Celebrating Leonard Cohen with another ‘hallelujah’ moment

This file photo taken on July 5, 2013 shows Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen performs at the Auditorium Stravinski during the 47th Montreux Jazz Festival....Leonard Cohen, the storied musician and poet hailed as one of the most visionary artists of his generation, has died at age 82, his publicist announced on November 10, 2016. PHOTO| AFP

What you need to know:

  • Cohen wrote well over 100 songs exploring a variety of themes — politics, social unrest, sexuality, angst, love and religion.
  • Some like "Come Healing" and "I’m Your Man" achieved both commercial and critical success.
  • His latest album, You Want it Darker is produced by his son, Adam. Released two weeks before Leonard Cohen’s death, it is bound to attract big sales.

I have spent the last two weeks singing Hallelujah; two kinds of hallelujah, actually — a lament and a fete. On November 7, 2016, Leonard Cohen, the multi-talented Canadian artiste who wrote the pop anthem Hallelujah in 1984, died at his home in Los Angeles. He was 82. His death prompted an hallelujah in celebration of, and gratitude for a long life, a talent fully exploited and shared; a secure legacy.

Still, there was an inescapable sense of dejection; like that feeling of being abandoned by an old friend. When those who have contributed to one’s cultural references leave this earthly stage, one is plunged into nostalgia for what was and pensive thoughts of whether it will ever be, again.

Mercifully, on that same November 7,  2016 I was dragged out of my despondent hallelujahs by a long-awaited announcement from the ATP World Tour, the body that governs the circuit of men’s professional tennis. I should be named the patron saint of lost tennis causes! Britain’s Andy Murray — whose abundant trials and erratic fortunes have been the soundtrack of my recreation over the last nine years — finally achieved the coveted status of world number 1 tennis player. As we say in popular culture: another Hallelujah moment! Murray has laboured hard for this, losing only nine matches this year and winning 78, to seal his unlikely return to the game after back surgery in September 2013. Hallelujah!

A graduate of McGill University, Leonard Cohen started out as a poet and novelist, earning the 1956 McGill Literary Award and the Quebec Literary Award in 1964. At 33, he turned to song-writing. When a number of recording artistes achieved success with the songs he had written, he decided to record his own album, Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967).

EXPLORED VARIETY OF THEMES

Cohen wrote well over 100 songs exploring a variety of themes — politics, social unrest, sexuality, angst, love and religion. Some like "Come Healing" and "I’m Your Man" achieved both commercial and critical success. His latest album, You Want it Darker is produced by his son, Adam. Released two weeks before Leonard Cohen’s death, it is bound to attract big sales. But it is doubtful whether any Cohen song, will ever gain the global, iconic status of the half-hymn, half-love song known as Hallelujah. The lyrics and melody are so versatile, that the song can evoke deep sorrow and loss as powerfully as it evokes cries of joy, praise and celebration.

Hallelujah has been covered by close to 200 artistes who include, Celine Dion, Michael Bolton, Justin Timberlake and Bob Dylan. It has accompanied bleak break-ups and tragic death scenes in films and television shows such as Shrek, American Idol, The West Wing, ER, House and X Factor.

In 2009, Cohen remarked: “I think it is a good song, but too many people sing it”. Some people went further and spoke of “criminal overuse of the song”. That view persisted. When Hallelujah’s opening chords filled the “In Memoriam” section of the 2016 Emmy Awards, there was an instant storm of disparagement on Twitter.

Alan Light, music journalist and author of the 2012 book, The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of ‘Hallelujah’, describes Hallelujah as “the most loved, most performed and most misunderstood compositions of all time”. Ironically, when Cohen released it in 1984 as part of the album, Various Positions, Hallelujah made no mark on the pop charts. Its trajectory from this initial obscurity to blistering fame is the subject of many published conversations.

In Soul Music, a BBC radio documentary, Light explains that Hallelujah’s three-decade journey began as a challenging conception and a difficult delivery. “Hallelujah was a song that kind of tortured Leonard for years. Depending on when he was telling the story, it was something that he worked on for 2 or 3 or 4 years and wrote … 60/70/80 different verses for, and he describes a scene where he was in a hotel room, in his underwear, banging his head on the floor saying, ‘I just can’t figure out what to do with this song’”. 

Cohen was 50 years old and down on his luck. Columbia Records, didn’t think much of his new song, so they farmed it off to a small independent label. Cohen kept reworking his delivery in live performances, confusing the few people who had listened to his original recording.

In 1991, John Cale contributed an acoustic piano version of Hallelujah on I’m Your Fan, a tribute album for Cohen. Cale had written to Cohen to ask for the song’s lyrics.

Cohen reportedly faxed him 15 pages, filled with verses. Cale rearranged them, selecting two for his own third and fourth verses and picking a fifth one to crown Cohen’s epic meditation. That five-verse Cale version is the one Jeff Buckley recorded in 1994. It rose steadily on the charts, inspiring new covers. 

Remember when I moved in you?/ The Holy Dove was moving too… Maybe there’s a God above …And it’s not a cry that you hear at night / It’s not somebody who’s seen the light / It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah”.

Do ardent Hallelujah lovers listen to all the invigorating lyrics or are they lost in the billowing repetition of that one-word chorus, “hallelujah”? Does it matter? The original artiste’s intentions are never sacred. Critics and covering artistes lend new functions and new meanings to his work.

Maureen Kendler, a Teaching Fellow at the London School of Jewish Studies, explains how Cohen explores divine inspiration, weaving the Biblical story of King David and Bathsheba with that of Samson and Delilah to contemplate some fairly dark aspects of love, faith, redemption and betrayal. The carnal is seen through the spiritual.

For Jeff Buckley, “the hallelujah is not an homage to a worshipped person, idol or god, but the hallelujah of an orgasm. It is an ode to life and love”.  Alexander Burke won the 2008 edition of X Factor when she decided to “Whitneyfy it …”. Her soulful rendition sent "Hallelujah" to the top of the charts in precisely the way that Whitney Houston produced platinum success with her poignant cover of Dolly Parton’s "I Will Always Love You", theme song of the 1992 film, The Bodyguard.

In February 2012, Cohen was amongst the first recipients of the newly minted PEN, New England award for Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence. On that occasion, novelist Salman Rushdie embraced Hallelujah’s contradictions — “non-sacred rhymes … the wit and jaundiced comedy … undermining the hymnal qualities … the open-ended meditation”. Precisely. Cohen’s lyrics are, in every way, poetry that is loaded with layered meanings.

There are several biographies and documentary films to help us understand Leonard Cohen — his life, his work, his literary allusions. Born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Montreal, Canada, on September 21, 1934, Cohen never stopped exploring the contours of his own faith, in particular, and of religion, in general.

Ultimately, he saw "Hallelujah" as a song of affirmation. “The song explains that many kinds of hallelujah do exist. I say all the perfect and broken hallelujahs have equal value. It’s a desire to affirm my faith in life, not in some formal religious way, but with enthusiasm, with emotion”.

Indeed. Here is another of those anthemic songs like "Imagine", "Change is Gonna Come", "Blowin’ in the Wind", "My Girl", "Shauri Yako" and "Muzina"; songs that can lift you to a variety of emotional realms; songs you can employ to mark any sorrow or to celebrate every joy.

Just listen to "Hallelujah" — any of, or every one of, the horde of recorded versions and then join me in raising a final, heartfelt hallelujah for the departed Leonard Cohen. His music lives on. For all time.

 

Dr. Nyairo is a Cultural Analyst – [email protected]