Ashokan Farewell (Memorial Day Special) 5/25/20

On this Memorial Day, I am going to cheat a bit and highlight a song that wasn't written until 1982, but sounds as if it were written in 1862.

Composer/Violinist Jay Ungar wrote “Ashokan Farewell” after experiencing an overwhelming sense of loss and longing after the annual Ashokan Music & Dance Camps (in New York) had ended for the year.

In 1990, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns was assembling his historical masterpiece, “The Civil War,” when, by chance, he heard Jay's recording and fell in love with it. So much so, Ken used it as one of the main themes for the series.

The song captured the feeling of the era so perfectly, viewers were amazed that it wasn't an authentic Civil War song.And when Ken used the track behind narrator Paul Roebling's reading of the Sullivan Ballou letter, the inherent sadness of the pairing was enough to bring people to tears (including me).To this day,

“Ashokan Farewell” is considered by musicologists to be timeless—retroactively. Most agree that the song would have been just as hauntingly beautiful to the folks of the 1860s, as it is to people today. Ken Burns himself told Rolling Stone Magazine, “It has all of the bittersweet tragedy and uplift that I think is contained in the Civil War,. It speaks directly to the heart.”

Since the 1980s, the song has been performed at countless funerals—and rightfully so. That's why, on Memorial Day, I can't think of a “Greater Song” to highlight.

Version #1: Jay Ungar, his wife, Molly Mason and their family band (with daughter Ruthy and her husband Mike Marenda).

Version #2: From Ken Burns' “The Civil War,” the original version by Jay, Molly and the group “Fiddle Fever” with narration by Shelby Foote & Paul Roebling: