Something summery to encourage us in this challenging time we’re going through. I wrote this song a few years ago; it’s a work of fiction, but I like to imagine it happening!
Category: Songwriting
Maria Dunn: ‘When I Was Young’
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on saying it: Maria Dunn is a Canadian national treasure. She’s one of those rare songwriters who don’t spend most of their time describing the state of their own emotions, but take a profound interest in the world around them and in the lives of others. Maria has spent her career researching the stories of others – and especially those ‘others’ who are less fortunate than we are – and putting them into her beautiful and memorable songs.
Here’s a fine example – a song written from the perspective of Dorothy McDonald-Hyde, the first woman to be elected chief of the Fort McKay First Nation, and her sadness about the pollution of the Athabasca River as it flows through her home community, only sixty miles downstream from the Fort McMurray oilseeds projects. As Wendell Berry says, treat those who are downstream from you as you would like to be treated by those you are downstream from.
On this song Maria is accompanied by Shannon Johnson on violin and Jeremiah McDade on whistle. They are members of The McDades, another excellent Alberta musical ensemble. This song has been recorded on Maria’s recent CD ‘Gathering‘.
Find out more about Maria at her website here. And if you haven’t already done so, buy some of her CDs. you won’t regret it.
Hunting Song
When I lived in the Northwest Territories I was lucky enough to make regular trips out on the land with local hunters; those were some of the best experiences of my Arctic days. Sometimes we made one-day trips; at others we stayed out on the land in tents or in cabins. In the latter case we usually travelled out the first day, hunted the second and then came back to town in the dark, arriving home frozen and tired and ready for a hot bath and a hot meal!
This photo was taken on one such trip I made up into the mountains (probably across the border into the Yukon, actually) in the spring of 1988.
This song lyric is an amalgam of some of the trips I took when we lived in Aklavik in the Mackenzie Delta. It starts on the second day, waking up in the cabin. The tune doesn’t have a regular time signature; I’ll try to post a recording before too long.
Hunting Song
© April 2012 Tim Chesterton
Deep in the northern forest
Stars shining bright in a sable sky
Wind in the trees comes whispering through the night
Deep in the heart of winter
Hours yet to pass ‘til the shortness of day
Creatures of night slip silently on their way
I wake in the dark of the cabin
Fire in the woodstove takes the chill off the air
Wood smoke and coffee warming us into dawn
Breakfast of bannock and oatmeal
Kamiks and parkas with wolverine trim
Stillness of morning split by our engines’ roar
Our/snowmobiles follow the river
Snow-covered ice shows the promise of prey
Caribou tracks are leading us on our way
Up on one knee I’m riding
Weight of the rifle across my back
Off in the distance moving specks catch my eye
Speeding toward the horizon
Wind on my face cuts as sharp as a knife
All my pretences finally stripped away
Now in this one vital moment
Food for the winter is all that we know
Crack of the rifles echoes across the snow
Superman’s Fallen
This is my good friend Rob Heath singing a song that we wrote together about Christopher Reeve, perhaps best known for playing Superman, but also for his brave response to the riding accident that left him a quadriplegic.
Rob has admired Christopher Reeve for some time, and a few months ago he sent me a lyric he had written in tribute to him, asking me if I could write a ‘Celtic/traditional-style’ tune for it. So the song started out as a combination of Rob’s words and my tune, but over the next few weeks he modified my tune a little, and we worked together to polish the lyrics. It was a very enjoyable process and Rob is a great songwriter to work with.
Hope you enjoy the song!
If you’d like to see more of Rob’s songs, check out his YouTube channel here.
The appalling CCM songs meme
There’s a meme going around Christian circles on the Internet about CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) songs. The gist of it is as follows: ‘Please try to name ONE (I know, there are so many to choose from) CCM praise song that you find unbearable and at least 2-3 reasons why, pointing to specific lyrics if you must’. Responses have appeared from Clayboy, Elizaphanian (briefly!), Phil’s Treehouse, Banksyboy, to name a few.
