John Ylvisaker, the Bob Dylan of Lutheranism

John Ylvisaker redux

I cherish connections.  After Lenten service at Desert Hills Lutheran tonight, good Cobber friend Roger Eggen brought me two articles on John Ylvisaker's death.  I could do no better than to add them to our Symposium.  John was a classmate and roommate of Joe Vold.  John's father was a religion professor at Concordia when my mother was there in the 30's.  John followed me as parish worker at St.Philip's Lutheran Church in Fridley.  We even dated - once.  These two articles tell his story well:

John Carl Ylvisaker, the 'Bob Dylan of Lutheranism,' dies at 79

By MIGUEL OTAROLA Star Tribune    MARCH 28, 2017

John Carl Ylvisaker was a rarity: A widely traveled musician rooted in Minnesota, and a self-effacing man whose music was sung by thousands across the world.

Ylvisaker, one of the most popular composers of contemporary Lutheran music, died March 9 of multiple system atrophy at his home in Waverly, Iowa.  He was 79.

Gracia Grindal, a professor of rhetoric at St. Paul's Luther Seminary for 30 years, called Ylvisaker the"Bob Dylan of Lutheranism."  It's no coincidence, she said, that both Ylvisaker and Dylan were highly influenced by the protest music of Pete Seeger.  "He was a genius, no question about it," said Grindal, who performed poetry with Ylvisaker.  "And he didn't have any sense of his genius."

Friends and family described Ylvisaker, who composed more than 2,000 hymns, as a prolific musician whose creativity never waned, even as his voice and body did in later years.  His hymn "I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry", used in baptisms, funerals, weddings and church services, is known around the world.

"He knew that it had to be recognizable," Grindal said of his music.  "So he used folk.  Because that's deeply memorable music.  It comes out of the ground."

Ylvisaker was born in Fargo in 1937 to a Norwegian family steeped in Lutheran tradition.  His father, Carl, chaired the religion department at Concordia College in Moorhead (Concordia's library is named for him); his mother, Marie Sletvold, was the librarian.  He received a degree inn music and history from Concordia in 1959.

Lutheran music took him across Minnesota.  He taught at schools in Hawley, Morris and Buffalo, and worked at churches in Fridley and St. Louis Park.  For years, he was the composer-in-residence for the American Lutheran Church, headquartered in Minneapolis.  It also took him far outside the state.  He toured the country and overseas starting in the late 1960s; wherever he was, he would study the melodies particular to that region.  Those influences, along with American folk music, were reflected in his Christian music.

"He got really curious about tunes from around the world, and he started putting biblical texts to these lost tunes," said his son, musician Jeremy Ylvisaker of Minneapolis.

It was a stylistic change from Lutheran music that was precisely composed and performed by trained vocalists and organists.  Ylvisaker's hymns, which he presented in his intense, warbling baritone, were loose and inviting.

"For John to come into church with a guitar and encourage the congregation to sing, as a cantor would do,was quite a shift," said his wife, Fern Kruger.

While those differences led him to be criticized by many traditional Lutheran hymn writers, they were also what made him popular.

"What John's music does is get you in touch with your heart," Kruger said. "He put the gospel into everyday life."

Ylvisaker had a song for every occasion, his longtime collaborator Hal Dragseth said.

He toured extensively until 2008, performing in churches, colleges and conferences.  "He would take me on tour with him," Jeremy Ylvisaker said. "We got to be two amigos for a couple of years, hitting the road."

Until late last year he continued working on his music, some of it still left unreleased.

"He's not dead," Grindal said.  "He's living in his songs."

Besides his wife and son Jefremy, Ylvisaker is survived by sons Jon-Marc and Matthew, both of Edina; stepsons Grant and Jeremiah Brase, both of Waverly; sisters Ruth Foster and Mary Nilsen, of Des Moines; and grandchildren.

A memorial service will be at 1 p.m. on April 26 at the Wartburg College chapel in Waverly, and will be live-streamed at wartburg.edu/knightvision.



John

Mary Nilsen, John's sister and my classmate in 1960 at Concordia, sent the following to our missionary friend, Don Nelson, originally from Mahnomen.  Don's first wife, Ruth Langemo, played at our wedding - Joe and Marilyn - in 1961.


March 9

My brother died this morning.  Early.  Taking his last breath with his wife at his side, cuddled in the bed the hospice people had just brought to the house.  If I stay in my head, I think--what a blessing. He doesn't have to suffer anymore.  It was time.  And all that is true.

But the marvel of the human condition is that we are not just heads, and I have been sadder than I ever thought I would be.  He was, after all, the brother who frustrated me so many times I cannot imagine even listing them.

I've had two or three "release" moments, when I gave up expecting him to turn around and look at his younger sister and say, "How are you doing.  Tell me about your work, your life, your kids.  I want to know," and really be interested.  But it never really happened.

But there were also other stories.  He was, after all, my first friend.  My constant companion for those early years when we ran free beyond the dead end.  My confidante through junior high crushes.  A supporter in my love interest in college.  An uncle to my children.  An encourager in their music.  The composer of music that I loved to listen to for many years.

I put on a couple of his CDs.  The first was mostly other people singing his songs, but the second one filled our home with that ever so familiar voice and the songs I know all the words to.  And suddenly I felt simultaneously his presence and his absence coexisting in my heart, always linked as they always have been.

I remember a funny story when Anders was a toddler and the family often listened to Borning Cry on their sound system.  They were at the house and John was passing through town and so spent the night.  We were sitting around in the living room when Patty got the idea that it would be fun for Anders to actually hear John sing the song he knew only from the sound system.  When John started singing, Anders ran over to our sound system and started crying and pounding on the glass, wanting the CD version.  Kai laughed and said, "Anders, we have here the 'real presence,' so we don't need the CD."

The marvel of modern technology is that the 'real presence' can be gone and the song is still present.  But, unlike Anders, I long for the real presence, the presence who vied with his brother Mark for control of the room when we siblings met as adults in Moorhead.  The real presence who had a wry sense of humor, telling me about his "Franz List" - the list he had in his head of all the times he had felt bested by someone, and whether it had evened out eventually.  The real presence who heard Solveig as a toddler singing around the room and stopped the conversation and listened.  "She has a voice," he stated.  The real presence who gathered up all the nieces and nephews and others who wanted to perform at family reunions and brought them together into a smashing band.  The real presence who...

The list goes on....But dear John does not.  Goodbye brother mine.