Junk Box Jury

Tracks from the LP ‘Through The Eyes Of Terry Ber’ | (World Pacific WPS-21876) July 1968

Terry Ber | ‘Through The Eyes Of Terry Ber’ | (World Pacific) | Have you ever seen a symphony in blue mist — when the blue and grey of the sky are echoed in the haze which hangs over the river and through it the lights on the opposite shore twinkle in soft gold?

It was a cold evening and the wind was penetrating even the thick jersey I was wearing. The clouds were irresistible. I felt like a bird released into flight and spread myself under the sky. I became one with nature till I could sing with its voices.

In the stillness of twilight, when the west is still flushed with the setting sun, the cries of children at play mingled with the barking of dogs echo inside me as in a large cavern.

The setting sun of last evening: to you I vowed much. Suddenly in the midst of a conflict, when I was reaching out to you and not finding you, came a harmony. I was singing your song and I felt a peace.

I am the bird of an indigo sky which flies between the sunset and the night. I become the mountain and the moon.

Terry Ber | ‘Through The Eyes Of Terry Ber’ | (World Pacific)

I surpass the river, surpass the sea . . . surpass all motion. And I am the young green of early summer shy and new. Slow like lapping water and a summer cloud I am in the softness of damp grass under bare feet and in the city lights which are as grounded stars . . .

I float as a ripple into eternity lightly, finding my freedom in surrender; not in the heated longing for or chasing after freedom but in the abandoning of the search.

Like a bird free from the labyrinths of the human mind.

Happy with the fulness which must overflow into everything. I want to run, to talk to the stars. Just a simple gladness which makes one sing, shine with the sun in jewels on the water and talk with the breeze to the tall trees. —Lolita Bose

THE GEMINI GYPSY SPEAKS OF LIFE, MUSIC, HERSELF:

“. . . for me, singing is life suspended in a split-moment, and if I can move even one person . . . give him my message and make him understand, then I have succeeded. Music embodies an emotional catharsis and simple, basic communication of honesty. I don’t always sing my own songs, but those I choose must harmonize with my attitudes.

If the song’s message is dismal, I choke on it-I just can’t get the words out. And if the lyrics cannot stand on their own, as poetry, the song is unacceptable. I strive for a conversational intimacy with my audience, and it comes out the best when my act stops being a concert and becomes a less-structured emotional communication — like an informal visit.

“You could say I lead the gypsy life of a itinerant folk singer, who spends whatever money may befall her on one-way tickets to places she’s never been. I arrive with three dresses, a pair of dungarees, a swim suit and my littlest guitar . . . and that’s it . . . no money at all. I spend the first hour after landing to know the town, and what places hire entertainment. It usually takes the next three hours to find the singing job. From then on things just happen.

Terry Ber | ‘Through The Eyes Of Terry Ber’ | (World Pacific)

“Once I arrived on Eleuthra Island just as the sun was setting. The splashes of colour and rolling clouds in the Bahamas sky were so violently beautiful that I became so enraptured I lost identification with everything except the sunset sky. With no place to stay, no work and no idea where my next meal was coming from, I reflected: If I were not meant to drink in that moment. even in the face of threat to personal welfare, somehow I wouldn’t have been there. So the sky darkened and the sand started to get cold under my bare feet (hate shoes!). Then unexpectedly, as all good things happen, a big, smiling woman appeared and within the hour I was seeing the town from the front seat of her son’s pick-up truck, had the singing job, a place to stay and a full stomach.

“. . a simple gladness inside that makes one sing with birds, shine with the sun in jewels on the water and talk with the breeze to the tall trees’.

“I guess you might call me a highly mobile nomad. I call myself “gypsy,” and anchor my person and thoughts wherever I happen to drop. I’ve developed a great taste for travel and a love of folklore. Hitch-hiking through the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe and the Caribbean, I have met so many wonderful, colourful people who told me their stories, taught me their languages, sang me their songs—and I sang them mine.

Now my repertoire includes songs in twenty-seven languages and I accompany myself on instruments from the auto-harp to the Mexican vihuela, and, of course, the guitar and banjo.

“The road of a traveller is sprinkled with fascinating potholes — tragic ones, funny ones, ironic ones —along the way. For instance in Puerto Rico it was my pleasure each morning to swim from the not-so-nice public beach to the elegant private beach of one of the big hotels every morning.

‘No es una playa publica!’

One day, though, I was observed by the bureaucrat in charge of keeping ‘undesirables’ in their proper place—that is, off the private grounds. I was grabbed by three policemen and given the bum’s rush off the premises, the bureaucrat screaming all the while, ‘No es una playa publica!’

As I think back, it must have been hilarious—three armed policemen forcibly escorting a 100-pound girl from the sacred burial grounds of hotel guests.

“But six months later, I was back in Puerto Rico, this time doing some T.V. appearances. One morning I was once again lazing under my favourite tree at the big hotel—this time as the guest of the management—when the same bureaucrat and his three policemen spotted me and threw me off the beach. I’m sure there’s a moral to be found somewhere . . . ” —Terry

She exudes an “extravagant positivity,” guaranteed to pull you out of any blues and into the fun of walking down the streets of an old part of town or sticking toes into forbidden fountains while the Lord Mayor glowers from the window above.

But there is also the quiet flow of a Terry beneath all that: who can sit absorbed midstream on a rock listening to the sound of water. She is alive and free, and standing in the middle of her room throwing her voice out for the whole world to hear, it is the freedom of her voice which first compels.

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cost of record: 50p
from: Charity shop