Past Programs
Religion and Beliefs - 2008
Hymns and Kores of theTorres Strait Islands
05/12/2008
The Torres Strait islands, nestled between the tip of Australia's Cape York Peninsula and Papua New Guinea, are home to almost 6 000 people. A part of Queensland since 1879, the islands have their own languages and culture stretching back thousands of years. Christianity came to the Torres Strait in the 1860s, but it was the London Missionary Society which made the biggest impact when they arrived in 1871, an event celebrated every year on 1 July as The Coming of the Light. In the 1920s American Pentecostal groups began to appear, and today denominations such as the Assembly of God exist alongside older churches like the Anglicans.
With the missionaries came traditional hymns. These have been adapted and are sung by congregations or choirs in local languages like Kala Lagaw Ya in the Western Islands and Meriam Mir in the Eastern Islands, often to the beat of traditional single-headed skin drums. Since the 1960s contemporary Christian songs have also appeared called kores - sung in Torres Strait Creole and English as well as the local dialects - performed with electric guitars and drums. The sacred music of the Torres Strait islands is vibrant and unique and we'll travel to three islands of the region to experience their songs, hymns and kores - Thursday Island, Mabuiag and Iama/Yam.
The Rapping Priest
21/11/2008
Fr Stan Fortuna is a Catholic priest and a founding member of the Community of Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, an order established in the heart of the South Bronx in 1987. But he is also a musician known worldwide as 'the rapping priest'. Even after 20 years it's not a title he's totally comfortable with. "It sounds like, 'Oh, the chihuahua in the pet store', you know what I mean, but there's nothing novel about it because it's essentially all about the gospel."
With his salt-and-pepper hair and long grey robes, Fr Stan cuts an unlikely figure on stage. But as soon as he opens his mouth, it's clear this rapping priest is the real deal. He grew up in New York City becoming a professional jazz musician. But in his early adulthood he dedicated his life to God and became an ordained priest. While studying for the priesthood in Spanish Harlem, Fr Stan discovered the style he calls 'rhythm and rhyme' and noticing its similarity to jazz improvisation, decided this was a musical form he could work with.
A Change Is Gonna Come
14/11/2008
We look back at Remembrance Day with a hymn sung at services around the world and a favourite in Australia, 'O God, Our Help in Ages Past'. An Isaac Watts hymn with music by William Croft it was first published 300 years ago in 1708. We'll also take in the Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe's evocative orchestral piece 'Small Town' which features the Last Post threading through the work. And with a United States President-elect raised in the African-American church, we look ahead with songs of hope from that tradition including one from the preacher's son, Sam Cooke, 'A Change is Gonna Come'.
The Sufi Blues
07/11/2008
This week, the poetry and stories of three Sufi mystics - Rumi, Hafiz and Nasruddin Hodja - are set to blues, folk and country music improvisations. The speaker is Ashley Ramsden, founder of the School of Storytelling in England, who travels the world with his spoken-word performances. The musician is David Bates.
Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi, the founder of the Mawlawi Sufi order in Turkey known as the Whirling Dervishes, was born in Wakhsh (Tajikistan) under the administration of Balkh in 1207 to a family of learned theologians. His shrine is in Konya, Turkey. Hafiz (Shams -ud-din Mohammed) was born in the city of Shiraz in Persia (now Iran ) around 1320. Nasruddin Hodja is a legendary Sufi holy man who lived during the Middle Ages (around 13th century), and who is renowned for his satirical stories.
The Bodhi Sutra
31/10/2008
The Bodhi Sutra is a mesmerising work by a young Australian composer, Nicholas Ng, featuring flutes, bells, drums, gongs and Mahayana Buddhist chant in Chinese and Sanskrit. It was commissioned by the Art Gallery of NSW as a kind of ambient soundtrack to their current exhibition of 6th century Chinese Buddhist sculpture, The Lost Buddhas.
We also hear music for All Souls Day from Faure's Requiem and touch on the pagan roots of Halloween with a Celtic folk song from the Orkney islands. Full of magic and shape-shifting, 'The Great Selkie', is performed by Hector Gilchrist and Liz Thompson.
Guitar Evangelists
24/10/2008
Street musicians or buskers are usually at the bottom of the musical pecking order but you might be surprised to know there's a long and proud tradition of musical street preachers, guitar evangelists, who mix blues and gospel with some fierce guitar playing. This week we'll hear from some of the best including the Rev. Gary Davis recorded live in the early 1960s, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe from 1947. As well, there's the new generation of blues artists like Ruthie Foster raised in an African-American Baptist church. And on the comeback trail, a woman who started her career jamming in New York City's Greenwich Village with street preachers like Rev. Gary Davis and guitar prophets like Bob Dylan. I'm talking about Maria Muldaur.
To finish, a young blind guitar player from north eastern Arnhem Land, but an evangelist not for Christianity so much as for his own indigenous traditions. Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu is from the Yolgnu people and he sings in language about sacred places in the landscape and about the ancestral beings that originally shaped and named the Yolngu homelands.
The Songs and Silence of Taize
17/10/2008
Three times a day the French hill-top village of Taize in Burgundy comes to a standstill. The church bells call everyone to stop what they are doing and come to prayer. And thousands of young people from around the world, pilgrims to Taize, do just that because prayer and worship at the Taize community is a unique experience. It involves the white-robed brothers of the community and the pilgrims coming together to sing short songs over and over again in a service that also includes a long period of silence for contemplation.
