Michael Jackson

Desert Island Discs

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

There are few things in the world that mean more to me than music. If that wasn’t clear enough by now, here’s me setting the record straight. My tiresome Chinese Bluetooth headphones might instil an odd lethargy whenever I put them on, but they provide a welcome lifeline on the five-minute walk to school on Monday mornings. So it strikes me as rather odd that, in two and a half years of blogging, I’ve yet to pen my own Desert Island Discs-style blog. Perhaps that’s just as well, as one’s taste in music is as much a part of growing up as one’s outlook on the world. It would surprise me greatly if I ever met a man whose tastes had remained unshaken since the beginning. I know mine haven’t. That is, not too much.

I’m going to keep to the BBC Radio programme’s format: that is, eight tracks, from which I will have to pick a favourite. So, whilst I’m still young, naïve and idealistic, here’s my Desert Island Discs.

1. Circle of Life (Elton John/Lebo M.)

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Say what you like about the 90s, but they did give birth to one of the greatest animated films of all time. I haven’t the least shame in admitting that, to this day, Disney’s The Lion King remains one of my favourite films of all time. It’s simply perfect. I used to spend hours gawping at it as a kid, and watching some of my private lesson kids crawling around the room pretending to be all the animals in the opening sequence almost brings tears to my eyes. If there’s a better way to invoke a sense of awe and love for Africa’s natural beauty in four minutes flat, I’d like to see it.

When did you first discover it?
Given that The Lion King came out in the year I was born – a mere four days later, in fact – it’s very possible I’ve known this song for my entire life. I expect my first ‘real’ encounter with it would have been shortly after my first birthday when we got the movie on VHS.

What do you like most about it?
Lebo M.’s voice. The first twenty-eight seconds are pure gold. Who doesn’t love the opening? Even if most everyone gets the words wrong…

Any special memories?
I used it as my audition piece to get into Durham University’s A Cappella group, Northern Lights. Thanks to my dear friend Biff, we ended up performing it, and I got to pay homage to Lebo M. in Durham Cathedral itself in front of a crowd of a thousand. Riffing over the top of DUOS, Chamber Choir and the rest of Durham’s finest in the finale of King of Pride Rock will probably never be toppled as one of the happiest moments of my life.

2. Back in Stride (Maze feat. Frankie Beverly)

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Maze is far from one of the most famous bands of their day. The late 70s was a hard time to make it big as a new artist, with heavyweights like Barry White and Earth, Wind and Fire kicking around. But for me, this is a special one-hit wonder that floors them all. Back in Stride is neither ground-breaking nor thought-provoking, but it is feel-good, and one of the most feel-good numbers I know. There’s just an honest, heartfelt get-up-and-go about it that brings me out of the dark and into the light whenever it comes on. And Frankie Beverly may well be one of the most underrated male vocalists of all time.

When did you first discover it?
If memory serves, it came on the radio on one of the few nights I tuned in to a local Soul and Funk radio station, shortly before my great Spanish adventure. Like I’ve said before, if I’m proud of one thing, it’s my whim decisions.

What do you like most about it?
The delay on the rolling bass guitar line. Apparently Despacito has been scientifically proven to be catchy because of the deliberate delay in the chorus. I wonder whether it’s the same mechanism at work here. I wouldn’t be altogether surprised if it were.

Any special memories?
This song once saved my life. Quite literally. When I was sleeping rough in the mountains to the north of Madrid, it rained through the night and my bivvy bag turned out to be a lot less waterproof than I’d hoped (though I suppose they’re supposed to be used in tandem with a tent, rather than as the sole defence). I couldn’t sleep, I was shaking from head to foot for hours, and I wanted my parents more than ever in my life. Listening to this song on repeat pulled me back from the brink. Which, I suppose, is what granted Back in Stride a certain legendary status in my Top Ten.

3. Forgiven Not Forgotten (The Corrs)

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Anyone who knows me will know that I go on and on (and on) about how black is beautiful when it comes to music. You only need to look at this list to see where my preferences lie, and it’s by no means a good sampling, with Fela Kuti, Tina Turner and the one and only Luther Vandross being narrowly beaten to the punch on this list. So it might come as a surprise that my favourite band is not black at all, but an Irish folk band. The Corrs and I go way back, and there’s hardly a song of theirs I don’t love. Forgiven Not Forgotten is a gem of an album and the title number is the standout diamond.

