Sometimes, I hear a piece of music that is so remarkable, I just have to buy it. It happened again today as I listened to Stuart Maconie’s brilliant Freak Zone via BBC Sounds. This week’s show was a tribute to the composer and musician Gavin Bryars who earlier this year celebrated his 80th birthday. I was only slightly familiar with Bryars’ work but having listened to the show, I am keen to hear more. I am not sure one song Maconie played, in its 24 minute entirety, will ever leave me.
Jesus’s Blood Never Failed Me Yet all but nailed me to my chair. To quote wikipedia: Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet is a 1971 composition by Gavin Bryars based on a loop of an unknown homeless man singing a brief improvised stanza. The loop was the singer’s recollection of the chorus of a gospel hymn, by James M Black, published in 1911. I couldn’t have put it better myself, very obviously.
It’s incredibly haunting, too. I very much doubt that the homeless man ever got to hear what happened to the recording of his voice, always assuming he knew it had been recorded in the first place. No one knows his name or what happened to him, yet here, within a 26 second segment, repeated on a continuous loop is his life on the streets, almost as The Guardian put it “an anthem for the homeless“.
What the song does is to take me into this man’s world, with the aid of my own imagination and understanding of this most broken of countries. And even though the song was composed over 50 years ago, it is as relevant today, of not more so, than it ever was.
The album arrives when I am away on holiday but it gives me something to look forward to for when I return. This may just be the most affecting piece of music I have ever heard.
