Mavis! merging spirituality and social comment

COURTESY OF MIIKKA SKAFFARI/FILM FIRST CO

In the latest edition of Church Times I have a review of Mavis! the first feature documentary on gospel/soul music legend and civil rights icon Mavis Staples and her family group, The Staple Singers. Featuring powerful live performances, rare archival footage, and conversations with friends and contemporaries including Bob Dylan, Prince, Bonnie Raitt, Levon Helm, Jeff Tweedy, Chuck D, and more, Mavis! reveals the struggles, successes, and intimate stories of her journey.

In the review, I say: "Jennifer Edwards’s documentary is an emotional tale and trip combining elation in the gospel with defiance of discrimination, as the group crosses boundaries — first, by combining blues, country, and gospel to create their unique sound, and then by merging spirituality and social comment at civil-rights marches and the Newport Folk Festival, before re-sacralising soul as Stax stars in the Black Power period characterised by the Wattstax Festival of 1972, a benefit after the Watts Riots in 1965."

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The Staple Singers - I'll Take You There.

Mavis! Her message of love and equality is needed now more than ever

Mavis! is the first feature documentary on gospel/soul music legend and civil rights icon Mavis Staples and her family group, The Staple Singers. From the freedom songs of the ’60s and hits like I’ll Take You There in the ’70s, to funked-up collaborations with Prince and her recent albums with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Mavis has stayed true to her roots, kept her family close, and inspired millions along the way.

Featuring powerful live performances, rare archival footage, and conversations with friends and contemporaries including Bob Dylan, Prince, Bonnie Raitt, Levon Helm, Jeff Tweedy, Chuck D, and more, MAVIS! reveals the struggles, successes, and intimate stories of her journey. At 75, she's making the most vital music of her career, winning Grammy awards, and reaching a new generation of fans. Her message of love and equality is needed now more than ever.

As she sings on her new album Livin' On A High Note:

"The simplest things can be the hardest to do
Can't find what you're looking for even when it's looking for you
The judge and criminal, the sinner and the priest
Got something in common, bring em all to their knees

Do what you can, do what you must
Everybody's trying to find the love and trust
I walk the line, I walk it for us
See me out here tryin' to find some love and trust"

"Chicago wasn't always easy
But love made the windy city breezy
I've got friends and I've got family
I've got help from all the people who love me
I got friends and I got
I got family
I got help from all the people who love me"

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Mavis Staples - MLK Song.

Pop's holy rollers

The Guardian has an article today on Pop's holy rollers which links Steve Arrington's retrospective‬ Double CD Way Out (80-84), Sheila E's autobiography The Beat of my Own Drum, and Chuck D's The Black in Man. Angus Batey writes that 'Many acts – from Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis to Marvin Gaye, Prince, Madonna and U2 – have struggled to reconcile the sacred with the profane in their art.' He suggests that if 'the musicians-turned-pastors (the likes of Arrington, Little Richard or Al Green) are the most head-turning examples of artists trying to accommodate their faith,' there are others like Sheila E for whom the process is less dramatic.

September has actually been a great month for new albums which explore spiritual themes with excellent new releases by Leonard Cohen, Deacon Blue, Robert Plant and U2.

Popular Problems by Cohen is his best since The Future and, as with that album, deals both explicitly and ambiguously with religious imagery and spiritual reflection: 'Word of Words / And Measure of all Measures / Blessed is the Name / The Name be blessed / Written on my heart / In burning Letters / That's all I know / I cannot read the rest.' ('Born in Chains')

Ricky Ross is in a rich vein of inspiration with The Hipsters in 2012 quickly followed by solo album Trouble Came Looking in 2013 and now A New House. Deacon Blue's best album since under-appreciated classic Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, both albums featuring songs centred on Bethlehem: 'I long to be there / As bright as the sky / At Bethlehem's gate' ('Bethlehem's Gate') and 'You got to go back, gotta go back, gotta go back in time / To Bethlehem / To begin again.' ('Bethlehem begins').

Robert Plant's Lullaby ... and the Ceaseless Roar is a wonderfully original melting pot of blues, country, indie and world influences. Somebody There explores a sense of the sublime: 'When I was a young boy / And time was passing by / Real slow / And all around was wonder / And all around the great unknown / With eyes that slowly opened / I set about the wisdom to know / And living out of language / Before one word I spoke / I heard the call / There is somebody there I know.'

Neil McCormick's initial reaction to U2's Songs of Innocence to me seems fairly accurate: 'I wouldn’t put it on a par with their greatest work - Boy, Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby or even the seamless songs of All That You Can’t Leave Behind ... But ... it certainly does the job it apparently sets out to do, delivering addictive pop rock with hooks, energy, substance and ideas that linger in the mind after you’ve heard them.' 'It is, at heart, a highly personal set of songs' with 'no flag waving anthems, no big social causes.' If there is a moral, he suggests, 'it appears in the coda of Cedarwood Road: “a heart that is broken / is a heart that is open.”'

More on some of these artists and the interplay between faith and music can be found in my co-authored book, The Secret Chord.

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Leonard Cohen - Born In Chains.