c.e. breslin's
prayers, thoughts, hopes & happenings.
“… Christians believe that composers can make music out of noise because they have heard something healing in the origin of sound. A moving musical rendition of this theological conviction can be heard in Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me, one of the most remarkable pieces of music of the twentieth century. In 1971 Bryars stumbled upon a bit of audiotape of an old man singing a short verse: ‘Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, Jesus’ blood never failed me yet. There’s one thing I know for he loves me so.’ Bryars never knew the tramp (as he is called in the liner notes), who died before Bryars decided to pay a musical tribute to his heartfelt tune. The result is a string quartet composition that accompanies the tramp’s song—which is continually repeated throughout the piece—with a gentle reverence and empathy, as if Bryars is afraid to drown out the tramp’s gentle but broken voice.
“First we hear the tramp’s voice alone, then low strings and full strings, reminding us that even the loneliest voice is never without an echo. Theologically construed, the strings sound like the angelic hosts that Jesus could have called upon to save himself from his anguished death on the cross. Finally, almost miraculously, we hear Tom Waits’ gravelly voice. At first Waits sings softly, just below the tramp’s range, and then Waits’s voice becomes stronger, as if he has surreptitiously stepped beside the homeless man in order to accompany him home. Then there is a remarkable musical transformation. Waits’s voice gently rises, as if he is now carrying the tramp on his own musical shoulders. What is nearly impossible to do in life—that is, to aid someone without appearing condescending or patronizing—is accomplished here with a grace that can be only musically expressed. Waits subsumes without replacing the tramp’s tune, carrying it to new heights without leaving the tramp behind. Waits is the Son carrying the tramp with his voice, showing us how Christ can take our tuneless songs and make them sublime, or Waits is the Father harmonizing with the cries of the tramp/Son at the moment of greatest sorrow.”
Yeah the stuff about the devil’s music and ‘why does the devil have the best music?’ – it’s not always true.
Josh Ritter’s ‘Drinks With:’ session for American Songwriter with Skip Matheny, talking about Luther’s quatrains.
Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.
C.S. Lewis
I think this is true of a lot of people; I’m really tired of irony. I’m tired of sarcasm. I’m tired of interacting with my friends, where we make fun of each other to show each other that we love each other. I’m totally scarred by that. I’m tired of it and I don’t want to do it. I really just want to make music that’s really honest and is almost embarrassingly sincere.
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.
David Foster Wallace
