"Messiah" and Me.

I am entirely astonished.  In fact, I couldn't be more astonished. You remember this song?:



I have just found out what this song is about and, sincerely, I cannot be more flabbergast.

I'm currently reading Malcolm McLaren's biography, The Wicked Ways of Malcolm McLaren. It's all very interesting, all that "Rock n Roll Swindle" stuff, and I'm enjoying it immensely ... but ...

... I have to tell you about something in there that's entirely too strange for words.  It came in the chapter about the aftermath of the Sex Pistols, when everything had collapsed around him and Malcolm was broke, depressed, condemned by all-and-sundry, reputation shot to pieces, unemployable in the music industry and hiding out in Paris where, practically on the bread-line, he found a job working as an archivist in a music library.

And here's the bit that entirely astonished me.  He says that in those archives he found a record put out by a "leprosy hospital" in Fiji in the 50s - lepers performing the oratorio from Handel's "Messiah" - and laughed uproariously thinking it was so bizarre it would be a complete hoot listening to it.

But the moment he heard the voices and the total beauty of the singing, he was transported. He says that never before in his life had he ever heard music of such entire perfection, with such depths of emotion that it dragged you into the lowest and highest parts of yourself and quickly had you blubbering like a baby, entirely and simultaneously both inside and outside yourself in some new and magic unknown place ... and thus he spun off into rather foolish and unworldly thoughts of dichotomies of "savagery vs civilisation" and decided that it should be the way forward for all music ... so went off and wrote a song about it, which he then gave to a young band he put together called "Adam and the Ants" ... and the song he gave them was indeed the song "Ant Music" above.

However, apart from reducing something so profound into something else entirely - although I do think Ant Music is a great song, it's just not nearly great enough - Malcolm was wrong on so many levels. Firstly, it wasn't a record put out by "lepers in Fiji".  Since no other hospital in Fiji ever put out an album, Malcolm McLaren could only have been talking about the record dad put out in 1954: "Tamavua Hospital Choir sings Handel's "Messiah".  Secondly, it wasn't "lepers" singing, it was the hospital's nursing staff. And, thirdly, it wasn't even a leprosy hospital: Tamavua Hospital was all about the Tuberculosis Epidemic then sweeping through the Pacific.

And how dad came to put out this record was because he thought the world needed to hear his choir.

It started in 1953 with a concert put on for the patients at the hospital to celebrate Easter, when his nursing staff put together a version of "He Shall Purify" ...


(A version that doesn't come even close to the beauty of dad's hospital's choir, but that's because no version does)

... that, when performed, it's shocking and unexpected beauty had every single person in the hospital blubbering away, weeping silent tears of wonder.

You have to remember that these singers were the front-line workers in a dreadful epidemic. Tuberculosis only came to the Pacific during WWII so no Islanders had any immunity to the bacilli and thus, by 1950, it was spreading a juggernaut of death throughout Oceania and it got so bad that Pacific governments were finally realising something had to be done, and as a top priority too.

And thus Tamavua Hospital ...

 As it is today, looking very sad indeed.

 (Formerly a WWII field hospital built 

by the NZ Army but commandeered 

by the American Army during The Pacific War 

and renamed The American Base Hospital) 

... was brought on line to deal with it, but with terrible results because ALL the staff who came to work there only lived for six weeks at the most, but it kept being fully staffed so we really do have to say that the Tamavua Hospital staff in the early 50s were probably the bravest and most heroic folk who ever lived and that's something that needs to be acknowledged and rewarded rather than - as it is now - simply forgotten.

However, those deaths are the reason my mother came into this story.  She was in Fiji on holiday on the first leg of her long-dreamed-for trip around the world when entirely by chance she heard on the radio about the deaths of all the nurses at Tamavua Hospital and thought "I can fix that!" and so, compelled by a force she didn't quite understand, she applied for the job as Head Nurse, got it, and, thanks to BCG vaccines, cropping nurses' hair, thorough hot-water-scrubbing of every inch of the hospital, and putting every single object out into the sun, within three months she had cut her nurses' death rates to exactly ZERO and they kept that way in all the years to come.

So, since they were now finally retaining staff, that's when the Fiji government decided that they could take it up a notch and bring someone who "knew how to be a right bastard" in to head it.  Yup, they'd realised that the fight to get on top of the epidemic wasn't working because everyone who'd tried to tackle it was too compliant and NICE so what they needed most was "an arrogant bastard" to spearhead it, and so, since my dad was probably the most world-class arrogant bastard they'd ever came across, he was brought out to Fiji from Belfast to be the general in this war.

