So What?

Improvisation and Spirituality 6: Cameron Carpenter

This video features some splendid improvisations as well as Cameron's reflections on improvisation.  It is worth exploring the TED website for a wealth of challenging and thoughtful presentations.

 

 

Love in Bloom

This post celebrates of a song from about 1934.  Love in Bloom  was written by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin.  That's about all I know except for four and a half performances which everyone should hear.

Usually Bing Crosby  is spot on.  This has to be the most sentimental of his performances I've ever heard.  It's so bad it's almost worth listening to.  If you hunt around I've added another video of Crosby solo but it is an uninspired rendition. 

Noel Coward  made a better recording.  I should warn you this tune sticks in the mind.  I don't mind really it's a brilliant tune for stamping around the neighbourhood!

My next presentation is my second favourite.  Spike Jones  for those of you who don't know him is a consummate musician.  You know from the first few seconds this is going to be a memorable recording.  If you can cope with more in the same genre, have a look around, I've added an inspired extra.

Finally, the best of the lot has to be Gracie Fields .  Even if you're desperate to get this tune out of your head by now, you need to hear this version, if only for the vocal fireworks towards the end.

On the Nature of Repentance

The Greek word for repentance, metanoia, means we turn around, away from what is not of God, towards what is of God.  The problem is we tend to think of repentance as turning away from sins we conceive of as crimes. 

But we need to understand those things not of God, not as crimes but as principalities and powers .  We are invited to turn away from those things which hold us captive.  Certainly, activities we commonly hold as sinful such as murder or covetousness can hold us captive but so can many other things.  As we buy into the second best worlds of the principalities and powers, we imprison ourselves.

Those who are unemployed for example, are often faced with an overwhelming sense of being sidelined.  They believe their  unemployment is their own fault.  Gradually, healing might come through a realisation that society is to blame.  Later still, they may see how they were at fault for accepting the idea they were personally to blame.

Terrible things happen to all of us and we turn them into prisons for ourselves.  Repentance is breaking out of our own prisons, realising that we are personally responsible for sins not only against others but also against ourselves. 

When someone commits a serious crime, such as the murder of a child, it is almost as if they commit two crimes.  In addition to the crime itself, there is also a spiritual crime, a crime against the surviving victims.  They are held captive by grief and often a desire for vengeance.  Of course, these desires cannot be met for all sorts of reasons and so they can be nursed for many years.

Whose fault is this self-captivity?  Without a doubt it was originally the perpetrator of the crime.  But who is responsible many years later?  The perpetrator might be dead.  Release can come only with the recognition that I am my own gaoler.  Blaming the other reinforces the shackles I have forged for myself.  Ultimately, the call to repentance is a call to take responsibility for my life.

To see someone who has not been able to forgive and let go is never edifying.  Sometimes we see the opposite, someone who is able to forgive a terrible crime, sometimes very soon after it is committed.  This is never unfeeling, it is always a great generosity of spirit which happens despite ongoing and real pain.

Sporting Life is the real villain in Porgy and Bess.  Whilst Porgy and Crown fight over Bess, he insinuates himself into her life using her drug addiction.  Unlike Crown, he lacks self-awareness and so awareness of the humnaity of the other.  In this extract he tempts Bess to come with him to New York.  Unfortunately, I have been unable to find an extract from a performance of the opera.  This is the best I could find out of an indifferent pick of on-line recordings.

What Sin Is

Hopefully you are persuaded that sin has nothing to do with the 10 commandments or sex  .  But you might ask what is it do with?  There is a debate about whether there is such a thing as institutional sin.  How can institutions be sinful, it is people who are sinful?  Well, actually no.  The truth is all sin is institutional.  But of course this needs to be unpacked.

We need to understand human institutions have a temporal and a spiritual dimension.  The temporal are those aspects you bump into, shake hands with or bow down to.  So, an easy illustrative example would be a king.  A king has a kingdom, a throne, castle with banqueting halls and dungeons.  The problem is none of these or anything else the king possesses will earn him the obedience of his subjects.

