In 1976 and 1977, a music teacher inspired by the small academic district of the canton of Langley, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver, recorded his elementary students singing popular songs in a school gymnasium. Two vinyl files were produced over the past two years, and families were invited to pay $ 7 for a copy. The recordings were largely forgotten – just another personal memory stored in a few houses in the West of West Canada – until a record collector fell on a copy in a thrift store in 2000.
Founded by what he heard, the collector sent a sample to a jockey record in WFMU, an eclectic radio station supported by listeners in New Jersey. The station has started playing some of the songs on the air. The listeners were affected by the haunting and ethereal quality of performance. In 2001, a small record company published a compilation called The Langley Township Music Project: Innocence & Despair.
The record has become an underground success. THE Washington Post Called it “an album that seems to capture anything but the sound of falling in love with music”. Rotation said the album “seems to summarize all the reasons why music is holy.” And dwight gamer of The New York Times wrote that the music was “magic: a kind of rally of Pep Céleste”. The listeners were moved by the ingenuous of young voices, the strange authenticity of the performance of children who are too young to understand all the adult themes of the words. As Hans Fenger, the music teacher who made the recordings, written in the lining notes:
The children had the understanding of what they liked: emotion, drama and making music in groups. Whether the results are good, bad, in tune or outside, it was not serious – they had launched. This was not how music was traditionally taught. But I never liked conventional “music for children”, which is condescending and ignores the reality of children's life, which can be dark and frightening. These children hated “cute”. They cherish songs that evoked loneliness and sadness.
You can learn the history of the extraordinary musical project of Fenger in the 2002 VH1 documentary above, which includes interviews and a meeting with some of the students. And listen below for a few samples of this touching quality of loneliness and sadness Fenger and others have spoken.
“ Space Oddity ” by David Bowie:
One of the most popular songs of Innocence and despair is David Bowie's 1976 of “Space Oddity”. In an interview of 2001 with Mike Callstein for Blur Magazine, Fenger explained the sound effects of the recording. “When I taught for the first time” Space Oddity “, he said,” the first part I taught after the song was the children who had. They loved it: they would go “ten! “They couldn't say strong enough; her lunch and started doing this (imitates a bottle that goes up and down the sleeve). I just increased the volume and refused the master volume, so it was really distorted. And that was the sound effect of “the odd space”.
The Beach Boys' ‘in my room':
The children recorded “in my room” by the Beach Boys in 1977. Fenger told calls that it was the song of the ultimate children. “This is the perfect song perfect for a nine-year-old child,” he said, “just like” Dust in the Wind “is the perfect philosophy song for a nine-year-old child. Adults may think that it is stupid, but for a child, it is a very heavy and deep thought. To think that there is nothing, and it is expressed in such a simple way.”
The Eagles' ‘Desperado':
Several of the recordings present soloists. A young girl named Sheila Behman sang the “Desperado” of the Eagles in 1977. “With” Desperado “,” said Fenger, “you can see him as a romantic story of Cowboy, but it is not how Sheila heard it. Who they were, and they make this music and fall in love with it. »»
Note: a previous version of this article appeared on our site in 2013.
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