Rise Up Singing: The Group Singing Songbook
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Rise Up Singing: The Group Singing Songbook Customer Reviews
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The basic "hymnal" for our singing group
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This book is the one referred to as the "hymnal" by our informal sing-along group (I think one of he members picked it up from an autoharp class she had with Brian Bowers). It's a good description; we often find ourselves saying "Is such-and-such a song here? I'm sure it is, lemme see now ... ah. Turn your hymnals to page 62 ..."
As Pete Seeger mentioned in the introduction, there's bound to be at least song you know on every page. It's true that there's a strong populist sentiment in the editing process (which some critics would label "leftist" or "socialist" or "liberal"). That's to be expected, since it sprang from the roots of the folk movement of the last mid-century, which sprang in turn from the union organizers and community organizers who were addressing serious social dysfunctions in their songs. And they paid heavily for the right to compose, sing, and teach these songs, often with their freedom and their blood, a fact which many have forgotten or found it convenient to ignore. I doubt you'll get any apologies for their inclusion here, and certainly not from me.
But political-themed songs are a small minority here anyway, and they are easily outweighed by the lullabies, love songs and "fun songs" that cut across culture and politics. Even Rush Limbaugh would find some favorites here.
My only minor quibbles with the book concern occasional mistakes in lyrics or attributions, which detract from its value as a reference (which it was never intended to be). It is also not for rank beginners; you won't always be able to figure out which chords go where, particularly if your acquaintance is with a different version of the song than the authors had. (Bob Dylan's version of "Blowin' in the Wind" and Peter, Paul and Mary's version used different chords for the same melody, so which one should we be using ... the author's version or the most popular cover of it?) But If you know the song, the annotations allow you to fake the accompaniment reasonably well.
If you're playing an instrument, by the way, get the spiral-bound "Leader" version, which is the 9"x12" one. It's a lot easier to read from a few feet away, which is probably the distance from your eyes to your music stand. |
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