Songs from the Yukon

Barbara Chamberlin of Whitehorse

(Music and Beyond, continued)

At the Tabaret Hall on July 6th, singers from the Yukon were showing what they could do; the first three songs were sung unaccompanied by a ladies' choir calling themselves The Persephones. They were directed by a forceful woman called Barbara Chamberlin who had also arranged or composed some of the items. At the lectern, to educate us about the Whitehorse region and Yukon culture, she introduced the songs and announced the many deviations from the published programme.

The actual order of items was as follows:

1. A part song entitled The Northern Lights.
2. Hudson Bay Boys, a cheeky 4-part number supposedly sung by the 1st Nation women to the gold diggers, who used to look forward to their arrival. "Where's the Hudson Bay boys?" went the chorus. "I'm getting older for you!" Or at least, I think that was what they sang.
3. Then came a song about a badly behaved husky: Dog of Shame. I think Ms. Chamberlin wrote the words as well as the music, which incorporated dog noises. She told us that in Whitehorse, there are more (sled) dogs than people. Anyway, "...they had to muzzle him."

For the remainder of the programme, three men came on stage, plus a few extra women, to join (or replace some of) The Persephones. This was the 8-part Whitehorse Chamber Choir, a more experienced group of 14 singers; with their arrival the standard of performance went up.

4. Gabi Gabi, a South African song.
5. Song For A Winter's Night, pianissimo, in close harmony, ending with humming in all the parts.
6. Cold Snap, a song with eccentric words, such as "I want to be a winter person..."
7. After the Gold Rush, a setting for choir of a Neil Young song.
8. Ms. Chamberlin introduced the 8th item by telling us, "Summer in the Yukon isn't very long, only about twelve days" so the next item was a spoof version of The Twelve Days of Christmas: The Twelve Days of Summer. The choir themselves had helped to compose the words, so (as well as I could make out) we had

12 Yukon drummers
11 moose a-rutting
10 Can-Can dancers
9 wolves a-howling
8 broken windshields (?!)
7 salmon swimming
6 ravens (doing something I couldn't catch)
5 gold claims
4 mosquito bites
3 blackflies
2 cariboo
and a bearcub in a pine tree

9. Baba Yetu, another South African song
10. An arrangement of the the late Leonard Cohen's ubiquitous Hallelujah, that people praise so highly. I shall now make myself extremely unpopular by adding that I don't like this song very much, neither the words nor the music, sorry.
11. High Wind. This was a song with piano accompaniment expressing Yukoners' longing for the north wind and "the midnight sky on fire" whenever they're away from the Yukon.
12. The last item was Ned's Lament composed and sung in gospel style, the story of a paddlewheeler that ran aground on the River Yukon. Ned was its Captain. Here's a recording of the performance I watched:

I wrote in the margin of my programme that concerts* allow you to stare at people without seeming rude. On the front row for this one, I'd been able to stare to my heart's content.


* The same applies in cinemas and at the theatre, of course.