CHRISTMAS IN MY SOUL
When I was in college, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat was one of my favorite albums and Laura Nyro was one of my favorite singer song-writers. Posthumously inducted into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, she had commercially successful albums, and a number of hits (often covered by others). Although greatly appreciated and revered by many songwriters, musicians, and others in the music world, she is under-appreciated if not relatively unknown among the general public. Her songs were covered by a number of artists and many had hits with songs penned by her: The 5th Dimension with “Blowing Away”, “Wedding Bell Blues”, “Stoned Cold Picnic”, “Sweet Blindness”, and “Save the Country”; Blood Sweat and Tears and Peter Paul and Mary with “And When I Die”; Three Dog Night and Maynard Ferguson with “Eli’s Coming”; and Barbara Streisand with “Stoney End”, “Time and Love”, and “Hands off the Man (Flim Flam Man)” [Wikipedia]. She recorded with the trio Labelle and was a lifelong friend of Patti Labelle.
Musically speaking, it may be a disservice to Nyro not to introduce her with some of her more upbeat songs that bring together her stylistic interests in jazz-pop, “blue-eyed soul”, gospel, rock and folk for which she is perhaps best known. (SEE here) Her songs are at times intimate, confessional, plaintive, joyful, mellow, sensual, and dark. In her early albums common themes are romance, passion, love, loss, death, and street life. Later in her career she ventured toward themes of mysticism, feminism, motherhood, and environmentalism. An accomplished pianist, Nyro combined her musicianship with emotional singing and lyrics that showed she was spiritually introspective, a keen observer, street wise, and a social commentator with an increasing awareness and concern for people, animals, and the earth.
The song below is a Christmas song, a bluesy yearning lament written in 1970 juxtaposing the season of cheer and jolliness with what was actually taking place at the time in the United States (protesting and working for civil rights for Native peoples and African Americans, the need to address homelessness, and political dissidents calling for justice) and in the name of the United States in other countries (Vietnam War). Dishearteningly, it is a lament as relevant today as fifty years ago.
If you do listen, listen all the way through her painfully-slow, softly sung melancholy to her cry for and attestation of Christmas in her soul and her rueful insistence for “joy to the world” for all the brave ones and all the children who yearn for the deeper meaning, implications, and mission of Christmas in a world that needs to “come to the book of love.”.
CHRISTMAS IN MY SOUL
Come young braves
Come young children
Come to the book of love with me
Respect your brothers and your sisters
Come to the book of love
I know it ain’t easy
But we’re gonna look for a better day
Come young braves
Come young children
I love my country as it dies
In war and pain before my eyes
I walk the streets where disrespect has been
The sins of politics, the politics of sin
The heartlessness that darkens my soul
On Christmas
Red and silver on the leaves
Fallen white snow runs softly through the trees
Madonnas weep for wars of hell
They blow out the candles and haunt Noel
The missing love that rings through the world
On Christmas
Black Panther brothers bound in jail
Chicago Seven and the justice scale
Homeless Indian on Manhattan Isle
All God’s sons have gone to trial
And all God’s love is out of style
On Christmas
Now the time has come to find
Laws in that book of love the blind
People, you must read through thee, America
Deep and deep for all the high court
World to be
On Christmas
Christmas in my soul
Christmas in my soul
Christmas in my soul
Come young braves
Come young children
Christmas in my soul
Christmas in my soul
Joy to this world
from Christmas and the Beads of Sweat
Laura Nyro, 1970.
For a different taste of Nyro click here.