Podcasts: Listening to Music on a Printed Book

Keep the Fire Burning: The Folk Mass Revolution is a book about music, so it already has the inherent problem of all books in the genre of music history: One cannot “hear” the music just by reading about it on the printed page. This problem is enhanced for my book because I wrote about a body of music that is, for the most part, not performed or sung anymore. Additionally, although much of the music of the Folk Mass was recorded in the 1960s, most of those recordings are no longer around, and even if they can be found they are not in a convenient listening format.

Yes, those of the Boomer generation will certainly “hear” the referenced music in their heads. The very reason I chose the title Keep the Fire Burning was because it is a line from Ray Repp’s ubiquitous song, “Here We Are.” Boomer Catholics who were involved in their parish Folk Mass automatically “hear” the song’s next line when they see the book’s title:

Keep the fire burning,
kindle it with care,
and we’ll all join in and sing . . .

But what about younger readers, or people who wouldn’t touch a Folk Mass with a ten-foot collection basket?

When I started writing Keep the Fire Burning six years ago I wrestled early with this problem. I considered the idea of making a CD but, with multiple publishers and composers involved, the permissions process alone would have been prohibitive. I also thought about inserting the printed music in the book itself but only notation-reading musicians would be able to read that.

Meanwhile, as I continued my research and writing, I set about on the challenging search for the original Folk Mass records on eBay and other Internet LP sites. Yes, this meant I had to buy a turntable if I wanted to actually hear these historical tracks.

21st century technology eventually offered a solution in the form of the podcast, which really took off around 2005. With the right software and hardware, anybody can host their own radio show on the Internet. After digitizing the tracks of my Folk Mass records, it became a simple matter of presenting this music in an appealing and accessible podcast. Luckily, copyright laws allow me to freely podcast this music since most of it was released before February 1972, which is apparently a legal line of demarcation in the recording industry. I was also able to find public domain speeches of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Pope John XXIII, and other historical figures, allowing me to place the music within the context of its times.

As websites became do-it-yourself affairs, that allowed me even greater freedom to post my Folk Mass podcasts on the Internet, first at www.kencanedo.com. The only thing left to do was to offer listeners the most convenient way to subscribe to my podcasts so they don’t have to wait for a file to download or be unaware of a new podcast’s release. I am happy to announce that the Keep the Fire Burning podcasts are now available for free in the following convenient formats:

• iTunes (simply click on “Subscribe” and each new podcast will automatically upload into your iTunes library)


• RSS subscription feed

I just posted the latest podcast about 1968, a pivotal year for a decade that brought about much upheaval in the world and in the Church. Future podcasts will focus on the later chapters of the book, including the music of John Fischer, Jack Miffleton, Carey Landry, and the Dameans. There will also be a sampling of Ray Repp’s final FEL album, The Time Has Not Come True, and Sebastian Temple’s rarely heard The Universe Is Singing, the composer’s fascinating treatment of the theology of Teilhard de Chardin. You won’t want to miss these.

After I complete the podcast for the final chapter, I plan to continue doing podcasts for special events, such as CJ McNaspy’s 1967 Carnegie Hall concerts of Folk Mass artists. I will also produce some podcasts that focus on particular composer albums that I didn’t have to time to do in the first round of podcasts. As they say in the business, thanks for listening, and stay tuned!