Jay Ungar and Molly Mason

Ashoken  Farewell was composed by Jay Ungar, an American Folk Musician and Composer.  The music, beloved by tens of millions worldwide, has been described as haunting, mournful, hopeful, beautiful, poignant, and very emotional.  Many associate Ashoken Farewell with documentarian Ken Burns’ 1990 TV American Civil War mini-series. They mistakenly assumed it was a Civil War period piece.  It was not.  Burns heavily blended it in as interpretive background music.

Ungar observed, “Ashokan Farewell was written in the style of a Scottish lament. I sometimes introduce it as, ‘a Scottish lament written by a Jewish guy from the Bronx.’ I lived in the Bronx until the age of sixteen.”

Jay wrote the music in 1982.  It emerged, almost spontaneously, from his soul at the conclusion of another summer season at the Ashoken Center, a music and art camp in Olive Bridge, N.Y.

The lyrics revealed an expanded dimension he hadn’t considered at the time.

The sun is sinking low in the sky above Ashokan. The pines and the willows know soon we will part. There’s a whisper in the wind of promises unspoken, And a love that will always remain in my heart.

My thoughts will return to the sound of your laughter, The magic of moving as one, And a time we’ll remember long ever after The........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)