It's still amazing to me that music can touch people. As Delirious? we have been in the business of trying to find notes, melodies, rhythms and tempo that take people out of the ordinary, to make what is a difficult day feel better and to take the hardest of hearts and see them broken.
Music can do this, and we've seen it with our own eyes from the Littlehampton sports hall to the fields of Mumbai. So what's all this fuss about Mumbai? Why the lyrics to the Kingdom of Comfort, when simpler more 'vertical' stuff always sells more?
Well, our hearts got broken. Simple as that. With mothers trapped in the commercial sex trade their kids have a bleak future. And so, we promised to give a royalty of every sale of our last record to help the community at Prem Kiran, which is nestled in the centre of one of the red light districts in Mumbai.
After tears and emotion and the shock of seeing this stuff you need to dust yourself down and get a strategy, look at what's in your hand and use it to help someone. Stu G has a guitar, Jon a bass, Tim a piano, Paul a snare and me, well, an average voice but someone upstairs gave me a microphone and I've learnt over the years to speak down it. So we made Kingdom of Comfort, we sold it to people that love our music and we built a medical centre in Prem Kiran, Mumbai with some of the money.
Anyhow all that seemed a million miles away, 3 hours outside of Mumbai, on a new bit of land, with little buildings everywhere and the same mothers and kids I met 2 years ago with BIG smiley faces, as I pulled back the red curtain and unveiled the brand new medical centre that would literally save these peoples lives.
This represents a new life for them, leaving behind prostitution, learning a domestic trade, studying, and tasting for the first time in their lives a commodity we don't even know we
have. FREEDOM.
It's not rocket science is it? or clever or even spiritually heroic. Just being human I think, just loving your neighbour. The gospel of Christ is simple, simple and simple. As I stood before 30 prostitutes and their kids I had a smile the width of India and thought to myself how
much fun I'm having even before I leave this planet.
