Brown Gold

With pleasure, I direct my readers to this video:
Brown Gold (a song about composting)

The group is the Family Folk Machine, which is directed by Jean Littlejohn. She is an amazing musician. Not only can she do everything that I can (playing the organ, directing choirs), but she has a side that I entirely lack – folk music. She plays guitar and banjo, and most of all she founded the Folk Machine and has developed it into a confident fun-loving group of singers and players that has become important to our community. She writes most of the arrangements for the group. Besides the string band that accompanies the video, they also have a more “classical” string ensemble – violin, cello – made up of some of the FFM children, and Jean writes the arrangements for them as well. Their concerts, which are always a delight, include a healthy dose of group singing by the audience, and that is a central part of the FFM's mission.

Not all of their songs are as light-hearted as “Brown Gold,” for there is quite a lot in the folk tradition that is dark, and the FFM explores that side as well. In the same concert where they sang “Brown Gold” and (my favorite from that program) the song “Home-Grown Tomatoes,” they also had songs about migrant workers and the Dust Bowl here in the Midwest.

I am pleased that they have produced this, their first “music video.” I hope that there will be more. I am proud of the three girls who sing solos near the beginning; they are in our parish choirs. So are two other singers in the video.

Back in the spring, Jean suggested an idea that has developed into what we call the “St. Simeon's Choir.” It is an auditioned group of singers that join the regular adult choir for the First Sunday Evensongs, and it has allowed several people – including Jean, and two of the girls from the video – who are unable to be with us for every Wednesday night and Sunday morning to sing the Evensongs. Tomorrow will be our second service with the expanded ensemble.

In a lesser world, there would be only one kind of music, and it would be a gift of grace to have it. But our God is not only gracious, but extravagant. We have music of every possible style. This becomes a test for working musicians, a test that many often fail -- can we step outside of our own style? Can we listen with joy to something completely different? If not, we cannot long continue in joy even with our own music; it will wither and die.

And if there is not something like the Family Folk Machine in a community, keeping the folk traditions alive, something withers and dies in the community as well.

Thank you, Jean and the FFM singers and players, for the imagination and hard work that has brought the Folk Machine to our community. May it prosper and "grow a lot" and help our community to do the same.