0:00:02 > 0:00:03Hello and welcome to Songs of Praise.
0:00:03 > 0:00:05This week, we're meeting artists
0:00:05 > 0:00:11and writers from the south-west to the north-east of Scotland.
0:00:11 > 0:00:16The artist who risked all by giving up the day job.
0:00:16 > 0:00:19A writer who delves into the minds of murderers.
0:00:19 > 0:00:22How to make a business from hip hop.
0:00:22 > 0:00:26And hymns from Dunblane by Scottish hymn writers, past and present.
0:00:30 > 0:00:33We've chosen to celebrate Scottish artists
0:00:33 > 0:00:37because we are celebrating the anniversary of the birth
0:00:37 > 0:00:40of Scotland's national poet, Robert Burns.
0:00:40 > 0:00:44Burns lived in the 18th century in Ayrshire in the south-west of Scotland.
0:00:44 > 0:00:49In his late 20s, he set off on a tour of Scotland
0:00:49 > 0:00:51and he stopped here in Dunblane.
0:00:51 > 0:00:53He stayed in an inn within sight of the cathedral
0:00:53 > 0:00:56in which today's hymns are being sung.
0:00:56 > 0:00:59We begin with a traditional Scottish psalm.
0:00:59 > 0:01:02It's been sung on many a grand occasion,
0:01:02 > 0:01:03including the Queen's wedding.
0:03:24 > 0:03:26By Allan-side I chanc'd to rove,
0:03:26 > 0:03:28while Phebus sank beyond Ben Ledi.
0:03:28 > 0:03:31The winds were whispering thro' the grove,
0:03:31 > 0:03:33the yellow corn was waving ready.
0:03:33 > 0:03:35I listen'd to a lover's sang
0:03:35 > 0:03:38and thought on youthfu' pleasures mony.
0:03:38 > 0:03:41And ay the wild-wood echoes rang
0:03:41 > 0:03:44O dearly do I lo'e thee, Annie.
0:03:44 > 0:03:46That's Robert Burns' poem, Allan Water,
0:03:46 > 0:03:49and this is the Allan Water running past us here in Dunblane?
0:03:49 > 0:03:55Yes, indeed, Burns visited Perthshire on his first Highland tour in 1787
0:03:55 > 0:03:58and was basically enchanted with the scenery and the countryside.
0:03:58 > 0:04:00I wouldn't be surprised if he had a look
0:04:00 > 0:04:02in the cathedral while he was here.
0:04:02 > 0:04:04It's interesting because
0:04:04 > 0:04:07- people don't think that Burns was religious?- It's a strange thing
0:04:07 > 0:04:09because it's there on the page,
0:04:09 > 0:04:12his belief in God, his interest in religion,
0:04:12 > 0:04:15and if you think about his own Presbyterianism,
0:04:15 > 0:04:17he is the man who, in the Cotter's Saturday Night,
0:04:17 > 0:04:21gives the Presbyterian community in Scotland a sense that it is cultured.
0:04:21 > 0:04:24He says it's OK to pray in a simple way,
0:04:24 > 0:04:27it's OK to concentrate on the Bible and when he does that,
0:04:27 > 0:04:29he's being absolutely sincere
0:04:29 > 0:04:31and paying tribute to his own upbringing.
0:04:31 > 0:04:35It's interesting that Burns is a Presbyterian.
0:04:35 > 0:04:39Is Burns taking that side of Scottish national life seriously?
0:04:39 > 0:04:41He takes that side seriously
0:04:41 > 0:04:44and we might say Burns is a great ecumenical poet.
0:04:44 > 0:04:48This is the man who writes sympathetically about the Covenanters,
0:04:48 > 0:04:51the man who writes sympathetically about Mary, Queen of Scots,
0:04:51 > 0:04:55that great Scottish Stewart Catholic icon, if you like.
0:04:55 > 0:04:58He's a man who knows there's more than one way to be Scottish.
