I was curious what songs we’ve done for our secular solstices in Boston,
and wanted to put them together for thinking about what to do in the
future. I’ve sorted these in roughly descending order of how often I
think we should do probably them in the future. This is a combination
of:
How well does it work for group singing? Is it something you
can pick up when hearing for the first time, or instead something
widely known? Do the lyrics flow, is the melody interesting, does it
have a good rhythm?
How well does it fit with general secular solstice themes? How
often do I expect it to fit with the particular theme we use in a
year? Do I endorse its general message?
For example, “Somebody Will” is musically very interesting, almost
always pretty on theme, covers an important aspect of cooperation, but
then loses a ton of points for how the melody is super tricky.
“Christmas in the Trenches” is musically beautiful, very moving, and
intensely sad, but while it has strong themes of international
humanity that’s not enough to make it be on theme most
years. “Brighter than Today” is the one song all the Ray-derived
secular solstices do every year, so we should definitely keep
doing that.
Boston Solstice Songs
Link post
I was curious what songs we’ve done for our secular solstices in Boston, and wanted to put them together for thinking about what to do in the future. I’ve sorted these in roughly descending order of how often I think we should do probably them in the future. This is a combination of:
How well does it work for group singing? Is it something you can pick up when hearing for the first time, or instead something widely known? Do the lyrics flow, is the melody interesting, does it have a good rhythm?
How well does it fit with general secular solstice themes? How often do I expect it to fit with the particular theme we use in a year? Do I endorse its general message?
For example, “Somebody Will” is musically very interesting, almost always pretty on theme, covers an important aspect of cooperation, but then loses a ton of points for how the melody is super tricky. “Christmas in the Trenches” is musically beautiful, very moving, and intensely sad, but while it has strong themes of international humanity that’s not enough to make it be on theme most years. “Brighter than Today” is the one song all the Ray-derived secular solstices do every year, so we should definitely keep doing that.
If this is something you find interesting, and you’d like to help out in choosing music and/or leading singing at future ones, let me know!