This theme is like a red rag to a bull for me, because there really are many so-called ‘worship songs’ that I find not only banal and trite but also genuinely irritating and even ‘appalling’. Not that I know even a fraction of the songs out there; at our church we sing fairly traditional music from ‘Hymns Old and New’ , with a supplementary binder of praise songs ranging from seventies material to almost the present day. But I’ve been around enough services where the CCM approach is used, and although this style does seem genuinely to engage a lot of younger people, there are some serious drawbacks which I’ll address in a moment.
And yet… and yet… in the 1970s my own Christian faith came alive as a result of the charismatic movement, and many of the songs we sang then were indeed ‘trite, banal, and perhaps even genuinely irritating and appalling’. How about “I’ve Got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy Down in My Heart”? Or “The Bell Song”? Or “The Joy of the Lord is My Strength”, whose fourth verse went like this:
‘Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
The joy of the Lord is my strength!’
But here’s the thing: as a teenager and a new Christian I loved this stuff! I found most hymns stuffy, boring and (in many cases) virtually incomprehensible (what on earth does ‘ineffably sublime’ mean, anyway?). In contrast to that, the new stuff being promoted by groups like the Fisherfolk was simple, direct, enjoyable, accessible and refreshing. And I’m so grateful that I became a Christian in a church where this stuff was welcomed. I’m pretty sure that if my nascent faith had had to deal with a purely traditional worship style I’d very quickly have gotten bored out of my tree.
So I want to be careful about dismissing the CCM praise songs genre, simply because the sort of criticisms some people level against it sound disturbingly like the things some people said about our music back in the seventies when twelve-string guitars and Arran sweaters first arrived in our eleventh century Norman church in Southminster! The question of what exactly constitutes worship music is a slippery and elusive one, and I need to remind myself that in the end what is really important is that people focus on the living God and go away with their lives transformed as a result.
Nonetheless, I do have a few questions about much of what I hear sung in churches today:
Is it really worship if the subject of a song is not God, but rather our feelings about God?
Let me give an example of what I’m talking about:
You know that I love you
You know that I want to know you so much more
More than I have before
These words are from my heart
These words are not made up
I will live for you
I am devoted to you
King of Majesty, I have one desire
Just to be with you my Lord
Just to be with you my Lord
Jesus you are the Saviour of my soul
and forever and ever I’ll give my praises to you.
Now, quite apart from some rather strange (if ‘these words are not made up’, how precisely did they get onto the page?) and even downright dishonest (“I have one desire” – really? No, really? Does your wife know that?) statements, notice that the entire attention of the worshipper singing these words is the state of his or her own emotions. Is this worship, to focus on my own gut, rather than on the glory and majesty of God (who is glorious and majestic whether or not I feel his glory and majesty)?
Is worship in which the most frequent pronoun is the singular ‘I’ really faithful to the Biblical vision of Christian worship?
Quite simply, Biblical worship is primarily corporate: the people of God coming together to join in words of praise and in ritual action. The worshipping agent in the Bible is not primarily an ‘I’ but a ‘We’. Not that the Bible doesn’t contain prayers and psalms written in the first person, but they do not dominate as they do in contemporary worship music.
Interestingly, the old Book of Common Praise (1938) of the Anglican Church of Canada contained a small section entitled ‘Hymns Chiefly for Personal Use’. Is it not true to say that in a book of contemporary worship songs, that section would comprise probably 80% of the material? And is this a healthy balance?
Is a genre of worship music that virtually ignores the Christian stories really true to the Bible (which is overwhelmingly composed of narrative)?
Here’s an exercise: take a Sunday in which you know that a well-known biblical story (other than the crucifixion) is going to be read in the service at your church. Now try to find a contemporary worship song in which that story is sung. In most cases it simply can’t be done, because the songs do not exist.
In contrast, older hymn books included many songs that recounted biblical stories. These songs, once again, helped to focus the attention of the worshippers away from the state of their own entrails and onto the great objective story of God’s love told in the Bible and supremely in Christ.
Is the intimate really the best and most appropriate tone to use in worship of God?
