I'll try again! Did anyone hear that new track he did about the Paris shootings? Very moving I thought. Interesting that during it he mentions he had been listening to some new songs he recorded too.
No shame in enjoying it at all, I felt my eyes water it was so touching. I've said on the Facebook page it deserves a wider audience and asked if anything will come of it. Like you said, he still clearly has it, when the subject matter was so affecting to him.
There's a version here on the BBC now, so hopefully that will get some more attention, it's been on Twitter a lot too. I heard it first on the programme on Sunday afternoon. I also keep wanting to say it was lovely, then feeling that is entirely the wrong kind of word, appropriate is rather limp. I had wondered if he was there all through it when the previous week's programme was recorded in Paris.
Jarvis about his Jamma on 13.11.2015 on the Sunday Service
"The attacks happened about 4 hours after I'd pre-recorded the Sunday Service for that weekend in the BBC studio just off the Champs Elyseés. I believe they got a BBC newsreader to say as much just before the show went on air. I always mention if the show is coming from Paris so I guess the listeners might have found it strange that I made no reference to the recent events otherwise.
I was in Paris until the morning of Wednesday the 18th when I was due to travel to London to do some recording. I found myself writing stuff down in my notebook constantly: I imagine a lot of other people found themselves doing that too. When your world is threatened you tend to see it in sharper focus. I didn't really have a plan of what to do with the writing - it just seemed important to get it down so I wouldn't forget things. A lot of it is just mundane details.
Sometimes on the show we have this feature called "Jamma" which entails me reciting or (almost) singing a text over an accompaniment improvised by a musical guest. (David Cunningham & Beardyman are amongst those that have participated in the past). Sometime during the Eurostar journey to London the idea of doing a "Jamma" based around my Paris scribblings came to me. It felt like the best & most personal way to communicate to the Sunday Service listeners my impressions of the past few days. I got the other stuff I had to record out of the way & then we started work on it around 7pm. Serafina Steer had been playing on the other material & she graciously agreed to give me a hand. We didn't discuss it very much - I just gave her a couple of vocal cues where I thought the mood of the music should change. I sat by the microphone & she sat at the keyboard. I think we had one false start but what you hear is basically the one & only time we played it all the way through. I misread a couple of bits but, hey....We added a bit of piano at the end & then that was it. I was home by 9:30pm.
It's not really a song - I'm not sure what it is really - but hopefully the sentiment gets across: I'm not generally a lovey-dovey person but that weekend in Paris I really kind of felt besotted with everyone I saw! We all sort of bumble around & sometimes mess up & stuff but everyone's trying their best & in the end we have the freedom to fail & that's important too.
This was the best I could do given the time & the circumstances. Thanks for listening.
(& thanks to Serafina & Ross for helping make it happen).