Other hearts in other lands
I think it was either the summer of 1994 or the summer of 1997. The Indigo Girls were performing at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, and Beth and Robyn and Ellen and I went to see them.
I'm afraid I was kinda disappointed. The music was very very loud, to the point of being painful; I finally went and found someone who worked there and asked if they could give me earplugs, after which the volume was more reasonable but the sound was of course muffled. And most of the songs they performed were not among my favorites.
But at the end of the show, Joan Baez came onstage, and the three of them (and maybe someone else I'm forgetting) sang "Song of Peace," words by Lloyd Stone to the tune of Sibelius's "Finlandia." It was gorgeous; probably my favorite Indigo Girls performance, and I do like a lot of their music.
With the help of various friends, I found lyrics and music in the Methodist hymnal, and I learned that the Indigo Girls recorded the song on the B side of an obscure single. But I've never found their recording of it. A quick web search this evening revealed that there's a thriving trade in IG concert bootleg tapes out there, and that the IG have repeatedly stated that it's fine with them if bootlegs of their shows are traded as long as nobody makes any money on it; almost enough to make me go sign up for Kazaa or whatever the other post-Napster systems are and look for the song.
But in the meantime, if you want to hear it, there's a lovely MP3 rendition of the song online, newly recorded by a group I've never heard of before called Harmonious Combustion. I'm not entirely happy with their mixing in "My Country 'Tis of Thee" at the end, but it's still very nicely done. And hearing the song has a very different impact from just reading the lyrics. (But the lyrics are available too if you want them.)
It's my favorite patriotic song.
(I like "America the Beautiful" a fair bit too, for prettiness of tune and coolness of language in some bits, as long as I ignore the religious parts and the excesses of some of the later verses (I knew there were a bunch of verses but I had no idea just how many until just now). "Enameled plains"?)
Apparently Dar Williams also sang "Song of Peace" (it's pretty much always referred to simply as "Finlandia") on her "Out There Live" tour, but it didn't make it onto the associated album. Peter, Paul, and Mary have also performed it.
