Soul Music

Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks was released in 1967.

Soul Music hears the poignant, thoughtful and life-changing memories of those who love it.

Childhood holidays were an escape from bullying for John Harvey. He describes the unforgettable moment when he heard Waterloo Sunset for the first time, on the radio, in 1967. Getting to know the music of The Kinks, and finding out about the character of its lead singer, Ray Davies, shaped and coloured his life from then on.

Allison Moore Adams is an American who married Vernon, a Brit. Waterloo Sunset was sung at his bedside following a terrible road accident. The painting used to illustrate this edition of Soul Music is of Vernon and Allison on Waterloo Bridge. It's by Allison's friend, Isabelle Logie, who also sang to Vernon in hospital.

Christopher Young used to work in mental health. For him, the lyrics of Waterloo Sunset symbolise the isolation that many people feel.

Professor Allan Moore, a musicologist, discusses why this beautiful pop song works so well.

Producer: Karen Gregor

First brodacast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2017.

America's national anthem was written by a lawyer, Francis Scott Key, after watching the British navy bombing Fort McHenry in 1814.

It was set to an English social men's club song and recognized as the national anthem in 1889. Notoriously difficult to sing, and traditionally played at public sports events and orchestral concerts, the anthem has inspired emotion and attracted controversy.

We hear from:

* Jose Feliciano who sang the anthem at the 1968 World series and provoked criticism.

* Conrad Netting IV who discovered the truth about his fighter pilot father's history, which led him to a cemetery in Normandy.

* Writer Crista Cloutier who associated it with President Obama's election.

* Members of the Coldstream Guards band, who played the anthem at the changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace on the day after 9/11.

* Leon Hendrix, Jimi's brother, who was in the army at the time of Woodstock, and was put on 'potato peeling duty' because of the 'dishonourable' version his brother had played.

Producer Sara Conkey

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2016.

Memories of first love, first borns and loss are stirred by 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face'.

This timeless love song was written by Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger, and made famous by Roberta Flack.

Activist and folk musician Peggy Seeger recalls her first meeting with the Scottish folk musician, which would inspire him to write the song, and talks about what the song means to her today. Ewan MacColl's biographer Ben Harker explains why this song is so different from much of his other work.

Julie Young talks about singing the song to her son Reagan, who had severe complex needs following a cardiac arrest as a baby.

Writer Louise Janson speaks about what the song came to mean to her as she set out on the path to becoming a mother on her own.

Writer and academic Jason King tells the story of how Roberta Flack came to cover this ballad, and how it catapulted her to fame.

And Kandace Springs, a singer and pianist from Nashville, Tennessee, records her version of the song and talks about why the song is one of the greatest love songs of all time.

Producer: Mair Bosworth

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 2016.

"Jerusalem" has become a quintessentially middle-class and very English song, but it's also held in the hearts and memories of people from different backgrounds and cultures.

There is a bit of cricket - commentator Jonathan Agnew (Aggers) discusses England's stunning and unexpected victory in the 2005 Ashes. Jerusalem reminds him of that extraordinary summer.

Pamela Davenport is the daughter of a man who felt that the words of Jerusalem highlighted inequality in society; lack of money prevented him fulfilling his academic potential and he died in a care home that didn't care well enough for him.

For American poet, Ann Lauterbach, the unusual and little-known Paul Robeson version was the theme-tune to her escape from the difficult years of Nixon and Vietnam to 1960s London.

Singer, Janet Shell, recalls the burial of her Great Uncle who was killed during World War One, but whose body was only discovered in 2009.

Susanne Sklar - a scholar of William Blake - discusses the inspiration behind the words of the poem. Probably, she says, he wrote them while awaiting his trial for sedition; he was in trouble for fighting with a soldier who had urinated in his garden.

Composer and writer, Paul Spicer, plays, sings and talks through the tune which was composed by Sir Hubert Parry.

Series about pieces of music with a powerful emotional impact.

Producer: Karen Gregor

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 2016.

Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come has become synonymous with the American Civil Rights Movement.

It was released in December 1964, two weeks after the influential singer was shot dead in Los Angeles.

Contributors include:

Sam Cooke's brother LC, singer Bettye Lavette who sang it for Barack Obama at his inaugural ceremony and civil rights activists from the Freedom Summer of 64, Jennifer Lawson and Mary King.

Producer: Maggie Ayre

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 2016.

'Feed The Birds' was written for the film Mary Poppins by Richard and Robert Sherman.

