Tonight I was listening to our local public radio station's old-time folk music program as I tooled around town in search of kitchen sponges.
In between supermarkets a sound came out of the radio that I can only describe as voluptuous.
Just over in the Gloryland
Where with the mighty host I stand
Just over in the Gloryland
It was supposed to be a mountain harmony gospel song with finger-picking guitar and banjo, a style I've grown used to in my twenty-odd years living in the South.
The instrumentals were authentic enough, but those voices: all-female, layered, classically-trained, warm, well-fed, and downright erotic, completely unlike the clatter and twang of authentic mountain women's voices. These were voices that were used to a pork loin roast, herbed gnocchi and a glass of berry-rich syrah, not beans, cornbread, and cold branch water in a mason jar.
It thus made complete sense when the host of the show credited the song to Anonymous 4, one of my favorite vocal groups, and the object of my extremely unreasonable fan's crush for quite a few years.
Anonymous 4 made its name singing sacred and secular medieval song, much of it in Latin, which added to the crush. They made such beautiful harmony that when they sang they made it seem as if nothing else in the world really mattered because just by singing they were granting the listener with reason enough to live.
(Sigh...)
Then I went to hear them sing in the local cathedral here, and almost DIED when, after the concert, they came strolling down the aisle, all four of them plus one member of the male chorale who sang with them that night.
And they actually talked to me.
(Melt...)
I thought Susan (bottom left) was going to be the nicest, but it turned out that Marsha (third from left) was. Just outside the cathedral a fireworks display was ending. But I saw fireworks the rest of the night.
Anyway.
In the intervening years I lost track of them, but they have apparently branched out into American music, and they have a new CD out called Gloryland, with the track I heard. Previously they released American Angels, also a selection of traditional sacred folk music.
Also, they are touring this fall and will be in our area in November.
I'm going.
It is a little disconcerting to hear fantasy-inducing voices doing, for example, shape-note singing, which is notoriously un-listenable. This is, after all, church music from an austere (though still gorgeous) tradition. But as Plato pointed out in the Symposium, eros or desire is a necessary first step towards the Good.
Uh huh.
Interesting. I haven't heard of them before, and I missed last Saturday's Back Porch Music. I'm glad you have a link to them (though, from what little I heard, I prefer their medieval music).
Posted by: M Light | October 02, 2006 at 11:27 PM