Military Wives

There I was, all set up to talk about football and the Brontës, then I find the studio full of women singing. And aren’t they brilliant?
 
On this morning’s BBC Radio 2 Chris Evans Show Gareth Malone brought 20 of the 100 Military Wives choir (whose single Wherever You Are must surely go to number one for Christmas) to sing. There was a great atmosphere in the studio, but my Pause for Thought was in danger of missing the mood as well as the mark. So, I tried to bring the ‘choir experience’ into the script – before saying something about the honesty of genuine prayer.
 

The starting point was last Sunday’s dual experience of Haworth and Anfield:

Last weekend I had a bumper culture experience. On the Sunday morning I did a baptism and confirmation service in Haworth – the church where the Brontë sisters wrote their moody books. It was a good gig (as they say) in which several adults took up their responsibilities in the Christian Church. (I was back in Haworth the next day and it was freezing. I’d have called ‘Wuthering Heights’ ‘Brass Monkeys’…)

 

That afternoon I went with friends to Anfield to watch the Liverpool vs Manchester City game – the first time I’ve been back to Anfield for over twenty years. It was amazing. OK, the result wasn’t quite what I’d hoped for, but the atmosphere – and Liverpool’s performance – were just fantastic.

 

And what was it that linked the two events – Haworth and Anfield (and singing in a big choir)? Well, it was something to do with a shared experience, a sense of awe, and very vocal expression of support. OK, 50,000 screaming footie fans make a different noise to 100 worshipping Christians – and they use different language sometimes, too(!). But, they both involve being caught up in something that’s bigger than ‘just me’.

 
(And this is where the collective experience of singing in a choir comes in. For most of the Military Wives there had been little or no previous experience of singing collectively. Every child everywhere should get the opportunity to experience learning a musical instrument and playing in an orchestra or singing in a choir.) 

One of the things I do every morning is read poetry that was written nearly three thousand years ago. I’m not a freak, but the Psalms mix up the cries of individuals with corporate songs of praise, lament, hope, fear, shame, joy… and just about every other human emotion. With no holds barred, the poets shout at God, complain about their lot in life, curse their enemies, question everything about why the world is the way it is, and yet usually hold onto the fact that God holds on to them. It’s wonderful and edgy stuff – and often reminds me that we are free to tell God the unvarnished truth about how and what we feel.
 
OK, Liverpool didn’t quite respond to my vocal urgings to put the ball in the net more often. But, that’s OK. Cos our prayers in the morning in Haworth weren’t about forcing a result; it was enough just to tell God the truth. And then move on.

 

I guess this is particularly pertinent – in an unplanned way – to the experience of the military wives in the studio this morning. Being separated for months on end from your husband or partner who is serving in dangerous territory in Afghanistan must from time to time evoke fear, loneliness, frustration and anger. Yet many people think that prayer is something pious – telling a rather disconnected God what he wants to hear… whereas, in fact, prayer is supposed to be the free, uninhibited and honest expression of real emotion and reflection to a God who understands… because he has been here. (Which, of course, is what Christmas is all about.)
 
I hope Chris Evans’ promotion of the Military Wives’ single will be enough to get it to number one for Christmas. It would be a great achievement. Especially as it involves ordinary people (not stardom-seekers) doing something as ordinary as singing together and creating something that is greater than the mere sum of its parts. 
 

 
 

 

 

 

 

Three disclaimers and a plug

Just for the record, I note the following:

1. On BBC Radio 4’s excellent ‘The Report’ programme, broadcast last night, I was introduced as having been a vicar in Southwark before moving to Bradford. Not true. I told them I had been Archdeacon of Lambeth for three years and then Bishop of Croydon for eight years.

2. In the same introduction to my contribution to the same programme it was said that I had kept in close touch with clergy at St Paul’s Cathedral – which was part of the theme of the programme (whcih was really about the Corporation of London). In fact, I had said I had been in touch with Giles Fraser on the day of his resignation announcement and that I had met Graeme Knowles several times in the past, but didn’t ‘know’ him. I had also said that the Cathedral Chapter was autonomous and that the Diocese of London was not the same as the Diocese of Southwark – and that my real connection with St Paul’s was having been consecrated there in May 2003.

