Category — Music

Serene and Navid

I read the last stanza of the Roger White poem I’ve incorporated into the script:

Tell, Duarte Viera, kindly tell,
What crime won you a prison cell?

The Wildfire group, seven of us - Nancy, Navid, Serene, Carmel, May, Izzy and I - are on the stage in the Old Gym at Wellington College. We’re facing an audience of 300 or more. And the concentration in the room is intense.

As the last words die away, there’s a pause. I wonder how the audience will react to the musical narrative we’ve just presented, the story of Eduardo Duarte Viera, the first African Bahá’í martyr, who died in jail in Portuguese Guinea in March 1966. He’d been badly tortured.

The pause stretches beyond the point of comfort.

Rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal

May, Izzy, Carmel

Earlier in the day, I’d been wondering with some desperation, “Is this piece ever going to work?” We’d sat in our comfortable room upstairs in the Wellington College Music School and practised and practised. I’d worked out how to stage what was in effect a script for radio and I’d taken the group through their moves - although those moves were no more than when to sit down and when to stand up. This was not a piece for theatre, but the kind of narrative that people could use in their living rooms for Bahá’í meetings.

But somehow our energy had slackened and the delivery was really not focused.

So, “OK, let’s take it from the top one more time,” I say.

Navid hits four slow beats on a djembe, Nancy comes in at double time on a smaller djembe, May shakes the rattle, and Carmel starts our opening song. It’s an African call and response song and I’ve never been able to get my mouth around the words. But Serene, Izzy and May pick it up and take it away with gusto.

We work our way through to the end. It’s OK, but it lacks sparkle.

It’s time to get across to the Old Gym. We’ve a ten-minute technical rehearsal slot and then that will be it until the evening.

Pre-performance nerves

Come the evening, and there’s nerves. Well, that’s as it should be. We’re all sitting in the front row of the audience as Richard Lee’s wonderful Zingaresque workshop, carry some challenging Macedonian folk tunes with fiendishly complex time signatures to a triumphant conclusion.

Old friends Kathy and Brian perform a comedy sketch, and then it’s our turn. Hadyn, the Academy’s technical wizard, resets chairs and microphones. The audience settles and we’re off.

Drums, song, the first bit of narration:

“This was destiny. All is terminated.” Part of Duarte Viera’s last message to his wife, scratched on a biscuit tin in his prison cell in Bissau.

Putting the narrative together

It’s a powerful story. Co-tutor Nancy Lee Harper had suggested that it would make a good narrative for us to work on at the Academy. I had written a script based on Viera’s obituary in Volume XIV of The Bahá’í World. The script provided the backbone of the final work, and the group that came together at the Academy - Nancy and myself, three 16-year-old girls, a very good classical violinist and a gifted singer song-writer (both in their 20s) - together created the performed piece through a week’s worth of consultation and action. Music, songs, drumming, edits to the script, all ideas that came from members of the group.

It took a couple of days for the group to meld and for the creative juices to flow, but once we’d engaged with the piece, the group worked hard.

High octane, high performance

Bahá’í audiences love to clap along to songs and music. Sometimes that’s just what’s wanted, but tonight I’m praying that they won’t do this. As we go deeper into the piece, the audience’s concentration deepens. I know the story has captured their hearts. The only hiccup comes when the script calls for one verse of an African song well-known to Bahá’ís the world over, Toko Zani. Some people in the audience begin to sing along. We’ve decided to cut the verse short for dramatic effect, but the singers in the audience slide on into the repetition of the final two lines.

I narrate on over the singing, in the hope that the audience will get the message and quiet down. They do. They quickly realize that there’s more to come.

The group is doing well. The tension between audience and performers is creative and gives the performance just the edge it needs. Any mistakes are minor and quickly put right. Navid strikes in with a tremolo on his violin as the story tells of police raiding Viera’s home and confiscating Bahá’í books. Nancy plays the opening of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata as Viera is arrested and beaten.

And eventually we hear that Eduardo Duarte Viera was the first African Bahá’í to lay down his life as a martyr for the Cause of Bahá’u'lláh. Serene starts the beautiful song she’s written around a text of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “Lift to Thy lovers’ lips a cup brimful of anguish”. Navid’s violin soars above the melody and then we are all singing the chorus, adding alto and base harmonies, Nancy’s piano adding body to the glorious sound.

I read Roger White’s poem. Silence falls. And we wait…

And the audience bursts into noisy, warm-hearted applause and cheers.

I’m trembling as we come off stage and sit down in the audience for the next performers. The adrenalin rush is over and life continues. After all, our group was only one amongst the many who had performed or were yet to perform last Friday evening.

