Listen & tracks

15 works · 33:56

1 The Present Tense Sydney Carter :59
2 Standing in the Rain Sydney Carter 3:24
3 George Fox Sydney Carter 1:55
4 When They Shouted Hosanna Sydney Carter 1:55
5 Lord of the Dance Sydney Carter 2:32
6 The Crow on the Cradle Sydney Carter 2:28
7 Every Star Shall Sing a Carol Sydney Carter 3:08
8 I Want to Have a Little Bomb Like You Sydney Carter 1:46
9 Bird of Heaven Sydney Carter 1:46
10 Travel On Sydney Carter 1:45
11 Judas and Mary Sydney Carter 3:09
12 Friday Morning Sydney Carter 2:22
13 Bitter Was the Night Sydney Carter 2:22
14 The Vicar Is a Beatnik Sydney Carter 2:18
15 The Mask I Wore Sydney Carter 2:07

This is the man who wrote Lord of the Dance, but also I Want to Have a Little Bomb Like You.

This short film of the title song was made in 1972 for Sydney Carter's Australian tour.

Reflection perform fifteen of Carter’s best-known songs, from the quiet intensity of Judas and Mary and Friday Morning to the wry protest of The Crow on the Cradle and the title track.

In the artist’s words

Dancing has always interested me. It seems to be the most basic activity and the one most like faith and creation and everything else.

It always has seemed very religious to me, and I was very interested to find two things.

First there was a carol in the Oxford Book of Carols called Tomorrow is my dancing day which I think is a sort of holy parody. That is to say, an ordinary secular tune or song adapted to give it a religious meaning in which Christ invites somebody to come to the dance.

And then I read about the Shakers, that curious American sect who actually did dance in their worship and made some very good tunes including this one which I’ve used for Lord of the dance called Gift to be simple. When I first heard that played, and indeed danced to in the Albert Hall in London at a festival of the English folk dance and song society, at that point I thought I might write my own dancing song.

— Sydney Carter

There are two kinds of song: those after which you say ‘Amen’ and those after which you don’t. The ‘Amen’ kind of song, whether it is a hymn, a national anthem or whatever, has to unite people who are singing it. Any song in dialogue which presents two or more points of view without indicating clearly which is ‘right’ has to be disqualified. Any irony, any ambiguity, is dangerous. There must be no doubt about what you have said ‘Amen’ to.

This rules out nearly all the songs I write, including those upon this record. But that does not mean that they are not religious.

Most religious songs are hymns — even though you call them psalms or anthems — and therefore they are Amen songs. That does not make them worse or better than any other kind of song. It merely means that they have a special function, like a work-song or a lullaby. The function of a hymn is to unite the singers in an act of worship.

What kind of song (it may be asked) can be religious, which does not do this? The kind of song which I would call ‘dramatic’. And drama is essentially ambiguous in that it presents more than a single point of view. The audience can take sides and identify with one view-point or another. But the drama — as drama — cannot say ‘this is right, and that is wrong’. That must be left to the audience.

— Sydney Carter

Classification of Sydney Carter’s songs is self-defeating. It is only when we forget our preconceived ideas about what these songs should say that we can fully experience their depth – when we allow their poetry to dig beneath our surface reactions and touch that part of us that we so often fight to hide. And it is the genius of Sydney Carter that his songs have this ability to make us face and question our innermost thoughts and conflicts.

Sydney Carter provides no easy answers to the vital questions posed in his songs; and the rejection of the man Standing in the rain or the bitterness of failure in Bitter was the night can only be softened by the listener’s own reactions – and action.

Reflection lived with these songs for a long time, and on this recording has tried to preserve the flavour of a man’s music as they have experienced it. The cover picture reminds us of the most recent past tense, and our future now rests on the way that we react to the present tense. All we can ask of any man is his help on our way to the future. As Sydney Carter has written elsewhere: “To keep running with the truth – that is our destiny.”

— Reflection

Artists

Reflection

ensemble

Sydney Carter

composer

Sydney Carter (1915–2004) was an English poet, folk singer and songwriter. He is often called a hymn-writer for Lord of the Dance, though his songs range across faith, protest, doubt and ordinary life.