The preamble to this ponder is that at lost holiday time (Christmas/Hanukkah in our family) I received (mirabile dictu!) a USB-output-equipped turntable, and I've been delightedly and delightfully ripping my old vinyl - cracks & pops and all, since they're part of what these discs mean to me - in odd moments, especially on weekend evenings.

So tonight I'm ripping "Joan Baez In Concert" on Vanguard, from late 1962. (Jesus Christ, that's 45 years ago). It's a very old disc, from the original issue - there was a reissue later that appended "Part I" and added three other tracks not present here.

One of the tracks is (natch) "Kumbaya" and it (also natch) got me to thinking about the disrepute that some of our sentiments from the time & place have fallen, and how those sentiments have been tagged with the title of this particular song, as in "Kumbaya moment" said with a sneer, or a least a slightly snide, supercilious snigger (is there a special word for alliteration that contains more than one phoneme, as in "sn"?)

Anyway, I'm guilty of such sniggery myself. I look back at us, poking our cheapo guitars in student lounges and valiantly imitating the wheezes of the early Dylan, whose wheezes should not have been imitated (but whose words should of course have been sung over & over again, as they have been).

But hearing JB singing Kumbaya, in a concert setting, and hearing the audience response - remember when it was not only ok, but expected, to sing along? Remember when it was not only ok, but expected, for an artist to sing a bunch of songs you knew well enough to sing along with, whether he or she had written them or not? Shit... - anyway, hearing the audience response, from people who are my contemporaries, and my slight seniors, and who are grandparents now as I am, and many of whom of course are long dead, I wonder what's so snickery about "Kumbaya?" What's wrong with the way we felt then? Interesting ponder, that.