Christmas in the Trenches
Christmas in the Trenches

Author: John McCutcheon

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2006-08-01

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 1561453749

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This moving book about peace, understanding, and unity is based on the real-life World War I event known as the Christmas Truce. It is cold and clear on Christmas Eve night in 1914. Suddenly, a strange sound pierces the darkness. Someone is singing a Christmas carol in German. Francis Tolliver and his fellow British soldiers are holed up in muddy trenches along the Western Front. Their enemies—German soldiers—lie in wait just across a field known as "No Man's Land." As the Germans' carol ends, Tolliver and the other British soldiers sing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." Soon carols are being sung back and forth. Then a figure emerges in the dark, carrying a small Christmas tree with lighted candles. The British and German soldiers slowly leave their trenches—and the war—behind to stand together in the open field. This haunting story is adapted by award-winning songwriter John McCutcheon from his song of the same name. Henri Sørensen's traditional, full-color oil paintings reinforce the emotional power and dignity of the story. Back matter provides more information about the historical event, and a CD featuring readings of the story and recordings of "Silent Night" and "Christmas in the Trenches" is included.

Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana
Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana

Author: Joshua Clegg Caffery

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2013-11-05

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 080715203X

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Alan Lomax's prolific sixty-four-year career as a folklorist and musicologist began with a trip across the South and into the heart of Louisiana's Cajun country during the height of the Great Depression. In 1934, his father John, then curator of the Library of Congress's Archive of American Folk Song, took an eighteen-year-old Alan and a 300-pound aluminum disk recorder into the rice fields of Jennings, along the waterways of New Iberia, and behind the gates of Angola State Penitentiary to collect vestiges of African American and Acadian musical tradition. These recordings now serve as the foundational document of indigenous Louisiana music. Although widely recognized by scholars as a key artifact in the understanding of American vernacular music, most of the recordings by John and Alan Lomax during their expedition across the central-southern fringe of Louisiana were never transcribed or translated, much less studied in depth. This volume presents, for the first time, a comprehensive examination of the 1934 corpus and unveils a multifaceted story of traditional song in one of the country's most culturally dynamic regions. Through his textual and comparative study of the songs contained in the Lomax collection, Joshua Clegg Caffery provides a musical history of Louisiana that extends beyond Cajun music and zydeco to the rural blues, Irish and English folk songs, play-party songs, slave spirituals, and traditional French folk songs that thrived at the time of these recordings. Intimate in its presentation of Louisiana folklife and broad in its historical scope, Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana honors the legacy of John and Alan Lomax by retrieving these musical relics from obscurity and ensuring their understanding and appreciation for generations to come. Includes: Complete transcriptions of the 1934 Lomax field recordings in southwestern Louisiana Side-by-side translations from French to English Photographs from the 1934 field trip and biographical details about the performers

Soldiers of Song
Soldiers of Song

Author: Jason Wilson

Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Published: 2012-11-06

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1554588820

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The seeds of irreverent humour that inspired the likes of Wayne and Shuster and Monty Python were sown in the trenches of the First World War, and The Dumbells—concert parties made up of fighting soldiers—were central to this process. Soldiers of Song tells their story. Lucky soldiers who could sing a song, perform a skit, or pass as a “lady,” were taken from the line and put onstage for the benefit of their soldier-audiences. The intent was to bolster morale and thereby help soldiers survive the war. The Dumbells’ popularity was not limited to troop shows along the trenches. The group also managed a run in London’s West End and became the first ever Canadian production to score a hit on Broadway. Touring Canada for some twelve years after the war, the Dumbells became a household name and made more than twenty-five audio recordings. If nationhood was won on the crest of Vimy Ridge, it was the Dumbells who provided the country with its earliest soundtrack. Pioneers of sketch comedy, the Dumbells are as important to the history of Canadian theatre as they are to the cultural history of early-twentieth-century Canada.

A Collection of Southern Patriotic Songs
A Collection of Southern Patriotic Songs

Author: Francis Allan

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2023-03-05

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 3382501929

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Reprint of the original, first published in 1874. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.

The Horrible Void Between the Trenches
The Horrible Void Between the Trenches

Author: Dr. Clifton Wilcox

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2015-05-14

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1503564134

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Armies are virtually never ready to fight major wars. Warfare continues to change over time, which means no two wars are exactly alike. Armys leaders struggle to anticipate the next war, yet it is unrealistic to predict with perfection. The advent of new technology and tactics, unexpected adversaries, the vast size and complexity of military organizations, undetectable capabilities, and unforeseen goals signify gaps will exist between the war an army expects to fight and the war it must fight. Yet, throughout history there has been no army on Earth that has been accused of total unpreparedness than those that went to war in Europe in August of 1914. There is no conflict that more vividly conjures up the image of wasteful military incompetence than the First World War, in which a wholesale chain-of-command on both sides utterly failed to foresee the scale, duration and character of a war transformed by modern weaponry and mass mobilization. The millions cut down among the artillery barrages, machine gun fire and gas clouds have become the quintessential symbol of military unpreparedness and the inability to adapt.

Birdsong
Birdsong

Author: Sebastian Faulks

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2012-03-21

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 0307820386

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#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A mesmerising story of love and war spanning three generations and the unimaginable gulf between the First World War and the 1990s In this "overpowering and beautiful novel" (The New Yorker), the young Englishman Stephen Wraysford passes through a tempestuous love affair with Isabelle Azaire in France and enters the dark, surreal world beneath the trenches of No Man's Land. Sebastian Faulks creates a world of fiction that is as tragic as A Farewell to Arms and as sensuous as The English Patient, crafted from the ruins of war and the indestructibility of love.

Hummingbirds in the Trenches
Hummingbirds in the Trenches

Author: Kondwani Fidel

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2018-07-21

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 9781723519581

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"In Hummingbirds in The Trenches, Kondwani Fidel digests the circumstances of every day living in Baltimore. His honest recollection of growing up in his city--one plagued by poverty, inadequate schools, and violent murders--is a must read till the end. Fidel skillfully guides readers down a narrow line--his vulnerability on one side, his deafening power on the other. In the end, Fidel emerges a victor--overtly aware of the ironclad, historical systemic racism that continues to confine his community, yet still a hopeful, suggestive voice with a strong belief in change. His essays will make you cry tears of anger, but also tears of light-hearted laughter."--Stephanie Wash, Emmy Award Winning Producer and ABC News Journalist.