Song of home: Alison Richards plays it by ear

‘I often wonder why a particular piece of music gets lodged.’

I frequently find myself stuck with an ‘earworm’, a repeating fragment of music that I can’t shake from my head. I often wonder why a particular piece of music gets lodged. As I write, the chorus of the African American spiritual ‘Steal Away’ is playing on an internal loop: ‘Steal away, steal away home. I ain’t got long to stay here’.

Michael Tippett, the pacifist, Jungian-influenced composer, used ‘Steal Away’ as one of the five spirituals that anchor his oratorio A Child of Our Time. This was written in response to the events that triggered the Kristallnacht in 1938, and the horror of the subsequent war and Holocaust. ‘Steal Away’ is also sometimes understood to be a spiritual that, yes, encouraged enslaved people to have trust in God, but also to run away from enslavement, on their own or with the help of the underground railroad. It is a song, and a hope, of escape from suffering. The music draws a particular emphasis to the word ‘home’, which is held as a long, drawn-out note, signposting its significance.

Perhaps the song is playing in my head because my newsfeed has been full of images of the migrant boat that sank in the Mediterranean. It had more than 500 people on board, with terrible loss of life. A boat full of people seeking a sustaining and safer life. Warsan Shire’s devastating poem ‘Home’ speaks of that terrible journey and the unwelcoming destination, likening the home to be escaped to the mouth of a shark, and the journey, and destination, to be safer, however dangerous.

The first Christians were persecuted and martyred for their beliefs. Subsequently, those who sought to give their lives over to their faith and beliefs would choose what Jerome of Stridon called ‘white martyrdom’, taking themselves into the deserts, or setting out to sea in flimsy boats, seeking exile or to share the gospel in hostile places.

This sense of not being at home in the world and the need to find a different form of home is reflected in Hebrews 13:14: ‘For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come’. In 1653, James Naylor described to magistrates how he left his home and possessions because he believed in the promise that God would be with him, ‘which promise I find made good every day’. Naylor was one of those who became known as the Valiant Sixty. This group of early Quaker activists and missionaries felt called to travel across Britain to preach and spread the ideas and practice of Friends. They were often persecuted and imprisoned, living without home and comfort, but sustained by their mission and faith.

So maybe I hear the words and music of ‘Steal Away’ to remind me that home may not be a place to stay, but rather in the journey and the seeking. Michael Tippett ended his oratorio with another spiritual, ‘Deep River’. By setting out into the unknown and crossing that river we may hope to find ‘that promised land, where all is peace’.

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