Holiday Music

This post has been in the queue for half a week now, while I fiddled and researched and tried to make it come together. I've decided enough is enough and I'm just gonna toss it all out there like an odd casserole of sorts and hope you'll use it as a jumping off to creating your own colle...er, casserole.

Lots of people wait all year until they can finally bring out the holiday music. Some start listening to it earlier than others. Some don't listen to it at all. And some listen to it year round, much to their family's embarrassment. But almost all those people are talking about holiday music like Silent Night and Jingle Bells. The holiday music I'm talking about is a bit on the spookier side. I love to have a soundtrack for October.

There are entire CD's that, although I listen to all year round, are particularly fun for this time of year. The soundtrack to Practical Magic, the soundtrack for Wicked, Buffy's Once More With Feeling, soundtrack to The Nightmare Before Christmas. There are also those party tapes you can buy with things like Witchy Woman and Monster Mash on them, or CD's full of sound affects for haunted houses. Fun. But still, I need more.

For a number of years I've created compilations of holiday music from my collection of CD's. I have one I made years ago which was just a hodge podge of things and then a couple years later I made two new ones, one that was moody and reflective for Samhain and another that was just for fun for Halloween. Of course I didn't write down all the names of the songs or artists, but I'll try to remember as many as I can to share with you here.

Samhain compilation

All Souls Night by Loreena McKennitt - several of her songs work well for a Samhain collection. This one has a beautiful music video available on Youtubes.

Burning Times - a "classic" pagan folk song, not historically accurate perhaps, but powerful nontheless.

How Death Comes by Medieval Baebes

Ravens by Gaia Consort - there are several new songs on their latest CD that would work as well.

The Witches' Reel is a Scottish folk song over four hundred years old. It's a round that is sung faster and faster and it never fails to fill my head with the images of men and women dancing 'round a bonfire.

THE WITCH’S REEL

or Gelie Duncan's Song

Cummer, go ye before, cummer, go ye
If ye willna go before, cummer, let me
Ring-a-ring-a-widdershins
Linkin’, lithely widdershins
Cummer, carlin, crone and queen
Roun’ go we

Cummer, go ye before, cummer, go ye
If ye willna go before, cummer, let me
Ring-a-ring-a-widdershins
Loupin, lightly widdershins
Kilted coats and fleein’ hair
Three times three

Cummer, go ye before, cummer, go ye
If ye willna go before, cummer, let me
Ring-a-ring-a-widdershins
Whirlin’, skirlin’ widdershins
De’il tak’ the hindmost
Wha’er she be

Here's a version of it, although I don't like it as much as the version I have, which is, as far as I know, no longer available.

I also found this video of dancing witches. Different song, different country, but wonderfully spooky. The link doesn't work anymore and I have no idea what they're singing, but it's still cool.



I've got some folk songs in there from Susan McKeown, and Niamh Parsons, Kate Rusby, and other folk singers that Hubby or I have in our collective music stash but who's names escape me at the moment.

Halloween compilation

Zombie Zoo - Tom Petty

The Vampire Girl from Orn - Emerald Rose

Spider in My Room - Barenaked Ladies

Dumb Dorothy - The Wyrd Sisters

Rocky Horror Picture Show Theme Song

Werewolves of London - Warren Zevon

Charmed Theme Song

Away Ye Merry Lassies by Priscilla Herdman et al on At the Turning of the Year CD

Ghostbusters Theme

So, not all the songs, but a good bunch to get you started. I don't know if I have the time, but I'd really like to do some new compilations as I have a lot of new and unusual music I could comb through since I last made one. Plus I could download some extra stuff from itunes. Time, time, never enough time.

And now to go stick all these CD's in my quasi-working CD player and do some spooky decorating.