It feels impossible to talk about. How do I find the words? I’ll begin with some images…memories.
What happens when 8 women gather to perform the music of Kate Bush, in a southern California city, thousands of miles from the wiley and windy moors?
What began as a spark of inspiration, soon exploded into a 5 year epic that took us across the world. Somehow the music and the fans and some undeniable spirit carried us through a pandemic, a death of one of our own, and a rebirth out of all the tragedy. It feels like we survived the passage of the dragon, visited the underworld and came out the otherside.
Along the way, was Kate’s music…her lyrics and spiritual depth guiding us and serving us with the perfect poetry for every occasion.
Before the phenomenon of Stranger Things…it felt like we were all part of some underground club, a hidden cult of devoted listeners. Baby Bushka quickly began to feel like some kind of church service, a long lost folk club, where everyone knows the lyrics and weeps.
One review of the show goes as follows: “It’s not impersonation…it’s channeling”
In other words, there is a passage of spirit, and Baby Bushka merely serves as a conduit, a medium between worlds.
This phenomena of channeling, connecting to the divine through music is not new. Think about any ecstatic trance-like music expression and experience. Now insert a whirling dervish or the bone chilling cry of the Cree. It has the power to transport and transform. But where does it come from? Does it exist even if the intention of divine contact isn’t there?
Throughout most of our history as human beings, the artist has served as a conduit between man and God. Music and art a portal to other worlds.
In pop music, that purpose is far more ambiguous and rare to find. It’s an industry filled with divas and ego, rarely do you see a popstar choose to retreat like a hermit in the cave to create, shun interviews and tours and sing about angels and God. But Kate did this. And she’s doing it now. Somehow she has reached mythic proportions in the minds of her fans. Ironically, her silence is not unlike the silence sometimes attributed the divine. But for those who are truly listening…you will find it talking loudly all the time…in the song of the thrush, the thunder, the poetry…the art, faces of those you love.
So remarkably, from among her invisible home in the hills, her song Running Up That Hill has resurrected as a talisman out of the underworld of time and television. It's saving lives. And we talk about it as an “awakening”.
It might seem strange to talk about music that was written in the last 50 years as “age-old” melodies worthy of spiritual interpretation and sages to bring it to life. But it exists. I know because I’ve felt its heat, I’ve heard it roar and I’ve hugged it’s smiling grateful faces, in the audiences we’ve encountered.
Right now I’m thinking a lot about the mytho-poetics of Kate Bush. Spirituality in Pop Music. The Bush Magic and the Parish we are a part of.
Being a member of this family of fans and sisterhood of Baby Bushka feels like going on a great Arthurian quest.
Like knights clad in jumpsuits and cardboard guns and pockets full of rose petals, we illuminate the sacred songs and bring them to live. We open the church doors for singing, for seeing the divine feminine, visiting the deep grief and experiencing the spirited wings of bird-angels.
Kate Bush isn’t here. We are. And it’s magical isn't it?
