An essay about Village Harmony
This summer, I attended a summer teen traveling session of Village Harmony for the fifth time. As well as the summer sessions, Village Harmony has a Yeargroup, which meets every third weekend or so during the school year; I have also been in one year of Yeargroup, making this summer my sixth session altogether. Ever since I first encountered Village Harmony, I have seen it as an amazing, loving, intense musical experience, and have longed to be a part of it every moment that I wasn’t there.
I first heard of Village Harmony when I was nine. In the winter of 1998, there was a huge ice storm in the north, and one of the venues for yeargroup that year was struck, and had to cancel their concert, so the group came here, to Clinton, and sang in my church. We were enchanted. My brother went to a summer session the next summer, and I waited very impatiently until I was old enough to be a part of the community too.
Each session of VH is a group of around 20 teenaged singers, who love music enough to want to sing for eight hours a day for a week, and then travel all around New England, giving a concert every night for two weeks. They-we-sing an amazing variety of music, ranging from American gospel or shape note music to songs from the Caucasus republic of Georgia to renaissance Italian masses, from music by contemporary composers to South African music to music from Bulgaria or the island of Corsica. There are three adult(ish) leaders for each session, who bring their own special music to the session.
This year, my leaders were Amity Baker, who brought songs by contemporary Vermont composers; Suzannah Park, who brought traditional Appalachian music; and Carl Linich, who brought Georgian music. I think this session was my favorite one so far in terms of the collection of songs we sang.
This was my third session with Suzannah; my first session was the last one she attended as a camper, and my second was the first she led. She comes from a family of American folk singers; her grandparents were the “mom and pop of the Chicago folk-singing scene.” She’s one of the best human beings I’ve ever met.
Amity had been on a session with my brother, but I’d never met her before. She was… unexpected. As was Carl, in many ways. Neither of them was quite the stern, upright authority figure one sort of expected.
Carl is the leading western expert on Georgian music. He encountered it around 1990, and for the past nine years has been living, most of the time, in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, with his Georgian wife. He was brought to Georgia by the music, a lure I find perfectly understandable.
There are various different kinds of Georgian music, from the different regions of the country. One of the most spectacular kinds is trio music from the province of Guria. Carl described this music as where “everyone wants to be the president;” in other words, each part basically thinks their part is the most important, and sings accordingly. This kind of music also has the incredible krimanchuli, or Georgian yodelling. I learned to yodel this summer, and it is incredibly fun. And loud. And it’s one of the few places where the yawning chasm that is my break (as I like to call it) actually comes in useful.
One of the other incredible things about singing Georgian music is the Georgian language. There are, I believe, five languages in the Georgian family, all spoken in Georgia, and they are not related to any other language in the world. And they use so many consonants that, in Carl’s words, “It’s like, ‘your language has performed an illegal operation, and must be shut down.’” Words such as “prtkhili” or “ghvtisgan” are common (transliterated, of course, from the Georgian alphabet, which has 32 letters). Fortunately, they sing a lot of nonsense syllables.
In addition to the music, what brings me back to Village Harmony every year is the people. It’s a different group every year, of course, but the general feeling is always the same: love. Usually, these groups of teenagers have nothing in common at first but a love of music, but by the end, we all love each other a lot. So much that most of us cry a lot the last day, because after three weeks of constant companionship, we all have to leave, and return to our normal, everyday lives, alone.
In my session, there were twenty-seven people: Suzannah, Carl, Gray, Hallie, Johanna, Emma, Sonya, Mary, Franziska, Sewell, Sophie, me, Amity, Sarah, Gemma, Frances, Laura, Anna, Sora, Sonia, Hanah, Jeni, Nattie, Ness, Max, Wheaton, and Ted. Of these, I had been in sessions with Suzannah, Hallie, Emma, and Mary. I’d also done sessions with Gemma’s brother and Nattie’s brother. For a group which does over a dozen sessions of various types a year, Village Harmony is an amazingly tightly-knit community. I hope I will be able to go again next summer, and that I might re-encounter some of these amazing people again.
I first heard of Village Harmony when I was nine. In the winter of 1998, there was a huge ice storm in the north, and one of the venues for yeargroup that year was struck, and had to cancel their concert, so the group came here, to Clinton, and sang in my church. We were enchanted. My brother went to a summer session the next summer, and I waited very impatiently until I was old enough to be a part of the community too.
Each session of VH is a group of around 20 teenaged singers, who love music enough to want to sing for eight hours a day for a week, and then travel all around New England, giving a concert every night for two weeks. They-we-sing an amazing variety of music, ranging from American gospel or shape note music to songs from the Caucasus republic of Georgia to renaissance Italian masses, from music by contemporary composers to South African music to music from Bulgaria or the island of Corsica. There are three adult(ish) leaders for each session, who bring their own special music to the session.
This year, my leaders were Amity Baker, who brought songs by contemporary Vermont composers; Suzannah Park, who brought traditional Appalachian music; and Carl Linich, who brought Georgian music. I think this session was my favorite one so far in terms of the collection of songs we sang.
This was my third session with Suzannah; my first session was the last one she attended as a camper, and my second was the first she led. She comes from a family of American folk singers; her grandparents were the “mom and pop of the Chicago folk-singing scene.” She’s one of the best human beings I’ve ever met.
Amity had been on a session with my brother, but I’d never met her before. She was… unexpected. As was Carl, in many ways. Neither of them was quite the stern, upright authority figure one sort of expected.
Carl is the leading western expert on Georgian music. He encountered it around 1990, and for the past nine years has been living, most of the time, in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, with his Georgian wife. He was brought to Georgia by the music, a lure I find perfectly understandable.
There are various different kinds of Georgian music, from the different regions of the country. One of the most spectacular kinds is trio music from the province of Guria. Carl described this music as where “everyone wants to be the president;” in other words, each part basically thinks their part is the most important, and sings accordingly. This kind of music also has the incredible krimanchuli, or Georgian yodelling. I learned to yodel this summer, and it is incredibly fun. And loud. And it’s one of the few places where the yawning chasm that is my break (as I like to call it) actually comes in useful.
One of the other incredible things about singing Georgian music is the Georgian language. There are, I believe, five languages in the Georgian family, all spoken in Georgia, and they are not related to any other language in the world. And they use so many consonants that, in Carl’s words, “It’s like, ‘your language has performed an illegal operation, and must be shut down.’” Words such as “prtkhili” or “ghvtisgan” are common (transliterated, of course, from the Georgian alphabet, which has 32 letters). Fortunately, they sing a lot of nonsense syllables.
In addition to the music, what brings me back to Village Harmony every year is the people. It’s a different group every year, of course, but the general feeling is always the same: love. Usually, these groups of teenagers have nothing in common at first but a love of music, but by the end, we all love each other a lot. So much that most of us cry a lot the last day, because after three weeks of constant companionship, we all have to leave, and return to our normal, everyday lives, alone.
In my session, there were twenty-seven people: Suzannah, Carl, Gray, Hallie, Johanna, Emma, Sonya, Mary, Franziska, Sewell, Sophie, me, Amity, Sarah, Gemma, Frances, Laura, Anna, Sora, Sonia, Hanah, Jeni, Nattie, Ness, Max, Wheaton, and Ted. Of these, I had been in sessions with Suzannah, Hallie, Emma, and Mary. I’d also done sessions with Gemma’s brother and Nattie’s brother. For a group which does over a dozen sessions of various types a year, Village Harmony is an amazingly tightly-knit community. I hope I will be able to go again next summer, and that I might re-encounter some of these amazing people again.