Resistance, rising sea levels and the Piano music in Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church

The taxi driver was not too sure where Sacred Heart is located. The old Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church burned down in 2004, and the new church was opened in 2015.  I had not visited the new church. 

I was looking forward to hearing the piano concert by Maestro Pascal Gallet, organised by the Alliance Française of  Guyana with support of partners and sponsors.  

The first item was the National Anthem of Guyana, played by a teenaged Guyanese. Some of the audience sung along. Memories of school days when other students would play the piano and some of us would sing along  while some of us would stay silent because we knew Guyana didn't really belong to all of us, only to those in power and all them things like anthem and pledge was allegiance to power. And in a week when the Government succumbed again to the legacy of British colonialism and the police continued to harass citizens who protested against the colonialism, patriotism was not on my mind.

But, the school days, when we took for granted the students who played instruments,  remembering that it was a time of music education, and talented students learning music while doing other school work, much like the teenager on the piano.

Resistance 

I thought we would also get La Marseillaise, the French National  Anthem 

Th chorus of starts off with " Aux armes, citoyens" - calling citizens to arms against tyranny and so Formed out of the French Revolution, La Marseillaise was banned a couple of times before it became the French National Anthem. 

And today, students and others are protesting in France against conditions in schools and other things .. we learn that a school gate at Rama Krishna Primary School has injured two students , in a week of  the Government's honouring  of the British Monarch. 

Would La Marseillaise give us Guyanese ideas about continuous revolution? 

Music 

Maestro Gallet loves his craft and connected with the audience. He enthusiastically explained his pieces and his playing. 

Unfortunately, I could not hear him some of the time. 

The programme titles and google helped afterwards with understanding the range of his repertoire.  

One of the pieces it seems was also from another story of resistance, the Yellow River Cantata about the Chinese defending the Yellow River.  He demonstrated improvisation with Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah - and a couple of us sang along the chorus as he played. He had slow pieces and some strong powerful pieces. (at one point they had to repair the piano pedal)

The acoustics were good, the notes filled the church. I hope Sacred Heart could be a venue for other musical performances.

Rising sea levels

He included Debussy's "La cathédrale engloutie" - the sunken cathedral. This piece apparently is related to  Breton legend about a sunken cathedral on the mythical island of Ys. The island had been swallowed by the sea, and sometimes when the water is clear, the story goes, the cathedral rises and priests sing and the organs flow. 

Our coast though, cathedrals, churches, maasjids, mandirs and other things .. on land which is under sea level , not submerged thanks to the mangrove and seawalls.  

Thinking as I write this of MV Barima and those who died and those who survived, and their families seeking justice.

What kind of music could we make then, as we try to survive in this place?  What music will nurture us and uplift us, keep us above water, motivate us to justice? Liberate us?

 Feature image by Amir Doreh on Unsplash