3. During the chit-chat on the Chris Evans Show on BBC Radio 2 yesterday morning I said that we can see toward Ilkley from our house in Bradford. Well, that’s true in the same sense that you can see towards the North Pole from where I live in Bradford. I meant to say Bingley – and the moors that lead over eventually to Ilkley. Locals who listened must have thought I am seriously geographically challenged.

Neither of those is a moan about the media! Although the first two need clearing up in case anyone connected with St Paul’s wonders what is going on that they don’t know about. It wasn’t me who said it, guv.

But, here’s a plug:

4. My daughter and son-in-law gave me a CD for my birthday which I listened to in the car today. Called simply Kitty, Daisy & Lewis, it is a brilliant, atmospheric recording of some great (almost primitive) rock and roll. It says on the back:

We took a year to record and mix this album in our back room. Over a period of time we collected a lot of ribbon microphones, tape recorders and ancient sound equipment and eventually built a workable studio inspired by Sun studios in Memphis and Chess studios in Chicago along with the makeshift chaos of Joe Meek’s studio in the Holloway Road in London. Our main objective was to capture the energy of our live gigs.

It is excellent, moody, raw – and I would never have come across if it hadn’t been given to me!

 

I can’t dance

If you have a problem, why broadcast it to over ten million people? Good question.

I was back in the Chris Evans studio at BBC Radio 2 to do Pause for Thought this morning after a six month break while I settled in to Bradford. I’ve missed it – not because I’m a groupie, but because (a) it is unfailingly enjoyable and (b) it’s an interesting challenge to write and deliver scripts that work in that environment. Chris and his team were very friendly and welcoming despite the pressures of running an auction for Children in Need.

In this morning’s script I wanted to connect to today’s ‘Dine and Disco’ theme. Basically, I can do the ‘dine’ bit, but the ‘disco’ gives me the wobblies. Some people can dance, some can’t. I try, but I’m hopeless. Unfortunately, at the end of the slot Chris asked me to show him how I dance. He stopped me pretty quickly. Now he knows… (Radio is always better than telly for activities such as this.)

I referred back to the two gigs I got to last week: Imelda May at York and Jools Holland in Bradford. Both were fantastic, but you can’t sit still to either of them. Rockabilly, rhythm and blues, boogie woogie – even I had to get up and … er … dance … sort of. Fortunately, it was dark…

But, one of my favourite Imelda May songs ( which she did in York) is Proud and Humble. I think it’s really a prayer in which, with her extraordinary voice and cracking band, she wrestles with the attempt to live right while also trying to make life happen for herself. Addressing herself to God, she recognises where she fouls it all up, but pleads that at least she’s trying to get the most out of the life God has given her in the world which he created and loves.

And my point in this morning’s script is that I think this hits the button. We all need to own up to our failures, but not fail to celebrate the good stuff. We need both.

I think this is why the two gigs last weekend were full of joy. (I tried to find a less cheesy word than joy, but I couldn’t.) Even songs about loss and longing made the audiences dance – perhaps because somewhere in us there is a deep recognition that, as Bruce Cockburn once sang, ‘joy will find a way’. It comes when we know we’ve got nothing to fear – because the God who made us still knows us, beckons us, loves us, still holds open the possibility of a new start.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: music hits the soul and demands a response. I concluded my script with the following profound observation: Several thousand years ago a Psalmist wrote: “You turned my grieving into dancing.” Many of us know the feeling. Even though, I fear, my dancing would have made him grieve.

And that’s when Chris asked me to demonstrate. And then played Genesis’ I can’t dance. Very funny. And very accurate. How sad is that?

(Chris also clearly knows Bradford and bigged it up. Good to hear such positive stuff about the place.)

 

I love this town

Actually, that’s the title of a song by Clive Gregson. I’d heard of him before, but not heard him. Last night he was the support act for Jools Holland at the brilliant St George’s Hall in Bradford. I know two gigs in three days sounds excessive (Imelda May supported by Big Boy Bloater in York last Friday), but I had a couple of days break – the only break between August and post-Christmas – and it was my birthday!

