Power in music
26 August 2009
Volume 11, Issue 34
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After posting last weekÕs
article on ÒWater to Wine,Ó I needed to go to Colville (population 4500), to
pick up some supplies that included a used open top plastic drum. As a
consequence I needed to take my Dodge Dakota, which has a hard-wired iPod
connection to what once was called a radio. Cranking up my 5 star playlist, I
was soon enjoying my favorite songs.
It was after about three
songs when it hit me. I can bloviate about world and church problems until I am
blue in the face. I can pontificate until the Pope becomes a Protestant. I can
do that other stuff until the cows come home, but it really is not going to
make a significant difference in the world unless written words, by me and more
significant others, are interpreted in music. Music in all its forms is the
ultimate human expression that we are indeed creatures designed in the image of
God, for timeless fellowship with our Creator inclusively within a redeemed
human family.
They say that music can calm
the savage beast. None of us like to be considered savages, but music
specifically, and other forms of art generically, are what is going to change
or restore culture. I first began to understand this artistic concept through
the work of Francis Schaeffer, but since that time, that has been confirmed by
my own empirical evidence, as well as many other writers and musicians. If the
current world is going to change significantly towards either a traditional or
a more progressive agenda, it is going to be accompanied by music. As I once
heard an old gospel musician say, music that gets down into your soul.
The latest world changing
music experience probably began in the early 1960s with the emergence of rock
and roll. This was really in many respects a rebellion of the tacit life of the
post war prosperity of suburbia and American life in general. With the reality
of the Viet Nam war these songs of rebellion became more vibrant, eventually
being a causative agent for the hippie movement, as well as in the church where
hippies got saved and were soon known as Jesus People.
I was not part of that
opportunity. During that time I was stationed in Germany protecting our freedom
from the Soviet threat stemming from the Warsaw Pact, while many of my friends
were dying in Viet Nam. After my return to the States I remember while readjusting
to American material life, I had a long discussion about Christianity, with one
of the Jesus People who was witnessing at Eastern Washington University.
Jesus People music was
really the basis for the renewal of Christianity from the dead orthodoxy of the
liberal denominationalism of my youth. Furthermore it could be deductively
reasoned that music was the basis by which modern evangelicalism developed. In
later years I spent more than a decade at Calvary Fellowship in Seattle, which
was the local first generation outpost of Calvary Chapel. During that time I
got to hear and meet with may of those early musicians who, through their
music, changed the church. For the most part they are still doing their thing,
still serving the Lord, and somewhat disturbed to appalled, with what has
happened to their music and the church.
Today worship in most
non-liturgical churches is defined by choruses, which trace their roots to that
Maranatha type music of the late 1960s and early 1970s. As this music degraded
from those early musicians to what is now known as Contemporary Christian
Music, we can also see the increase in materialism within evangelicalism, and
as we noted last week and in other columns, the marginalization of Christianity
within the culture.
So todayÕs Christian music
really is not about what Jesus did, it is plastic music designed and marketed
to make you feel good emotionally about having your best life now in a vain,
narcissistic culture. It finds its way into church, because fresh choruses are
part of this liturgy, especially if it is devoid of true Christian theology.
While I said most of those
early musicians are still serving the Lord, if you have the chance to attend a
concert by Terry Clark and Catalyst Ministries, you can perhaps get a glimpse
of church worship that era had to offer.
Since my move to Eastern
Washington, I have had the opportunity to attend other churches that attempt to
follow or imitate that type of service liturgy. They should stick to what God
used to create them to do in the first place. I suppose that means they need to
get back to the basics, just as with todayÕs evangelicalism. The basics revolve
about worship, praise, and gratitude about what Jesus Christ did by his life,
death and resurrection, not about feeling good about yourself or how you become
a success in this life.
Now a renewal is required
within the church to bring about a change in the culture, but that renewal must
venture beyond the cloister of the Sunday service. If music can change society
and culture it must be able to relate to culture. There are twenty-one songs on
my 5 star iTunes playlist, only two of those would I consider Christian, and
those are from the Jesus music era. The first three on the list are labeled
under the country genre. The first is about life happening in society today,
the second is about doing what you were created to do, and the third reflecting
about the reality of life.
Last week we looked that the
trinity of human understanding of the salvation progression. The first was the
Calvinist: Guilt – Grace – Gratitude. Then there was my spin on
wearing your CAP: Condemnation – Adoption – Praise. Finally we had
the more fundamentalist Sin – Repentance – Worship.
