Soul music day

We went to the Cathedral Sung Eucharist this morning, and were treated to an excellent sermon from Mari Price in the wake of the Hawking news story, plus the singing of a Mass setting by late Victorian Irish composer Charles Wood, colloquially known as 'Wood in the Fridge' because it's written in the Phrygian mode. It's one of my favourites. The soaring sounds of the Sanctus literally made me tingle from head to foot. It's not something that I can honestly say I experience often at the liturgy these days.

One of the panellists on this week's 'Any Questons' owned up to being a practicing Anglican, confessing that he found it easier to believe in God when he could join in a Book of Common Prayer service than he did when asked to sing 'Shine Jesus shine'. I wouldn't be surprised if there were many more who'd want to say the same, but feel a bit uncomfortable about saying it. It wasn't the position of a diehard liturgical conservative, but of someone hungry for the richness of our spiritual heritage, feeling that a culture of choruses and jolly enthusiasm is not enough sustenance for taxing times. 

I've always been a moderniser, as well as loving church tradition. It's been a disappointment to me that over the years the impulse to give liturgy a more contemporary look and feel has happened, but with an over-simplification of content. Much of the best modern music is considered too hard and demanding on the attention span to be of use in today's brief encounter with the Lord, where anything longer than 65 minutes overturns schedules or disrupts the post liturgical meet and greet routine. So today's service hit the spot for once - uplifting, inspiring, and leaving enough time to say hello before heading back home for lunch.

Tonight we went to a benefit concert by old friends Robin and Bina Williamson, held in support of Pontcanna's vegetarian health food store Pulse, actually in the store itself, in front of an audience of two dozen, packing out the available space. Pulse has been struggling as a result of the recession, and after the failure of a co-operative venture to buy out and run the store and its suite of therapy rooms, Rhiannon and Derek, the couple who've been running it for years are having another go at re-shaping its retail offer, and in the process are discovering they have local community support. Hopefully, there will be other concerts and recitals in the space occupied by day by several cafe tables. For those who believe small is beautiful, there's real potential here for a multi-faceted enterprise.

Robin and Bina are true inheritors of the musical and story telling tradition of travelling bards and troubadors. Their repertoire of stories and songs embraces sacred and secular, Celtic, Latin, black and white American and Indian folk sources. They re-work the material of others, and do their own original compositions as well. Robin was making folk music in 'The Incredible String Band' forty five years ago, before hippiedom and cross cultural fusion really arrived. Holding together the old and the new, and taking them to a new place in connecting with old and new generation audiences is surely what wandering minstrels do best. We're lucky they call Pontcanna home.