Grateful Wanderer

Many of the gigs I'm doing these days here in Tokyo are fundraisers for Tohoku quake/tsunami disaster relief. This tune was from one such concert. The video for it has been added to the Artsts Support Japan YouTube channel, and it can be seen here.

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posted by flapjax at midnite (8 comments total)

GRATEFUL WANDERER

i have travelled far and jouneyed wide
setting out on many a path alone
but i've been lucky to have had along the way
so many generous souls to guide me

among kind folks i've met
who've steered me through
there are those whose names i can't recall
and there are those whose names i never knew
still somehow they're all within me now

i was deep in the desert across the sea
i came down so sick i was close to dying
but i was taken in and nursed back to health
by perfect strangers in that faraway land

they say one step forward two steps back
and it's true it sometimes seems just so
still we carry on and make our way
down uncertain roads towards fates unknown

if your home is in some distant land
or if in distant lands you feel at home
either way there's times you'll need a friend
and i pray you'll find one in that hour

Copyright P & C Samm Bennett - all rights reserved
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:19 PM on April 18, 2011

That's especially nice. Sounds Irish / scottish. Is that insularity, or true descent ? Anyway, very, very nice ( let's listen to it again ).
posted by nicolin at 5:48 AM on April 19, 2011

Sounds Irish / scottish. Is that insularity, or true descent ?

Ah, that's the question! As far as my own personal lineage, I reckon there's a bit of Irish / Scottish back there somewhere, but mostly I don't really know. I'm an American mutt, a true son of Alabama, with only the vaguest notions of were my ancestors hailed from.

Now, as far as the melody itself, it's an archaic one, and almost surely of Irish / Scottish origin, but by way of Appalachia. Which is to say, it resides somewhere between insularity and true descent.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:47 PM on April 19, 2011

This is beautiful.

I agree with nicolin, but I'm thinking the other side of the pond. This sounds like a true Appalachian traditional folk spiritual that gets handed down from one generation to the next like a precious heirloom.
posted by snsranch at 5:06 PM on April 19, 2011

Appalachian. I dig.
posted by nicolin at 12:58 PM on April 20, 2011

Sorry, didn't mean to be redundant, just didn't preview!
posted by snsranch at 3:30 PM on April 20, 2011

Perfectly sparse and slow, nice job flapjax. The note you sing and the note you strum on the words "alone", "recall", "dying" etc. is especially beautiful. The constantly changing strumming is done really well, too. This is my favorite song of yours, I'd say.
posted by Corduroy at 6:13 PM on April 20, 2011

Thank you nicolin, sns and Corduroy for your kind comments.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:23 PM on April 21, 2011