Laura Wright to Perform Jerusalem at Grand Final : Tue Aug 13, 2019 6:25 pm  

Laura Wright to Perform Jerusalem at Grand Final Laura Wright has been announced as the singer of Jerusalem at this seasons Grand Final at Old Trafford. The twenty-nine year old, who has sold more than a million albums, sang at the 2016 and 2017  Grand Finals and will be warmly welcomed back in 2019.  Full Story, and what it means to the players, here: https://twitter.com/SuperLeague/status/1160928929491775490?s=20 READ MORE ON THIS STORY...

Laura Wright to Perform Jerusalem at Grand Final Laura Wright has been announced as the singer of Jerusalem at this seasons Grand Final at Old Trafford. The twenty-nine year old, who has sold more than a million albums, sang at the 2016 and 2017  Grand Finals and will be warmly welcomed back in 2019.  Full Story, and what it means to the players, here: https://twitter.com/SuperLeague/status/1160928929491775490?s=20 READ MORE ON THIS STORY...

Re: Laura Wright to Perform Jerusalem at Grand Final : Tue Aug 13, 2019 7:01 pm  

The truth about Jerusalem is that it isn’t a patriotic poem at all. Parry’s music gives the hymn an upbeat tempo – especially with the booming orchestration by Edward Elgar – but William Blake’s original words are as laced with resentful irony as Shostakovich’s Leningrad symphony. Famously, Blake asks four questions in succession, and the answer to each is a resounding no. Christ’s feet never trod in England; the Lamb of God didn’t gambol – preposterous as the image is – around the Cotswolds; the Holy Spirit wasn’t regularly spotted in London fog; and most directly of all, there was no sense of Jerusalem in the dark Satanic mills of the Industrial Age. The consequent fantasy of building a New Jerusalem in England is widely understood by anyone who studies Blake to be a stonking parody of Napoleonic Era nationalism. Even in 1804, no one sung and danced about their own ‘mental fight’ and expected to be taken seriously.
Instead, Jerusalem encapsulates Blake’s fears about the all-too-easy suppression of the individual spirit. The ‘Satanic mills’ may refer to the Albion Flour Mills, large-scale mills near Blake’s home which were burned down anonymously after they threatened to put smaller millers out of business. (So, Jerusalem as an anthem would celebrate anti-capitalist arson. Which makes us virtually French.) But when Blake wrote about ‘mills’ elsewhere he usually used them as a metaphor for institutionalised religion – which, like Marx after him, he considered the natural ally of capitalism and monarchy. (He was wrong, of course, but that’s another fight for another day).
Consider Blake’s apocalyptic vision, Vala. On nine successive nights, Blake dreams that the universe unravels: on the ninth, superstition (Mystery) is lifted from the earth. ‘Art thou she that made the nations drunk with the cup of Religion?’ declares the spirit Tharmas. ‘Go down, ye Kings and Counsellors and Giant Warriors…Go down with horse and Chariots and Trumpets of hoarse war… Let the slave, grinding at the mill, run out into the field. Let him look up into the heavens and laugh in the bright air.’ Religion, War, Kings and Mills = bad; bright air and sunshine = good. After all, Blake, who was charged with sedition in 1803, was the non-conformist son of English Dissenters. He had little time, too, for the Glastonbury myths of St Joseph of Arimathea which permeate the verse. Instead, Blake satirised, rather than shared, the quasi-religious nationalism of his contemporaries. There’d be a heavy irony in the Queen’s modern subjects appropriating his words to swear loyalty to a collective cause.

I’m less convinced than Blake that there’s anything wrong with the gentler forms of nationalism, per se. When the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley debated this with me on Sky News yesterday, Tim argued that English nationalism is a destructive force, that rise of differing national symbolisms heralds a Balkanistic breakup of the Union. That’s overly pessimistic: a certain pride in Englishness should reassure us that the Celts aren’t the only Britons with an interesting history. It subverts the narrative which presents England as a soggy bland mass, against which ‘subaltern’ cultures proudly define themselves. It’s harder to hate your Sassanach oppressors when they’ve got an upbeat soundtrack.
But please, not Blake. He’d turn in his grave to know that English rugby fans already wave St George’s flag along to his words. Other prominent options are tricky, too. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, is already sung by rugby fans, but is abstract and overly religious. So is I Vow To Thee, My Country – which even harps on unpatriotically about England not being as pure as Heaven. Land of Hope and Glory is closely associated with the genocidal Cecil Rhodes, and singing about the need to push our national boundaries ‘wider and wider’ seems a little distasteful nowadays. But there’s always Ivor Novello’s Rose of England, which celebrates the rose’s truly English ability to blossom in rainy showers. Like the best patriotic songs, it brings back memories of British bravery during the Blitz of World War II, and it doesn’t have any dodgy references to Empire, either.