The result of all three
progressions is you end up with Gratitude, Praise, and Worship. You could say
that gratitude is more literary and reasoned, as you might expect from a
Calvinist. My praise, was more emotional and perhaps less reasoned, and finally
fundamentalist worship, which is much more sobering and majestic. The question
becomes how can you put all three together and end up with something that
reflects upon Divine truth, is still simple enough to understand, and at the
same time reflects upon the ultimate nature of God?
I just tried to do it in
words and I ended up with a question rather than a response. The only way to
pull this all together is through music, or song, something not in my bag of
gifts, other than singing along with my iPod. If you look at music however,
especially historic American music, one type of music seems to come closer to
meeting that encompassing criteria than any other, and that is what is known as
Bluegrass.
To draw a somewhat broad
generalization about Bluegrass music, it is basically hill country music from
West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. This area was settled by many
Scotch-Irish immigrants who brought from the old country a Celtic music
heritage. They came to find land in the Appalachian Mountains, but in many
cases ended up working in coalmines to support their families.
The Scottish side of those
immigrants were definitely Protestant, Calvinist Protestant, which when mixed
with the American religion of revivalism would have a tendency to produce
upbeat music with a little more depth than a flat land dirge. That Roman
Catholic liturgical side of the Irish peasants would, also bring a deeper
understanding of the encompassing reality of Godly worship. So what you see in
Bluegrass music is perhaps the best blending of gratitude, praise, and worship
into one art form that in many cases is at home in church, on the concert
stage, or on the front porch.
If you look at the songs on
my 5 star iTunes playlist most of them have Bluegrass roots. Could it be that
we are really not all that distant from our roots? On my motherÕs side of the
family, her mother can be traced through that Bluegrass Region through Missouri
to Washington. Her fatherÕs father and mother go back to Denmark. On my dadÕs
side, his motherÕs side can be traced to Wittenberg, Germany. His fatherÕs
father becomes more difficult. There is an 1870 census record of a John W.
Bannon of the right age, living with a single mom, in Lexington, Kentucky, she
being born in Ireland in 1811. Whether she was a Civil War widow, or some other
of lifeÕs mishaps, we have not been able to determine at this time. If true
however Kentucky is the home of real bluegrass grass.
What this is all trying to
point out is that perhaps the music that will be responsible for beginning to
again focus this country on the more important things of life will have
Bluegrass roots and also routes. In that light we followed Kathy MatteaÕs Coal
project and album last year. That number three song on my iTunes 5 star
playlist is ÒYouÕll Never Leave Harlan AliveÓ from that album.
Coal is AmericaÕs most
abundant energy resource. Other than talk about green jobs the Obama
Administration has yet to look seriously at anything related to domestic energy
production. Even in the most optimistic productive spin, renewable energy
technologies cannot come close to meeting AmericaÕs future energy requirements.
Someday there will be a larger coal reality in AmericaÕs future. How that coal
future is developed is of stupendous importance to the economic and
environmental health of Bluegrass Country, as well as the rest of the nation
and the world. The ÒCoalÓ album was an attempt to shape that discussion through
music.
What is needed now is a
broader attempt to shape the current discussion of AmericaÕs future through
music. It is not about playing the music backwards, so that you can get back
your truck, your dog, your house, and maybe your wife or girl friend. It needs
to be music about what made this country unique in history and how those
standards are being eroded through selfish, debt driven, materialism; coupled
with spurious leadership and only situational accountability.
In other words we need songs
of gratitude, praise, and worship in both the truly religious sense but just as
importantly the secular sense. The difficult task, which we try to do at Wonder
Springs, is to tension both with integrity based in the reality of Natural and
Revealed Law as well as Common and Specific grace.
It has been a long time
since we have asked for help in doing anything here. But this really isnÕt a
Wonder Springs project; it is a project to develop a new genre of American
music for the times in which we live. Perhaps we can be the facilitator. The
best way to make sure you finish in Somewhere is to start in Nowhere. Nowhere
is where we are, and in that case everyone will know that success is not the
result of solely human efforts.
I would like to hear from
you and how you would like to play a part, even if that doesnÕt mean singing,
playing, or composing. That might also mean forwarding this to someone who
might have something to do with really making music that we all need to hear,
put on our iPods and even play in church. The Internet is the vehicle that can
take this new music from dusty country road to broad urban boulevards. The
price of this gas is hidden within our various Internet access fees.
Music of Gratitude –
Praise – Worship reinforce the foundations of human peace within as well
as peace with God. That is what
makes music transcendent and all too often words, just words.
Jerry Bannon
jerryb@wondersprings.org
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