Idumea

A song for you today.

I’m a lifelong devotee of the American mountain music tradition, with an unending pull toward the minor key. It’s just what comes out when I open my mouth.

Years ago I heard this haunting tune performed as a banjo instrumental but couldn’t find much information on it then. But this got me started pulling on a thread of what would become a big ol’ tapestry of musical discovery— The search brought me to shape note singing and taught me why I tune the dulcimer the way I do and to a new understanding of how minor keys work in the first place.

[Like my ancestors singing this music before me, I don’t have formal training or music theory to back me up, so I find my way to this knowledge by dancing through the backdoor, usually…]

I eventually learned this tune is called Idumea, written in 1763 by a real fire and brimstone English songwriter & early Methodist church leader, Charles Wesley. This guy wrote over 6,500 hymns in his lifetime including some real bangers like “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”. Prolific & timeless, but I imagine he wouldn’t be the kind of guy who gets down with women like me... Luckily, we have 260 years between us and I haven’t been burned at the stake yet!

So a few years down the road, here’s my first try at an arrangement of this tune. I’m pushing myself lately to just hit record and see what happens live, so this is take 2 of 2 from the other night at our kitchen table. Once this had kicked around in my head a bit, I came back this morning and laid down some passes at the harmony.

It’s a sketch. You hear the air purifier kick on, the cat meows, something gets knocked over, Neon’s flash goes off… If I waited for perfection before I shared myself, you’d never see any of this work. But that’s why I’m a sketchbooker, too. If anything, being a lifelong performer has taught me that the really good stuff happens before you’re “ready”. And every time I push past perfection to make things with an open attention to a moment, I feel closer to Creator in all her tender and heartbreaking forms.

Now— this is intended for group singing, so pull up a chair to our table and sing along, if you’d like:

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And am I born to die?
To lay this body down!
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown?

A land of deepest shade,
Unpierced by human thought;
The dreary regions of the dead,
Where all things are forgot!

Soon as from earth I go,
What will become of me?
Eternal happiness or woe
Must then my portion be!

Waked by the trumpet sound,
I from my grave shall rise;
And see the Judge with glory crowned,
And see the flaming skies!

Sacred Harp 47b

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The animation loop here is one of my own, based on Woman Dancing (Fancy): Plate 187 (1887) by Eadweard Muybridge , and references Sufi whirling. I’m calling them my ghost ensemble. I love noticing how they fall in and out of sync like windshield wipers and the radio.

If you’d like to learn how to create looping animations like these, you might enjoy my PRO/FOUND Procreate Foundations for Illustration & Animation course, on-demand now through ViTra Academy.

xo,