Re: Laura Wright to Perform Jerusalem at Grand Final : Wed Aug 14, 2019 6:54 am  

Thanks for that Ronnie, when I go down to't club on Sunday night if the rugby talk drys up I'll bring that up in conversation, should pass an hour on

Re: Laura Wright to Perform Jerusalem at Grand Final : Wed Aug 14, 2019 7:00 am  

Who?

Re: Laura Wright to Perform Jerusalem at Grand Final : Wed Aug 14, 2019 7:16 am  

Dreadful song. Couldn't they find a better one?

Re: Laura Wright to Perform Jerusalem at Grand Final : Wed Aug 14, 2019 7:42 am  

Interesting. Mods seemed to have deleted the comments showing that MMR completely plagiarised his comment from Kate Maltby's article. https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/t ... jerusalem/ If you are going to copy and paste someone else's work, you could at least give them credit.

Interesting. Mods seemed to have deleted the comments showing that MMR completely plagiarised his comment from Kate Maltby's article. https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/t ... jerusalem/ If you are going to copy and paste someone else's work, you could at least give them credit.

Re: Laura Wright to Perform Jerusalem at Grand Final : Wed Aug 14, 2019 8:27 am  

LaVenRouge wrote: Interesting. Mods seemed to have deleted the comments showing that MMR completely plagiarised his comment from Kate Maltby's article. https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/t ... jerusalem/ If you are going to copy and paste someone else's work, you could at least give them credit. He left - When the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley debated this with me on Sky News yesterday, in the piece,which gave it away. I didn't think it PC,nowadays,for a lady's age to be disclosed. I am a gentleman,Laura,and would never do so.

LaVenRouge wrote: Interesting. Mods seemed to have deleted the comments showing that MMR completely plagiarised his comment from Kate Maltby's article. https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/t ... jerusalem/ If you are going to copy and paste someone else's work, you could at least give them credit. He left - When the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley debated this with me on Sky News yesterday, in the piece,which gave it away. I didn't think it PC,nowadays,for a lady's age to be disclosed. I am a gentleman,Laura,and would never do so.

Re: Laura Wright to Perform Jerusalem at Grand Final : Wed Aug 14, 2019 11:15 am  

Yes, please credit the source.

As an English Literature graduate I can tell you that analysis of Blake is always problematic. There are myriad interpretations of Jerusalem. Blake was, at the same time, sceptical about the Industrial Revolution and it's affect on working people, a supporter of the French revolution, and a deeply spiritual man. All of these elements of his character are reflected in the poem. It's not a total slagging-off of Christianity. See 'Tyger' for Blake's interest in the power of the almighty. What's for sure is that the Parry music transforms the poem into something far more upbeat and positive overall than would be the case with the verse on its own.

Re: Laura Wright to Perform Jerusalem at Grand Final : Wed Aug 14, 2019 11:19 am  

LaVenRouge wrote: Interesting. Mods seemed to have deleted the comments showing that MMR completely plagiarised his comment from Kate Maltby's article. https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/t ... jerusalem/ If you are going to copy and paste someone else's work, you could at least give them credit. Correct it would appear my post has been deleted? If your going to moderate the site then please start with the people with multiple usernames, then you might find this site picks up again.

LaVenRouge wrote: Interesting. Mods seemed to have deleted the comments showing that MMR completely plagiarised his comment from Kate Maltby's article. https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/t ... jerusalem/ If you are going to copy and paste someone else's work, you could at least give them credit. Correct it would appear my post has been deleted? If your going to moderate the site then please start with the people with multiple usernames, then you might find this site picks up again.

Re: Laura Wright to Perform Jerusalem at Grand Final : Wed Aug 14, 2019 11:26 am  

Asgardian13 wrote:

Yes, please credit the source.

As an English Literature graduate I can tell you that analysis of Blake is always problematic. There are myriad interpretations of Jerusalem. Blake was, at the same time, sceptical about the Industrial Revolution and it's affect on working people, a supporter of the French revolution, and a deeply spiritual man. All of these elements of his character are reflected in the poem. It's not a total slagging-off of Christianity. See 'Tyger' for Blake's interest in the power of the almighty. What's for sure is that the Parry music transforms the poem into something far more upbeat and positive overall than would be the case with the verse on its own.

That was my point .