20 SONGS FOR INTERNATIONAL DAY Of PEACE (Sept 21)

Give peace

Here are 20 of my favourite songs on peace for International Day of Peace that we celebrate every September 21st. They are in order if you wish to download as a playlist. Note the little Northern Irish section and that there are songs by all four Beatles!

 

Give Peace A Chance - Plastic Ono Band

(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace and Love And Understanding

How I Long For Peace - Rhiannon Giddens

Peace On Earth (Songs Of Surrender Version) - U2

Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth) - George Harrison

Another Christmas - Over the Rhine

Pipes of Peace - Paul McCartney

Fighting To Make Peace - Lies Damned Lies

The Island - Paul Brady

North and South Of The River - Christy Moore

There Is A Field - Martyn Joseph

Miracle Cure - Luka Bloom

Peace Will Come - Deacon Blue

Peace Has Broken Out - Judie Tzuke

Peace To The Neighbourhood - Pops Staples

Peace In Your Heart - Blue Rose Code

Peace In Our Heart - Eliza Gilkyson

Peaceful World - John Mellencamp

Send Love Spread Peace - Ringo Starr

Prayer of St. Francis - Sarah McLachlan


SUMMITING EVEREST IS NOT THE END - Surmise on Peacebuilding

Everest

(my script for Thought For The Day on BBC Radio Ulster on September 17, 2024...)

 

I remember the phone call. It was around 8 am and Caroline was telling my wife Janice that her husband Nigel had summited Everest. I remember a sense of relief. Then euphoria.

Nigel was on Everest to do medical research. Research done and there was a chance of conquering the highest mountain in the world. 

I was learning that you didn’t just get out at the highest Base Camp and make a run for it. It would depend on the weather. He would need the right weather at the right time. It might not have happened but it had. 

He had made it. I felt the sense of achievement. Not everyone summits the world.

When Nigel came home and talked about reaching the top of Everest he told me that he doesn’t endorse the idea that we conquer mountains. We are blessed to reach their summits and it might be possible in doing so to conquer our own fears and worries.

He also said that that when you get to the top of Everest you are only half way there.  Coming down can be more dangerous. You can be complacent. There are ice movements coming down Everest that can be the most dangerous part. 

Nigel didn’t even think it was over when he got down the mountain BUT he felt that he would only make it when he was back home with his family.

It’s good advice for every project. An understanding about when the challenge is actually conquered. When can I relax? When is it done? 

This is Good Relations Week and Saturday, September 21st, is International Peace Day. Over the weekend some of us will reflect on the anniversary of 30 years since our ceasefires. A mountain conquered it seemed. There was relief. Euphoria. 

But it wasn’t the end. We need to continue to build on the peace that was made. Making peace was not the end. The next bit can be just as dangerous. It will take the same kind of empathy. The same imagination. Just as much courage. We need to be as committed to keep moving until we have more than a constitutional peace but a peace that everyone is experiencing every single day. Blessed are the peace makers.


KINDNESS ON THE STREETS; Artists For The People's Kitchen Belfast

Kindness On The Streets

This is great… to do great things.

The People’s Kitchen does an amazing job into a very bad and often tragic homeless situation in Belfast. Kindness On The Streets is a compilation album put together to raise funds for the project.

However this isn’t a cheap fundraiser. Over fifty years of listening to music, and prone to such good causes, I have never heard such a fund raising record so carefully put together. 

Every song makes a statement about the subject, either a commentary on homeless and a society that allows it to flourish or inspiration to love and be kind. I could quote every single song but Cara Dillon’s Giving and Ben Glover’s Kindness made me want to do good things. Streets Of Kindness does want your money but it also wants to inspire your living.

It is an extraordinary list of songs and songwriters. Fair play to Damian McNairney who I can only imagine conjured this idea and track listing up,  alongside the artists even getting Judie Tzuke and Rumur to donate a new recording.

Why I love it and am recommending it to you Soul Surmise regulars is that it contains so many artists that I have reviewed or would be keen to recommend - Ben Glover, Cara Dillon, Matt McGinn, Hannah White and even Joe Henry, the best coup of all. 

It also gave me artists to investigate too - Emily Barker, Diane Jones, Carol Wilson and Stephen Rafferty. It was also good to hear Martin Stephenson and Ralph McTell.

20 songs. An issue opened up that badly needs to be in our discussions and societal changes. Artists to be reminded of. New ones to discover. Buy it on Bandcamp and give above the asking price.

BUY IT HERE


SNOW PATROL AT THE ULSTER HALL 13.9.24 - A PERSONAL REVIEW

Gary UH

Gary Lightbody told a frighteningly over packed Ulster Hall that he was emotional, thinking about starting a band 30 years ago this very month. Oh he’s the only one in the band left and they were then called Shrug but he is a Bangor boy standing in front of a Belfast crowd feeling the love and pride we have that Snow Patrol are world beaters from our wee place. We sang every word, helping Lightbody out on the odd occasion. 

I was feeling emotional myself. Our mate Jonny joined Shrug as they became Polar Bear around 1997. They struggled for years, another mate Iain played with them too before their third record Final Straw gave us Run. Jo Wiley endorsed and played it and suddenly they sold out the Mandela Hall and then unbelievably The Ulster Hall. 

