Rounds

I thought I would start posting lists occasionally, breaking down the big list of camp songs into smaller groupings. This could be useful if someone's looking for a specific type of song. Let's get right to it with our first list: rounds.

A round is a song that can overlap with itself and create interesting rhythms and harmony.

Chairs to Mend
Donkeys are in Love with Carrots
Hi Ho (Nobody Home)
Kookaburra
Little Tommy Tinker
Make New Friends
Music Alone
Oh How Lovely is the Evening
One Dark Night
Our Paddles
Rose
To Stop the Train
Wha' Saw the 42nd
When You Hear a Cannon

Did I forget any? Are there any that you like that are not part of the Camp Ajawah list on the home page?

Edelweiss - Song # 32

No doubt most people are familiar with "Edelweiss" from the classic musical, "The Sound of Music." Richard Rodgers composed a brilliantly simple melody for Oscar Hammerstein II's lovely lyrics. If you didn't know better, you might believe it to be a old Austrian folk song. And thus it works very well as a summer camp song - more for the evening campfire than for the rowdier post-meal sing-a-longs in the mess hall.

It was the last song Rodgers and Hammerstein composed together. It appears twice in the film; near the end when the Von Trapp family sings it at the festival as a patriotic hymn, rousing the audience to join them. Good as that scene is, I prefer the first time it appears - when the children learn that their father knows how to play the guitar. He simply strums a few chords and tenderly sings to the children.

So - how about a few other versions of the song? Here is one by a popular Iranian singer who performs it as a protest against the current regime, just as Georg sang it to protest the Nazis:




And here is a link to a young girl who sang it on Britain's Got Talent and broke down in the middle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2SxoBTkfNQ

She did get a second chance - thanks to none other than Simon Cowell himself...