Rise Up Singing: The Group Singing Song Book

Good day, I love all the books I bought here for my MHTP course, it is cheap and still very decent to use. the Rise Up Singing, Group book singing does this have new versions or is this the new one. Just asking, if anyone knows please let me know. Thank you, Arasida

When I first came across the first edition, at the Philly FOlk Fest, I literally jumped up and down in excitement. They were sold out and while we waited for a new supply to arrive a friend and I sang our way through the sample book. I had to buy the second edition a few years ago because my original copy was falling apart, quite literally. (But I still have it; couldn't bear to throw it away.) The second ed adds a much-needed songwriter index.You couldn't play the songs in this book if you don't already know the tune, since only chords are listed for most songs. On the other hand I can't open to any page without finding songs I know (and usually, love). Many of these are songs you won't find in other songbooks. All are singable. Included songs run the gamut of folk music (and that includes trad, Celtic and other ethnicities, folk-rock, singer-songwriter, and on and on) as well as Motown, Tin Pan Alley, a few showtunes, and more. When I first came across the first edition, at the Philly FOlk Fest, I literally jumped up and down in excitement. They were sold out and while we waited for a new supply to arrive a friend and I sang our way through the sample book.

In my earlier review here, I gushed about how great this songbook, but added a wish that the songs be indexed by author. In this current edition, that wish has been granted, helping me notice a few songs I'd overlooked before.Again, this is the best collection of songs you can actually sing, with guitar chords that usually work pretty well (occasional problems there may be in my skill level, not in the book!) There's no current Top 40 (there is some Motown) but these are the songs people have heard and sung and relaxed with and fought with and cried with and fallen in love with.....and been made to think with.

This book is always on the top of the pile on the piano or music stand since it gets constantly referred to in our folkmusic avocation. If you get the paperback, get it coil bound at Kinkos...It needs to be freely openable because it will be opened often.

I browsed over to this section just becasue I need to replace my copy of Rise Up Singing. After several years of heavy use, mine is falling apart. I disagree with a previous writer, in that I think this book has a wide range of music, ranging from very old songs such as 'The Cutty Wren' and 'The Coventry Carol' to 1910s ('In the Good Old Summertime'), 1930s (Woody Guthrie), Motown, protest songs, and modern folk classics (several songs each from Stan Rogers, Bill Staines, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, and on, and on...). Rise Up Singing owes some of its genes to Winds of the People, an older compilation (I think circulated by the Society of Friends) and it shows.It is certainly slanted more in the direction of those who wish to build a better world rather than those want to retain the status quo, but I find it fascinating to see how that status quo has changed, in protest songs from way back ('The Waulking Song') or about events from way back ('The Diggers') through the battles for universal suffrage and the labor songs of the 1930s and 40s, to problems of the present day. Plus, I just like to sing the songs. My only complaint is that, at least in my mid-1980s edition, the songs are not indexed by author.