On Sunday, MAB and I went to the wedding of friends of ours, Harry and Rhonda. The wedding was beautiful and fun. The bride and groom started all the fun off in the choice of their music to walk down the aisle to (aside: in general, Jews don't walk to the traditional American wedding music for various reasons (the standard processional is from Wagner's "Lohengren" and the standard recessional is from Mendelssohn's "A Midsummer Night's Dream")). So Harry walked down to "Help Me, Rhonda," and Rhonda walked to "I'm Just Wild About Harry."
The fun continued into the dinner and dancing - the first dance set was close to an hour long. After about 45 minutes, the band stopped playing. So the crowd started singing and kept dancing. The band, figuring they were outnumbered, started playing again. Eventually we all sat down to eat the first course (after Harry finally said ad kan, hakafah alef and made us all sit down) (aside: what Harry said is the traditional ending to the first hakafah, or circuit, done on Simchat Torah, the day on which we celebrate the completion of reading the Torah and the beginning of a new cycle. It means, "Until here, the first circuit"). By the time we left the wedding, I was completely exhausted, but I'd had a wonderful time.
Last night, we went to a sheva berachot celebration for Harry and Rhonda. In the more traditional sectors of the Jewish community, it is customary for the bride and groom to not cook for themselves the first week but instead for members of the community to host dinners at which the seven blessings said at the wedding under the chuppah (wedding canopy) are repeated. At last night's sheva berachot, aside from getting an opportunity to celebrate again with the bride and groom and to see friends from the community that I hadn't seen in a while, I got a chance to reconnect with an old friend that I'd last seen about 4 years ago.
Also at the sheva berachot, the subject of Shape Note singing came up. I think the context was actually the song "Help Me, Rhonda," which was used in the movie "Short Circuit 2" as a way of using the telephone keypad to signal someone for help. But, regardless of how it came up, the subject of Shape Note singing was raised, and I mentioned that I took a class in college ("Folk Songs as Social History," one of my most favorite non-major classes that I took) in which we learned about shape note singing and that somewhere I had my sheet music from that class (aside to![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dancingdeer: do you still have your sheet music from Tony Barrand's class? I know it was forever ago). The scary thing is, I still remember some of the hymns I learned first as shape notes. It's odd, I must admit, to be cleaning for Passover while humming "the year of jubilee has come/return, ye ransomed sinners home."
The fun continued into the dinner and dancing - the first dance set was close to an hour long. After about 45 minutes, the band stopped playing. So the crowd started singing and kept dancing. The band, figuring they were outnumbered, started playing again. Eventually we all sat down to eat the first course (after Harry finally said ad kan, hakafah alef and made us all sit down) (aside: what Harry said is the traditional ending to the first hakafah, or circuit, done on Simchat Torah, the day on which we celebrate the completion of reading the Torah and the beginning of a new cycle. It means, "Until here, the first circuit"). By the time we left the wedding, I was completely exhausted, but I'd had a wonderful time.
Last night, we went to a sheva berachot celebration for Harry and Rhonda. In the more traditional sectors of the Jewish community, it is customary for the bride and groom to not cook for themselves the first week but instead for members of the community to host dinners at which the seven blessings said at the wedding under the chuppah (wedding canopy) are repeated. At last night's sheva berachot, aside from getting an opportunity to celebrate again with the bride and groom and to see friends from the community that I hadn't seen in a while, I got a chance to reconnect with an old friend that I'd last seen about 4 years ago.
Also at the sheva berachot, the subject of Shape Note singing came up. I think the context was actually the song "Help Me, Rhonda," which was used in the movie "Short Circuit 2" as a way of using the telephone keypad to signal someone for help. But, regardless of how it came up, the subject of Shape Note singing was raised, and I mentioned that I took a class in college ("Folk Songs as Social History," one of my most favorite non-major classes that I took) in which we learned about shape note singing and that somewhere I had my sheet music from that class (aside to
dancingdeer: do you still have your sheet music from Tony Barrand's class? I know it was forever ago). The scary thing is, I still remember some of the hymns I learned first as shape notes. It's odd, I must admit, to be cleaning for Passover while humming "the year of jubilee has come/return, ye ransomed sinners home."
