Oh well Oh well

The Angels Sang

We're at Snug Harbor, in New Orleans. The Pfister Singers are leading an audience, including us, in Christmas carols. The Pfister Sisters got together in 1979 to honor the legacy of the Boswell Sisters, who created, in the 1920s and '30s, what I regard as the highest form of vocal harmony.

            "We wouldn't let our own mother and father in the room when we were rehearsing," recalled Martha Boswell. "And the funny thing, we have done our best numbers when each one of us was so wrought up she wanted to slay the others. When we haven't fought we don't get the tricky harmony."

            On the other hand, recalled Helvetia "Vet" Boswell, "funny thing, we could be in different rooms in the house. I'd be in the bedroom, Martha'd be in the kitchen, and Connie in the living room, and we'd all start singing the same song at the same time in the same key." On recordings today you can hear the Bozzies trading parts and combining seamlessly in various swinging permutations of one alone, any two together, all three together, or one up front with the other two behind.

            Connie once said she never sang a song the same way twice, and the sisters often sing every stanza and every chorus of a given song differently. They improvise independently within their feel for one another, shifting meters and tempos, slowing down when you think they're going to rattle along and vice-versa. You can hear them trade parts and combine seamlessly in various swinging permutations of one alone, any two together, all three together, or one up front with the other two behind. Sometimes they veer off into familectic scat, sometimes they sound like bees.

            Tonight the Pfisters, two of whom are sipping Sazeracs, are feeding minimal, good-sport Boswellesque touches into the audience's ragged attempts at harmony.  We are singing the great old songs, the songs I have known longer than any other songs probably, the carols.

            And it’s awkward.

            Printed-out lyrics have been distributed. They lead me to dwell on the words more than usually.

            Now I see that "Let It Snow!" is the consensual "Baby It's Cold Outside." Which is cool.

            We also do "The Twelve Days of Christmas" in New Orleans terms: "A merliton in a palm tree, two king cakes," and so on, which is merry enough, especially since one of the Pfisters commends us for pronouncing merliton right. (It’s a kind of vegetable.)

            And we do "Away in a Manger" -- whose first stanza, I notice for the first time, is an object lesson in the correct distinction between the past tense of the verb "to lie" and that of "to lay":        

            Away in a manger,

            No crib for his bed,

            The little Lord Jesus

            Laid down His sweet head

            The stars in the heavens

            Looked down where He lay,

            The little Lord Jesus

            Asleep on the hay.     

            Aww. 

            But Jeez, there's something awfully bouncy about how blithely we take off on, for instance, this:

                        Light and life to all He brings,

                        Ris'n with healing in His wings,

                        Mild He lays His glory by,

                        Born that man no more may die . . .

As if we believe it. A New Orleans crowd, at least one that's unusually white (the only black couple here tonight gets up and leaves -- perhaps coincidentally -- after "Repeat the sounding joy, Repeat the sounding joy, Re-pee-eet-re-pee-ee-eet the sound . . . ing joy") is not generally speaking a religious body. Including me. But we show no secular compunctions about the hearty way we swing into . . . Here it comes:

                        No-o-el! No-o-el! No-el! No-el!

                        Born is the Ki-ing of Israel!

According to Wikipedia, "The First Noel" derives from an old Cornish folk song, which dates back centuries before Israel meant the modern nation. The Israel at issue here — the Israel that Christmas songs proclaim the little Lord Jesus to be the adorable ruler of — is, to quote etymonline.com, "the ancient people ... known in English since the Fourteenth Century as Israelites."

            So this ancient people is supposed to recognize this newborn King?

            It's not that we carolers are leaning into contemporary politics. But where do we get off jauntily claiming, just before "Frosty, the Snowman," that anything called Israel is ruled by our particular Savior. One whom we tout as the essence of peace on earth?

                        Joyful, all ye nations rise;

                        Join the triumph of the skies . . .

                        Let every heart

                        Prepare Him room

                        And Heaven and nature sing

                        And Heaven and nature sing:

                        "Joy to the world, the Savior reigns . . .

            Really? Do we want to be quoted on that? Isn't there enough trouble over there,   
involving even drastically untriumphant babies? 

            According to Wikipedia (which I don't mean to suggest is the gospel truth), the earliest published lyrics of "The First Noel," the Cornish version, did not begin with "The first Noel, the angels did say." They began, those lyrics, with the angels saying, "O well, O well . . . "

           So the angels were willing to settle?

Who can imagine Jesus, at this point in time, even wanting to be crowned king of kings? Did he ever want that? Jesus might want to suggest (how about some new carols along these lines?) that harmonies are tricky at best.

Because if there is one thing I know, it is that Jesus believed in the Boswell Sisters.