When did you first discover it?
Forgiven Not Forgotten was my first ever album, back in the days when a mixtape meant an actual tape. My dad used to put it on every once in a while on the way to school, where the novel was born to the sound of Sharon Corr’s violin. The cassette itself is long since missing in action, and – like many of its kind – probably ended up a mess of spent tape that no pencil could fix, but I still have the cassette case.

What do you like most about it?
Andrea Corr’s vocals are hauntingly beautiful. I’d have to say that the break into the harder-hitting second verse is what takes the biscuit, though. It sends me soaring.

Any special memories?
As a kid, knowing that my favourite childhood author, Michael Morpurgo, was also a fan of the group made me smile a lot; he namedrops the band often in his Scilly Isle stories.

4. Thriller (Michael Jackson)

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Who’d have thought that a song about zombies would be one of the most popular songs of all time? Who else but Michael Jackson? Thriller is amazing. I love it. I can’t shake it. The chords are insane. The bassline is unforgettable. And don’t even get me started on the dance routine. It’s MJ at his finest; no deep message, no heavy lyrics, just pure, all-out fun. Any one of these eight songs could be a strong contender for my favourite, but as far as the official list is concerned, Thriller has been in the throne for the longest. And that’s despite Vincent Price’s voiceover, which somehow adds to the charm…

When did you first discover it?
You know, I don’t know? I won’t even pretend I do. We had Michael Jackson’s Number Ones on our CD rack at home, and I don’t think it took me all that long to find it.

What do you like most about it?
The whine of the theremin during the third and final verse. No doubt about it. I get the shivers every single time.

Any special memories?
Turning up to Arrowsmith’s Halloween party in my Thriller outfit, to find fellow Light Luke had come in exactly the same outfit. The beginning of a long and happy friendship, grounded in a common love for one of the world’s greatest.

5. Love Theme from El Cid (Miklós Rózsa)

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Many of the songs on this list are songs I grew up with, and number five is no exception. I can’t have seen El Cid more than two or three times before returning to study the epic at university, which brought me back into contact with the endlessly evocative soundtrack of the film. It just screams Spain, more so even than Bizet’s Carmen. Rózsa knew what he was doing. No matter what happened, I was once a violinist, and to have a set of favourites without the beautiful violin solo of the Love Theme would be nothing short of criminal. There are many pieces from the soundtrack that I adore, such as the famous El Cid March and the Fanfare Coronation, but the Love Theme wins it for me.

When did you first discover it?
Technically speaking, I ‘rediscovered’ it whilst I was writing my El Cid essay last year. I had the album on repeat every time I sat down to write, so it surprises me that Spotify seems to think ‘dance-pop’ was my favourite genre. By all rights, unrepresentative as it would be, my fixation with this album in essay season should have pushed it to the top.

What do you like most about it?
The violin solo in the second half. It’s breath-taking, and makes me wish I hadn’t given up the violin years ago, if only to be able to play it as well as the soloist does.

Any special memories?
I believe I finished my dissertation shortly after playing it for probably the 53rd time. That’s a special memory if ever there was one… right?

6. What’s Going On (Marvin Gaye)

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Stealing its way into the spotlight like a fine wine, Marvin Gaye’s pleading revolution song has been with me for a while, but only found its way into my heart recently. At a time in my life when music was taken from me (after a particularly music-heavy summer at the Edinburgh Fringe), Marvin found me and picked me back up. What’s Going On called out to me with a meaning it never had before and I fell in love with it. Grapevine might be one of his greatest legacies, but the subdued vocals of this particular number make it nothing less than spectacular.

When did you first discover it?
On my first serious fling with the world of Soul, Funk and Disco music in my final year at school, under the guiding influence of my former bandmaster, Mr D. I must have overlooked this diamond then, perish the thought.

What do you like most about it?
Whilst I don’t tend to go for songs for their lyrics, believing the music itself to be of far more importance, What’s Going On strikes a chord with the pacifist in me. And, of course, there’s the violins: the sailing strings of the third verse reach so high they trace the heavens and rain down gold.

Any special memories?
It isn’t often you discover a new artist you adore, but when it does, it’s a little bit like falling in love. Discovering Marvin Gaye ‘properly’ this year via this song makes for a special memory, I think.

