music for the rainy season

A while ago it occurred to me to look up the history of the Shaker song "Simple Gifts". Incredibly, until Aaron Copland used it in "Appalachian Spring" in 1944, it was apparently unknown. It's so familiar to us now that it's hard for me to imagine a world without that melody in it.





The music was re-purposed in 1963 to create the hymn "Lord of the Dance", which I heard at Episcopalian summer camp long before I knew about the Shaker song. I think the version I heard was by the early Christian rock band Petra, but I can't find any evidence they ever recorded it.





If you venture much into the obscure, you might have been briefly misled when a guy named Chris Clark released a very strange, squelchy, crunchy, wonderful electronic track by the same name but completely different music:





Then one day I heard this, and sometimes I just load up this video and listen to it a few times, because it's one of the prettiest things I've ever heard.





That's all.