Dear Friend🌹 🎶 November News 🎶 🌹"The wind that makes music in November corn is in a hurry. The stalks hum, the loose husks whisk skyward in half-playing swirls, and the wind hurries on... A tree tries to argue, bare limbs waving, but there is no detaining the wind.- Aldo Leopold, (1887-1948) American scientist and environmentalistHope you are keeping well in whatever inner and outer weather November blows your way. Here in London, windows are peppered with raindrops and the horizon is submerged in a damp, grey cloud-duvet. Sudden appearances of sunlight send me hurtling outside to bathe in showers of golden leaves and draw a sharp, revitalising breath of breeze-cut air.
There's plenty of crunchy, sparkly creativity afoot in this last portion of 2023:
🌹 🎶
Across the Lines - a journey into the heart of human connection -
a new piece with vocal artist
Randolph Matthews on 11th November at
The Front Room as part of
Croydonites Festival 🌹 🎶
Warble-a-Wassail - Winter Warmer Workshop - Midwinter Melodies and Spiced Singing on Saturday 2nd December 2-5pm in the Church Hall
@ St John's SE19 2RX £20 includes non-alcoholic Apple Wassail & Apple Cake!
🌹 🎶
Winter Sparkle - come sparkle with 7 amazing choirs on Sunday 10th December - Doors open 2pm for 2.30pm @ St Johns SE19 2RX -
ticketsMore details follow below - or
drop me a line
🌹 🎶 Warm-Hearted Warbling 🎶 🌹O the hoot! O the hoot!How he trillups on his flute!O the hoot of Tinfang Warble!Dancing all alone,Hopping on a stone,Flitting like a fawn,In the twilight on the lawn,And his name is Tinfang Warble!The first star has shownAnd its lamp is blownto a flame of flickering blue.He pipes not to me,He pipes not to thee,He whistles for none of you.His music is his own,The tunes of Tinfang Warble!Tinfang Warble - J.R.R Tolkien, 1914.As the rain and wind sets in and the woes of the world are all around,
gathering together for a warm-hearted warble feels all the more precious.
Warble comes from words meaning
spinning, turning and
whirling and evolved into
singing with trills and quivers. The Ancient Greeks believed that music tuned the soul to the turning of the heavenly spheres, restoring inner and outer harmony. Modern-day physicists now describe the constant vibratory motion of all things, even those which appear stationary- everything is warbling!
Warbling has long been thought to whirl us back into wellbeing -
Ves Heill! Wes Hail! Be Well! - the Medieval Norse/ English Toasts - are recorded in folk charms and epic poems including
Beowulf and
Elder Edda. These were, of course, accompanied by a cup of spiced ale/wine, that age-old feature of innumerable rituals including the subversive Roman Winter Solstice festival Saturnalia, where wild warbling whirled social norms upside down.
Warbling well-wishes were also bestowed on food, animals and crops -
by Tudor times we hear tell of young men being paid to
Wassail apple orchards to ensure a good harvest. Christianity assimilated the hailing and wassailing into Hail Marys and carolling. Puritan white American colonialists vainly attempted to purge rowdy Christmas customs -
“I found the tide of wine and wassail fast gaining on the dry land of sober judgment,” Washington Irving wrote in 1886. Yule, Christmas and Saturnalian spices swirled in the Wassail Bowl taken door-to-door by midwinter warblers.
On Christmas Day in 1712,
Jan Kwaw/ John Canoe, formidable leader of Ahanta (now Ghana) blew up the gunpowder reserves of The Royal African Company's slave trading bases. Earlier that year he had driven the Dutch out of Elmira Castle and continued to defend his people from slavery until his defeat and exile in 1724. His story spread via slave ships to the Caribbean and from there to America, where
Junkanoo was celebrated in his memory on Boxing Day. In Saturnalian liberation, masked singers and dancers mocked slave owners and went door-to-door causing a commotion until they were given money and whiskey. Vibrant all-singing all-dancing, elaborately costumed Junkanoo parades remain a vital celebration of Caribbean culture.
So a good warble can turn revolutionary and tune us back into personal and communal wellness. Like Tinfang Warble, Tolkein's liminal half-fay
'leprawn' who could make the stars shimmer, when we claim our warble we can wassail some magical singing wellbeing into our wailing world.
Wishing you much warm hearted warbling this NovemberLook forward to seeing and singing with you soon Be well, breathe deep and keep singing loudly!
Drop me a line or sing me a song:katie@therosewindow.orgwww.therosewindow.org@katierosewindow on the Socials
