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Mr. BRUCE COCKBURN, Singer: [singing] God rest ye gentlemen, let
nothing you dismay. Remember Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas
day to save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray. Oh,
tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy, oh, tidings of comfort
and joy.
HANSEN: Cockburn has wanted to do a Christmas album since the early
seventies. For the past two years, he's presented a Christmas special
radio broadcast in North America and Europe. But like most of us,
his love of the music goes back to childhood, when his father gave
him a book of Christmas carols.
Mr. COCKBURN: He gave me that book when I was two. He got a set
of Christmas cards, and they were, each card had a different carol
in it, music and lyrics. And he decided that because I was so good
at learning tunes at this early age that he'd make me a book of Christmas
carols, and he made it out of these Christmas cards. And he used
one of the card faces as the front of the book and he put it together
with loose leaf rings, and it was part of my Christmas present that
year, I guess. I've had it ever since, and it was the source of,
I suppose, at least half the songs on the record. [singing] Oh little
town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie. [speaking] I've always
loved the music that I grew up with, and then to me, as a Christian,
there's obviously a significance to that season that is not shared
by everyone, but it's that significance that has been part of the
motivating factor for me wanting to record that music, because obviously
the spiritual side of Christmas is the least apparent aspect of it,
most of the time these days. But growing up, while I didn't grow
up in a religious family or anything, Christmas was still thought
of as Christmas in those days, it wasn't `The Holiday.' There was
still an element of the spiritual side of it that was remembered,
and I suppose for a lot of people, and probably still, Christmas was
a time when people who don't spend much time thinking about spiritual
matters, are reminded that maybe they should once in a while and actually
do think some serious thoughts for a week or two. So all of that
kind of came into it, and, as I said, growing up with the music and
growing up with Christmas as a fun thing as a kid, which I suppose
is also an experience that's not shared by everyone. I have one friend,
when I said I was doing a Christmas album, he said, `Well, don't
talk to me about it. My memory of Christmas is hiding under the kitchen
table while Mom and Dad slugged it out.' You know, so not everybody
has those warm fuzzy recollections that we like to think go with Christmas,
but I do, and that was kind of part of it, too. [singing] Silent
night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin
mother -
HANSEN: You call Silent Night the prettiest tune ever composed.
What do you think makes this particular tune so beautiful?
Mr. COCKBURN: Well, I'm sure the Tin Pan Alley analysts could work
this out better than I can, but it's just an extremely satisfying
melody that comes with a whole bunch of good associations. And there'
s something inherent in the music though, that there's a calm quality
to the music that reflects perfectly the content of the lyrics and
the depth of the thought that's being expressed in the lyrics. It'
s really a well-written song. [singing] Silent night, holy night.
Shepherds quake at the sight. Glories stream from heaven afar, heavenly
hosts sing Hallelujah. Christ the Saviour is born, Christ the Saviour
is born.
HANSEN: I noticed that you credit the songwriters, and I doubt that
there are many people who know who actually wrote Silent Night, Franz
Gruper [sp] and Joseph Moore [sp]. Do you think we, at this point,
in some respects, take Christmas music for granted at this time of
year? I mean, we don't really hear what we're listening to?
Mr. COCKBURN: Well, I guess it depends on the person, but we're certainly
discouraged from hearing what we're listening to because we're inundated
with this, you know, the elevator music version of all these songs.
And they become, at best, tiresome, and at worst, [laughs] you don'
t want to hear another note of that stuff if you hear too much of
that kind of thing. But it becomes the unconscious accompaniment
to your stressed-out Christmas shopping and all the rest of it. One
of the things I was hoping would happen in the course of doing the
record was to try to bring the life back into these songs, and treat
them, as I think I said in the liner notes, treat them as songs that
somebody actually put creative effort into writing and not just something
that was intended to be wallpaper. [singing] It came upon the midnight
clear, that glorious song of old. [speaking] The songs with spiritual
significance and these Christmas songs in particular, often have a
really profound level of writing and really profound things to say,
and we miss that. We even miss it in church, where we shouldn't
be missing it, you know. A song like It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,
I never appreciated how good a song that is and what it actually
talked about until I was learning it for the record, because I'd only
ever heard one or two verses and never in a condition where, or in
a, I suppose, well, condition's probably the right word [laughs],
but in a context where I was able to really appreciate what was going
on.
HANSEN: You use Sam Phillips [sp] arrangement of It Came Upon the
Midnight Clear, and it's in a minor key. How do you think that contributes
to our appreciation, perhaps your appreciation, understanding, love
of this song?
Mr. COCKBURN: Well, the song as written, is a sort of Victorian-era
standard sounding hymn. It's very pretty and it's a good tune, but
with the chord changes that we normally associate with it, it's just
very standard. And by switching it to, into a kind of modal minor
key, but keeping the same melody, Sam, I think, got at something that
the song has that has tended to get lost over the years. It just
seemed to bring it back to life. [singing] When peace fell over all
the earth, its ancient splendors flame. And the whole world give
back the song which now the angels sing.
HANSEN: There is one song on this collection, compilation, it's called
The Huron Carol, one I had never heard of before. Tell us about this
one.
Mr. COCKBURN: Well, it would be more familiar to Canadian folks.
[laughs]
HANSEN: Well, it was, what, the first Canadian Christmas hymn?
