Gavin Bryars: The Stars Gleam, Even from the Gutter

Gavin Bryars is an English avant-garde composer and bassist who has moved in a number of jazz and experimental composition circles since the early 1970s. One of his most striking works, "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet," was composed in 1971. Bryars had worked on a film about homeless men in London, a number of whom would sing snatches of songs, usually while inebriated. He ended up with some unused material, including a 13-bar clip of a tramp singing a gospel song consisting only of the following refrain: "Jesus' blood never failed me yet / Never failed me yet / Jesus' blood never failed me yet. / That's one thing I know / for he loves me so." As the story goes, Bryars improvised a chordal accompaniment on the piano and, while working on the piece in a recording studio, created a loop which would play continuously. He slipped out for a while, and when he returned to the studio, the loop was still playing and everyone within earshot was listening intently or quietly sobbing. He composed a number of variations on the piece, including a 27-minute long orchestral version and numerous shorter versions, including one that features a vocal overdub by Tom Waits.

In an ideal world, I'd be able to post the entire 27-minute version, but you'll have to pick that one up for yourself. Here's some of the shorter version with Tom Waits, courtesy of imeem.com:



This is an odd and powerful work. One might expect the repetition of the 13-bar loop to become burdensome or oppressive. But it doesn't. The irony is palpable: a homeless man with nothing left to lose repeats again and again the line that Jesus hasn't failed him. But as the song wears on--and again, this is more evident on the long composition than on the short one I'm posting here--the listener comes to realize that the voice is not diminished in its repetition but rather becomes increasingly powerful, until it's clear that in a sense, the tramp's right: there is an element of grace in his voice and perhaps even his life that exceeds anything we could have imagined. I can think of few recent works more spiritually illuminating or deep.

Borges once said that the problem of beauty in our world is not that it's too rare but that it's too common. Bryars' magnificent piece shows Borges may well have been right.