I was a University Chaplain and my students were now big fans. I told them that I had been told I’d be on the Guest List for The Ulster Hall but I didn’t fancy going out. My daughter was tiny… and I am a shy introverted in real life. My students were aghast.

It would be the last time that I would have seen Snow Patrol in such a small venue until now. In recent years its been they have been filling the SSE on multiple nights. In Snow Patrol terms this was a pub gig.

My feelings got all tangled up with this Snow Patrol history when the support band took to the stage. I’ve been following The Florentines since Gary Lightbody name checked them in an interview that I did with him at the 4 Corners Festival in 2020. 

They are all rock strut with very accessible melodies and just coming out of their teens they took me back to 1992 when I was an amateur manager for the aforementioned Iain Archer, whose band included one Jonny Quinn. I was moved into moments of nostalgia. 

The emotional pile up doesn’t end there. This was the first time I had seen Snow Patrol without Jonny Quinn. Jonny and bassist Paul ‘Pablo’ Wilson left the band officially earlier this year and, whatever the public statements of mutual agreement, there is a ragged rip in Snow Patrol dynamics. I am sure I would have made it to Snow Patrol fandom eventually but the subjective interest via Jonny was my initial hook.

Of course through friends like Iain and Jonny and another mate Davy I have gotten to be one degree away from Gary Lightbody, culminating in that memorable evening when I had his attention and his mine in a public conversation. So like a friend of a divorced couple I was still rooting for him, smiling inside at his 30 year career and where it has brought him to tonight.

We are in this more intimate space because we are celebrating the release day of Snow Patrol’s eighth album. It is all about the upping the hype around a new record but is also a treat for fans, like the Stockmans here as a family singing the songs we have been singing on car journey playlists all of my daughters’ lives. 

And Snow Patrol delivered. Jasmine feared too many songs off The Forest Is The Path that she wouldn’t know but actually it would seem that she’ll have to go to the SSE in February for those songs. This was a set list rehearsed for the summer festivals and perhaps more limited by having to bring in a brand new rhythm section. 

The smaller venue made everything louder and more visceral. Take Back The City, about Belfast itself was explosive (maybe not the best choice of words). Crack The Shutters and Run in as early as song number 4 had the joint bouncing and almost hoarse early on. 

All we got from the record we were launching were All and The Beginning and the fans were already singing even those. I keep forgetting just how many bangers this band have. Chocolate, Don’t Give Up, Shut Your Eyes, Heal Me. I could go on. Of course there is Chasing Cars too to take the roof off, a balcony bouncing. 

In the guest seats in that balcony, Jimmy Nesbitt was throwing shapes and singing his head off while band member Jonny McDaid’s partner Courtney Cox sat as though unmoved. I imagine that below her too cool for Central Perk demeanour was a deep thrill at how popular her man’s band is as she soaked up a Belfast crowd.

Just Say Yes is a staple Snow Patrol closer these days and I hope it is not lost on the crowd that we are all screaming it out in a city that is renowned for saying No! What really grabbed my soul was the piano only reverent quiet of What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get. I’ve used it in communion and it is perhaps a hidden reason whey we love Gary Lightbody. He’s been there, knows the hurt and sings into our catharsis and healing:

 

What if it hurts like hell

Then it'll hurt like hell

Come on over, come on over here

I'm in the ruins too

I know the wreckage so well

Come on over, come on over here.

 

Tonight, 30 years in ,he took back his home city and left us wanting more. See you at the SSE in February!


PHIL MADEIRA - FUNKY COVERS

PM Funky Covers

In 1997 Phil Madeira made a record all by himself called Off Kilter. Madeira was by then slightly off kilter with the Contemporary Christian music subculture that had been his bread and butter. Off Kilter was a stunning work that reminded me of Daniel Lanois. In my old show on BBC Radio Ulster I played it a lot.

I have been a fan ever since, delighted at his Mercyland albums with their hymns for the rest of us and that he is a member of Emmylou Harris’s band Red Dirt Boys. Imagine! 

After a few songwriting records Phil has turned his hand to a covers record. It is a wonderful piece of work. Though ten different songwriters are used, this is no compilation record. Madeira and his band make these songs all their own. 

They give Dylan’s I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight the funk that they mention on the tin. You Can’t Do That takes a seeming throwaway track from A Hard Day’s Night (The Beatles’ Second Album and b-side of Can’t Buy Me Love in the States) and gives it real respect and dignity. Those Lennon and McCartney dudes couldn’t have write songs.

Madeira also adds a real poignancy to Bobbie Gentry’s Ode To Billie Joe and particularly Jackson Browne’s Doctor My Eyes, the latter stripped of the pop sheen of The Jackson 5. John Prine’s Dear Abby and Randy Newman’s You’ve Got A Friend In Me are perfect for Phil Madeira, that off kilter ingenuity.

As the title says it is all funky but in a gentle jazz way, listen to James Taylor’s Fire and Rain or Joni Mitchell’s For Free to see what I mean. Opening with Stevie Wonder’s Superstition was a risk but they give it a more laid back hazy superstition that works.

By the time I got to Bruce Cockburn’s Mama Wants To Barrelhouse All Night Long I could almost see this band on a little stage in a smokey Jazz bar and a line round the corner trying to get in. The musicianship is meticulous, somehow loose but taut and when the guitar or hammond organ go for it, oh my but it’s the toppest of notches.