0:04:58 > 0:05:00He's a man who knows that Scotland
0:05:00 > 0:05:04has had a number of different religions and different identities.
0:05:04 > 0:05:08So, a man who knows there are different ways to be religious?
0:05:08 > 0:05:11Absolutely, he is absolutely expansive in his humanity
0:05:11 > 0:05:15and he will write sympathetically about Islam on occasion,
0:05:15 > 0:05:16or about Jewish people.
0:05:16 > 0:05:19He is a man of the Enlightenment who believes
0:05:19 > 0:05:21we might have different creeds, different colours,
0:05:21 > 0:05:24different cultures, but by and large,
0:05:24 > 0:05:29human nature inside is pretty much the same wherever you go on the planet.
0:05:29 > 0:05:31What does Robert Burns mean to you, personally?
0:05:31 > 0:05:35Well, he's a great poet, he is perhaps an even greater songwriter.
0:05:35 > 0:05:38Ultimately, I suppose in the Christian context,
0:05:38 > 0:05:42we're talking about someone who has a strong sense of human weakness
0:05:42 > 0:05:47but, often overriding that, a sense of joy in the face of the world.
0:05:47 > 0:05:52And I think in many ways, those sort of perspectives
0:05:52 > 0:05:56come out of Burns' quite mainstream Christian point of view.
0:05:56 > 0:06:00You're a Catholic yourself, you have a Christian faith.
0:06:00 > 0:06:05Is there something in Burns that speaks to that core aspect of you?
0:06:05 > 0:06:07He is very good at looking into himself
0:06:07 > 0:06:09and seeing the cant and the hypocrisy.
0:06:09 > 0:06:13He is very good at seeing sinfulness but ultimately, to some extent,
0:06:13 > 0:06:15he can leave that behind,
0:06:15 > 0:06:17because he is a man who even sees
0:06:17 > 0:06:21dwelling in one's own sinfulness as a form of pride.
0:06:21 > 0:06:24So there are quite deep currents of Christianity going on there.
0:06:24 > 0:06:26And deep currents of human nature
0:06:26 > 0:06:29and that speaks to me very deeply from so much of Burns' work.
0:06:29 > 0:06:31I think you like this man?
0:06:31 > 0:06:33I love him!
0:06:33 > 0:06:35Robert Burns was brilliant,
0:06:35 > 0:06:40none better at putting new words to traditional Scottish tunes.
0:06:40 > 0:06:44Today, that is what John Bell and Graham Maule are doing
0:06:44 > 0:06:45to make new hymns.
0:08:58 > 0:08:59Alex Gray is a writer.
0:09:00 > 0:09:04Her books are crime novels, grim stories of murders.
0:09:04 > 0:09:09I've got a passion to authenticate the things that I write.
0:09:09 > 0:09:12Partly I'm driven by fear because I don't know an awful lot.
0:09:12 > 0:09:14I don't have a criminal background
0:09:14 > 0:09:17and I don't have a police background so I really have to go
0:09:17 > 0:09:20and find out the facts from the experts who know them.
0:09:20 > 0:09:21What's up here?
0:09:21 > 0:09:25This is the Justice of the Peace court, then it was made into...
0:09:25 > 0:09:30Generally, the ideas for my novels come from real situations.
0:09:31 > 0:09:34Sometimes these are quite dark situations.
0:09:34 > 0:09:39I remember going to sleep one night at a crime writers' festival
0:09:39 > 0:09:41and having this "what if" moment
0:09:41 > 0:09:44and it was, what if somebody decided
0:09:44 > 0:09:46that they wanted to commit murder.
0:09:46 > 0:09:48How would they go about it?
0:09:48 > 0:09:52I thought, somebody with that kind of idea has to be really evil.
0:09:53 > 0:09:56So this book, Five Ways To Kill A Man,
0:09:56 > 0:10:00was an exploration of the nature of evil in a person.
0:10:00 > 0:10:02It was a very, very hard book to write.
0:10:04 > 0:10:08I think crime novels are very moral novels.
