Music in the Workplace

June 30, 1997

Dear friend:

I am generally moved to write after I've read an article or a book that struck me as insightful.

This time it's just a bit different. On Friday I saw a movie that touched me deeply. I want you to know about it with the hope you might also get to see it.

It's called Brassed Off. It's the story of a brass band which is associated with a place of work - a coal mine in the north of England. The pit (mine) is about to be closed. No one will listen to the voice of the miners.

But the brass band plays on - barely. And because the music is both beautiful and powerful, the voice of the community is still listened to. Consequently, the community is not destroyed by this terrible economic misfortune.

I am sure that I was so powerfully touched by this movie becaue of my background - both the fact that I was a minister and the fact that I am from a long line of coal miners, in my case not from England, but from Wales.

I am often asked if I miss the ministry. The answer, which varies in length, always has two parts to it.

NO (I feel that my present work is very much a ministry - and a challenging and vital one at that).….

BUT I DO MISS PARTS OF IT, MOST ESPECIALLY THE MUSIC (for it was the music of the church that sustained and strengthened us both as individuals and as a community in all times of transition).

I learned to respect the power of music from my father, who was a musician, a very Welsh musician. My dad was, I believe, conceived in Wales and born in the United States. His father, who had already left the coal fields of north Wales to settle in the coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania, had returned to Wales to marry and bring his bride back with him. Soon after the family settled in the States, my grandfather died in the epidemic of 1918. From then on my dad supported his family by working as a breaker boy in the colliery and by singing in an Anglican church as a boy soprano. It was only when he got to college that he finally settled on a career, choosing not to be a mining engineer (as was his brother), but to be a music educator (as was his sister). As I grew up and the economy of our part of the country (the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania) got weaker and weaker, I firmly believe that my father helped to hold the people together - both as individuals and as a community.

Every Tuesday night he went off to lead his community choir.

And on lots of Sundays, we spent the afternoon singing hymns with the other Welsh congregations. (Those singing festivals were called Gymanva Ganus.)

And once a year we had to sit through long sessions while singers of all ages and voices and combinations - from soloists to full choirs -- competed with one another." (Those competitions - which are central to the movie Brassed Off - were called Eisteddfods, which means "the sitting" in Welsh).

Now that I have grown up, and now that I have left the ordained ministry, and now that I get to work with individuals and corporations that are going through major transitions, I often wonder how we could use music to help us through these troubled times.

I still don't have the answer to my wondering, which I guess is the real reason for this letter. Maybe, if you have some time, you might see Brassed Off and share your insights with me. I'd really like to hear them.

Sincerely,

Bill