Vanessa Austin Locke: Overheard on Helicon
Arts and culture from around the world, with Vanessa Austin Locke
The arts are never more appreciated than when helping us understand horrors, they are never more comforting than when applied to the healing process, and they are never more honest than when they are born from the hearts and minds of those who have suffered greatly.
In this Centenary year, which marks one hundred years since the beginning of the First World War, tributes from artists old and new have helped us to continue to come to terms with the very great loss the world endured, and to celebrate the very great freedom that loss bought for us. It’s helped us remember our fallen, support our future and give thanks for those among us who would and will put themselves in harm’s way before allowing tyranny and oppression to gain a foothold. From GCHQ’s human poppy, to the spectacular display at the Tower of London, to each handcrafted flower made by a schoolchild, the arts have provided us with a method of showing our unending gratitude.
One of the standout tributes produced this year is a collaboration between the celebrated folk band Show of Hands and actors Jim Carter (Downton Abbey and Shakespeare in Love) and Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake and Harry Potter). The double album, entitled ‘Centenary: Words & Music of the Great War’, comprises a selection of war poetry, read by the individually acclaimed husband and wife couple of 30 years, Carter and Staunton, and music by Show of Hands.
Jim Carter’s recitation of Edmund Blunden’s Concert Party: Busseboom – “To this new concert, white we stood;/Cold certainty held our breath;/While men in tunnels below Larch Wood/Were kicking men to death.” – is set to the soundtrack of ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, and treated with a beat box harmonica. This imaginative arrangement creates quite a physical response in the chest; the kind that booms there for a moment and then travels up, past the throat’s blockade and settles sorely behind the eyes. “It seems odd that the poems are so brutal and stark”, said Steve Knightly of Show of Hands, “but the music that was sung at the time was jaunty and more music-hall. So it’s been interesting to match the two things together.”
This imaginative arrangement creates a physical response
Unusually perhaps, a good deal of space has been given over to works by female poets, recognising that, of course, it was our women who lived on with much of the grief of the First World War as their men-folk marched out, never to return. Staunton gives such works a tender treatment, but she manages to retain a measure of the inherent strength and quiet power that has been the trademark of our wartime women, when delivering poems like A Girl’s Song – “The earth is on his sealèd eyes,/The beauty marred that was my pride;/Would I were lying where he lies,/ And sleeping sweetly by his side!”
This act of remembrance is a work of honest and mindful reverence. When combined with the skill and craftsmanship that each artist offers up, it delivers a thoughtful and graceful homage that brings the spirit of our fallen – across the ages – roaring into the heart.
Centenary: Words & Music of the Great War is available from Amazon and iTunes or at www.showofhands.co.uk, where tour dates are also available.
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Photo courtesy of Show of Hands
