Sparks from the Fire

I sat in my chair overlooking the sea.  Julia slept a heavenly sleep.  The Jamaican morning dawned grey and then pink, then red, then orange.  The sea was glass.  The air, sweet with palm and sea salt, mango and hyacinth.  The quiet, uninterruptible.

The opening chords on my guitar could not help but reflect the moment.  I took the wings of the morning and I dwelt in the uttermost parts of the sea.  I was there with my lyricist partner, David, as he wrote these words centuries ago.  The music of the song poured forth.

Once upon a time there was a genius songwriter named David.  He was quite a guy — shepherd, warrior, womanizer, king — but his real legacy is his songs.  They’ve been known worldwide not for decades, not for centuries, but for millenniums.  Over a hundred and fifty of them have been preserved down the centuries in the greatest selling book of all time.  Unfortunately the music of these songs was lost, but the lyrics remain.

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A minister I knew once questioned the depth or “the soul” of a song I wrote because it was “ a song of largely just Hallelujahs”.  Today I’d like to take a moment on this issue and look at the word “Hallelujah” in some depth.

Its etymology is from the Hebrew and means “Praise Jah” or “Praise God”.  Interestingly enough, it is a word that circumnavigates the globe and spans most languages.  When translated, the word “Hallelujah” (or sometimes “Alleluia”) remains the same: In Spanish it’s “Aleluya”, in Finnish and German it’s “Haleluja”, in French it’s “Alleluia”, in Estonian it’s “Haleluuja”, in Icelandic it’s Halleluja, in Slovak it’s “Aleluia” and on and on like that.  So it’s a word whose four syllables mean the same thing to most of mankind.  Say the word almost anywhere in Africa and they know how you feel.  Very few words translate that way.  Consider even the word “God”.  Even this word changes dramatically in its pronunciation and spelling in translation.  “Hallelujah” is truly universal.

I know of no other word in language or song that carries such joy, such celebration, such depth of spirit and soul.  With its four open vowels, it is a gorgeous utterance to sing and when sung alone or surrounded by itself and repeated over and over it is the epitome word of celebration in human language.  I find that when I’m writing a sacred song and I am most filled with the spirit of God, these are the words that spill out of me over and over as the melodies pour through me from God.  Over and over again, “Hallelujah”.  It happens so often that I have to rewrite the lyrics into other words, otherwise most of my songs would sing nothing but “Hallelujahs”.

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The Lyrics

I like story songs. And I love a parade. There is great drama in a parade. You stand on the curb and wait excitedly for it to come. Whatever ‘it’ is – it could be your daughter playing the piccolo or your high school marching band or the queen of the day waving in the back seat of a convertible. It’s proceeded by bands and clowns and majorettes and often followed by the same. You stand on the curb and await the big moment as the excitement ratchets up. You crane your neck in anticipation of the big moment.

And then it’s there! And the tears come to your eyes, and hope is restored and somehow the wait always pays off in a laugh or a ‘wow’ or a splash of pride.

And then it passes by and continues on its journey. And you wish you could prolong the moment, but you can’t. It’s the very nature of the parade. It gives you a taste, but for a moment. Sometimes you can run along with it for a moment or two trying to prolong it, but usually, by then, it’s over. The crowds are too much and ‘it’ moves on down the road to another place in time. (more…)

A woman called several weeks ago to thank me for a sacred song I’d written that she sang as a solo in church. We had a most friendly talk and near the end of the conversation she said proudly, “I just want to assure you that I sing your songs with absolutely no emotion.”

This took me back a beat and so I asked her what she meant by that and she explained, “Well, I think there should be no personality in church singing whatsoever, that the solo should be performed emotionless.”

As we talked I discovered a real confusion in this poor soul about the art of sacred solo performance. She was essentially confusing bad acting with emotion; and since she basically did not understand the craft of acting through song and did not like it when other singers “hammed it up” in a church solo, she had made the wrong decision that all acting/emotion in a performance was bad. I tried to help her make sense of all this, but she would have none of it.  To her, ‘emotionalism’, as she called it, did not belong in the church service.

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