At the suggestion of my up-for-anything friend Tim, I went to hear a concert given by the American Union of Swedish Singers. (Title, I kid you not: How Swede It Is) After an organ recital which included a surprisingly effective Wurlitzer rendition of ABBA's "Mamma Mia," we sang the American and Swedish national anthems ("Du gamla, du fria," of course. You had to ask?), then settled in for an evening of truly lugubrious choral music.
"Why are they all dirges?" asked Tim.
"What do you expect from a country with six months of winter?" I replied.
To make matters worse, this was pretty low-grade choral singing. The 400 singers were 2/3 of the way through one piece when I finally realized it was in English. I looked down at my program and saw that it was Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord."
"Doesn't sound like they found it," said Tim.
That said, we couldn't help but admire these people, who travelled from around the nation and from Sweden to bond over their love of something pretty unlovable. In a world of couch potatoes, I salute anyone willing to mash it up.
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3 comments:
I'm glad you didn't travel far for this experience. In '92 I followed a huge group of Slovenian Americans to Slovenia for this type of choral joining. Fortunately they weren't all dirges, instead it was the enthusiastic singing of songs about people singing in the hills or bars or while they worked or in bars after work. None of the songs were in English and most included motions depicting toasting steins.
Cheers!
Bork bork bork!
Did you know there's a google home page that's translated into Swedish Chef speak? Non?
Gu feend it! Bork Bork Bork!....http://www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/
And (if that weren't enough) there's also an English to Chef translator.
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~jbc/home/chef.html
Hefe-a a lufely dey
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