May Day Song: In the World Around

(0 comments)

In this time of year, in the late spring, modern paganism at least tends to focus its attentions on 2 main themes: The first is new life and fertility in all its glory and forms, and the second is celebrating animism, the idea that physical things in the world have some kind of living spirit. There's debate about whether the physical thing includes a spirit automatically, or whether it's more that spirits can move about on their own and have chosen to dwell inside that physical thing, but either way you wind up with something like a tree or stone or animal or body of water with a spirit of some kind attached. Once you have that idea, the next logical step is to try to make the spirit happy by giving gifts and labor to make their home a better place to dwell, in the hopes that they will return the favor or at the very least not bring you harm. So this song is about that idea, the process of identifying a spirit in the world around you and getting some ideas about what it might want from you, and why you should give to it.

Musically, this is a slip jig, which means 3 groups of triplets per bar. So counting this out is a "1-and-a 2-and-a 3-and-a" with each syllable having the exact same length. There are many recordings of slip jigs out there if you want to try listening to get the feel of it. It's one of my favorite rhythms, because the threes to me feel more "round" rather than the more "square" or linear sound you get with groupings of 2's, and with this 9/8 pattern you get threes inside threes that flow beautifully. The vocal line is intentionally quite simple, without an awful lot of leaping about, and harmonically it's very standard except for a few cheeky D major chords in an otherwise E major tune (you can substitute B for any of those, it will work just fine, I put them in because they're a fun surprise).

All works are copyright by yours truly, but may be distributed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 4.0. That means, in short, you can use them yourself and your group, and play the song to your heart's content both in private and in public, but must give credit where credit is due, and if you're planning on selling something involving this song we need to talk about that first.

Sheet Music

In the World Around

Recording

In the World Around



Patrons get access to weekly music, plus virtual concerts at higher sponsorship levels.Becoming a Patron

Comments

There are currently no comments

New Comment

required

required (not published)

optional

required