Life & Soul

The Kal Bergendahl Project (KBP) is a group of faculty, alumni and current students from Living Light School of Worship. The School is a full-time 9-month Christian discipleship and music program. The group's bassist and LLSOW Co-Director, Kal Bergendahl, embarked on this project venturing to combine jazz with soulful pop music in 2005. Over the years the group has featured over 15 of the students who have been on the program. Life & Soul is the group's first CD in four years. One of the constant themes in the music of KBP is the eclectic mix of music and musicians. The new EP continues this tradition by featuring three different vocalists as well as the group's various instrumentalists. The EP features introspective lyrics and socially-conscious themes such as drug abuse and discrimination as well as universal themes such as love, peace and acceptance. The disc opens with the title track Life & Soul. It's a high-energy funk tune incorporating a KBP signature trait - the combination of instrumental and vocal song sections. It's lyrics are based on Jesus' words in Matthew 16: 25-26 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? Racism. Discrimination. Hate. Blind eyes to crime. These are concepts that many prefer to assume are covered in dust and a thing of the past but they aren't always. They may loom at distant sidelines and though laws exist to prevent and protect, they still rear their ugly heads. Kal addresses the realities within the world we live and searches for truth in the song, Tell Me. It's filled with the vivid imagery of events that have marked history, namely racism in the South and the Holocaust. This song uncovers the certainty that these concepts have not completely fled, but looks rather to the hope that only love in the purest form can produce. A couple of years ago Kal received a call from a concerned friend regarding a local teenager's involvement in drugs and negative influences. Not knowing where a mere phone call would lead, Kal contacted the teen with the hope of speaking truth into this young life. Kind words, harsh realities and the loving gospel of a merciful God became the topic of conversation. Two years later, this teenager died of a heroin overdose. What impact do words have on someone you've met only once? What emotions stem from such an encounter, trailed by devastating news years later? An Afternoon Conversation is Bergendahl's musical reflection on this brief exchange. Cords of emotion and a heart of the chilling unknown are laid bare in the song's lyrics. Rosie Marvin takes the lead vocal on The One for Me, a jazz-pop love song Bergendahl wrote for his wife of 13 years. It is one of the two live songs on the disc, which were recorded at the 2011 Benefit Concert for Living Light School of Worship. Most people probably don't write love songs after they have been with the same person this long but really I needed this time to be able to write a song which truly reflects the genuine depth and appreciation I have of our relationship, Bergendahl reveals. 'Strange Fruit,' originally written as a poem by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish high-school teacher from the Bronx, became most well-known from Billy Holiday's 1939 vocal rendition. This song is a haunting portrayal of American racism in the South, namely the brutal lynching of African Americans. Kal says One of the reasons I included it on the EP was that it helps fill out the story in 'Tell me' as well as it being a significant song in American history Vocalists Jaime Bonds and Rachel Kraeuter trade verses on the well-known hymn 'Amazing Grace. It carries a message of unmerited forgiveness of sins and redemption through the mercy of God. John Newton wrote the song from his personal experience of what he called his great deliverance. As a Navy sailor and participant in slave trading, he called out to God for mercy in a moment of fear as the vessel of w