‘I’m longing for you’ – ‘I’m desperate for you’ – ‘Hold me close, put your arms around me – draw me near nearer to your side’; it has often been observed that the God (or, more frequently, the Jesus) addressed in these lyrics sounds more like my girlfriend than the exalted Lord and Creator of the universe. Where’s the genuinely shattering spiritual experience expressed by the author of Revelation when he saw the risen Jesus in a vision and said “I fell at his feet as though dead”? Where’s Isaiah’s “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King”? (“…and he was high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple”.) Does the metaphor of the romantic relationship have quite the dominance in the biblical approach to God that it does in contemporary worship music?
Do the authors of contemporary worship songs understand the difference between performance and participation?
I go to a lot of concerts and gigs, and I often sing along with the songs that I know, but the purpose of the concert is not for me to sing along; the purpose is to listen to the music, and hence the stage setup and the amplification draw attention to the performer’s voice, not mine. And is it not true to say that this is the natural setting for much contemporary worship music?
Here’s the thing: tunes written to be performed can be idiosyncratic, can bounce all over the place, can come down off the beat, can have bridges that are only sung once in the song, can have instrumental solos – all features of performance music. But congregational songs are different. They need to have memorable tunes (test of a memorable tune: can it be sung unaccompanied and still sound beautiful?) that can be easily learned and sung by a non-musical congregation. And here’s the crux of the matter: in much contemporary worship music, the congregation is singing along with the band (which has the amplification system to back it up), whereas, it seems to me, in the older approach to worship the instrumentalist (pianist, organist or whatever) was playing along with the congregation, to support their singing.
Finally, what does it say about the value we place on the God we worship, when we can’t be bothered to take a little more care with our lyrics?
I’m not trying to sound like a snob here, but I can’t help but contrast much of what I hear in contemporary worship music with my monthly experience at a songwriters’ circle here in Edmonton. And I can’t help thinking that much of what gets written and recorded in contemporary worship music would never make it past the first ten minutes in our songwriters’ circle. The rhymes are bad or non-existent, the metaphors are mixed and slippery and inappropriate, and the overwhelming impression, for the most part, is that the lyrics were just dashed off and recorded without any substantial time being taken for that essential feature of the songwriting experience – the rewrite!
Music is a sensitive issue, because for many people it is the language of the heart. But having said that, let’s remember that the metaphor of the ‘heart’ is a very slippery one. In modern times it means the emotions, but that was not the meaning it carried in biblical times. In the New Testament it was the intestines that were seen as the seat of the emotions, not the heart (hence the King James Version phrase ‘bowels of mercy’!). ‘Heart’ meant something much closer to what we would now call ‘the will’ – the seat of our choices and commitments.
So the purpose of genuine biblical worship is not just to arouse our emotions but to change the direction of our lives by orienting our will toward genuine Christian discipleship. And this discipleship is not primarily about ‘me’; it’s about God and my neighbour. Worship music ought to help orient our lives in this direction, and I think that intelligent Christians have a right to insist that our worship songwriters understand this. Too often, I’m afraid that they don’t.
Should ‘Money for Nothing’ be banned?
I would never use the word ‘faggot’ in my everyday conversation. Whatever one’s views on homosexuality, common decency and politeness means not using terms which have been used in the past as slurs and insults. And I would certainly not use the word in a song, if I was speaking in my own voice.
But that’s the issue, isn’t it? Not all songwriters speak in their own voice; I certainly don’t. Sometimes when I write songs, the ‘I’ is not ‘me’, and I may express ideas or views which are not mine, because they fit the character in the song who is speaking at the time.
Mark Knopfler does this a lot; that’s one of the things that makes him such a great songwriter. And he did it to great effect in his song ‘Money for Nothing’, which is found on the 1985 Dire Straits album ‘Brothers in Arms’ (the song became Dire Straits’ most successful single). Here is Knopfler’s account of how the song was written:
‘The lead character in “Money for Nothing” is a guy who works in the hardware department in a television/ custom kitchen/ refrigerator/ microwave appliance store. He’s singing the song. I wrote the song when I was actually in the store. I borrowed a bit of paper and started to write the song down in the store. I wanted to use a lot of the language that the real guy actually used when I heard him, because it was more real….’
