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.

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).