New Advent carol from Jonny Baker

Smoke is Rising is a new carol for Advent written by Jonny Baker, Britain mission director for CMS, and Niall Dunne, a first year student with CMS Pioneer Mission Training.

As well as being one of the founders of CMS Pioneer Mission Training, Jonny Baker was also a co-founder of Proost, an independent record label and publisher, which has been revived this year by some of its contributing artists.

The current Proost project is an Advent calendar, being published daily on Chris Goan’s blog. The melody and chords for Jonny’s new carol, Smoke is Rising, can also be found there.

Here’s Jonny’s entry about his new carol:

I was inspired reading Isaiah 9 and in particular the imagery of verse 5:

The boots of the warrior and the uniforms bloodstained by war will all be burned. They will be fuel for the fire.

In a world with so much brutality and violence the image of a fire burning army boots and clothes of war struck a chord and a deep sense of advent longing for another possible world. That turned into lyrics for a carol or advent hymn, Smoke is Rising. The last verse is quoting Arundathi Roy which many of you will recognise.  

Niall Dunne has written what I think is a beautiful melody. This came about through a chance conversation at CMS (Niall has started the undergrad pioneer training this year). I’d love any reactions to it. Even more I’d love any of you to try it out and lead it. Let me know how you get on if you do, though it’s a bit late possibly for this year now. I imagine it with a huge church or choir but I don’t have one of those! 

My sister Ruth kindly has written out the melody and chords. I should add that the guitar tuning is DADGAD which sounds lovely. Hopefully you can work out what I am doing from the video if you go that route and like me are not used to that. That’s how I learned it from Niall. I should say I am singing it a bit lower than Niall as I struggled to reach the top note in F. Ruth has written chords in F and in D and unhelpfully I am playing it in E flat!

I have not had the time or kit to record it properly so this is recorded on a phone – thanks to Jon Birch for his steady hand (and gorgeous lounge). Maybe this will spark a new project?!

And double thanks to Jon who was inspired to make a movie loop of a fire of army boots and clothes of war which you can watch and download. When I have done the song (the sum total of one time so far) I have projected lyrics over that video looping which is pretty evocative.  Jon was one of the founders of proost with me (and Aad) so it felt great to collaborate for this proost advent series. 

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