DAVID ADAMS speaks to Levi McGrath…
It was trip to the East African nation of Uganda almost two years ago that proved a key turning point for Levi McGrath, opening him up to the power of music in a way he’d never seen before.
DEBUT: Levi McGrath released his first album, Move, is August this year.
“We were working with widows and orphans – there were lots of AIDS sufferers and AIDS-affected families…” Mr McGrath recalls of his trip to Africa. “I just really saw, I guess, for the first time, the literal impact (music) could have with people.”
Mr McGrath, who has recently released his debut album Move, is a 21-year-old musician and singer from Victoria. He had been performing and writing music for years before he and his then girlfriend (and now wife) Megan, driven by a desire to help address the injustices they saw in Africa, spent three months in Uganda over from late 2005 as part of an African trip that also took them to Kenya and Rwanda.
Working with a non-government organisation based just outside the capital city of Kampala, the couple were involved in teaching kids such things as computer and soccer skills and putting on concerts in local villages where Mr McGrath would play his guitar and they’d tell the children Bible stories using pictures they’d made.
“We were working with widows and orphans – there were lots of AIDS sufferers and AIDS-affected families…” Mr McGrath recalls. “I just really saw, I guess, for the first time, the literal impact (music) could have with people.”
He says that as well as performing concerts for children during the day, being able to sit around after dinner at night and exchange songs with them had been an eye-opening experience.
“Just the kind of healing that really brought to them; to show them that people not only loved them and cared for them and wanted to sponsor them, provide them with food and clothing, but they also want to have fun with them and sing with them and learn about their culture. It really crossed all those cultural barriers, I guess. It was just fun to sing and to dance and create music with the kids…It was just a great way to connect.”
Mr McGrath says that while he had already decided music was what he wanted to do with his life, “it was then that I decided I want to make music that benefits people”.
“I want to make music that can inspire people to come over do the same things that we’ve been doing and I want to make music that can really makes people happy and can encourage people if they are upset”.
Mr McGrath was born in Donald, Victoria, and, along with his sister Skye, spent his childhood years travelling with their parents Jeff and Yvette around the regional parts of the state.
“My dad was a pastor as I was growing up – my parents were kind of both in the ministry – and we’d travel around to different churches and they’d actually take over a church for a few months to allow the pastor who was there to have a bit of long service leave,” he says.
He started writing songs at the age of 12 and recalls growing up in a ”very musical family”.
“Music was always playing in the house. Dad was always singing and my sister taught me to sing and was always singing around the house so there was lots and lots of music always going on,” he recalls.
“I started to learn piano from about age 10 or 11 and that kind of progressed into me picking up a guitar and beginning to write. I just started to write at about 12 or 13 – just about my thoughts and feelings and a bit of poetry here and there – and that developed into me writing my first song.”
(That song, Sing A Song To You Lord, is now featured on Move, the first album he’s released after signing with Small House Records in June last year).
Mr McGrath eventually started playing in a band called Orphan in Bendigo and while they saw some success, he says he started to look longer term at a career in music.
“It’s really the stuff that’s from your heart, that’s real and relatable, and (which enables) people to get a grip of it for themselves and take some stuff home and think about it and dwell on it.”
“I made a decision after year 12 that I wanted to go and study music and really become a musician. So I went off to Lismore in New South Wales where I studied a Bachelor of Contemporary Music and majored in songwriting. That was just a fantastic place to get (exposure) to a whole range of music – from jazz to blues to rock to classical music, it really went right through…and was a really great place to learn and establish yourself.”
Having completed two years, he deferred the final year and, after signing with Small House Records, has left the third year of his studies on his to do list.
Mr McGrath’s debut album – which includes a song about his experience in Uganda, the aptly named Africa – was released in August. He says he made a conscious decision to create an album that wasn’t seen as “typically Christian” – less overt in its references to Jesus – for a number of reasons.
“I play in lots of pubs and, seriously, you just can’t get up in a pub and sing a worship song as such,” he explains. “You just need to go around other ways of really getting a message through to people. We’ve played some of the tracks like I Fall Down off the album in pubs and people have come up afterwards and gone ‘Hey, that song, I know you didn’t mention it, but that was about God wasn’t it?’ We’ve found that it kind of gets under people’s skin and it’s really great to be able to do that as well as being able to go into churches and really sing explicitly about God and what He’s doing in my life.”
He adds that places like pubs are where Christian music “needs to be the most” and notes that this means playing music people can relate to.
“(So) it’s not just Christian lingo or Christian language. It’s really the stuff that’s from your heart, that’s real and relatable, and (which enables) people to get a grip of it for themselves and take some stuff home and think about it and dwell on it.”
When it comes to song-writing, Mr McGrath, who has already begun writing songs for a second album, says that many of his songs are inspired by events – he wrote Letting It Go, for example, after meeting a homeless man in a wheelchair while working with a street ministry in Melbourne. After hearing the man’s life story – in which he had told of the hurt and rejection he’d suffered in his life as he moved from city to city looking for acceptance and love – Mr McGrath and his companions were able to tell him about God and His love for the man. The man then broke down and wept.
“It was really in that moment that I connected with that song. It was like God was pointing at it, saying ‘This is what it’s like letting something go and this is the message I want you to put behind that song’. It was a really big moment”
Another song came about after he watched a documentary, The Invisible Children, about child soldiers in northern Uganda.
“Sometimes it’s other people’s experience as well,” Mr McGrath explains. “Just things that really hit home. And sometimes it’s just reflecting on the Word.”
“I’m just loving the journey.”
Mr McGrath has already been led to perform in some odd places – including a women’s prison – and is open to doing so whereever God leads him. He relates how he was in Tamworth recently for a Christian event and was invited the following day to perform a concert at a local factory for the staff.
“So he pulls all the staff outside at smoko and we all sit around and I pull out the guitar and sing a few songs and then (the man who invited him) says ‘Why don’t you share your testimony, share your story?’ And there’s all these tough, bearded guys with welding scars all over them and black hands are looking at me. But I did anyway and got to share a few songs with them.”
As for what’s next? Well, Mr McGrath has got a national tour starting next year and in February will be heading to Thailand as part of a trip organised by Compassion. In the meantime, he’s been enjoying visiting country towns and sharing his music and message with as many people as he can.
“I’m just loving the journey,” he says.
~ www.levimcgrath.com
~ www.smallhouserecords.com.au/LeviMcGrath.html