7. Erin Shore (The Corrs)

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What do you know? It’s The Corrs again. I told you there was hardly a song of theirs I didn’t love and I wasn’t lying. It was a struggle not having at least three Corrs numbers in this list (you’d find the third if we were to expand this list to ten). Erin Shore is an instrumental, and it must have meant a lot to the band: it’s at the opening and closing of Forgiven Not Forgotten. In my head it’s the theme of the Royals in my novel, and thus this piece alone has had a heavy influence the development of the novel. The Love Theme from El Cid may have been beyond me as a dropout Grade 6 violinist, but I had the book of violin parts as a kid and I remember teaching myself this one, before ear and memory sufficed.

When did you first discover it?
Shortly after (and before) discovering Forgiven Not Forgotten.

What do you like most about it?
The bells, the flutes, the choir… the sounds of Ireland… And, of course, the wicked drumming before the final uplifting round.

Any special memories?
Every time I listen to this track I see the heroes of my book. It’s not a memory as they’re almost always on my mind, but that makes it doubly special for me.

8. Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough (Michael Jackson)

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If the Corrs get a second mention, then the other great light of my life needs to be up there too. And he’s not here by proxy. Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough is the happiest, grooviest, boogiest song I know. I just want to get up on a stage and dance. If there were ever a film made about my life, this would be song playing as they rolled the end credits. The music video says it all: MJ, MJ, MJ. Oh look, more MJ. Billie Jean, Wanna Be Startin’ Something, Earthsong and The Way You Make Me Feel are all serious contenders for my top twenty, but this one makes the cut. Because it makes me want to dance.

When did you first discover it?
It was the first song on the Number Ones CD, which means that, of all MJ’s greatest hits, this was the one I came upon first. I remember boogying about to it as a toddler, unable to understand the lyrics, but smiling all the same.

What do you like most about it?
The opening. Like Thriller, MJ felt like having a few spoken words thrown in for good measure. And though what he says is James Brown levels of inspired, it is almost exactly what goes through my head every time this banger comes on.

Any special memories?
When they played this track on a night out in York back in ’14, I went berserk. I’d been waiting for a song I truly knew to get my mojo on, and then Don’t Stop came on and I lost it. I remember grooving with a couple of great dance partners on the dance floor and feeling like I’d stepped back in time to 1979. What a year to be young and free…

‘…and if you had to choose just one?’

Tough call. But it’d have to be Erin Shore. I might be on that desert island for a while, but Erin Shore would take me home in my dreams.

Special Recommendations:

Someday (The Corrs); Mother Africa Reprise from The Power of One (Hans Zimmer); A House is Not a Home (Luther Vandross); Shosholoza (Ladysmith Black Mambazo); Ukuthula (Soweto Gospel Choir); Truth Gon Die (Femi Kuti); I Wish (Stevie Wonder); Proud Mary (Ike & Tina Turner); I Feel Good (James Brown)

 

Fancy doing this yourself? Be my guest! Isn’t it wonderful to take a trip down memory lane through music? BB x

Life Lessons from the Mixed-Up Chameleon

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

‘How small I am, how slow, how weak. I wish I could be big and white, like a polar bear. And the chameleon’s wish came true. But was it happy? No…’

Do you remember reading The Hungry Caterpillar as a child? Eric Carle, the author, wrote another book around the same time called The Mixed-Up Chameleon. It’s about a chameleon that becomes dissatisfied with its own skin and so mimics the animals it sees, until it has transformed into something monstrous. The moral was clear: be true to yourself. For some reason it stuck in my mind far more vividly than the ever-popular Caterpillar, and for good reason: I don’t think there’s a children’s book out there that would have been a better beginning for me.

Adaptability is, in my honest opinion, the greatest asset in the human arsenal. It is, in a way, the most human of traits. We thrive because we can adapt. The trouble with trying to adapt is that at some point you have to put on the brakes and remain true to yourself, or run the risk of being many things and none: a mixed-up chameleon in the flesh. I sometimes wonder whether I am one of those who did not heed the warning signs and simply forgot to brake.