However, if the subjects believe the king, or better still the kingdom, is good and so ordained by God, they will generally do as they are told.  This is broadly the spiritual aspect of the kingdom.  Notice, it happens because the kingdom takes up residency in the heads of the people who live in it.  This applies to the king, his subjects and in fact their enemies too.  This is what Paul means by powers and principalities.  There is in the view of Christians one ruler who is not divinely ordained but is in essence divine.  Our calling is to know God and this means repeatedly unseating an unending procession of powers that seek our allegiance, often in very subtle ways.

The reason we do this is because we have a natural instinct to put our own survival first.  Whatever is out there that promises to earn our allegiance, will be placed at the centre of our lives.

This is known as idolatry and I intend to write a series on this theme during advent (for reasons which will become apparent).  Even something which seemingly has nothing to do with the powers is filtered through our distorted vision of what is right.  I fall in love, the way I express that love is through my sinful nature.  I learn from the media.  I buy valentine cards.  I buy loads of things.  Today we live in a consumer society, so our lives are expressed in terms of consumerism.

That's enough for now but it gets much more difficult as I will explain next time.  For now, remember it is the sin that is the problem, not the sinner.  God loves sinners because he can see the person captured by all the crap. 

I've always been fascinated by the character Crown in Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess.  He is one of the villains (I'll tell you about the other next time).  Crown is a brutal man and a bully.  This song A Red Headed Woman makes the Choo Choo Jump its Tracks is an example of his style.  He sings this in the middle of a prayer meeting during a storm.  He boasts that he and God like to fight.  But he is the one who is prepared to go out in the storm to rescue the men in the boats.  He is lost but on his return he is murdered by Porgy because of the power he has over Bess.  He is a man who is impossible to love and yet you can see he might be loved by God.  Not so the other villain.  (Click on the picture to hear the song.)

Children's Favourites 1: Teddy Bear's Picnic

Last night BBC Radio 4 broadcast a programme presented by Will Self  about the distopian science fiction writer JG Ballard .  Apparently as a guest on Desert Island Discs, Ballard chose Teddy Bears' Picnic.  He had liked it as a child, then hated it and had returned to it in later life.

Self remarked that the song is sinister and said it had frightened many children.  I can remember it as a child and it certainly exercised a fascination for me.  I don't remember being frightened although the warning to steer clear of the woods sounded like sage advice at that age.

Of course, I had a look for it and this is what I found:

I had no idea this recording was so old.  The orchestration is rather fun and Henry Hall's voice is a little sinister. 

I have a plan from time to time to dig out some Children's Favourites.  This was the name of BBC Home Service programme on Saturday mornings.  I welcome suggestions, even from a later (or earlier) era.

Improvisation and Spirituality 4: What is Improvisation?

I am not a musician.  Or any type of performing artist.  I write therefore from the perspective of someone who has listened to performing arts all my life. 

We live in a world of recorded performances.  How many times do we hear material that has been recorded directly from an improvised performance?  It is a difficult question to answer.  One way is to describe the sorts of things we might be hearing.  For musical performances, I suspect we hear the following:

1. Some performances are rehearsed performances of material that has been written down.  Most people would agree this is not improvised, even though the original composer might have improvised the music before she or he wrote it down.
2. Sometimes, there has been a long process of improvisation, particularly with groups of jazz players but the recorded result is something they can now reproduce note for note. 
3. A standard tune is improvised by a group of musicians according to strict rules, based upon some degree of rehearsal.
4. A group of people play together and record whatever comes out.

Clearly there is a range of possibilities between the attempt to reproduce written music and raw music generated on the hoof.  Sometimes it is difficult to tell where improvisation ends.  Go back to my post about Little Boots.  It is clear her finished version for her CD (the third I mention) is no longer improvised.  But how much work had already been done before the recording of the same tune in her bedroom (second version)?  It could be an early recording but just as easily produced after her album as promotional material.

Similarly, Diana Krall's version of Fly Me to the Moon  could be just as rehearsed as Nat Cole's.  My guess is not only most new music but also new interpretations of old music start with improvisation.  But at some stage a piece of music is recorded or ready for public performance and and the performance itself is not improvised.

Improvisation is the conversation the musician has with the composer, other musicians, their own instrument or even an orchestra in their imagination.  Sometimes it is necessary to play as previously arranged but always at some distance the good musician has improvised.

