Indian Tour
Personifies Ambition
for Delirious?

U K-based, globally relevant band Delirious? recently completed its second tour in India, performing outdoors in Bangalore and Pune, and visiting children’s projects in the slum areas of Mumbai (Bombay).

Speaking after the tour, Delirious? frontman Martin Smith says that while in one sense it was just “another tour, another crowd, another continent, another plane ride,” this trip made him feel like his heart “has been pulled out, turned round and put back a diff erent way round.” “I feel like life can never be the same again,” Smith says.

As thousands gathered outdoors to worship with Delirious?, the band members began to see their dreams materialise in the middle of rural Indian fi elds.

“It’s still a very strange experience to me that you can show up in a fi eld in India and there is a bunch of people singing our songs and wanting the heavens to open above their city. This is what we sang about 15 years ago,” refl ects Smith, “that the streets would be fi lled with singing. I guess I should be getting used to it by now, but I’m still in awe and wonder.” “We feel humbled to be received so favourably by so many,” adds band mate Tim Jupp.

“But even more humbled that we have the opportunity to play our small part in what God is doing in this incredible nation.” In addition to the concerts in India, the band spent time in the slum areas of Mumbai, visiting and serving meals to children and their mothers.

“For us as a band,” says Smith, “we are living our dreams, our future is now and we are seeing what we longed to see. Having top-20 singles in the charts was a good part of the journey, but going to a slum in Mumbai and singing ‘Rain down’ to those who own nothing is something extraordinary.” Before leaving the slums, the band rounded up and transported around 40 children and their mothers from the projects to that evening’s concert.

The families were able to sit toward the back of the stage and look out into the crowd as Delirious? led worship.

During a couple of the songs, the children came out to the front of the stage to sing and dance with the band.

“We have played with some great artists,” says Smith, “but none were as radiant as the children rescued from the red-light district, dancing with us on stage with so much joy on their faces you would think they had one foot already in heaven. “