Surrendering to the beauty of the choral polyphonal and acapella: ‘Ohio’ as you’ve never heard it before

My childhood friend Paul Sobanski wrote back in March that he associated a “few bands … with your place John; Nazareth, Humble Pie, Alice Cooper and Slade.” My place would be my parent’s bungalow suburban basement at 537 Nipigon St. in Oshawa, Ontario, circa 1972. While I still think Slade’s “In Like a Shot from My Gun” is a ripping good listen, while Humble Pie’s live cover of “Honky Tonk Woman” might at times sound better even than the Rolling Stones’ original, my typecast days (by myself, as much as friends) of having a main gig being a heavy rock fan are in some peril, or so it seems. Although if Sue Capon in a time shift were to drive her old orange Toyota Corolla atop Lake on the Mountain in Prince Edward County, like it was 1981 again, I might be tempted to perform a wee jig on her roof to the car radio blasting Loverboy’s “The Kid is Hot Tonight.” Many, many years later, I received an email from Sue in response to something she had read somewhere by me, asking, “Are you THAT John Barker?” Mea culpa.”

Blame it on choral polyphonal and a capella. Blame it on Ted Andkilde, another old friend, who back when I worked with him in the mid-1990s was a hell-driving, scrappy news photog, who never shied away from a good tussle for the money shot, or setting a land-speed record in a Kingston Whig-Standard white Chevy Lumina to the homicide scene. Last week, Ted posted on Facebook a YouTube link to “Ohio,” one of my favourite protest anthems, perhaps my favourite, of the 1970s. And a song, of course, I always associate with Neil Young. But this was not your father’s Neil Young version of “Ohio.” This was the Kent State University Chorale, in remembrance of the 50th anniversary of the events of May 4, 1970, memorializing them by performing an acapella version of “Ohio,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOibinIeyRg) arranged by Kent State Glauser School of Music alumna Brandy Kay Riha, and requested and approved by Young himself. In an unusual moment of succinctness, I told Ted, “Wow … few things leave me speechless. This did.” To which Ted replied: “Kinda blew me away. I’m not crying.”

Choral music is necessarily polyphonal – i.e., consisting of two or more autonomous vocal lines. It has a long history in European church music. A cappella is group or solo performance without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term a cappella, also spelled acapella, was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato style, a distinction no doubt better understood by my many smart and delightful musician friends (take a bow Jeanette Kimball, Suzanne Soble, Leigh Hall, Betsy Wrana, Wally Itson, Erin Taylor-Goble, Russell Peters, Kevin Lewis, Bruce Krentz, Serena Godmaire, Trevor Giesbrecht, Gareth Goossen, Helen Chapman, Joe Callahan, Jeannette Lupien, Steven Crooks, Ryan Flanagan, Danny Morris, Peter Frigo, et al.)

I might have been inclined to think of the Kent State University Chorale’s extraordinary rendition of “Ohio” as an exceptional exception to my long-held musical tastes, but for the fact that five days later I came across Thunder Bay, Ontario musician, singer, and songwriter Rodney Brown’s Facebook post linking to a YouTube video from 2018 of the Manitoba’s Pembina Trails Voices singers performing Ian Tamblyn’s 2007 classic “Woodsmoke and Oranges,” arranged by Rebecca Campbell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqL4WqBKNBc). How could I not give it a listen? Brown, who I saw perform once at a Home Routes concert in October 2009 in the basement Bijou Room of the Thompson Public Library, and Tamblyn, who I haven’t seen perform in person, but both for my money, two of old Fort William’s finest Bards of Superior.

“By woodsmoke and oranges, path of old canoe,
I would course the inland ocean to be back to you.
No matter where I go to, it’s always home again
To the rugged northern shore and the days of sun and wind.
We nosed her in by Pukaskwa, out for fifteen days,
To put paddle and the spirit at the mercy of the waves.
The wanigans were loaded down and a gift left on the shore,
For it’s best if we surrender to the rugged northern shore.
In the land of the silver birch, cry of the loon,
There’s something in this country that’s a part of me and you.
The waves smashed the smoky cliffs of Old Woman Bay,
Where we fought against the backswell and then were on our way.
I could speak to you of spirit – by the vision pits we saw them
Walk the agate beaches of the mighty Gargantua.
I have turned my back upon these things, tried to deny
The coastline of my dreams, but it turns me by and by.

“It tossed the mighty ship around, smashed the lighthouse door,
Sends a shiver up my spine, oh the rugged northern shore.
In the land of the silver birch, cry of the loon
There’s something ’bout this country that’s a part of me and you.”

With apologies for shamelessly “borrowing” a line from Bob Dylan, but perhaps something is “Blowin’ in the Wind” of Northern Manitoba’s boreal forest here at 55.7433° N latitude.

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