How Mozart's Requiem, written when he was dying, has touched and changed people's lives.

Crime writer Val McDermid recalls how this music helped her after the loss of her father. Hypnotist Athanasios Komianos recounts how the piece took him to the darker side of the spirit world. And a friend of ballet dancer Edward Stierle, Lissette Salgado-Lucas, explains how Eddie turned his struggle with HIV into a ballet inspired by Mozart's music.

Basement Jaxx used the Requiem in their live shows while Felix Buxton reveals his love for Mozart and the divine nature of the Requiem.

And Mozart expert Cliff Eisen takes us inside the composer's world: how the orchestra and choir conjure visions of funerals, beauty, hellfire and the confusion of death. He recounts how Mozart was commissioned to write the piece by a nobleman who may have intended to pass off the work as his own. The stern challenge faced by people trying to complete the piece are described by composer Michael Finnissy, who himself wrote a completion of the work.

The Requiem was performed at the funerals of many heroic figures - Beethoven, Napoleon and JF Kennedy, among others.

Gordana Blazinovic remembers one extraordinary performance during the horrors of the Bosnian war - a show of defiance and grief from the ruins of Sarajevo City Hall.

Producer: Melvin Rickarby.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2016.

'The Way You Look Tonight' was written by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields for the 1936 film 'Swing Time'.

Sung by Fred Astaire to Ginger Rogers while she was washing her hair, the song won an Oscar. It has been recorded by Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday.

Sarah Woodward, daughter of actor Edward, recalls how aged seven, she watched him sing it on The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show with his 'angelic' voice.

Theatre director Michael Bawtree remembers the song being his father's favourite, and being distraught when he broke the gramophone record as a five-year-old.

And Glaswegian singer, Eddie Toal describes making an album of jazz songs, including 'The Way You Look Tonight' to remember his late wife, Irene.

Series about pieces of music that make a powerful emotional impact.

Producer: Sara Conkey

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2016.

Memories of a prison camp in the Arizona desert, a tsunami and a plane crash are stirred by the bittersweet Japanese song Sukiyaki, a huge global hit of the 1960s.

Originally released in Japan with the title 'Ue o Muite Arukou' ('I Look Up As I Walk'), the song was retitled 'Sukiyaki' (the name for a type of beef stew) for international release. It went to No 1 in the USA, Canada and Australia and placed in the top 10 of the UK singles chart.

With melancholy lyrics set to a bright and unforgettable melody, it has since been covered hundreds of times in countless languages.

California peach farmer Mas Masumoto tells the story of his family's internment in an Arizona relocation camp following the bombing of Pearl Harbor and explains what the song meant to him and many other Japanese-Americans in the years after the Second World War.

Violinist and composer Diana Yukawa plays the song as a way to remember her father, who died in the same plane crash that killed Kyu Sakamoto, the original singer of 'Sukiyaki'.

Michael Bourdaghs, author of 'Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon', talks about the songwriting team behind the song (Rokusuke Ei, Hachidai Nakamura and Kyu Sakamoto), and the surprising roots of the song in the Japanese protest movement of the early 1960s.

Janice-Marie Johnson of A Taste of Honey talks about writing an English version of the song and how she interpreted the Japanese lyrics. While Gemma Treharne-Foose speaks about her experience of travelling to Japan from her home in the Rhondda Valleys, and what the song came to mean to her.

And we hear the story of how Ue o Muite Arukou became a 'prayer for hope' following the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011 from musician Masami Utsunomiya.

Producer: Mair Bosworth

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 2016

Bring Him Home is a beautiful and moving prayer-in-song that has developed meaning and identity outside of the hit musical, from Les Miserables.

What has been its impact?

Celebrated tenor, Alfie Boe has sung it many times in the West End and on Broadway. He discusses what the song means to him.

Herbert Kretzmer talks about the agonising process of writing the lyrics.

The Greater Manchester Police Male Voice Choir recorded a version especially for the programme; one of their members describes singing it at the funeral of PC Dave Phillips in 2015.

The original Cosette, from Les Miserables, Rebecca Caine now sings this song - written for a male voice - regularly as part of international recitals.

And for Becky Douglas it will forever be a reminder of her daughter whose death inspired the foundation of a leprosy charity.

Jeremy Summerly, Director of Music at St Peter's College, Oxford plays through the piece and describes why it moves us emotionally.

Series about pieces of music with a powerful emotional impact.

Producer: Karen Gregor

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2016.