So with everything in place and mum scrubbing and cropping heads and dad being an arrogant bastard, without fear or favour, willing to stomp anyone and everyone into the ground to get his own way, finally there was the smallest glimmer of a chance the Pacific could bring this horror to its knees ...

... which brings us back to the Easter concert where, amidst this terrible epidemic and surrounded by daily death and horror, the nurses sang "He Shall Purify." with such beauty that captured something so profound listeners were quickly blubbering like babies ...

 Jon's photo of a Fijian choir, 

although NOT Tamavua Hospital Choir.

... and the head of Fiji's British Colonial Service - Vascass? - heard about it and rang dad to say "You need them to do the entire oratorio." and thus came about the first ever concert at the Suva Town Hall of "Tamavua Hospital Choir sings Handel's "Messiah"."

It was a HUGE success and I think that where Malcolm McLaren got it most wrong is that the dichotomy this choir captured wasn't "savagery vs civilisation" but rather it was "life vs death." - trying to drag life out of a situation where everything around you is death, death, death - and also "hope vs despair" - the belief that maybe finally, finally, finally you can beat death ... and since it is THIS that Handel's "Messiah" is ultimately about and because most choirs the world over have never been in the front-line daily dealing with death and hoping to finally conquer it, is the reason that they don't ever get it right.

And they don't you know. Truly, Handel's oratorio has the potential for sending you soaring into some very special place beyond time and space, but most usually - let's finally admit this - it doesn't and if you'd ever heard dad's choir do it, you'd know for sure that other choirs simply don't cut it.

And it's because they got it so right that dad thought the world should hear it - "Messiah" done the way it should be done - so he got in a recording company to record it, for the princely sum of 30 pounds, and thus released the record ... into a resounding void.  Guess the world thought "lepers singing Messiah" was too funny to be taken seriously and so no one was particularly interested, although, over the next 30 years the hospital got exactly 17 shillings in royalties, so I guess there were a few folk out there who knew music well enough to appreciate the sheer magic of this version.

But the concert became, by popular demand, an annual event and I first heard it when I was two years old and NEVER, even to this day, have I known anything so entirely beautiful. I can still remember sitting there, that first time, transfixed by the voices and swooped up to some place so angelic I was frozen in my seat until the Alleluia Chorus brought the whole thing to a head and I started to tremble.  And that's exactly what happened to me every year after.  Yup, every other concert we went to as young children - even those at Covent Garden in London - it was always about the delicious nougat mum would buy us to keep us quiet, but for this concert we sat there, completely still until the trembling started, hardly able to breathe and nougat entirely forgotten.

And since this was Fiji the inevitable happened and all other Fijian choirs started saying "We can do it as well as they can." so every year there was an annual "Handel's Messiah" concert where dad was always a judge, and we always went to them as well and, yes, there were many choirs who could do the oratorio as well as dad's choir, but to me Tamavua Hospital Choir always had that hidden extra: perhaps a deeper and more profound understanding of what Handel was saying with his music.

You know, it's only now, as an adult, I realise we were spoiled rotten as children having access to the best possible version of this oratorio. And what is particularly funny is that I always thought it was the music itself, but then, back at university in Brisbane in the 80s, during my punk phase, I read there going to be an Easter performance of "Messiah" at the Queensland University auditorium and I  dragged a lot of my punk friends along promising them "the best experience you'll ever have in your life."  ... and sat there shocked and embarrassed by the empty, meaningless, seemingly endless crap I was having to endure; "the big nothing threatening me." as McLaren wrote in that song above.

I thought it was me. I thought I'd got it wrong. But then, during intermission, surrounded by all the Brisbane glitterati fluttering their fingers and talking about how sublime it was, a booming voice cut through the crowd; a man I didn't know saying "It's unfortunate but I can't appreciate this. I once heard a Fijian choir perform "Messiah" and ever since then when I listen to anyone else do it, all I can hear is how empty it is." 

Oh yeah, way to go, strange man!  That's exactly what I feel too. And now that I know it's still out there, I do wish the world would re-release dad's record so everyone else on earth can have the chance to hear "Messiah" the way it should be done, outstandingly beautiful and holding such truth and wonder, capable of transfixing even total tossers like Malcolm McLaren.

But it should also be re-released in memory of that terrible, terrible time where, in the midst of that rolling juggernaut of death, so many courageous and beautiful souls put themselves on the front-line to overcome it, and then sang songs so richly imbued with everything they'd gone through.  Alleluia!