Before I even get into tackling this subject, I know straight off the bat that I am not the most qualified person to write about this. I’m mixed-race, but not enough physically for it to have had a significant impact on my growing-up (we’ll leave the mental impact out for now). In many respects, and despite my best efforts, I am a picture-perfect Englishman. There are people from whom this article would make so much more sense, to whom it would ring more true. And that’s exactly why I’m writing about it: because I’m not the man for the job – and, as a result of that, because I am.

As we grow up, we mould ourselves around the things around us, just like the chameleon: the people we associate with, the expressions we use, the music we listen to. We absorb these aspects of our surroundings along the way in a never-ending process, some voluntarily, some involuntarily, and these little changes can affect our lives in the subtlest ways. In years gone by, when the world was smaller, the number of directions life could take you in were, perhaps, more limited than they are today. YouTube can take you to downtown Los Angeles. Spotify can take you to Mali. Everything is just a click away these days, and so the possibilities for discovery are far more accessible than they once were.

And so we go on absorbing. But herein lies the problem: when does one stop? Is it a subconscious action? Or is there a point when we ought to work on what we are rather than search for the self elsewhere?

Growing up, I always felt that some people were ‘more complete’ than I was. Fellow classmates who had firm opinions of their own, or skills they had mastered. Friends who spoke in complete sentences that made sense, an eloquence I could only hope to achieve with a pen or keyboard. These were people who just seemed to have it all together, to be happy with where they were and confident in what they did. I don’t think I ever was. I wanted to be complete, like them. I even went through the motions if and when I could, but I always felt like a fish out of water. I was a romantic in a cynical age; a funkster in a decade when acoustic was King; an Afrophiliac in a white boy’s body.

So much of what I liked or wanted to be was not what I was on the outside. It made me hate what I was for years, and I fuelled that hate by reading into the worst of my race’s actions. For a long time I was obsessed with the brutalities of the Raj, the inhumanity of the American genocide and the barbarism of the West. It taught me a great deal about the world, but none of it did any wonders for my attitude towards my kin.

In one of life’s beautiful ironies, it was actually a fictional Imperialist – Allan Quatermain – who saved me from my condition, at a point in my life when my will was at an all-time low. He may not be the ideal balanced man by twenty-first century standards, but there was something about his acceptance of his lot that spoke to me, and brought me back from the brink of misanthropy.

Even so, I am still something of a mixed-up chameleon. I can be, but I am not. I suppose that’s natural for a mimic – or, perhaps, a linguist. And of all of the factors that mix me up, the strongest by far is music.

As the child of two music teachers, I admit I find it impossible to imagine a world without music. I was exposed from a very early age – before birth, if you listen to my mother – to all kinds of music. I got the full range of classical music from my father, and the most eclectic mix you could imagine from my mother, up to and including klezmer, jazz, gypsy jazz, disco, punk, broadway classics, film soundtracks, zulu chant and flamenco. As a result, my musical upbringing was incredibly mixed-up. I could have gone down any particular route – except perhaps acoustic-guitar-and-voice, which nobody in my family really went in for – and yet, despite my classical training (or perhaps because of it) I grew tired of that very Western world and threw myself headlong into ‘black music’; the blacker, the better.

It probably wouldn’t be too far-fetched to say that my taste in music and its subsequent effect on my identity has had a massive impact on my attitudes to talking about race, either. How else do I explain my willingness to discuss the one subject guaranteed to make most of my countrymen blanch?

Where am I going with this? We had solo auditions this afternoon for a few new numbers in our repertoire and – after the usual fit of nerves – it dawned on me that I was, once again, fighting for something that wasn’t me. I suppose my problem is that musically, as with so many other aspects of my life, I have made myself something of a Frankenstein. I have tried to be so many different things over the last twenty years and, in complete honesty, a great many of them I am simply not: I could go on and on about how much I dig the tune, but James Brown’s Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud) was, quite simply, not written for a white middle-class English boy. And it sure ain’t easy singing about the ghetto when you were born and raised in a quiet country village.

My mother’s gift to me in diversity may not have helped my case much. I worship the things that I am not. And whilst I go through the motions, others around me have grown up singing the ‘right’ music for their world. I rebelled, and here I stand, somewhere in the middle, neither here nor there. The fact remains that I am out of place, and it is entirely of my own doing.

‘Just then, a fly flew by. The chameleon was very hungry, but the chameleon was very mixed up. It was a little of this and a little of that. “I wish I could be myself”. The chameleon’s wish came true – and it caught the fly.’

