I'm not sure what this means .... but it's both funny and interesting (from a musical standpoint). A good friend of mine, Janine, follows the ancient Lithuanian faith of Romuva: it's a heathen path. She visited Lithuania this past summer, and last weekend at our Hof Dedication she presented me with a gift, an album of Lithuanian hymms to Perkunas, the Thunder God (Kulgrinda:Perkuno Giesmes).

Wonderful stuff! I like it alot. And yesterday, when my father-in-law was over helping to put up ceiling tile in the mud porch, I mentioned it to him - he's a bit of a fan of chants and general classical and folk music. He said he'd give it a listen - so when we went inside for a break, I brought it downstairs and put it in our Bose home theater stereo system - I'd had it upstairs in the library where I'd put it into iTunes on my Mac, and had only ever listened to it on headphones.

Dick liked it: but Willie loved it! On the second track, he sat in front of the stereo and howled, but only with the choral parts! It's a "call and response" type of song, and he'd let the lead singer make the call, and then howl in response!

I've only seen him react this way once before, and that was to a German military march from the movie The Battle of the Bulge. And that was really more of a "getting excited" reaction than it was a "sing along".

Very strange indeed.... especially since that's the only song on the album that he goes nuts over! Maybe he's just a "Thor's dog"!

Here's the lyrics to Willies favorite(in English - on the album it's sung in Lithuanian):

Our greatest, our God
Our greatest, our Thunder
With your power
    with your might
Unite us, strengthen us!

Our greatest, our God
Our greatest, our Thunder
The powers of the Oak-tree,
    the might of the Oak-tree.
Unite us, strengthen us!

Our greatest, our God
Our greatest, our Thunder
The brightness of the Fire,
    the power of the Fire
Unite us, strengthen us!

10:56:04 AM     comment []