Clive Gregson was fantastic. Like Bruce Cockburn, you can’t hide when you are playing acoustic guitar in front of a live audience. Great songs, great musicianship, great chat to the audience – Clive set up a great evening. (Sorry for the superlatives, but it just was great.)

I have seen Jools Holland every year for the last decade or more – usually at the Royal Albert Hall or in Croydon. Last night he had the usual suspects with him: Ruby Turner, Louise Marshall and, standing in for the cancelled Shane MacGowan (ex-Pogues), the inimitable and always understated Chris Difford (Up the Junction, Cool for Cats, etc.). Other tour dates have Sandy Shaw and the epic German rocker Herbert Grönemeyer (who I once saw live in a stadium in Linz, Austria – long story…) with Jools, but I was happy with Squeeze‘s Chris Difford who has supported him many times.

This gig is worth every penny. It is sheer energetic joy from beginning to end – an evening devoted to brilliant musicianship from people who clearly love what they are doing and draw the audience (however reluctantly) into a serious bit of bopping. From the moment Jools walks onto stage the music doesn’t stop – boogie woogie, blues, ska, etc. See here for previous posts on these gigs. Sheer unadulterated joy. Even an embarrassment like me can’t help but try to dance.

I realise this is a bit of a tenuous link, but it was in my mind while writing. Yesterday began with the Remembrance parade at the Cenotaph in Bradford – always a moving event, but especially when a photograph of someone’s son killed in Afghanistan or Iraq is placed among the wreaths. Remembrance isn’t simply about history or the past. It brings the past into the present and reinforces the responsibility to deal justly in the present in order to vindicate the sacrifices of the past in order better to shape a common future. But, memory is not restricted to wars and the military; it drives us back to the whole of life’s experiences.

Much of the music played yesterday had its ultimate roots in the experiences of the slaves. Black music didn’t just give expression to the misery of loss and humiliation, but it also confounded that subjection with musical exuberance and joy that promised a future. The language of Exodus fired the hope of a people who knew that empires come and go, that ‘now’ isn’t the final word, that ‘justice will out’. It defiantly dances in the face of the miserable oppressor who above all fears losing his status or possessions.

Or, as Clive Gregson puts it on his album Bittersweet:

The door is open, somewhere, somehow,

There has to be a better life than the one we’re living now,

I won’t believe it’s for a chosen few,

The door is open, let’s go on through…

 

 

I can’t, but Imelda May

Dance, that is.

I’ve posted about her before, having first come across her when she supported Jools Holland at the Royal Albert Hall in London a couple of years ago. She is the only support act I have ever seen who could have gone on all night – the audience loved her. Last night we went over to the Barbican at York and she was brilliant.

Imelda May not only has a great voice, but she also can sing. From the high-energy Johnny Got a Boom Boom to the poignant Too Sad to Cry, she lives the song. From rockabilly through to ballad, she commands them all. And from the moment she walks on stage she commands the space with a charisma that is at once bigger than the venue and yet intimate in her connection with the audience. Bizarrely, you come away thinking the gig is not just about her – when she thanks the audience for coming out, hopes they are going home happy, generously thanks not only the band, but also the crew and venue management, you know she means it. This is an artiste who knows her audience, doesn’t take them for granted, and repays every penny (and more) of the ticket price.

But, it’s the music that is just brilliant. Her band are superb: tight drummer, excellent double bass player (how does he do that stuff?), evocative trumpeter/guitarist, and fantastic guitarist (and writer of some of the songs). Clever, entertaining and totally engaging, her approach is summed up in the song Humble and Proud: she struts the stage with charisma and confidence, belting out these wonderful songs, yet never overreaches herself.

Just go and see her. Don’t book a seat – stand where you can dance. OK, sort of dance.

The support yesterday was Big Boy Bloater. As I tweeted, I’d never heard of him before. But he and his band (the drummer and keyboard players reminded me for some reason of the Proclaimers) were entertaining, funny and promising of more to come. I didn’t get the CD. But, I will.

