Harvest Coverfolk:
Because Full Is The Best Kind Of Thankful
Last year about this time I posted a few songs about giving thanks; this year, I was so appreciative for the wave of support which followed my call for patronage that I jumped the gun, posting my favorite coversongs of thanksgiving in celebration of you, my beloved readers.
Sharing those songs just a few weeks early was worth doing, though it preempts the obvious set of thankful songs and blessings. But this, too, is a gift. For it allows us an opportunity to delve a bit deeper into the sentiment that drives the holiday. And under the trappings of thanks, we find the history your middle school teacher tried to get you to visualize: namely, the Pilgrims were really, really hungry.
It’s worth remembering that Thanksgiving has its roots in the agricultural cycle — that it is, first and foremost, about that which we are thankful for, before it can be about the thanking itself. The American holiday that, these days, has less and less to do with buckle-hatted pilgrims and brown paper headdress indians was ultimately a holiday about sharing the harvest, just as much about survival and celebration of the very atmosphere as it was about any sort of appreciation for an objectified earth-as-other.
Indeed, much of what we know about the old ways suggests that to personify the earth as worthy of thanks was not as natural as it might seem today. For its denizens, to imagine themselves as separate from the very ground and sky which brought forth foodstuff was anathema to the innate sense of oneness which we have lost along the way. Giving thanks, in this sense, is a construct. It is, instead, the very act of sharing table, and breaking bread together, which shows our connection to the earth, and to the fields which we have left fallow for the long winter ahead.
Some harvest tradfolk, then, on the cusp of a day of family and friends at table: a cornucopia of song, from barleycorn field to huntin’ ground, and from farm to garden, to remind us of our place in the cycle of life, here and now and forevermore. Enjoy the day, and the fruits of the earth. As the days get shorter, and we look upon our larders and storehouses, let us pray, as we do each year, that we have put aside enough for another winter.
- Tim Van Eyken: Barleycorn (trad.)
(from Stiffs Lovers Holymen Thieves, 2006) - Steeleye Span: John Barleycorn (trad.)
(from Below the Salt, 1972) - Traffic: John Barleycorn Must Die (trad.)
(from John Barleycorn Must Die, 1970) - Jordan Layne Bourland: Bringing In The Sheaves (trad.)
(from Back Porch Hymns: More Old Time Favorites, 2008) - Tim O’Brien: Let’s Go Huntin’ (trad.)
(from Cornbread Nation, 2005) - Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem: The Farmer Is The Man (via Fiddling John Carson)
(from Gambling Eden, 2003) - Amanda Shaw and the Cute Guys: The Garden Song (orig. David Mallet)*
(from Funky Kidz, 2008)
*Predominantly about planting, not harvesting, and not tradfolk, either. But harvest is a cycle, and we are all but part of it in turn.
PS: Like what you hear? Give thanks to the artists for the music; hit links to buy their best works, and become part of the cycle that is folk. After all, we cannot live on bread alone…
Category: Holiday Coverfolk | Tags: Amanda Shaw, Jordan Layne Bourland, Rani Arbo, Steeleye Span, Tim O'Brien, Tim Van Eyken, Traffic
November 26th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Not really in a Thanksgiving mood at the moment (mine was a month ago), but, the selections sure put me in a mood for a beer. Thankfully I have a good British dark ale available.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Excellent post, I love your music, as always but I love your sentiment today even more. And as I think about my winter stores I do wonder this year but not nearly as much as some neighbors this year and for that I am thankful. I needed that reminder today, xoxo