Who is Tony Barr, founder of Jabulani Music?
Tony Barr graduated in Theology and Liturgy from Durham, England, in 1970, having already connected with many of the leading liturgists and musicians in England, Holland and France. In the years immediately following Vatican 2, he had become an active member of the fledgling Church Music Association, later absorbed into the Society of St Gregory. While serving as music director of the central London University campus ministry, he was appointed in 1974 as music director for the St Thomas More Center for Pastoral Liturgy parish church in north London, before moving to the parish of St. Helen and St. James the Less in Colchester, Essex in 1980. There he served on the Brentwood Diocesan Liturgy Commission, until leaving for the United States in 1985. By then he had already become a published composer, hymnal editor, and multi-media resources publisher/producer. Some of his pieces were selected for the Papal visit to the UK in the early 1980s.
From 1974 to 1984, he participated in the annual Universa Laus gatherings across continental Europe, a forum of academics, composers and liturgists. During those years he worked with an Anglican Missionary Society, USPG, in developmental studies. His role was to combine the insights of the overseas missionary churches with the emerging liturgical perspectives in the UK. This work was highly ecumenical in nature, taking him to campus ministries and parishes throughout the UK across every denominational board. In these years he developed an interest in the music, culture and spirituality of the Native American Indian, a passion which continues to consume him.
He holds an M.Div. (Masters of Divinity) degree, with specialization in liturgical studies. He presented his doctoral proposal at a 1984 Universa Laus Convention on Popularity and Functionality: the artform of the assembly in worship', but circumstances resulting in his emigrating to the United States prevented him from continuing his research. Other postgraduate studies included a Diploma Of Communication in the Broadcasting Arts from the Catholic Radio and Television Centre, Hatch End, London, in 1984. In 1985, he was the first of the Thomas More Group to move from the UK to the Pacific Northwest of America. He had lured as a free-lance editor and, later, music engraver by Oregon Catholic Press, to serve for a while as liturgy editor of the Archdiocesan weekly Sentinel catholic newspaper, and to serve as music and liturgy director of four catholic parishes over a period of sixteen years. While in Oregon, he introduced a series of liturgy and liturgical music classes at Marylhurst College, and was invited to teach as an occasional lecturer in the liturgy department of the University of Portland.
It was there that he collaborated with Richard Rutherford in co-authoring the 1990 edition of The Death Of A Christian, a commentary on the Order of Christian Funerals published by the Liturgical Press of Collegeville, Minnesota. He also taught a unit on Liberation Theology at Salem's Willamette University, a Methodist school of studies, where he served as guest lecturer for many years in the Winter School of Theological Studies.
He was a founder member of the forum of catholic composers of North America, which meets every year in the winter months to confront developing issues in Catholic Liturgy.
In 2001, he moved from Oregon to Illinois, where he spent two years as parish liturgist and musician in the diocese of Rockford, before moving to the Archdiocese of Chicago in 2003.
In 2006 he completed his first CD of liturgical music, You Are For Me'. His appointment as director of liturgy and music for the parish of St Bede in Ingleside (just south of the Wisconsin State line) was almosta homecoming: he had been born in the same village as the Venerable Bede, in the North East of England, albeit some 1300 years apart.