0:10:08 > 0:10:10They have a very good outcome.
0:10:10 > 0:10:13There's not a lot we can do about the world around us.
0:10:13 > 0:10:16We have a vote every five years, for example.
0:10:16 > 0:10:21But as a writer, I can create a pseudo world,
0:10:21 > 0:10:24a fictional world, where I make things happen
0:10:24 > 0:10:27and I can also resolve the things that happen
0:10:27 > 0:10:30and have a positive outcome.
0:10:30 > 0:10:33I think all crime writers have this sense
0:10:33 > 0:10:38of being able to control their world and have a good moral outcome.
0:10:38 > 0:10:40I like that, I like doing that.
0:10:42 > 0:10:45I'm fascinated by what makes people tick.
0:10:45 > 0:10:49I'm fascinated by what makes people do the bad and the good things they do,
0:10:49 > 0:10:52the psychology behind it.
0:10:52 > 0:10:57But beyond all of that, there is a loving God.
0:10:57 > 0:11:02I've found in my lifetime, no matter what situation you're up against,
0:11:02 > 0:11:08even if you don't have answers, there's always a certainty
0:11:08 > 0:11:13that there is a much, much greater, powerful force and that is God.
0:11:13 > 0:11:15A force for good.
0:11:15 > 0:11:17A force that will always be there.
0:11:17 > 0:11:21Underneath are the everlasting arms, I totally believe that,
0:11:21 > 0:11:23in any kind of situation.
0:11:23 > 0:11:27Also, I totally believe in redemption.
0:11:27 > 0:11:31No matter how bad an act that you've committed,
0:11:31 > 0:11:35it can always be forgiven by a loving God.
0:11:39 > 0:11:42Our next hymn is by another Scottish writer,
0:11:42 > 0:11:46the 19th century Edinburgh minister, Horatius Bonar.
0:14:40 > 0:14:43FUNK MUSIC PLAYS
0:14:43 > 0:14:455,6,7,8.
0:14:49 > 0:14:52Dance has always been part of my life.
0:14:54 > 0:14:56Myself and my brother,
0:14:56 > 0:14:58we had been inspired by Michael Jackson...
0:14:58 > 0:14:59And one, two, three and four.
0:14:59 > 0:15:03'..and the Jackson Five, so we were copying him.'
0:15:05 > 0:15:08Consol Efomi is a dancer,
0:15:08 > 0:15:11but he's much more than that, he's the son of a Congolese diplomat
0:15:11 > 0:15:14and the great-grandson of a tribal chief.
0:15:14 > 0:15:18I had a very privileged life in Congo.
0:15:19 > 0:15:24So, even queueing, it was not something I was doing back home.
0:15:24 > 0:15:27You were always at the front of the queue back home!
0:15:27 > 0:15:32At the front or you had people from the protocol who was queuing for you.
0:15:32 > 0:15:35Ending up in Glasgow, at the back of the queue,
0:15:35 > 0:15:39meant Consol had to learn a very different way of living.
0:15:39 > 0:15:44I started working as a cleaner, working in the warehouse.
0:15:44 > 0:15:46I didn't know even how to mop.
0:15:46 > 0:15:51So they teach me how to mop, how I should stand straight and, you know?
0:15:51 > 0:15:53So it was a very difficult time.
0:15:53 > 0:15:59Two jobs of eight hours, so I had to work extremely hard.
0:16:01 > 0:16:03But then things began to look up.
0:16:03 > 0:16:08At a church in Glasgow, Consol met Kate who was to become his wife.
0:16:09 > 0:16:12I knew him as a dancer and that was about it.
0:16:12 > 0:16:15He was in the Christmas shows doing this hip-hop dance
0:16:15 > 0:16:17which I didn't know anything about
0:16:17 > 0:16:21and wasn't really interested in at the time.
0:16:21 > 0:16:27- What did you two have in common? - It's our faith.
0:16:27 > 0:16:32We made it clear that Christianity is a culture
0:16:32 > 0:16:35and we built everything around that.
