Orchestra celebrates Music of Freedom

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James Keelaghan: remembering sacrifices. (SUPPLIED PHOTO )

THE Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra is marking Remembrance Day this weekend with three performances of a pops concert called Music of Freedom.

Local folk singer-songwriter and history buff James Keelaghan is slated to perform three of his history-based songs with the orchestra, including a new one about war veterans.

The concert, hosted by former CBC Radio personality Ron Robinson, also features jazz vocalist Anna-Lisa Kirby singing wartime favourites. The orchestra's selections will include works from war movies such as Saving Private Ryan. Video clips and projected photos will accompany the music.

The past five years have been personally eventful for the Calgary-bred Keelaghan, who turned 50 last month. He lost both his parents, became the father of a son who is now three, and has a second child due in December.

The Juno Award-winning troubadour with the rich baritone voice has just released House of Cards, his first disc of all-new material in eight years.

Keelaghan, who has previously performed with the Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg orchestras, spoke with the Free Press about war and remembrance.

FP: On your new CD there's a song, Medusa, that you wrote with Scottish singer Karine Polwart. You're performing it with the WSO. It talks about soldiers marching "row upon row" and how "nobody cares, no one remembers." It refers to Medusa, the monster who turns men to stone.

JK: "The way Medusa operates in the present-day world is that we send people off to war and turn them into headstones. . . . I have friends down in the States who fought in Vietnam, and were really in the thick of it. One guy, I asked him, 'What does that experience make you think about now?' And he says: 'Not my child. Not ever.'"

FP: Your father was from Ireland and your mother was English. Did they have war experiences?

JK: "My father was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. My mother was an East Ender (in London). She was like, 12 or 13 years old when the Blitz started. She was bombed pretty well every night for about six months.

She must have seen truly horrific things. But she got past that. She came (to Canada) and raised six children. She was active in social justice issues, in the same way that my father was. There's this realization from that generation that life does go on. The real measure of us as human beings is what we do after those horrific things."

FP: Do you consider yourself a pacifist? What do you want your children to think about Remembrance Day?

JK: "I want them to remember the sacrifices those people made. The past few (Remembrance Days) we've gone to the ceremony at Vimy Ridge Park....

The Second World War is possibly something that was justifiable, to stop a regime run wild. But the First World War was a useless slaughter. I wouldn't say I'm necessarily a pacifist... but by and large, the people who send people to go do the dyin' are not willing to go do the dyin' themselves."

FP: The WSO concert will include the Last Post and a moment of silence. Do you find that meaningful?

JK: "I think it's a very moving thing. One of the (reasons) I'm so affected by the First World War is that France, for example, had 300,000 missing. To me, the Last Post is particularly about the unknown fallen.

I'm reading a book called The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War by Jean-Yves Le Naour. It's about this guy in France at the end of the First World War, who they found on a station platform. He was a total amnesiac. He became France's living unknown soldier.

Hundreds of families stepped forward to try and claim him as their son or their husband or their father. Although his family finally found him, other families couldn't let go... and kept taking the case to court. It's a really, really sad tale about grief."

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 6, 2009 D4