Today happily, I’m releasing my first single ‘Join
The Liberation’.
In the spring I attended the ‘alum of colour’ conference at
the Harvard school of education. Harvard is a 15 minute bike ride from my new
home in Boston Massachusetts and I’d seen a workshop listed that appealed to me.
The only way to go to the workshop was to buy a ticket to the whole weekend. I
had planned to be working through my to do list that weekend, yet after my
workshop, once I got to this conference, I didn’t want to leave. Here was the
radical American spirit I had heard in Martin Luther King jr, in Black soul
music, in the best hip hop. Here were people who ancestrally and currently were
facing huge oppression who’s spirit shone in the darkness, authentic, joyful, insightful liberatory powers of life. One of the two keynote speakers I saw
(both of African decent) said ‘to our white friends, if you are here to save us
or help us, please leave. But if you are here because you know that your own
liberation is bound up in ours, you are welcome’.
Join The Liberation.
Born in to middle/working class Britain a white boy, I have
hungered to be able to do good, to serve life. Often it has seemed that there
are not good role models for me in this sphere; people of integrity who hold
fast to doing the right thing regardless of the cost. I read Alastair
McIntosh’s soil and soul in 2014 and was transfixed, here was an activist who
could see through the brokenness of the world to ways of transforming, to ways
of overcoming the oppressors, in partnership with the oppressed and bringing
everyone in to a more right relationship. I wrote to him until he agreed to
have tea with me. He said ‘you need to feel that each step you take goes deeper
and deeper in to service, in to empathy and compassion, giving people beauty’
and to feel the music coming through me not from me. This saved me from the
loneliness and confusion I had been feeling on stage as an artist, and opened
up new alive paths for me to walk.
Writing this Spring in a wee cabin in Canada while I waited
for my work visa to clear, the only thing that seemed worth while to do really
as a singer, was to contribute my voice to the movement. This song starts with
an admission that the place we find our selves is;
In a terrible fix
This world is burning
I once heard of a wife who called her husbands Death bed
apologies ‘a very late beginning’ perhaps it is possible for us to make a late
beginning, the problems we face may be intractable but there is peace in doing
the right thing any way. I feel some ambiguity about the fact that I am calling
out to ‘Join The Liberation’ in this song, and yet I lean only just in to that
field in my life. In Palestine in 2009 I volunteered as a peace worker;
Palestinian farmers are safer with internationals harvesting olives with them.
There in the sun and the wind picking olives in a tree with three generations
of local folk, I felt a new happiness, the happiness of doing what my heart new
was right regardless of the risks, and doing it in friendship with land and
people. I’m happy to write songs in that same spirit that seek to be in
solidarity with the oppressed and to see that all of our liberation is bound up
in a collective work, a work of art and love together. Please help me be
braver, and to live that life of justice each day, we all need friends to
discern and learn with, I hope this song is one that we can dance and sing with,
that gives us gumption to ‘keep on Marching, keep marching on!
09/15/17
lukeconcannon:
(A photo of My Nan and Aunty, curious of Andy Holdcroft)
The Ole TV
The ole TV
How central you were to our lives
Watching news, snooker, and pop stars
Formula one, chat shows, cartoons and soap operas
With Whiskey wine beer and tea
“Would you look at that Ejjit!?” Grandad would shout at the TV
‘He makes me sick!’
I’d cuddle in to Grandad on the Sofa
A love of connection between the two of us
He had a warm heart beneath all his scars
It was like falling back in to the sweetness of the ancestors
Thank God for our parties
Where we danced and laughed and sang together
where we talked around the fire Grandad made
Where us children invented plays and dance routines to songs
Where Nan would ask for ‘The Creole Girl’ and ‘Dublin In The Rare Old Times’
These sweet returnings to the village, from out of the smog of TV nation
Lets gather the clans friends
The nations need each other
And I need to be awoken by your song
And yours by mine
My Nan Died last week
What a stunning woman
Sharing this again so folk can see her and hear about her.
09/08/17
An image taken today of my friend and teacher Michael practicing Sarangi (An Indian bowed instrument) on our day off on tour.
Thoughts on fasting
My friend and Brother Michael and I are touring from Boston MA to Chicago and back at the moment. Mainly playing house concerts. Michael is fasting for Ramadan and I’ve joined him for this tour. Muslims at this special time of the year do not eat or drink anything from sun up to sun down for one lunar month. I’ve been finding it an inspiring experience. There is the discomfort and fear of course; will I be able to play a good concert with low blood sugar levels? Is it healthy to tour and perform and fast? (a good question!) Things I am noticing; there is less energy for excessive talk or show when one is fasting, we are quieter, more still, more likely to listen than speak. It’s a very basic form of training; it strengthens ones will and clarity to not eat. When that most fundamental activity of getting and eating is gone, the gift of life has been clearer to me. It is a gift to be alive!
I woke with a fun song in mind from a nap, I was thinking about the delights of intimacy with my darlin and the lyrics:
Your a fun phenomenon, your the funinest
Came to mind, a playful hip hop tune. That wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t fasting I think. Out of that emptiness come songs, essential insights and strengths. Seeing Michael out practicing in nature today, devoted to playing his music, following his path. It spoke to me. These parts that are of our higher selves, exercising the finest capacities of being human, making beauty, and studying beauty, making more space for that and less for consumption. He just sent me the below Rumi poem which I love, and which speaks differently to me whilst fasting. Here’s to the mysteries of the worlds traditions that we don’t dip in to till we try.
“There’s a hidden sweetness
in the stomach’s emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less.
If the sound box is stuffed
full of anything, no music.
If the brain and the belly
are burning clean with fasting,
every moment a new song
comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and a new
energy makes you run up the
steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like
reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with
the reed pen.
When you’re full of food and drink,
Satan sits where your
spirit should, an ugly metal
statue in place of the Kaaba.
When you fast, good habits gather
like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon’s ring.
Don’t give it to some illusion
and lose your power.
But even if you’ve lost all
will and control, they come
back when you fast,
like soldiers appearing out
of the ground, pennants
flying above them.
A table descends to your
tent, Jesus’s table.
Expect to see it, when you
fast, this table spread with
other food better than the
broth of cabbages.
–Rumi
06/13/17