The art of the Arts Academy

The Bahá’í Academy for the Arts is a remarkable achievement. Started some 14 years ago by two Bahá’í women, it has become a model for other Bahá’í communities around the world who want to give space and opportunity for Bahá’ís to develop their artistic skills and enrich the lives of their communities.

The ethos, which has evolved over the years, is one of service, of work performed in the spirit of worship, of sacrifice. It provides no space for big egos that want to show off. This is about humility on the part of all, whether acclaimed professionals or absolute beginners. The Academy team are utterly dedicated

And the extraordinary thing is that this ethos allows people to produce work of high standard and good quality in just a week.

There were courses for children, young teens, older teens, adults, everyone; courses in (amongst other things) urban art, comedy writing, speaking with confidence, computer presentations, fashion, painting, photography, choreography, storytelling, instrumental and vocal music.

And there was room for independent artists and writers.

Nancy Lee Harper

I felt privileged to work with Nancy Lee Harper. She’s a wonderful musician and a very special person. The idea for the workshop was Nancy’s. I came in as writer earlier this year. I found our creative partnership productive and we were able to help a rather disparate group to create a piece that really touched the hearts of the audience.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Arts Academy, music, writing, performance, Wellington College

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Getting ready for the Arts Academy group photo

Just back from the Bahá’í Academy for the Arts, a wonderful annual week of courses and classes in a range of arts, organized by a group of Bahá’ís. This has been going on for 14 or 15 years, and has become regular fixture in the UK Baha’i community’s calendar.

Almost 300 people took part. Babies, toddlers, children, junior youth, youth, adults. The oldest participants were in their 70s.

Arts Academy group photo close-up

This year’s academy took place at Wellington College (in Berkshire, not in New Zealand), my old school.

Wellington College Chapel

I was there as a tutor, working with concert pianist and music academic, Nancy Lee Harper, on musical narratives. The academy catered for a wide range of skills in a wide range of arts from music, theatre, visual arts, and electronic arts to the art of living well.

I’m now sleep-deprived and will have to put off writing more about this excellent week until tomorrow!

Wellington College crest

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, arts, education, training, Wellington College

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Wellington College

OK, I’m off to the Baha’i Academy for the Arts at Wellington College for the next week. I shall be co-tutoring a course called “Wildfire” with the wonderful concert pianist Nancy Lee Harper. We shall be working on developing musical narratives about the Bahá’í Faith with a select group of young musicians. I’m providing the script-writing skills.

If this works well, we hope to record the music and provide the scripts for people to use in their own homes.

Erica will be co-running a creche at the Academy.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to blog from the Academy. It depends if the college has wifi available for me to use. If not, see you in a week’s time.

Oh, by the way, this is where I went to school in the early 1960s. It is one of Britain’s famous public (i.e. only for those who can afford them) schools.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, arts, Nancy Lee Harper, Wellington College

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I’ve just learned from my good friend David Henderson that he worked with the (now) late and (always) great Pavarotti during the first Three Tenors Event in Rome in July 1990.

David produced this promotional video at the time, featuring Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma - what else?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ovFCFhjrWk]

Watch and enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Pavarotti, opera, singer, Three Tenors, Nessun Dorma

One of the great joys of the Baha’i summer school in Bath was the music. I wish, I wish I could have been a competent musician, a singer-songwriter like the members of the Smith family from Cornwall. Sadly I drive good people to distraction with my piano playing, but I utterly lack the natural musicianship of Geoff and Michaela Smith and their daughter Rosie Smith. Their son Jordan is also part of the family band.

The Smiths kept us in music throughout the the recent Baha’i summer school in Bath. I could have wished them to play on and on and never stop. I can highly recommend their albums, particularly Fragile Leaf, Geoff and Michaela’s latest output, which I listened to about five times yesterday.

One morning they sang the prayer Baha’is know as the Long Healing Prayer to a setting of their own devising.

This was one of the most uplifting, spiritual experiences of Baha’i worship that I have ever had: Geoff Smith played a continuo on guitar, Rosie Smith on drum, Jordan Smith on maraccas, Michaela sang the verses - starting with “I call on Thee O Exalted One, O Faithful One, O Glorious One!” and led the chorus. Those of us sitting in the auditorium sang:

Thou the Sufficing, Thou the Healing, Thou the Abiding, O Thou Abiding One!

It was a kind of musical meditation.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, musicians, Geoff and Michaela Smith, worship

There’s a really nice interview with Tierney Sutton here. She relates her music to her life as a Baha’i:

Well not really! Not personally. Tierney Sutton didn’t come round our house to sing just for Erica and me.

