We are billing this as a “Series,” but it is not actually what we normally think of when we hear the term, “Series”; that is to say, it is not, in reality, a collection of thematically-related individual episodes that are meant to be aired in sequence. Our CHRISTMAS REVELS “Series” is, in fact, one single program that is being offered in two versions: There is the complete, full-length, two-hour edition of the show, and – for those stations that would prefer it – a half-length, one-hour version, which can be broadcast on its own as a stand-alone, self-contained, 59-minute holiday feature. The one-hour edition of the program is identical, in most of its elements, to the second half of the two-hour version of the show; however, there is one performance segment in the one-hour edition of the CHRISTMAS REVELS Radio Special that is unique to that realization of the program, and different from the segment that appears at that point in Hour Two of the two-hour version. Radio station programming decision-makers are invited to license and air whichever version of the show best fits the needs and preferences of their station, their broadcast schedules and their audiences. The description below generally applies to both versions of THE CHRISTMAS REVELS Holiday Special; however, not all of the cultures, performers, or types, styles or genres of musical selections mentioned in this article appear in the one-hour edition of the show. Please consult the individual Program/Episode Pages for the two versions of the program for specific details as to what’s included in each of the editions of the show in the way of musical content.
“THE CHRISTMAS REVELS: IN CELEBRATION OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE 2023” is a compilation of musical excerpts, plus a few short poetry and prose readings, selected from the live Christmas/Winter Solstice Revels stage productions that are presented each December in nine cities across the United States. This joyous holiday broadcast special is available in both a two-hour and a one-hour edition.
CHRISTMAS REVELS performances have been described as entertaining collections of country, ritual and courtly dances, wassails, carols, songs and ballads, hymns and anthems, story-telling, poetry and drama. They are made up of sacred and secular folk materials, plus some composed popular and “art” music, from traditional European, Middle Eastern, Asian and American celebrations of Advent, Chanukah, Christmas, Dongzhi, the Feast of Fools, New Year's, Twelfth Night, Epiphany/Old Christmas, and other end-of-the-year festivals, along with various cultures' hereditary observances of the Winter Solstice, some elements of which date back to pre-Christian times.
The music in this year's CHRISTMAS REVELS radio broadcast is mostly traditional, and it comes from several different cultures and eras. We join Seventeenth-Century political detainees incarcerated in the notorious castle and prison known as The Tower of London, where the inmates make the best of their situation by welcoming in the Winter Holidays with a jolly wassail, Renaissance-era Christmas carols, and a children’s game-song that highlights the pleasures of the special foods that are enjoyed exclusively during the Yuletide season. Another segment of the program explores how the old-time music of Appalachia came into being when the traditional fiddle tunes, west-gallery church hymns and folk ballads brought to America by Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century immigrants from Ireland, Scotland and England, merged with the rhythms and the call-and-response group-singing of the West African people who were forcibly transported to the New World as slaves. In the mid 1850s, performers from the Chinese Opera arrive in the central-California gold-rush town of Columbia, California, to take part in a community-wide holiday celebration. There the Asian artists share a program of Chinese folk music and dance, including a song about the special kind of dumplings that are served and eaten only during Dongzhi, the annual Chinese Winter Solstice festival. In 1924, a group of Irish Catholics, several Jewish families from Russia and Ukraine, and a team of medical personnel from Mexico – all of them just arrived in the United States – find themselves stranded by the holiday and have to spend Christmas Eve night together in the Great Hall of the immigrant intake center at the Ellis Island port of entry in New York Harbor. At first suspicious of each other, they are soon enthusiastically sharing the folk songs and dances with which each of the ethnic groups regularly celebrates its particular Winter Solstice festival: Christmas, Chanukah or Las Posadas. Deep in the forests of late Eighteenth-Century Quebec, we observe the Winter holidays with music and customs that range in tone from the solemnity of the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve to the uninhibited and quite secular revelry of Le Jour de l’An (New Year’s Day). Revelers in New England greet the shortest day of the year with a gentle folk song that hails the morning stars, a piece we know as a Christmas carol but whose imagery proves that its roots lay in the ancient Winter Solstice observances of the pre-Christian era, and a nineteenth-century musical toast to “Good Old Santa Claus,” written by a woman who was a poet, essayist, feminist, spiritualist and love-interest of Edgar Allan Poe. In old Mexico, we are serenaded with a villancico, a Christmas carol, that may be the oldest piece of music in existence written in the European style by an indigenous Mesoamerican composer. From Nineteenth-Century Scotland, a rowdy bunch of Glaswegians entertain us with a musical account of their New Year’s Eve highjinks in the popular seaside resort town of Rothesay. And from Al-Andalus, as Spain was known during the eight-hundred-year period of the Middle Ages when the country was ruled by Arabic Muslims from northern Africa, we hear seasonal music from all four of the major cultures who co-existed in relative peace and tolerance during that time: the native Spanish Christians; their Muslim rulers; Sephardic Jews, many of whose families had lived on the Iberian Peninsula for hundreds of years; and the Spanish Romany people whose unique style of music and dance we now call Flamenco.
The enthusiastic performers heard in the program include the adult and children's choruses of each of the Revels companies, their professional brass quintets and instrumental folk-music groups and soloists, plus a distinguished line-up of featured guest artists, including the Whiskey Before Breakfast Irish traditional band (Washington, D.C.); Mexican-American actor-singer, Ricardo Holguin (Cambridge, MA); Chinese-American actor-singers, Joann Wu and Virginia Ho, Erdu (two-stringed Chinese violin) virtuoso, Shi Tao, and Yangqin (Chinese dulcimer) player, Wai U Wong (Oakland, CA); Trío Guadalevín, specialists in the traditional son huasteco, son jarocho and ancient Mayan music of Mexico (Tacoma, WA); traditional American music singers and instrumentalists, Jeff Warner and The Vox Hunters (Armand Aromin and Benedict Gagliardi) (Lebanon, NH); and Spanish flamenco, classical Arabic, and Andalusian music ensemble, Seffarine (Moroccan singer, Lamiae Naki and flamenco guitarist and oud player, Nat Hulskamp) (Portland, OR).
Because all of the Revels music is traditional – and accessible! – the show will fit into almost any radio format: classical, folk, AAA, world beat, eclectic or what-have-you. Last year, 139 public stations and thousands of listeners around the country enjoyed this holiday treat. We hope you'll plan to license the 2023 CHRISTMAS REVELS radio special and include it in your broadcast schedule – to the delight of your audience! – this coming Yuletide season.
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