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.