Music guru in Sandton

Music guru, Sean Brokensha swept into Sandton this week, full of fascinating facts and mind-boggling versions of Christmas music for the Johannesburg U3A’s end-of-year event at the Rosebank Union Church.

“Christmas is a time to reconnect through music, not in shopping malls,” is Brokensha’s message.

“When Oliver Cromwell banned Christmas festivities as being Popish, the No 1 hit tune was The Twelve Days of Christmas, which bears a coded message,” was his opening sally.

“The two turtle doves were the Old and New testaments’; three French hens stood for faith, hope and love; the four calling birds for the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and so on.

“Then came the immortal Silent Night. Father Joseph Mohr in the village of Oberndorf, Austria wrote the words as a message of hope. He asked his friend, musician and teacher, Franz Gruber to put it to music for the 1881 midnight mass.

“On Christmas eve in 1914, that same hymn, [with] its humanising power of song transcending creed and culture, brought the men out of the WW1 trenches to sing together, play football and exchange gifts. After the Christmas truce they went back to killing each other.

“In the 1980s, Paul McCartney wrote some awful stuff but his Pipes of Peace, set around that same WW1 story, was a gem.”

His hymn No 3 is the lump-in-the-throat, Adeste Fideles – Come all ye Faithful, sung by Andrea Bocelli.

“The best-selling song of all time, however, is White Christmas, first sung by Bing Crosby,” said Brokensha.

“Then in the 70s, Johnny Mathis rang in the true message of Christmas with his, When a Child is Born (Soleado).”

He then highlighted John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s War is Over – if you want it, with Mahatma Ghandi’s mantra, ‘An eye for an eye will make us all blind’. As a message for peace, it’s as powerful today as it was then,” Brokensha told his rapt audience, stressing that the music clip held gruesome images of man’s inhumanity to man.

Another favourite of the music guru is Chris de Burgh’s A Space Man Came Travelling. “It’s an interesting idea, the star as a space craft – a seed being planted by another civilisation. The lyrics are great. I don’t know why it was banned in South Africa for a time,” added Brokensha.

His last number, which brought roars of applause, was Ed Jordan’s, Give Me an African Christmas.