0:16:35 > 0:16:39We had nothing in common apart from our faith, absolutely nothing.
0:16:40 > 0:16:43At the same time as he was building a new relationship,
0:16:43 > 0:16:46Consol was also forging a new career.
0:16:46 > 0:16:49I went through university doing entrepreneurship.
0:16:51 > 0:16:54And this is time that I had that idea
0:16:54 > 0:17:00of creating a dance-video-sharing platform, just like YouTube.
0:17:02 > 0:17:05I've been working hard on that for the last year.
0:17:05 > 0:17:08You must be rather proud of him now.
0:17:08 > 0:17:13Consol jokes about the fact that he pursued me for two or three years.
0:17:13 > 0:17:18I think because we didn't have much in common apart from our faith,
0:17:18 > 0:17:21I was nervous about getting involved with this guy,
0:17:21 > 0:17:27but I think the main thing that really attracted me to him
0:17:27 > 0:17:30was his sense of dignity,
0:17:30 > 0:17:34his sense of drive, his sense of tenacity.
0:17:34 > 0:17:38And that faith that brought you together in the first place,
0:17:38 > 0:17:42that...still what drives you forward?
0:17:42 > 0:17:45That's what we agreed when we were dating really.
0:17:45 > 0:17:48Let's forget about the fact that you carve a turkey
0:17:48 > 0:17:51by chopping it into four quarters at Christmas
0:17:51 > 0:17:53and I carve it with an electric knife.
0:17:53 > 0:17:57Let's forget all that and put the kingdom at the centre
0:17:57 > 0:18:00and everything else falls into place.
0:18:00 > 0:18:06We were trying to put something in our ring, wedding ring,
0:18:06 > 0:18:10and then we were trying to find all these romantic things.
0:18:10 > 0:18:15But then we say, by the way, we are together because of our faith
0:18:15 > 0:18:20and what we put in our ring, it is a verse that says,
0:18:20 > 0:18:23"For me and my house, we will serve the Lord."
0:21:33 > 0:21:37One of the new hymns that has recently become popular
0:21:37 > 0:21:40on Songs of Praise is We Cannot Measure How You Heal.
0:21:40 > 0:21:45It's set to the tune of a Robert Burns song, Ye Banks And Braes.
0:24:33 > 0:24:36If you want to make a living as a landscape artist,
0:24:36 > 0:24:38you could hardly find a better place to live
0:24:38 > 0:24:41than this remote peninsula of south Argyll.
0:24:44 > 0:24:48One of Scotland's most popular artists, John Lowrie Morrison,
0:24:48 > 0:24:50better known by his signature "Jolomo",
0:24:50 > 0:24:53came to live here 30 years ago.
0:25:08 > 0:25:10We came here to Argyll
0:25:10 > 0:25:14because my love of the west coast brought me here as a painter.
0:25:14 > 0:25:19Over 21 years, I worked in the local high school,
0:25:19 > 0:25:24I was Head of Art at one stage, and then latterly, in education,
0:25:24 > 0:25:27I was involved in the education development service
0:25:27 > 0:25:31as an art adviser, going around schools in Strathclyde.
0:25:33 > 0:25:36I was session clerk here in the local church for a long time,
0:25:36 > 0:25:40and that took me into doing ad hoc pulpit supply
0:25:40 > 0:25:43for ministers that were unwell or whatever.
0:25:46 > 0:25:49I was about to lead worship in the Bellanoch church,
0:25:49 > 0:25:51not far from here, as I usually do.
0:25:51 > 0:25:54I was praying for the service, that the service would go well,
0:25:54 > 0:25:57and as I was praying, I heard this voice saying,
0:25:57 > 0:26:00"I want you to do two things, preaching and painting." Two Ps.
0:26:02 > 0:26:06That was the exact words I heard...inside.
0:26:06 > 0:26:08What do you mean about hearing a voice?
