Don't normally do this, but am posting directly about my piece in this week's City Pages, on
xtian rock. I went through a few rewrites on it and moved from first person essay to trying to take the idea of secular listening to spiritual music in general. Thoughts?
4 comments:
that transition is smooth enough..no worries there...but do i want to go ahead and run a review of the starflyer album now that i know about the rock for life angle?
a strictly christian magazine wouldn't review a band on the other side, would they? but is refusing them coverage because i find their politics all wrong just making war on potential allies?
the questions you raise linger. when do aesthetics trump politics (esp when those politics are pretty naff)?
most people have given in on the whole Wagner was a nazi sympathiser routine; clearly there are some lesons to learn...or guidlines to string up.
i spent a majority of my adolescence tangled up in this, so it's interesting to see the way you approach it. in response to bb, tho: i think once you start basing coverage and reviews on any artist's personal belief system, you're going to run into trouble. odds are anyone from al green to r. kelly to starflyer 59 holds credos - poltical and otherwise - that you might not fully agree with. are you reviewing the music, or the music maker? are you promoting a record, or promoting a viewpoint? and does one necessarily imply the other?
Really dug the piece. A couple of thoughts, both on it and the questions raised so far by this discussion...
I read your piece and Rick Moody's Believer essay on Christian art on the same day, and the two complimented each other in interesting ways. The main difference, I'd argue, is that Moody ends up using (mainly) the Danielson Famile's music to work through some of his own spiritual beliefs and takes on religion.
I do remember, at least in the salon-like message board scene of the day, more than a few people expressing anger when Jade Tree signed Pedro the Lion. Said people seemed unable to process the fact that (1)not all bands that expressed some sort of faith were doing so in order to convert the listener; and (2)a lyrical focus on Christianity and leftist politics are not mutually exclusive. Though I do think that the indie rock and hardcore scenes nowadays are much more open to bands with a spiritual component -- I'm tempted to invoke the raging debates over the Krsna Consciousness movement and hardcore in the early 1990s, but won't. For now.
One question for you that comes to mind, as I know that rock music is not the only style of music that you listen to: do you have the same feeling listening to (say) Sufjan Stevens's "Seven Swans" that you do to a classical piece that takes its origin in a religious tradition? (For some reason, Arvo Part comes to mind -- though I could just as easily invoke Bach).
Re: BB and J. Edward (congrats on eMusc, btw) - that's why I'm interested in the process/result divide between evangelical Xtian music and 'music made by Xtians who express their faith' - one is propaganda, the other is just another set of beliefs to untangle lyrically.
I think it's possible to think and write about music that falls outside your beliefs - same has been argued well by the likes of Joan Morgan on the problem of loving hip hop and it's many shades of sexism and homophobia (I mean, look how HUGE hip hop is in the dyke dancing scene, it's downright strange in a way).
The problem for me is how to deal with the social aspects of being a fan - mostly, would you bother going to a show where you knew you'd either be made to feel uncomfortable or would just feel uncomfortable because of what you observed (like me at the Starflyer show). Do you go and express your difference, something that you wouldn't do at a 'regular' show (I mean, I don't go around chatting pro-choice at shows regularly) - or you just go and 'try to ignore it.'
Re: Wagner, his dates come before Hitler, but he did have a fervent anti-semitism and his music was used by the Nazis as a sort of model for the accomplishments of the Aryan race.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wagner#Anti-Semitism_and_Nazi_appropriation
The question for Wagner is: was the music he wrote intended to be anti-semetic or was it merely trying to show that white, German intellectuals were the pinnacle of civilization. In his writing it is clear, but in his music, I would think it's more the latter. Absence and denial are forms of racism too, but it's harder to pin down than if he had inserted Jim Crow-type character into one of his operas, which would have been par for the course in America at the time.
This would lead to Toby's question about classical music, since the history of Western art music from plainchant on has been focused around the church. I wouldn't dare argue the 'absolute music' angle, but would point to reception history and the fact that almost the whole of Western art until recently has been under patronage of the church or government, which were often closely tied.
Arvo Part and other spiritually guided modern classical composers (love that Penderecki) made the choice to include spiritual themes, and so it would be a bridge to a new era of inspiration/subject/audience to talk about them.
I don't have a good answer (scratching head here) other than that, in Part's case, it seems like conversion followed from his intense love of Reinassance music - Machaut is the Sufjan of the 14th century! - and Penderecki is Polish, and Catholicism in that country was the way to survive as an intellectual under Communism. Not to discount their faith - but it seems like talking about faith in art music now is more of a choice.
Duh. And that somehow Part's work is no less alienating that George Crumb's "Black Angels," which deals with the Vietnam War - both subjects and experiences I've read about and can understand more through listening.
Okay, maybe it's this - there's the expectation in art music that BIG THEMES will be discussed, covertly or straighforwardly, and somehow God and Faith and Suffering and Hell seem like the types of things you might want to think about for a three hour opera. For three minutes though, it might be better to stick with the moon/june/spoon. Love that Spoon. Besides, what rhymes with God?
Sod.
Mod.
Tod.
Rod.
Bod.
Claude.
fraud.
Okay - that could be a good pop song, actually.
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