I have written elsewhere about the power of generative conversations  and that they do not have to be with people  to be conversations.  This is the fount of creativity, the discovery of new notes from old instruments, the wringing of new emotion from an old tune, the spontaneous emergence of a new tune from an old emotion.  To improvise is to be receptive.

Another way of looking at it is through complexity theory .  Complexity happens where chaos and order meet.  The movement from a new tune to an established, written melody and on again is a necessary dimension to creativity.  The exciting thing is we can pause anywhere and listen for something new.  Recorded music allows us to do this more than at any time in the past.

In this video Diana Krall speaks of her own creative processes.

Dog the Second

It's time for a second sentimental dog video.  One redeeming feature of this one it is that it doesn't actually include a dog. 

That's all the sentimental dog videos with redeeming features I'm aware of.  If you can suggest any other sentimental dog video, I might consider continuing this series.  The video must have some redeeming feature.  Inclusion of a dog is not in itself a redeeming feature.  Inclusion of a cute dog will reduce the chances of it featuring unless it has a spectacular redeeming feature.  The dog on a skateboard video has no redeeming features.  My decision is final and I'm hard to please.

Improvisation and Spirituality 3: Diana Krall

Nat King Cole inspired Diana Krall.  Her CD All For You is made up of covers of numbers by Nat Cole's trio, from his early days.  This is her version of Fly Me to the Moon, in the style of the early Nat Cole.  There is a link to the later Nat Cole version of this song, on the earlier post.

Diana Krall issued a number of CDs with her early Cole style trio.  In more recent years she too has moved on to more sophisticated orchestrations, including some that use strings!  Look of Love is an example of Krall's later style.  It is interesting how the two careers have mirrored each other in this respect.

Those who are wondering what this series of posts has to do with spirituality (or improvisation for that matter) do not have long to wait.  In the next post in this series I will reflect on what we mean when we say a piece of music has been improvised.

Improvisation and Spirituality 2: Nat King Cole

King was Nat Cole's nickname.  Lots of jazz men during the early decades had them and many seemed to be based upon European aristocracy.  Others included Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Earl Hines ...  You might think Nat Cole earned his name as arguably the world's most popular singer.  You would be wrong.  What is less well known is that Nat Cole was a jazz pianist (just like the other aristocrats I've named!)and some would argue that his greatest work was during his early life in a trio with double bass and guitar.

Unlike Little Bootswho moves backwards and forwards between informal and formal presentations of her music, Nat Cole showed a progression through his career.  Nat King Cole became famous later when he lost the trio and focused on singing.  He was immensely successful.

Many listeners to jazz view this progression with dismay.  A sure sign of loss of the jazz spirit is the introduction of strings!  Listen to Fly Me To the Moon to see what I mean.  This video includes the words, so you can sing along!  In my next post in this series, there will be another version of this song, by way of contrast. 

The Locomotion Explained

The video below is a fascinating historical relic.  In those days regulations were very strict and some of their practices are incomprehensible to modern viewers.  For those of you too young to remember, here are a few pointers to enhance your enjoyment of the video. 

1. In those days studio time had to be strictly controlled (studios were few and far between) and so if even a main performer was late they had to lock the door and make a start.  The singer would upon arrival have to find their way to the door in order to be let in, perhaps even starting to sing outside.  Note how an announcer (he'd obviously been peeling onions immediately before volunteering to step in) attempted to delay the start to give Jackie Lee time to arrive. (It appears her steam train was late, hence her stated preference for locomotion.)
2. Just as today, health and safety regulations were strict.  Only accredited people were permitted to dance.  Singers' movements were very circumscribed and the dancing was left to highly trained professionals.  You will note that all the dancers wear safety helmets, a practice sadly discontinued with the introduction of the fabled Pan's People, who were noted for their daredevil dancing technique without protective clothing or safety nets.
3. Backing groups were expensive and where resources were scarce, it was not uncommon for the performers to bring their dads.  Dads were encouraged to put down their pipes and take off their slippers before performing. 
4. You will notice the lead dancer arrives on stage from the basement.  It is likely she arrived by tube.
5. Singers were not allowed to stand for more than 2 minutes.  As Jackie Lee was late, she was allowed an extra 30 seconds before she had to have a rest.

Enjoy ...