MusicMoves Me - Hearing the Bells and More

Welcome! It's Monday and time for another episode of Music Moves Me!

Who are the #MusicMovesMe bloggers? We are bloggers (and perhaps also musical elves) who blog about music each Monday and if you have music to share with us, you are most welcome to join! (Music Posts Only on this music train, please!)   First, there is XmasDolly,   Her co-conductors are:  ♥Callie of JAmerican Spice♥,  and ♥Stacy of Stacy Uncorked♥   Also, co-conducting  is  ♥Cathy from Curious as a Cathy♥ .  And finally, there's me. 

Every other week we have a theme, and on alternate weeks, we can blog about any music we wish.  But December is different.

Normally, in the month of December, the Music Moves Me participants concentrate on Christmas music.  But today, I am going to take a different track. (Track...get it?...I guess anyone who remembers 8 track tapes does.)

Actually, three tracks.  Because today is the first full day of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights of my people.  

My first song is  a parody of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.  The a capella group Six13 and their new release "Bohemian Chanukah" helped to brighten this season for me. The history is a little "off", but that can be forgiven - after all, it's a parody song, not a history textbook.

My second choice is a song by Peter, Paul and Mary called Light One Candle.  This performance is from 1986, and I feel this song transcends Hanukkah and has meaning for us all.

Switching this holiday music to its second track, I am inspired today by a Civil War era Longfellow poem that was made into a Christmas music classic.  Bing Crosby with "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day".

This song has a painful but inspirational history behind it.

The poem the song is based on is "Christmas Bells", written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  His son Charles had been seriously wounded in a Civil War skirmish in late November of 1863.  This poem is the anguished result. 
 
Loss  was no stranger to Longfellow but his son did survive his war injuries.

The last two verses, especially, speak to our country today: 

And in despair I bowed my head; “There is no peace on earth," I said;     “For hate is strong,     And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good-will to men!” 

 Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;     The Wrong shall fail,     The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

The rest of this post is on my third track, which features some music that can help us recover from loss, because this holiday season can be so hard on those of us who have experienced recent loss. 

Let It Be - The Beatles, a classic song from the Beatles.

After 9/11, the Scorpions song Wind of Change somehow called to me, and I listened to it over and over.

The Bad Wolves' cover of Zombie, a song written about another tragic loss - the death of Johnathan Ball and Tim Parry, who were killed in an IRA bombing in 1993. The song was written by Dolores  O'Riordan, an Irish musician, singer and songwriter, who performed with The Cranberries. She was supposed to participate in this cover but passed away (at the age of 46) right before the recording session was to have taken place.

Next week, an annual music tradition on my blog.

May all of my readers have a happy holiday season, and to my Jewish readers, a Happy Hanukkah.