In 2000, Knopfler appeared on another interview program and explained again where the lyrics originated. According to Knopfler, he was in New York and stopped by an appliance store. At the back of the store, they had a wall of TVs which were all tuned to MTV. Knopfler said there was a man working there dressed in a baseball cap, work boots, and a checkered shirt delivering boxes who was standing next to him watching. As they were standing there watching MTV, Knopfler remembers the man coming up with classic lines such as “what are those, Hawaiian noises?…that ain’t workin” etc. Knopfler asked for a pen to write some of these lines down and then eventually put those words to music.
(taken from Wikipedia).
Here are the lyrics:
Now look at them yo-yos that’s the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
Money for nothin’ and chicks for free
Now that ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
Lemme tell ya them guys ain’t dumb
Maybe get a blister on your little finger
Maybe get a blister on your thumbWe gotta install microwave ovens
Custom kitchen deliveries
We gotta move these refrigerators
We gotta move these colour TVsSee the little faggot with the earring and the makeup
Yeah buddy that’s his own hair
That little faggot got his own jet airplane
That little faggot he’s a millionaireWe gotta install microwave ovens
Custom kitchens deliveries
We gotta move these refrigerators
We gotta move these colour TVsI shoulda learned to play the guitar
I shoulda learned to play them drums
Look at that mama, she got it stickin’ in the camera
Man we could have some fun
And he’s up there, what’s that? Hawaiian noises?
Bangin’ on the bongoes like a chimpanzee
That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
Get your money for nothin’ get your chicks for freeWe gotta install microwave ovens
Custom kitchen deliveries
We gotta move these refrigerators
We gotta move these colour TVs, LordNow that ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free
Money for nothin’ and chicks for free
Apparently Knopfler himself is less than comfortable with these lyrics these days; in live performances he has taken to replacing the word ‘faggot’ with other terms like ‘Queenie’ and ‘Maggot’. Nonetheless, it’s clear to me that in the song he is not standing behind the term ‘faggot’; he’s faithfully reporting the words of someone else (should drummers sue him because he describes them as ‘banging on the bongoes like a chimpanzee’?). In the same way, John Grisham will use the word ‘nigger’ in his novels when faithfully reporting the speech of a racist, while not in any way standing by that term himself.
Well, from now on Canadians who listen to the radio won’t be able to make up their own mind on the subject, because the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has ruled that the unedited version of the song is unacceptable for airplay on Canadian radio stations; the Council made this ruling after receiving a complaint about a gay slur in the lyrics.
Like Mark Knopfler, I must confess to being somewhat ambiguous about this ruling. On the one hand, I can well understand the feelings of gay people on hearing that word. But on the other hand, that’s the point of the song! The song isn’t defending homophobic attitudes any more than it’s defending the other attitudes expressed by the speaker; if anything, it’s ridiculing them.
And of course, where do we stop? How many times have I sat in coffee shops and heard musicians sing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ (which explicitly links having a religion to having something to kill or die for, and says the world would be a better place without religion at all) and then experienced their surprise when I won’t applaud for it. And that song is far more direct than ‘Money for Nothing’. Lennon isn’t parodying anti-religious attitudes; he is speaking with his own voices, and those attitudes are his own. I choose not to applaud that song when I hear people play it, and I’ll be happy to explain my views about it to anyone. But I would never suggest that it should be banned.
Underneath it all, of course is the growing attitude in our society that it’s my human right not to be offended, and it’s your responsibility to tiptoe around my sensibilities and say nothing that’s remotely likely to give me offence. I have a problem with that attitude. Yes, I have a Christian duty to love my neighbour, and that includes speaking to them, and of them, in a respectful way. But I also believe that emotional freedom includes taking responsibility for my own feelings, and realising that there are many times when taking offence is not a given, but a choice that I make. And whenever it’s possible for me to make the choice not to be offended, I believe I’ll be better off if that’s what I do.
Songwriting in the Traditional Mode: Some Preliminary Thoughts