THERE is a voice that we usually associate with the Orange Order: imperious, heavy-jowled — and, of course, Northern Irish. So it comes as something of a shock to hear the tenets of the movement espoused in the West African dialect. They were the same values; but with a very different effect.
Orangemen on the Equator (Radio 4, Monday of last week) thus did something that decades of politicking and PR could never achieve: make us engage and even sympathise with the history and culture of an organisation that has for ever been associated with bigotry and division.
To be a witness to the convention of international Orange Orders, in Liverpool, as Chris Page’s documentary allowed us to be, is like sitting in on a dentists’ knitting circle, or an estate agents’ a-cappella rehearsal. We were introduced to all sorts of nice people from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and — the main focus here — Ghana. Certainly, this listener felt the paradigms shift under his feet.
The programme was structured around comparisons between Ghana and Ulster, Accra and Belfast. While both groups feel to an extent embattled — in Northern Ireland by growing secularisation, in Ghana by a media that mistrusts them — the religious alliances that have been formed in Ghana are noticeably different.
For them, Roman Catholics are the natural allies, while it is the Pentecostal Church which presents the greatest threat. And, in Ghana, the principles of faith and fraternity appear to be thriving; while in Belfast, the Museum of Orange Heritage is fighting a rearguard action against public apathy for all things religious.
A revelation no less striking came on Monday evening when Radio 2 broadcast a play — and a pretty good one at that. When Elvis Met the Beatles (Radio 2, Monday of last week) is probably the first significant drama I have ever heard on the station; and I wonder if there was some contorted commissioning story behind it: too much music for Radio 4; not the right kind of music for Radio 3. Whatever the case, this was as well-scripted a piece of drama as you are likely to find on those sister channels.
Written by Jeff Young, and marking the 50th anniversary of an event about which nobody knows any details, the play imagined the encounter in Bel Air between Elvis and four cocky arrivistes, as recounted on tape by the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein. Elvis is, by this time, “a wild animal, tamed” by the never-likeable Colonel Tom Parker, the Svengali who notoriously started his career. But Epstein is unsuccessful in negotiating a collaboration; one of the questions he is asked after his proposal is: “Who’s selling the hot dogs?”
Meanwhile, Elvis and the boys sit in silence, watching television, until the ice is broken by music. And this is what sets Young’s production above so many music documentaries and bio-pics: it contains a generous dollop of actual music, and one genuine spine-tingler, when Elvis gives a solo rendition of “Peace in the Valley”. For a moment, there is a connection; and then Lennon goes and opens his big mouth.