Last week The Blind Boys of Alabama performed at Auckland Town Hall in a one-show-only-24-hour-tour of New Zealand

Russell Walder was there to feel the joy...

Since forming their group at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind in 1939, the The Blind Boys of Alabama have kept alive the spirit and energy of pure soul gospel music. Last week The Blind Boys of Alabama performed at Auckland Town Hall in a one-show-only-24-hour-tour of New Zealand

Russell Walder was there to feel the joy...

Since forming their group at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind in 1939, the The Blind Boys of Alabama have kept alive the spirit and energy of pure soul gospel music.The Blind Boys founding members are Clarence Fountain, Jimmy Carter and George Scott --they have been joined by more recent arrivals Joey Williams, Ricky McKinnie and Bobby Butler.

The three founders of The Blind Boys of Alabama actually met as schoolboys in the 30s. I haven't kept in touch with my friends from elementary school and these days having close friends for longer than 10 years is saying something, so take wonder in growing up and performing with the same friends for 70 plus years. Makes you think, doesn't it.

Jimmy Carter, one of the two singers told us he didn't come to New Zealand looking for Jesus. No he brought him here - which mostly explains this groups longevity. They sing about their faith and in turn that rekindles their hunger to spread the good word. At times when the mostly packed out audience was up on their feet shouting "hallelujah", you might think this was a tent revival meeting, and in a way, it was.

Jimmy couldn't resist posing like a 30s Hollywood starlet, all glamour and pouting, informing us of their Grammy wins with confident cheek and style. But that's the key to these guys: complete joy in the doing and letting the audience feel in awe of a life lived singing and praising what they believe in. At one point Clarence Fountain, the senior band member, completely took over the show. You could sense the little boy in love with the new discovery. It is nothing short of a miracle to get so passionate about a song that you've been singing for over 50 years.

In the middle set, they sang "Amazing Grace" to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun". Perhaps there is just one song that all songs are birthed from? With such an enormous and vast history of music, it would have been a nice touch to sing some of these tunes without a loud backing band. Simply to bask in the light of the acoustic simplicity of sitting on a porch in the summer, listening to repeated tales of life in the American south.

It's also refreshing to be in the presence of artists whose primary goal is to evoke soul and spirit from the audience and not to shrink from the fact that there is nothing else that art is about. In a music world where radio, media and money is afraid to step outside the narrowest box of plastic and yesterdays smiles, it is refreshing indeed to have Jimmy Carter pose like a model and smile his Cheshire cat smile and tell us that heart and spirit are what it's all about. Oh and that Grammy too.