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From: gtaylor@cornell.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: Jesus Music
Message-ID: <101@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-May-84 00:31:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: cornell.101
Posted: Mon May 21 00:31:37 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 22-May-84 07:41:06 EDT
References: <1580@vax4.fluke.UUCP>
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept.
Lines: 64

It's real possible that this column will fill up very quickly
with flames about the relative merits of discussing "religious"
music, the relatively mindless preoccupations of all such inclined
folk, etc. To avoid the possible mess to come, I'll try to file
early.

Perhaps inadvertently, you've raised an interesting question that
we batted back and forth during the recent classical brouhaha:
the notion of music and special interest. (NOTE: for those of you
who are ofended by the discussion of CHristian musicians, do a global
substitute of band names like Prairie Fire, Style Council, and the Gang of
Four wherever you see the name of an overtly religious artist. The 
discussion should maintain its same flavour).

Being a rabid fan of Jacques Ellul and Walker Percy (and a fine
Episcopalian to boot), I am certainly interested in others of like
mind. My problem as a music critic is that very little of what I've
heard in this area is very interesting musically. I can think of a couple
of reasons for this:First, the approach that sets off a specific area
and calls it "Christian" (or "Marxist" or "Buddhist") music has set up
a hierarchy whereby the music itself is subservient to some identification
with a group. This is not to say that individual artists don't or shouldn't
identify with others of like mind: but the people who do CCM come across to
me all too often as persons who do CHristian music rather than Christians
who do music. As such there seems to be a sense in which style is constrained
by the notion that whatever this music is, it had better be acceptable enough
to the general public that they'll stay to hear "the message." All too
often, it becomes a case where the only ones who stay to listen are the
converted.

Not that people of religious faith are the only ones affected by this. The
drive to make "palatable music" is rampant in the marketplace, and the
same drives which build a sense of conservatism and safety into it are
also at work there.

In addition, there's also a sense in which the propositional nature of 
a religious text-yes, even songs of "praise" fit into this category
mean that the "words" have to be important. It is rather difficult to
find bands who work for a "whole music"

As a result of this, I tend to be continually disappointed by musicians
who are firmly entrenched within the CCM cubbyhole (and it's not as if
a lot of my friends don't keep hunting for people i'll "really like").
I also find that when asked to name Christian musicians, lots of CCm folks
wind up pointing you at artists who are in that category I mentioned earlier-
Christians who make music rather than people who do Christian Music: I'd
cite Bruce Coburn, ATF, Bob Dylan (though everyone seems less than interested
in him now that he's eitherbecome more Mseeianic or less overtly Fundementalist
-I can't tell which merely on the basis of his music) and the ever popluar
U2 and T-Bone Burnette as examples here. Their music stands on its own.

Well, I hope that I've thrown out a few observations about belief and
the act of making music that go beyond merely hunting up fan lists for
our Christian faves (RalphVaughnWilliams "Mystical Songs"). ANd please
don't think I've singled out Evangelical Fundementalism here as the bogey:
the Orthodox Marxist is just as programmatic, pedantic, didactic, and
boringly undanceable for just the same reasons.

Pax en charis.
gtaylor
m

f