 

The unrivalled event

I am in Dresden for a Meissen Delegation Visit with the Archbishop of York until Sunday. I am the Anglican Co-chair of the Meissen Commission which handles relations between the EKD and the Church of England since 1991.

Apart from the hard work on theological and practical issues, we have also had some fun. This evening we attended a brilliant organ concert at the incomparable Frauenkirche – the church the Allies destroyed during WW2 and in which I delivered a Bible Study during the Kirchentag last May.

I am not a great fan of organ music, but this exposition of JS Bach’s Die Kunst Der Fuge (14 fugues and 4 Canons) played to a packed house by the Frauenkirchenorganist Samuel Kummer was just brilliant. Organists must be the best musicians there are – they have to use so many fingers and toes – and this performance was mesmerising.

It made me think about the importance of ‘live’ music. Like with preaching, it is the event itself that defines the performance and content. Recorded music is wonderful, but the live event is by definition unrepeatable, utterly unique, of the moment. It is risky – anything could happen and anything could go wrong, especially in something so long and complex as the Bachzyklus XVIII.

Why were there hundreds of people in the church, many of them young and including a number of children? What on earth brings such a cross-section of humanity to a church to listen to an organ that is so high up that you cannot see the organist anyway? Why bother to turn out on a cold night to listen to something you could hear on a CD in the warmth and comfort of your own lounge – and probably for the same price?

The answer is probably complex. But, the combination of architecture, ambience, the shared experience, the live nature of the event, the atmosphere and the sheer artistry all combine to draw people to experience something unique and uniquely beautiful. You just can’t imitate in your living room the volume and nature of a major organ played in a vast and beautiful space.

It is a pity that the ‘event’ is so easily traded for a lesser, more accessible experience. I wonder if the experience of ‘live’ music is something that every child should be exposed to early on – something that should be commended and recommended to anyone wanting to know they are alive. And I wonder if people like me – those who preach, debate, communicate in a variety of media and contexts – need to make the ‘event’ so unique, so unmissable, so unrepeatable that curiosity and the need to discover one’s pulse will draw people to it?

Musings in Dresden after a long day.

Tomorrow we continue the business as we go to Meissen itself to begin celebrating 20 years of the Meissen Agreement. We end back at the Frauenkirche in Dresden on Sunday before the long journey back home.

 

Imelda gets it

Several years ago I was at the Royal Albert Hall for the annual Jools Holland gig. Support acts are sometimes a bit hit and miss, but that year it was stunning.

I’d never heard of Imelda May, and this was her first performance on the big stage. From the moment she walked on she had the audience of 7,500 people eating out of her hand. Not only was the music fantastic and her voice immense, but she commanded the stage with a charisma that, I think, took everybody by surprise. It’s not every support act that you want to keep going at the expense of the main act, but in this case she could have done another hour.

I’ve just (finally, and after meaning to do it for a year) got her album Mayhem. It is superb. The songwriting ranges through love and loss to eternity and sadness via a psycho and a prayer. Even a waltz finds its way through the energetic rockabilly and her voice is perfect. But, what struck me (as it would) is the insight you get from one song into spirituality. Proud and humble is a prayer, a confession, one that stands in its simplicity with the openness of a Leonard Cohen. Here’s a stripped down studio version of it:

Like Cohen, she holds together the honest reality of human living in which we try to be godly, but get it wrong a million times. It’s Cohen’s ‘holy and broken hallelujah’ – the two held together in a confusing life that drives us through passion and prayer to some sort of muddle. But, again like Cohen, she doesn’t make excuses for ‘living’ and all that’s involved in milking life’s opportunities for love and laughter – even when they lead to pain and tears.

Oh, I made the most from what I knew then / But if I lived it over I’d do the same again / I try, I try for You to please / But you know I’m only human, You created me.

She recognises humility at failed attempts to be holy, but can look God in the eye and say, “But, at least I lived.” There’s something here about the parable of the talents in which the guys who risked losing their deposits got praised and the one who buried his in order to protect it from harm got damned. The song concludes:

Well I’m humbled by You and thankful oh Lord / Istudied Your life and Your holy word / But I hold my head just a little high / ‘Cos I’m proud that I got on with this given life.

