you can’t go wrong with anything he’s done (fyi there’s also some recordings under the name Blind Gary Davis, which is the same guy). 00:02:47 Old Harp Singers Of Eastern Tennessee – Morning Trumpet (No. 99) (from Old Harp Singing) If there’s one genre of music outside of drone and metal that I would take with me to the grave, it would be sacred harp singing. There’s nothing else like it. 00:04:44 The Lord – Church Of Herrmann (from Forest Nocturne) Debut LP under a new pseudonym of Sunn O)))’s Greg Anderson. It’s very Sunny but it’s got it’s own vibe. Also don’t miss the single track he released with Robin Wattie (singer/guitarist in Big Brave) last year it’s amazing. 00:09:55 L. Ron Hubbard And Friends – Why Worship Death? (from The Road To Freedom) Bet you weren’t expecting some John Carpenter-esque New Age prog creep to show up on this list, let alone from Mr. Scientology himself, and with broadway singer Julia Migenes on vocals and Chic...