escapingbabylon.com

LaTonya Taylor of Urban Faith, while writing a tribute to Walter Hawkins gave some really good insight into Gospel Music that is a really good articulation of things that I’ve never been able to articulate.

There are at least five things I value in traditional, choir-driven gospel music above all else:
1. Clarity of the gospel message.
2. Accessibility to the local church choir and musicians.
3. An aspirational quality — that is, songs a choir can sing next Sunday, and continue to sing better through the years.
4. Singability for the choir, and saaaangability for the lead vocalist.
5. Demanding music that doesn’t scrub out the spontaneity or experiential nature of gospel.

Additionally, I believe strongly that good gospel for the church setting stays on the side of congregational song rather than concert performance. If the congregation can’t sing a song without getting ensnared in a labyrinthine thicket of vamps, key changes, and vocal acrobatics, that song positions the congregation as an audience, rather than as a body of people participating together in worship.

Goin’ Up Yonder – UrbanFaith.com.

She also posts the following video and says

By 3 minutes and 16 seconds in, it’s all over, and it’s just begun. Here you hear the narrative poly-vocality that creates one song out of two, and contextualizes the individual experience within that of a community. As the choir rocks steadily into the repeated “I’m going away,” Hawkins sings over them, giving specificity to that general vision. If you’ve ever sung lead over a song like this, you know that the interchange between your voice and the collective voice of the choir is the difference between having a perfunctory rehearsal and having church. The community girds you from beneath, lifts you up and over a cloud of witnesses, empowers you to speak your piece, as long as you’re willing to speak for everybody.

This last paragraph is amazing for two reasons. Firstly, it’s completely accurate about the experience of singing lead on a song like this. Secondly, it captures a bit of how community is expressed and modeled in the practice of gospel music. In this music, individuality and community are not opposing forces. The lead singer isn’t being asked to simply sing the song but to “saaang”. The song is not complete unless it is processed and expressed through the lead singers own experience, ability, belief and emotion to become something that only that singer can do. But this is not done in opposition to the community of the choir, but in harmony with it. When done well, the choir leaves room for the individual expression of the lead, and the lead leaves room for the community voice of the calendar, and all are in tune with each other and with the director so that the song may be contextualized to the particular emotions, event, and move of the Spirit that’s happening at that particular time.

I thought this was cool. Go check out the blog post. Let me know what you think.

Anthony Daniels, better known as C-3P0

This weekend I saw Star Wars in Concert. It was an absolutely amazing experience, despite only catching the last half of it. It was an incredible show, the sound was great, as was the orchestra. The visuals were fantastic, a mix of excerpts from the films, live shots of the orchestra, artists’ renditions (I think I recognized some of Tommy Lee Edward’s art) and lasers, so many lasers.

One of the highlights for me was Anthony Daniels’ performance as the narrator. The show was organized by character and theme, and Daniels (better known as the droid C-3PO) was given the task of putting each of the performances and accompanying visuals in context. In other words, he told the stories of the Star Wars universe.

But this post is not about what he did, but about how he did it. It would have been easy, and satisfactory, for Daniels to tell the story in a way that was suspenseful, or scary, that got us caught up in the story of the moment, and wondering what would happen next. He did not do that. Instead he gave a celebratory, or one might even say patriotic, telling of the story.

The room was filled with people who had seen the Star Wars story multiple times. These were people who were coming, not to experience the story for the first time, but to celebrate it, and to share it with their kids. Daniels’ reading celebrated a story complete. He told the story as if it were our own, and in his telling helped to make it ours.

So how does it connect to scripture? If you’ve gone to a church, so many times we’ll hear portentous readings of scripture, that are independent of authorial intent. The reader rarely stops to consider what role this particular reading plays in the larger work. Is this retelling of dire straits a part of a larger passage celebrating God? Is this story a warning, wisdom shared (apparently) to a beloved son, a persuasive argument in the face of accusations or a celebration of identity, and the journey to it. I believe that if we, like Daniels, kept in mind what a particular passage is supposed to be doing, and imbue our reading with this purpose, the use of Scripture in our worship services will be a lot more powerful.