Wednesday of last week Erica and I celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary. I say “celebrated”, but Wednesday was a fairly busy day. An Equality and Diversity Forum meeting all morning, lunch with Brian Pearce, Director of the Inter Faith Network for the UK, and participating in a Royal Commonwealth Society inter-faith dialogue session at the Commonwealth Club kept me pretty busy.

I went straight from the Commonwealth Club to the basement of Pizza on the Park to listen to the Tierney Sutton Band.

Tierney Sutton is a wonderful jazz singer who happens to be a Baha’i. Or is she a Baha’i who happens to be a wonderful jazz singer? Whichever way, her voice and her band are worth some sacrifice to hear live. Rob Weinberg was kind enough to book a table for a number of friends at Pizza on the Park, where they have weekly live jazz.

In addition to Rob, Erica and me, Arman Danesh was there. So were Sean and Tebby Hinton, who are about to move to China with their children, Sarah and Ollie Perceval (Sarah’s the wonderful storyteller and teacher who conducted last weekend’s storytelling course, and Kerry Ann Smith.

The basement was well filled for the gig. We ate our pizzas and waited for the lights to go down and the band to come onto the small performance area.

Sutton sings a mixture of standards from the American song book, some happy, quite a lot are sad. The thrill comes from the arrangements (which the band does consultatively) - I had actually had to listen quite hard sometimes to detect the melodies on which the arrangements were based - Sutton’s voice - spot on pitch and she’s a great exponent of scat singing - and the band’s ensemble (it’s “togetherness”). Tierney told us the band had been together 15 years. They listen; they listen hard to each other; and they are, each of them, great musicians. Somebody in our party referred to them as “tight”. This was not a reference to a state of inebriation - they were drinking bottled water on stage - but to the way they all slotted their jigsaw of parts together to make a glorious whole.

Tierney said nothing about her faith during the gig, but she did say that the band works collectively on the arrangements - an oblique reference to the Baha’i practice of consultation.

I love jazz. I listen to quite a lot of recorded music. But there’s nothing to beat the real thing, live in front of an audience. It’s a great way to celebrate 37 years of marriage - particularly at a time when marriage is increasingly out of fashion or seen as a “lifestyle choice” rather than as a lifetime commitment.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, music, jazz, Tierney Sutton, marriage

Yes, sadly I have to admit it. Before this weekend just gone, I had never been to Geneva before.

Sad, really, to have waited until I am almost 60 to visit such a beautiful city.

To be honest I had no reason to be there other than to accompany Mrs Barnabas and Wendi Momen on a business trip. They were going there for a George Ronald Publisher Ltd editorial/board meeting with May Hofman, with whom we stayed in Le Lignon in the municipality of Vernier.

May and husband Paul Ojermark live in a vast 1960s complex of flats which is almost a kilometre long. It sounds horrendous, but is much more pleasant than one might expect, given the age and size of this complex. May and Paul have a wonderful view across the

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It seems that African Body Percussion is the thing — rhythmic stomping and hitting oneself as a form of exercise. Well, daughter-in-law Vicky is into this big time and she’s sent this message — yes, more shameless promotion for a member of my family.

As you may know, we have been working hard on a DVD called ‘Tribal Groove‘ for several months! We filmed last summer and now the DVD is finally complete!

As you can imagine, we would like to get as much publicity as possible and spread this as far and wide as we can. The DVD is excellent and not only teaches people how to do some fantastic body percussion moves, it’s also GREAT to use with children and youth of any age as it focuses on implementing communication skills, respect and virtues into everyday life.

We are selling the standard edition off our own site initially (www.africanbodypercussion.com) but will soon be also selling it on Amazon, Play.com and possibly in HMV and Virgin. We would be SO grateful if you could help us out by purchasing a copy - The standard edition is currently being sold at a reduced price at ?10.95 (until 31st August) and is really great value for money with hours of learning and exercise on it!

If you don’t want a copy yourself, then if you know anyone with kids, it makes a superb pressie! It’s also great for anyone who wants to learn an exciting new exercise so don’t feel they have to have children to buy a copy!

We would love it if you could email all your contacts and let them know about Tribal Groove, as that would really help us out in spreading the word.

Thanks very much and if you have any questions about the DVD, do email me! If you also have any ideas about promoting it, then of course, drop me a line.

Visit the website and pass the message on! By the way, Vicky’s email address is victoria[at]littleguru.co.uk

Technorati Tags: African Body Percussion, exercise, Tribal Groove, communication

Synkronyst is Tom Leith’s music site. I guess I’m allowed some parental bias here, but I really like the music and I think the site’s visuals are striking.

I strongly recommend a visit!

Technorati Tags: Synkronyst, music