Mr. COCKBURN: It's, that's right, that song was written in the early
1600s by Jean Debuy Beauf [sp], who was one of the original Jesuit
priests to be sent over here to convert the `heathens,' quote unquote.
And he wrote that song in the Huron language, so subsequently the
Huron culture was obliterated by the Iroquois Confederacy, and by
historical currents that all native people were forced to confront,
and there isn't a surviving Huron culture now that I'm aware of.
There are two little villages near Quebec city, in which are people
who think of themselves as Hurons, but they will not admit to speaking
Huron, probably because even if some of them do they've been told
year after year that it's a bad thing to do, that they should be embracing
modern culture and so on. But my friends who were searching out the
true Huron pronunciation for me were steered by the people in those
villages to a guy named John Steckley [sp] at the University of Sudbury
in Ontario who is a linguist and student of things Huron and actually
does speak Huron. So he was kind enough to provide me with a tape
of him reading the lyrics in the original Huron so I was able to get
out the original pronunciation. I don't know how close I actually
got, but closer than I would have without the help anyway, for sure.
[excerpt of The Huron Carol] It is a beautiful tune, and it has always
struck me as being a beautiful tune. The English lyrics, which are
to be found in Canadian hymn books, are atrocious. They're kind of
a bad copy of Tennyson, or something, you know, and very demeaning
to my way of looking at things, and patronizing. They talk about
children of the forest, and mighty [unintelligible] and all that sort
of stuff. And which, I mean, that's fine if native people are comfortable
doing that, but I'm not comfortable doing that, so I wanted to get
the original Huron lyrics. John provided me with a translation, and
they're actually really good. They talk about the birth of Christ
as a liberation from the thrall of evil, and they use the image of
the star of Bethlehem but they name a particular star, and I don't
know whether it's a star that existed in Huron mythology or whether
it's a real star that they're talking about or a physical star that
they're, that's named as the star of Bethlehem. They talk about the
three wise men coming, but they refer to them as three men of great
influence who, when they came to where the baby Jesus was, anointed
his scalp with sunflower seed oil many times as a sign of respect,
and this sort of thing. It's the story retold in that certain Native
American context, but retold without any patronizing or of talking
down to the people. It's just put in terms that are sort of cross-
cultural. [excerpt from The Huron Carol] [singing] I saw three ships
come sailing in, on Christmas day, on Christmas day. I saw three
ships come sailing in on Christmas day in the morning.
HANSEN: The tune I Saw Three Ships is one that I've listened to over
and over again, as I had been growing up, but I was very interested
in what you said in the liner notes about this one, that perhaps the
artist had consumed too much ergot in his daily bread, ergot of course
being a hallucinogen. [laughs]
Mr. COCKBURN: Yeah. Well, there is one theory that a lot of the
art and culture that arose out of medieval and renaissance Europe
came as a result of people being in a permanent state of hallucination
because all their bread was moldy and the mold was producing this
chemical. It certainly is true that the image of three ships is a
peculiar one. It's a pretty image, but it's so utterly unscriptural,
that I was kind of curious as to how somebody would have come up
with this. But I've read a couple of different ideas as to where
the image of the ships came from. Once is that it was believed that
after the whole thing came down after Christ's departure to heaven
and during the early stages of Christian persecution, Joseph of Aramathea
[sp] and the Three Marys sailed to the south of France from the Middle
East. That's one element of the grail myth as well, so, and then
somebody else suggested, well, maybe he's talking about camels, ships
of the desert. But that's not in the Bible story either, that Joseph
and Mary appeared on camels, so I think the guy was having a real
good daydream.
HANSEN: And it lasted and lasted.
Mr. COCKBURN: And it lasted, and he's made it available to us, thankfully.
[singing] And all the angels in heaven did sing, on Christmas day,
on Christmas day. And all the angels in heaven did sing on Christmas
day in the morning. I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas
day, on Christmas day. I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas
day in the morning.
HANSEN: In putting this project together, you said you wanted songs
that didn't express the obvious Christmas sentiment. What is the
message of Christmas that you would like to convey today?
Mr. COCKBURN: Well, it is, in the simplest terms a birthday party
for Jesus. Of course, socially, it's much broader than that, it means
a whole other thing to a whole lot of people who have no particular
interest in Jesus one way or the other. But, to me that's what it
means, and it's an occasion to celebrate both the gift of Christ's
existence and the complexities of that. The element of responsibility,
the element of questioning that comes with that, when you encounter
something that's profoundly spiritual in nature you're forced to look
at all the other aspects of your existence in relation to that, and
sometimes that causes great discomfort, so it isn't a one dimensional
kind of experience, Christmas for me. It's a time when there's a
lot of things going on. It's sort of politically incorrect these
days to say that this holiday is something other than a holiday, but
to me it is, and that's kind of what I was hoping the album would
reflect.
HANSEN: Where will you be spending Christmas this year?
Mr. COCKBURN: I don't know yet, probably at home, though.
HANSEN: All right, well, Merry Christmas, Bruce Cockburn.
Mr. COCKBURN: Thanks, you too.
HANSEN: Bruce Cockburn's new album is called Christmas, and it is
on the Columbia label. He joined us from Toronto. Thanks very much.
Mr. COCKBURN: Thank you. [music]