It was a moment to remember. Returning to my alma mater, Madras Christian College, recently and that too to sing in the famed Heber Chapel as part of a mass choir for audio and video recording. It’s a scene to visualise — some 225 voices of bright-arrayed young and not-so-young choristers soaring in four-part harmony – along with the glorious sound of time-tested hymns to organ accompaniment inside the acoustically superb precincts of the chapel. The Classic Hymns, founded by Binu Joshua, was putting the final touches to its first Tamil CD-DVD, having already brought out five in English and one Malayalam album since 2008 when it released its first CD, Ancient of Days.
The main aim of Classic Hymns is to revive hymn singing; introduce it in an attractive way to the young and present it to people of all faiths. The project is the brainchild of Binu Joshua, who also runs the Christian Professionals and Businessmen Forum. An old student of Madras Christian College, 53-year-old Joshua worked in Calcutta for 12 years before moving to Chennai.
The first four CDs contained English hymns, the fifth was country gospel by Chennai-based ensembles. Grammy nominee and Dove-award winning group Ernie Haase & Signature Sound was recorded live with a special backing choir put together from Chennai for the title song, ‘Blessed Assurance’. Joshua went to his home state, Kerala, for the next venture, and the melodious hymns were rendered in Malayalam this time.
As a musician in the city put it, “if you like good old gospel music it is very likely you have a nodding acquaintance with the Gaither Vocal Band and their famous Homecoming series. What Binu Joshua has done is the Indian equivalent, and just as good too.”
When Joshua shared his vision in 2008 of getting about a dozen choirs in Chennai together to do the recording with the choir conductors, the latter were excited at the prospect and pitched in with great enthusiasm. “Why hadn’t any musician or conductor thought about it earlier?” was the tenor of the reaction. I was lucky to be one of the 150-voices in the mass choir which sang for Ancient of Days. The choir directors included Arul Siromoney, Sharada Schaffter, Samuel Grubb and
Damayanti Santwan. It is interesting to know that in each of the albums a favourite hymn of Mahatma Gandhi finds place. The latest album in Tamil, ‘Jagathrakshaga’ was released early this month.
Pauline Jones, an athlete and senior IT official who was part of the 225-voice mass choir for the Tamil CD, said, “singing alto in a huge choir for a live recording inside a lovely chapel like Heber, is a lifetime experience. It’s a musical offering to God even as we worship Jagathrakshaga in the title of the album, which incidentally is a line taken from the praise hymn, ‘Potrum, potrum’.”
Binu Joshua says his next project, a keerthanai CD, is already half ready and is looking forward to doing hymns in Hindi in March 2016. “The next challenge I want to take up is to better the Guinness hymn-singing record by 8,000 odd people, with may be 10,000 choristers drawn from people assembling at Nehru Stadium in the city.”