That’s not arrogance; that’s honesty. Life is for living. And Imelda may have understood it better than some of us.

Whatever. The whole album is brilliant. Not one weak song. And Marc Almond’s Tainted Love is painted in fresh colours while Johnny got a Boom Boom just makes you want to dance.

 

Beauty in the darkness

All around the world is going mad. Regimes we have armed, funded and cosied up to are now being threatened with war crimes trials. The victors always implement the ‘justice’ and write the histories. So far, anyway. And the prophets warn that justice will one day be done.

Not for the first time, the epic lines of Leonard Cohen penetrate the fog of misery. Having growled his way through the list of drugs he had taken over the years, he concluded with a mischievous light in his eyes:

I’ve also studied deeply in the philosophies and religions, but cheerfulness kept breaking through… There ain’t no cure for love.

Like Cohen’s ‘cheerfulness’, beauty has a habit of breaking in when the darkness and ugliness of human cruelties seem to dominate our consciousness. Today, for me, it has come through two wonderful albums.

I once wrote of 19 year old Alexandra Burke‘s X Factor version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah that such a young person can’t possibly sing such a song. The depth of experience beneath the lyric and the haunting loveliness of the music demand the lived-in voice of someone more mature – someone who has lived and lost and loved and longed and languished. (Sorry!) I got heavily criticised for voicing such a heresy – mainly by 19 year olds. But today I have listened properly to Adele‘s 21.

Like with all the great poets, it is the agonies and losses that seem to produce the most beautiful art. Her acoustic performance at the Brits showed how exposed a musician can be – nowhere to hide and all the intimacy laid bare for all to see. I don’t know how she does it. But this stripped-back perfomance of one of her most moving songs just gives a hint of what lies in the rest of the album. And when you have listened to this, try Don’t You Remember.

The second album is categorised as ‘folk’, but it is more than that. Again, the lyrics are infused with the yearning for love and the pain of loss. Yet, they also reach out for the idea of ‘grace’. Like Leonard Cohen’s grasp of ‘true religion and virtue’ (Book of Common Prayer) – when he sings in Hallelujah:

Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah…

… Mumford & Sons depict the reality of life for most people who live and love and mess it up a million times, yet long for redemption – for the freedom to start again. They touch on the difficulty of being grasped by the notion of grace despite not being able to comprehend its scandalous generosity – a generosity that transcends even justice.

In the title track Sigh No More we hear (with a confident and defiant accompaniment):

My heart was never pure
And you know me
And man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Love it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you,
It will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be.
There is a design, an alignment, a cry,
Of my heart to see
The beauty of love as it was made to be.

Later, in Roll Away Your Stone (with its obvious biblical associations), we hear:

Roll away your stone, I’ll roll away mine
Together we can see what we will find
Don’t leave me alone at this time
For I’m afraid of what I will discover inside

‘Cause you told me that I would find a hole
Within the fragile substance of my soul
And I have filled this void with things unreal
And all the while my character it steals

Darkness is a harsh term don’t you think
Yet it dominates the things I see

It seems that all my bridges have been burned
But you say that’s exactly how this grace thing works
It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart
But the welcome I receive with the restart

This beautiful album shows that – again, in Leonard Cohen’s words – the cracks are where the light gets in. The well-armoured or self-righteous person is ignorant of grace; the cracks are covered up for fear and nothing will break in – not love, not light and not grace.

Adele and Mumford & Sons open the gaps in the darkness and let the shafts of unmerited beauty drift in.

 

Surprising voices

Good grief! You watch some of the novelty acts in Britain’s Got Talent and the X Factor and wonder about the participants’ self-insight.

But, have a look at this extraordinary performance from three Italian lads (who look like their mummies don’t know they’ve sneaked out – probably because they are 14-15 years old) and ask what sort of culture encouraged and produced that.

 

Taking the X out of Xfactor

I warned you.

The excellent blues/reggae musician Tim Hain got nowhere with X Factor – probably because he is a musician.

In a funny attempt to divert attention (and sales?) from the nice young man who won the 2010 competition tonight, Tim and his mates have posted the video of Sorry It’s a No. You can buy the download here.

Happy subverting!