I Thought I was Going to Write About a Concert I Went to, Then THIS Happened

So it's Lent, a time of year in which most Lutherans feel compelled to go to church. Epiphany? Not so much. But we are all UP in that Lent business. It should come as no surprise then that this Sunday found me and an absurdly large crowd at church. What was a shocker was this program

That's right, "Nicaraguan mass
with the swedish Victoria congregation's choir" singing along in Swedish.

So seeing the two violinists meant not that we were in for the treat of Swedish folk music but rather VERY skillfully played ranchero music played by a pack of Swedes who had been living in Nicaragua.

The choir director, who had arranged all this, then got up and introduced the Nicaraguan ambassador, who, along with her entourage, barely spoke German let alone Swedish, so she sat there smiling and giggling at some things, like most of us in the audience. Were I a betting person I would say that the choir director had done the translating too, and he'd put his all into it, but the rhythm of Swedish and the rhythm of Spanish have two different...everythings, so once they started singing, there was a lot of RUSHING TO FIT ALL THE WORDS IN THE BARS.

Oddly enough, the 6/8, 3/4 alternating time signatures lended themselves well to the bounce of

Roman imperialisten

But that was one of the minor victories to be had.

The most EnTeRtAiNiNg "creative addition" was this:

It's a verse on how G-d is in Nicaraguan towns, and the verse directly after (again, where I a betting person I would bet this line wasn't in the original tune) speaks of Her presence in a list of Swedish and Norwegian cities...and of course Berlin. Oddly enough, there were no Danish cities on that list, and that provided some very good laugh lines.

A [Seemingly Obvious] Note on Laughing in Church- at this point we had been shushed once (by a woman with snuss in her bag who left at communion, I might add) and the more forbidden it was to laugh, the more frequent and intense was the humor. It was truly something awful.


Insert random Spanish word here

The communion also turned into a bit of a fiasco, because they don't use ushers, and it was pointed out to me that Nicaragua isn't famous for its citizens' ability to self-regulate themselves into neat and tidy little lines, much to the consternation of the Swedes.

Then a couple more awkward tunes:





...some with a little audience participation:

the alternative is the 2 and the 4

And then came time for post-service coffee, when I took the opportunity to write in my program a quote from John Mayer's failed stint as a baseball announcer: