Refreshingly offbeat holiday tunes

The soundtrack of December is seldom drawn from nature. Adding sleigh bells to pop songs might evoke an imagined rural past, but their function is like pumpkin spice: an associative marketing gimmick used to brand the season. I’ll take the artistry of soft brush strokes on a snare drum over sleigh bells any day. Listen to the instrumental cut from the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s 1965 recording of “Christmastime is Here” in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and savor how percussionist Jerry Granelli creates the impression of footsteps in snow. Guaraldi’s score also taps into the melancholy undertones of this season of togetherness and warmth at the coldest and darkest time of the year.

Being of a nostalgic temperament, and feeling the weight of a hard year, I have two clear choices for holiday music if I wish to avoid the worst of the mainstream musical offerings. I can go with tradition, or seek the imaginative reinvention of the December songbook. Within these categories, I can go for songs that are contemplative and inward turning, or unabashedly festive and celebratory. How do you like your holiday music? Thanks to the internet, you can have it your way. Every chart and recording mentioned in this article can be found on YouTube.

Hearing old standards reinvented with fresh arrangements can be unsettling for purists. Not everyone feels that Billie Holiday should be sampled in a ska tune, but I am sold on the Yesking remix of “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” from the 2008 Verve Remixed Christmas album. No matter that the dance hall backbeat is Caribbean and the lyrics are boreal; the brass and ivory are pure winter. You can kick it up a notch further with The Toasters’ version of “We Three Kings” off their 1997 Christma-Ska album. True to the band’s NYC origins, this is both a ska and klezmer vehicle, with a lead trumpet that finishes with a nod to the spaghetti Western. Neither of these songs feels like a novelty, and both stand up well to repeat listening.

Staying with cross-genres for the moment, pairing klezmer with Christmas can be delightful, such as the Klezmonauts “Oy to the World,” or gloriously weird, like the heavy-footed lurch of “The Dance of the Latke Princess” by the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra. 

More common but less inspired are swing arrangements of holiday classics, the best known of which is “Nutcracker Swing.” Instead, try a slice of Postmodern Jukebox’s ragtime and hip hop version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” or “Silent Night,” salsa style, in Hilario Durán’s “Noche de Paz.”

There is plenty of Christmas kitsch to sift through before striking gold. James Brown did an entire album of Christmas music, none of which really stands the test of time, and the rationale for Bob Dylan’s Christmas album defies articulation. 

Perhaps because I once fronted, as a charter member, of The Hiram L. Weinstein All-Star Memorial Funk Project, I’m willing to dig deeper and with a more sympathetic ear into Santa Soul. For those of a similar mindset, I can recommend Albert King’s “Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin’.” The hot licks of the Jive Turkeys’ “Get Down Santa” are begging to be sampled, much as Run-DMC made good use of the best riff in “Back Door Santa” by Clarence Carter. Oh, to be young and hip with access to such old-school grooves.

If your old school is of the English boarding variety, then you probably have plenty of Kings Singers and Chanticleer on short rotation. To this I would add women’s voices, and for that it is hard to beat Anonymous 4 and The Mediaeval Babes. I favor sacred music with ancient roots, whether gospel or high church hymns. Listening to Odetta sing “What Month Was Jesus Born In?” gives me chills, and I once heard her do that in the largest Anglican cathedral in the world, down in the Heights at St. John the Divine.

If I am very lucky, one of these brittle December nights, I will walk out through the sifting snow with nothing else to hear but the wind, or stand in the shadow of the mountains while the coyotes howl at the stars. These are the sounds of the season that we do not invite inside when we deck the halls with evergreen, but without which our celebration of hope would be a hollow bacchanal. May your days be merry and bright. For every shadow there is light.

Tim Abbott is program director of Housatonic Valley Association’s Litchfield Hills Greenprint. His blog is at www.greensleeves.typepad.com.