While I certainly love traditional Christmas music, I also have a big soft spot for newly-written, original Christmas songs. After all, there was once a time when songs like "I'll Be Home for Christmas" and even "Silent Night" were new and original; at the time, who could have known that these songs would endure for decades or centuries?
A lot of artists write their own original Christmas songs, often as part of an album of more traditional songs; I've covered quite a few such songs here. More rarely, an artist will write several new Christmas songs. Melissa Pierre-Louis has gone a step beyond that and penned three of her own Christmas songs in three different languages as part of Operation Touch. The languages are English, French, and Kreyol, with the latter two being a tribute to the artist's Haitian background. "Touch Someone" (also known as "Lonje Men" and "Une Main" in the other languages) sounds the most like a "traditional" Christmas song, with the same kind of warm feeling that songs like "I'll Be Home for Christmas" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" have. "Sing We Noel" ("Fetebon Nwel" in Kreyol; this is the only song that doesn't have a French version) is much more exotic sounding, while "Thank You Immanuel" ("Mesi Emanyel" and "Merci Emmanuel") is somewhere in between the two sounds.
There's a lot of stuff on the Operation Touch site, but if you just want the music you can download it in either MP3 or WAV format (the latter is what you should get if you want to burn your own CD copy of the album). Artwork and lyrics are also available if you poke around the menus a bit. Happy listening!
URLs:
http://operationtouch.brbmi.com/ (main site)
http://operationtouch.brbmi.com/downloadmp3.htm (MP3 downloads)
http://operationtouch.brbmi.com/downloadwaves.htm (WAV downloads)
6 comments:
Yeah, "Sing We Noel" is done with the Bossa Nova style which is Brazilian...listen to the rim shots, they give a sense of imbalance that keeps you expecting...Bossa Nova is nice...
Thank you for this comment! That is a style of music that I am not very familiar with at all, which is why I shied away from anything more descriptive than "exotic". I love the way it sounds, and I'm glad to know a little more about it now.
Thanks again!
Hi Jeff, we've slightly modified the words of "Touch Someone" and we are trying to make it available at CD baby to benefit charities helping with rescue and recovery...this song was written in the knick of time... new version available on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhdzZ9e37dA
If you have other blogs, give this a shout out... appreciate it.
Oh, thank you! I've actually been keeping an eye on the Operation Touch site for the last week for news about the rewritten version. I do have another music blog, and I'll definitely make a post about the video now that I know about it.
Hi Jeff,
I really appreciate it. Please let me know the blog address so I can tell others about it.
Regards and keep up the good work!
Marc-Arthur
Hi Marc-Arthur,
Here is the URL for my post about the video:
http://totallyfreemusic.blogspot.com/2010/01/video-spotlight-melissa-pierre-louis.html
Thanks again for making me aware of this video. I hope my post will be of some help.
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