Director of Music, Br Jean Marie, was in Australia recently conducting a series of Taize services and Geoff Wood went along with his microphone to join the hundreds of worshippers eager to sing out their faith.
Special Audio Downloads
Download an extended interview with Br Jean-Marie from the Taize community in France. The duration is 14.47.
Days of Awe and Mystery
10/10/2008
This week, Jewish music and prayer for Yamim Nora'im, the Days of Awe (also known as the Days of Repentance), the ten days between Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). And some soulful singing from Australia's Tina Harrod as she tackles a Nick Drake song, River Man, full of mystery and prophecy.
We'll hear the opening prayer of the evening service of Yom Kippur, Kol Nidre, which means 'all our vows'. It's set to a haunting melody which we'll hear twice, played once on a harp and then sung by the Singers of the Amsterdam Synagogue. One of Australia's finest singers, Tina Harrod, brings a jazz inflection to a classic Nick Drake song. And to finish, Byzantine chant from cantor Petros Kyriacou and a male choir chanting in Hebrew from the Book of Genesis. These chants are part of a choral work called Prayer Bells or Pentekostarion, for 3 solo cantors in Hebrew, Greek and Latin and 8 male voices, composed by Con Koukias of Tasmania's Ihos Music Theatre and Opera.
The Call to Prayer
03/10/2008
The Islamic call to prayer, Qur'anic recitation, and Gregorian chant all share a belief in the power of the unadorned human voice. We'll hear from each of these ancient traditions, along with scholar and Islamic chaplain Dr Abdurrahman Asaroglu who reveals the history of adhan, the call to prayer.
Swing Low, Sweet Spiritual
26/09/2008
Spirituals are the sacred folk songs of the slavery era in America, the best-known being the African-American spirituals of the 19th century like 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot'. We'll hear versions of this much-loved song from Paul Robeson, Beyonce, Eric Clapton, The Fairfield Four, and Johnny Cash. And we'll discover the coded messages hidden in its lyrics.
TaKeTiNa - Rhythm Consciousness
19/09/2008
Every human life moves to a beat. From the womb to the end of life, we are driven by powerful rhythms which we barely understand - the pulse of our blood, the beat of our heart, the wheeling of the seasons, walking and breathing, sunset and sunrise. Austrian composer and percussionist Reinhard Flatischler calls this the 'forgotten power of rhythm', forgotten because he thinks our natural connection with rhythm has disappeared. Since 1970 Reinhard has been helping people reconnect with their rhythmic consciousness through a method he has devised known as TaKeTiNa. Integrating rhythms, body movement, clapping and vocalizing, TaKeTiNa is according to Reinhard, "a spiritual path using rhythm for the evolution of human consciousness."
It's also a method for healing the body and mind by re-wiring neural pathways through the use of rhythmic patterns. Reinhard himself learned the piano from the age of four and later studied at the Music University Vienna. But after travelling to India to study tabla drumming, he spent three years learning shamanistic techniques with the renowned Korean shaman and master-drummer Kim Suk Chul, and now percussion has become his life. Reinhard with his wife Cornelia was in Australia recently giving TaKeTiNa workshops and I joined the circle of followers hoping to gain an insight into rhythmic body-consciousness.
Those Who Sing Pray Twice
18/07/2008
We take to the streets to hear the rousing songs of Catholic pilgrims in Australia for World Youth Day. From passionate Spanish hymns sung on the steps of St Mary's Cathedral to the soulful songs of Malaysian and Central American pilgrims, and from Korean chants to Australia's own 'singing seminarian', Robert Galea.
We also hear some of the official music for World Youth Day, including the WYD08 theme song 'Receive the Power', sung by Guy Sebastian and Paulini, and an excerpt from the Mass Setting commissioned by George Palmer, a Gregorian chant version of the 'Pater noster'. And to round out an eclectic mix, there's a unique fusion of the secular and the sacred, acid jazz meets Gregorian Chant, with the Australian group Resonaxis.
<i>Manikay</i> - Ancestral Songs of Arnhem Land
11/07/2008
In north-eastern Arnhem Land, the Yolngu people have been singing manikay for millennia. Manikay are series of songs, passed down through generations from the ancestral beings that originally shaped and named the Yolngu homelands. Accompanied by bilma (clapsticks) and yidaki (didjeridu), these manikay series are sung at ceremonies and contain ancestral knowledge essential to the Yolngu way of life. They are sacred ritual songs, but are also songs about the land, and the plants, animals, people and spirits that inhabit it. Mokuy, the ancestral ghosts, are everywhere in the landscape and mediate the transmission of the manikay. Their teachings offer a glimpse of the deeper ancestral treasures held in each Yolngu homeland.
Byzantine Chant on the Holy Mountain
25/04/2008
It's Good Friday for the Eastern Orthodox churches and we travel to Mt Athos in Greece to hear their 1000 year old tradition of Byzantine chant. We keep the Easter Vigil inside the Xenophontos Greek Orthodox Monastery, and hear from musician Stephan Micus who made his own pilgrimage to the Holy Mountain.
