Music and Cats

When Jack Langstaff sang, people couldn’t help but listen. His powerful, clear baritone filled any room, and the warmth and intensity of his singing compelled attention. When Jack asked people to sing or dance with him, they did… thousands and thousands of people, in concert halls, theaters, pubs, classrooms and living rooms across the country. Jack believed that anyone could sing. He believed that singing together creates powerful bonds between people. Because he was able to make those around him believe those same things, he made magic.

I first experienced the magic that Jack could create in December of 1984. Recently out of college, I was living near Boston, and two friends were performing in something called the Christmas Revels in Cambridge. They tried to describe the show to me, but had trouble capturing it - it’s a mix of musical theater and Christmas pageant, sing-along and dance performance, they said, but it’s not really any of those things. You’ll love it, they promised me. I bought a ticket.

The night of the performance, I arrived at the gorgeous Gothic revival theater in Harvard’s Memorial Hall. The performance that I attended was sold out - as they always are - and the anticipation in the audience was almost palpable. Friends greeted each other warmly; small children chattered excitedly to their parents and grandparents. As the lights went down, the crowd quieted. A brass ensemble began to play in the wings, and a chorus processed through the theater and onto the stage, singing a medieval carol. The Revels had begun. The performance was good, interesting, engaging, but I did not love it. As the first act reached its end, three men in morris dancer’s ribbons and bells leapt onto the stage. Two danced morris figures center stage, while the third man - Jack - stood alone to one side, and sang:

I danced in the morning when the world was begun
I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun
I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth
At Bethlehem I had my birth

I grew up singing the words of Sydney Carter’s song Lord of the Dance, but I had never heard the song sung so authoritatively. In that moment, Jack was the Lord of the Dance. Although I knew the refrain, I was not prepared for the flare of energy and joy that filled the theater as the voices of performers and audience joined in singing:

Dance, then, wherever you may be
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.

The song continued, Jack singing the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, the morris men capering about the stage, each chorus building in volume and excitement. At the end of the last verse and refrain, the singing did not end; rather, the performers and audience continued singing the refrain over and over. Jack and the two morris dancers took the hands of chorus members, who formed into several lines, dancing across the stage. And then much of the audience was on its collective feet, and chorus members were dancing in the aisles of the theater, reaching out their hands to folks in the audience, drawing them into the dance.

I saw an outstretched hand, looked up into a smiling stranger’s face, reached out my hand, and was pulled into a crush of sound and motion and energy. My line danced its way out into the high-ceilinged lobby of the theater, where the lines of singing people snaked and spiraled around each other. Radiant faces and clasped hands moved past on either side of me, I held a warm hand in each of mine, and from the balcony of the theater lobby, Jack kept us singing with him. This was powerful stuff, earthy, warm, and deeply spiritual. And I loved it.

I got involved with Revels in 1990, when Jack started a company in Houston. I was thrilled to be part of creating a new Revels - the seventh at the time - in my hometown. Jack had as raw material a group of people gathered from the local classical and folk music communities, church choirs and theater groups. Most of us were strangers to each other. Only a handful of us had ever seen a Revels. Jack taught us how to make a Revels: how to create a sense of ritual in a theater, how to draw our audience in, how to gently encourage a person sitting silent during a sing-along to sing with us. In the process, Jack also created a community of people who not only loved performing and loved the Revels, but loved each other as well.

I have moved twice in the past 10 years, to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1996, and to Seattle in 1999. Both places have Revels companies, and I sought them out, knowing that the people Jack had brought together in each of those places would be people I wanted to know. Since 1990, I’ve been in twelve Christmas Revels. Whether Jack has performed in the show, or sat in the audience, or sent his greetings from across the country, his spirit has been a part of every Revels in which I’ve performed.

Several times over the years, I’ve stood in a circle of costumed singers, dancers and musicians just prior to a Revels performance, while Jack read to us a piece by Peter Smith, one-time manager of the theater where Revels North performs. Peter is one of those whose life was changed by his involvement in the Revels. In Peter’s case, the transformation began when he put his hand into an outstretched hand, and allowed himself to be drawn into the line of people dancing past him during the Lord of the Dance. Peter’s essay has always moved me to tears, particularly this last paragraph:

I have no idea - any more than anyone else has, of course - of what happens at the moment of death. But if it is something other than encountering oblivion, I realize that I cannot conceive of anything I would more joyfully welcome than having my hand taken by someone - a complete stranger, perhaps from the other side of the globe - who had died in the millisecond before me, someone who brings me into a very wide aisle and an infinitely long chain of people who are reveling in a dance which is a dance of life rather than a dance of death, people who are all connected, through their handholding, not only to one another but also, at the point where the line begins, to the one who is indeed the Lord of the Dance.

Jack died on December 13. When I heard of his death, I thought immediately of this passage. I imagined Jack eagerly clasping the hands of the people on either side of him in this eternal chain, dancing joyfully through the cosmos, and pausing occasionally to exhort all those within earshot of his powerful voice, “Everyone sing!” I smiled at this image of Jack in his element, and then I cried.

Jack Langstaff was born on Christmas Eve, 1920. He would have been 85 years old today.

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