Friday, October 16, 2009

The New "It" Music; or, The Byzantine Toddler

The Pascha right after Kittyboy came home, we got a CD of Paschal hymns from Greece. "From Greece" meaning that not only was the chanting entirely in Greek, there was no English on the packaging or the CD itself. This was GREEK.
And while it was majestic, transporting, awe-inspiring, and made me so crave to attend the church where that man chants, I could NOT sing along. Mr. Frank, at church, is on a whole different level from me in chanting, I mean, he Is A Chanter. But compared to me, the chanter on this CD is from another PLANET. It wasn't that I didn't know the hymns, it was that the style and ornamentation were so very Byzantine that I just couldn't follow. I was proud of myself just for being able to sing the harmony for the Glory To The Father.
Kittyboy wanted to take his Mary music ("Mayee! Faytokos! Mama God!) in the car with us to run errands. I grabbed that CD and what I thought was one of our recordings of chant in English, and gave him the choice. He chose the second - and boy was I mistaken, that wasn't a fancy font on the disc, that was Greek. It was the ultra-Byzantine CD.
Kittyboy's only heard the more ornate chanting three times, Pascha when he was four months, a year and four months, and two years and four months, and that's from Mr. Frank. He'd never heard anything quite like THIS. I figured I'd give it a couple tracks and see if he changed his mind. Change his mind he did not. We got to the first store in our three-store trip, and he didn't want the music to stop playing. I turned off the car - "Jesus music?" "No, we have to go inside now." "Jesus music inside? Okay." Thankfully he accepts me as a substitute for The Greek Guy. Every time I turned off the car, if the CD wasn't coming inside in his moist little hand, I had to start singing. Now it's the new sleeping music.

1 comment:

Mimi said...

That's so sweet! What a blessing.