THE PRODUCT: ‘SING’

I defy you to listen to ‘Sing’ by Gary Barlow & The Commonwealth Band featuring Military Wives and not be moved. It exemplifies the power of creativity beautifully with a symphony of culture, music, emotion and videography. And its engagement with the creative economy is clear, with the album and single engaging strongly with the charts (Prendergast, 2012; Lane, 2012).

Geographies of the contributors.

Bringing together 210 musicians from around the world, there are such diverse geographies represented on the track. From the Sydney Symphony Orchestra to the Slum Drummers, ‘made up of a group of street kids from the slums of Kenya’ (Jubilee Sing webste, no date). Often drowned in negativity, the notion of self and other is actually afforded a lease of positivity within the track; the difference expressed through the song and video – black and white, rich and poor, young and old – is one of the powerful, unifying and attractive things about it. Delving deep into our ‘positionality’ – ‘our personal beliefs, identities and motives’ (Cloke et al., 2005: 67) which also determines how our knowledge is ‘situated’ (ibid.: 67; Rose, 1997:306) – we know that the people represented on the track are different to us, and to the other performers, but that is what makes the song and the emotion attached to it.

An interesting way in which to view this track is through the concept of actor network theory. ‘Networks are … materially heterogeneous or hybrid, built of both human and non-human elements, each of which exercises agency (as ‘actants’) in affecting the length and stability of the network.’ (Foster, 2006 :293). ‘Sing’ brings together, in the form of a network, many different actants – both humans and instruments – and it’s fascinating how a song can do this!

Activism

‘To hear a thousand voices shouting love and light and hope’. These lyrics in conjunction with a crescendo in the music, create a powerful moment! As a form of activism, creativity is powerful simply because it is something we can all understand (Holbrook, 2005) – it unifies us; as Sawyer (2011: 3) states, ‘creativity is part of what makes us human’ and, with particular reference to music, Stevie Wonder reminds us that ‘music is … a language we all understand’ (A-Z Lyrics).

Fixing

As I alluded to in an earlier blog post, I would like to suggest that there is a ‘creative fix’ – an idea inspired by David Harvey’s ‘spatial fix’ (2001: 24) – which is exemplified through this song. In order for the geographies of the contributors, their combined creativity – in the form of a network – and the activism they are promoting to be useful and communicable, it all needs to be ‘fixed’, or packaged, in some way. This is achieved through the recording of their talents and the ‘fixing’ of those talents with the temporal dimension of a song and its spatial dimension as a CD or downloadable MP3.

As I said, creativity is powerful!

References

A-Z Lyrics, STEVIE WONDER LYRICS, accessed by me on 4 March 2016, <http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/steviewonder/sirduke.html&gt;

Foster, R. (2006) Tracking globalization: commodities and value in motion. Tilley, C., Keane, W., Kuchler, S., Rowlands, M. & Spyer, P. (eds) Handbook of material culture. London: Sage. 285-302.

Harvey, D. (2001). Globalization and the spatial fix. Geographische revue,2(3), 23-31.

Holbrook, M. B. (2005). Customer value and autoethnography: subjective personal introspection and the meanings of a photograph collection.Journal of Business Research, 58(1), 45-61.

Jubilee Sing website, Performers, accessed by me on 4 March 2016, <http://www.jubileesing.com/performers&gt;

Lane, D. (2012) Official Charts Advent Calendar 2012: Day 14, accessed by me on 3 March 2016, <http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/official-charts-advent-calendar-2012-day-14__2636/&gt;

Prendergast, L. (2012) Gary Barlow’s Diamond Jubilee album tops UK chart, accessed by me on 3 March 2016, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/9310329/Gary-Barlows-Diamond-Jubilee-album-tops-UK-chart.html&gt;

Rose, G. (1997). Situating knowledges: positionality, reflexivities and other tactics. Progress in human geography, 21(3), 305-320.

Sawyer, R. K. (2011). Explaining creativity: The science of human innovation. Oxford University Press.

‘Sing’ by Gary Barlow & The Commonwealth Band featuring Military Wives (2012) video recording, Decca Records.

The photograph:

BBC photograph within Telegraph article, viewed 4 March 2016, photograph: <http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02236/garbarlow_2236793b.jpg&gt;; article: <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9306124/Gary-Barlow-On-Her-Majestys-Service-BBC-One-review.html&gt;