The LXD: In the Internet age, dance evolves … | Video on TED.com.

Music video with a whole school as the instrument – Boing Boing.

Though this may be horrifying to several of the readers here, I’ve never been a huge Coldplay fan. The following video, may make me reconsider

YouTube – PS22 Chorus VIVA LA VIDA by Coldplay acoustic guitar version.

A while ago I linked to a TED talk by Jose Abreu, on transforming kids through music. From what I can tell, this is what the folks at PS22 are doing in their own way.

edit:via Eugene Cho

The Folk Prince of Bel-Air – CollegeHumor video.

The 2009 TED conference recently concluded, and I’ve been slowly looking at some of the video. The video embedded  below is of Jose Abreu. Abreu founded a youth Orchestra called El Sistema (The System) that has transformed the lives of many Venezuelan children. He’s also the winner of this year’s TEDPrize

Jose Abreu on kids transformed by music | Video on TED.com.

I would love to take a similar idea and adapt it to rural Jamaica. Quite frankly, it’s probably something that would work pretty well on the East Side of St. Paul, or in North Minneapolis.

FFFFOUND! | theloniusmonksnoteshk0.jpg 600×816 pixels.

Thelonious monk gives good music and life advice.

Notes by Thelonious Monk

That last note is worth a blog post by itself

Kurt Carr – Just the Beginning | Christian Music Today

Simply doing church proves Just the Beginning‘s undoing. From start to finish, the project is one sweeping, larger-than-life church extravaganza—an overproduced, oversized, oversung pageant that’s large on pomp but limited on circumstance. Earlier Carr standards allowed parishioners sing along and join the praise, but Just the Beginning barely lets them get in a word edgewise, as Carr and the imposing Kurt Carr Singers monopolize the entire live recording in their soloing, vocalizing, and sermonizing. There’s no room for the church when they do church!

Ok this may be a little bit obtuse for those who aren’t familiar with the Christian worship music scene and for that I apologize I’ll get back to something more universal next time. If anyone has heard the Kurt Carr Singers, you know that they are incredibly gifted musicians who create incredibly powerful music. But in this situation, it seems from the review that they fall into the trap that many musically talented worship leaders fall into. They let their musical ability get in the way of leading the congregation into worship.

Now I can’t speak for Kurt Carr and his group. But I have been with several groups who, while genuinely worshipping, will do things that leave the congregation as simply spectators, or confuse and distract the congregation from the worship they came to participate in. Here’s what I think every worship team should keep in mind. The primary reason that they are in front (or behind or to the side or whatever) of the congregation is to help the congregation worship, which is to say, to facilitate the conversation that the congregation is having with God. Whenever the people on stage begin to dominate the conversation, or carry the conversation in a direction that the congregation cannot participate, then they have failed.

I have more thoughts on this, but they may be posted later (if anyone cares).

If you have 20 Minutes, you should watch this talk by Benjamin Zander:

I love this talk. Benjamin Zander, as he talks about Classical Music and teaches an audience of 1600 to love and understand Classical Music as well as gives us insight into leadership in 20 minutes. In some ways he does this by taking the big and the complicated and plays it with one buttock. What he does in his talk, is the same thing that he does when he’s playing. He doesn’t have an “impulse” on every possible point, or theoretical aspect of the piece, but instead gives us what it means, and shows us the line, not the individual notes.

I think that sometimes when we are dealing with ministry, activism or any other endeavor to lead others, we tend to be like the seven year old piano player. We put an impulse on every technical aspect of the vision that we are casting and the life that we are calling people to, and in doing so we kill it. Here’s a tip for you. If someone is trying to convince you to change your lifestyle, the best way to kill their argument is to nitpick it. Sometimes, we save our audience the trouble.

I think that part of ministry is to take the big, the complicated, the technical, and make it small, simple and evocative, and then to always keep that evocative, small, and simple truth in mind so that whenever we are tempted to make it about the individual notes, or aspects of the vision, we dont.

via Presentation Zen