So in choosing to favour diversity over working on what I do best, I have become something of a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none. A good mimic, but not the best at what I do. Versatility has its drawbacks, it must be said. But, given the chance, I would not trade my position for all the world. I may not be the master of the art, but I love the art to death. Funk music gives me a beat I just can’t shake. Michael Jackson makes me feel alive, African voices lift me to the heavens and flamenco stirs me into a passion I can’t explain. Who gives a damn if I’m white? Music transcends that. It’s how I feel on the inside that really matters.

If catching the fly is the key to getting the job done, I’m still a long way off. But if it symbolises happiness, then I’m better off a mixed-up chameleon. BB x

The Call of the South

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

South Africa’s calling to me again. Only, this time, in the form of my younger brother, reminding me that he still wants to go. Admittedly I’d shunted it to the back of my mind, but in the sudden economic boom in BB’s world that is the belated arrival (of my own causing) of my Erasmus grant – a full two thousand pounds more than I’d budgeted on earning – it’s come back with a vengeance. It says something about my self-confidence that I’d actually budgeted on missing out on the Erasmus grant entirely through my own uselessness when it comes to paperwork.

I suppose that this is how most British students feel when the Student Loan comes in. Not me. For the last two years I’ve been reeling in the post-debt no-job spendthrift mode that suits me so well. My first year at university saw me so utterly swamped by living costs that my bank account was permanently in the minus figures well into the start of my second year. Every time the loan came in, it was snapped up by the debtors, and somehow I was still in debt after that every time. As a result, I went out a grand total of five times throughout the year, including Fresher’s Week, none of which I paid for, having no disposable money of my own.

My advice? Either get a job before going to university – easier said than done – or, better still, refuse point blank to live in halls. Durham City, bang in the middle of what is supposed to be one of England’s poorer counties, is a viciously expensive place to live, thanks to its students. I won’t get into that debate now. I’ll only state that, in my first year, it cost me upwards of £6,000 a year to live in college. That total is now closer to £7,000. The college system has a lot going for it, and it’s a friendly system too, but the price is simply crippling for most of us. And I’m speaking as one neither poor nor well off, but somewhere in between. Lucky for me, I guess, that one or two bad experiences gave me further justification to avoid living in college, besides being an already justified Scrooge about my limited funds.

The trouble is, as with so many things, it’s all about balance. The rising fees have got a lot to do with bringing the Durham staff onto the living wage, a subject for which the student body actually campaigned back in 2014. It’s truly ironic that the complaints began to resurge just months later when it was revealed that accommodation fees would necessarily have to be raised for this to be at all feasible. In the same light, years of fighting for freedom of speech have resulted in a nation where people are now complaining about the very smallest offence, the increasing access to mobile phones has come at the price of the clandestine employment of child miners in the Congo, and equality in the workplace may or may not have resulted to the splintering of family values. Speculations these may all be, but it’s a world truth that you have to give to get, piece by piece, heart by heart.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve spent most of this week listening to Michael Jackson’s Earth Song on a constant repeat that’s made me conscious all of a sudden. It could be that five hour conversation with the gaditano on my way back from Cantabria on Sunday. Either or. I think myself very lucky in many ways, not least of all that, as an Englishman in Spain, I have access to a wealth of opportunities from my birth right as a native English speaker alone that the locals could simply never have, starting with this jammy British Council job. I’m thankful every morning for my good fortune. I really am.

It’s why I teach, and why I believe I always will. Better to earn a modest sum and be eternally grateful for what you have than to climb to the dizzying heights.

Not that I’m saying a little ambition is a bad thing. I’ve just never really had my sights set on a life of fortune and prestige and I don’t think I’d enjoy it if I made it that far. I’ve been writing novels since I was five or so, but if I’m perfectly honest with you, all I want from that is to have them in book format, so that one day, if life should be so kind to me, I might have children to read them to. That’s the greatest dream of all. Sorry, Mum and Dad.

…Jiminy Christmas, did I go off the tracks or what? An hour ago I was trawling South African travel advice and now I’m trying to be socially conscious, as if my last few forays didn’t leave me scarred enough. Time to retreat back into my self-consciously middle-class headphones and dwell on the subject a little more. I’ll get to the bottom of it one day. Before I die, preferably. That’d be nice. Sala kahle. BB x