0:26:08 > 0:26:12It wasn't a booming voice in the church or anything like that,
0:26:12 > 0:26:17nothing physical. But it was a still, small voice you hear within yourself.
0:26:23 > 0:26:26John works for hours each day in his studio
0:26:26 > 0:26:31surrounded by decades of discarded tubes and unused oils.
0:26:33 > 0:26:38So, to what extent is painting for you a sort of act...?
0:26:38 > 0:26:41It's a spiritual act.
0:26:41 > 0:26:47I start off each day, just spending a few minutes in prayer
0:26:47 > 0:26:51and reading a bit of scripture, and then I paint.
0:26:51 > 0:26:55It's like I'm praying when I'm painting.
0:26:55 > 0:26:57And quite a lot of artists have said that,
0:26:57 > 0:26:59people who are not religious at all.
0:26:59 > 0:27:03Not Christian, not religious in any way, Buddhist or Muslim or whatever.
0:27:03 > 0:27:07They'll say that their painting feels like a form of prayer.
0:27:07 > 0:27:12What I'm trying to do is show, not only the beauty of God's creation,
0:27:12 > 0:27:17but the beauty that's in creation that man has...
0:27:17 > 0:27:20We think man's destroyed creation, and in many ways he has,
0:27:20 > 0:27:26but there's lots of things that man has built over the years
0:27:26 > 0:27:28that can look absolutely beautiful.
0:27:28 > 0:27:32Like an old dry-stone dyke, or an old bit of a farm building,
0:27:32 > 0:27:35or an old gate. That's all grist to the mill for me.
0:27:35 > 0:27:40At the end of the day, beauty is the most important thing
0:27:40 > 0:27:43and you can relate to people through that beauty.
0:27:53 > 0:27:58The test in all of it is that I went into training as a lay reader
0:27:58 > 0:28:00with the Church of Scotland over five years.
0:28:00 > 0:28:04I then gave up education which was a big thing, good salary.
0:28:04 > 0:28:07We had a mortgage, three boys at the time,
0:28:07 > 0:28:10it wasn't a clever thing to do really.
0:28:10 > 0:28:13What happened when you went home and said to your wife,
0:28:13 > 0:28:16"Hello, dear, I've heard a voice, I'm giving up my job.
0:28:16 > 0:28:19"I don't know how we'll pay the mortgage."
0:28:19 > 0:28:21Maureen was a psychiatric nurse
0:28:21 > 0:28:25and I think she'd thought I'd gone off my head, cos she knew the signs.
0:28:25 > 0:28:28No, she was totally stunned.
0:28:28 > 0:28:32It was not the kind of thing you do every day.
0:28:32 > 0:28:34But we prayed about it,
0:28:34 > 0:28:38and prayed about it with friends and we felt it was the right thing to do.
0:28:40 > 0:28:43When I'm dead and gone, the main thing I hope you'll say to me is,
0:28:43 > 0:28:44"You've been a faithful servant,"
0:28:44 > 0:28:49and I've always felt duty to God is very, very important.
0:31:07 > 0:31:11- ALEX:- We give you thanks for your redeeming love.
0:31:11 > 0:31:14The source of strength in our weakness.
0:31:14 > 0:31:17CONSOL: We give you thanks for your faithfulness,
0:31:17 > 0:31:21bringing hope out of our most difficult moments.
0:31:21 > 0:31:25- JOHN:- We give you thanks for infusing life with your presence,
0:31:25 > 0:31:28bringing light and colour out of darkness.
0:31:31 > 0:31:33And so, to our final hymn,
0:31:33 > 0:31:36from the wonderful setting of Dunblane Cathedral.
0:33:20 > 0:33:23Next week, Russell Watson discovers how his native Salford
0:33:23 > 0:33:27has changed since artist LS Lowry painted the town.
0:33:27 > 0:33:29He performs the classic hymn, Jerusalem,
0:33:29 > 0:33:33and introduces some wonderful congregational singing
0:33:33 > 0:33:35from St Peter's Church in Swinton.
0:33:54 > 0:33:56Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd