FFM 2007 - Part 3

"People who know they're not home do not fence it off and dig in." So stated the Psalters as they began their presentation on the role of music in worship. For the church to re-envision its relationships to the land is to sing the travelling songs, the exodus psalms, as we move from one place, to the place where we have been called. Having recently returned from Turkey, a trip which led them into small, remote villages, the Psalters returned with a new song (5 in fact) that they had collected in their travels. After a long-ish lecture on the prophetic role of music in worship, we finally had a chance to do what I had thought we were there to do - to workshop some music. Playing five different tracks, mostly from the middle east, the Psalters took us through the music of lament, prophecy, and of joyful exhuberance. The discussion focused on the ways in which these particular pieces exhibited emotion (especially through their deep, gutteral, and at times pained voicings). The discussion ended up deciding, more or less, that western worship music is somehow less than authentic, because such songs, such utter abandon in the singing of the songs is not present in much of what we consider modern worship music in the west. Point taken. A great deal of our hymnody/mod worship can sound like the newest boy band single, except that we rarely, if ever, like the psalmist, ask God to "quit playing games with my heart." Just saying. Sappy rock ballads fit for radio, often with us as the focus where the focus could be God instead. But - and this is the question that Rob and Brian were kicking around afterwards - how faithful is it to appropriate someone else's music and to claim it as our own? Does it make sense to say "your music is more authentic, more deep, therefore we will adopt that form?" I don't know, but I suspect that when the prophets were railing against Israel (see Amos) about their weak, empty words, it wasn't just about music style, but about the honesty and truth behind their words. So. The question of appropriation. We live in a world where boundaries are being blurred, where people migrate rather frequently, and often from one side of the world to another. We bump up against other cultures, are influenced by them, and they with us. Surely taking Turkish music and calling it a more authentic expression of worship than, say, Matt Redman, is a false choice, especially in the face of hybridity of influence, and hybridity of cultures. But to create music, and to form an expression of worship influenced by some other culture is not fundamentally dishonest. Unless you're just doing it to be "relevant." Then, perhaps, you've got problems. If you're appropriating another cultural form, like the liberation songs of an African-American spiritual, but have no relationship to the story of such a hymn, have no relationship to the culture that birthed the song, can it become for you an authentic expression? I'm not sold on it, either way. That being said, I'm fairly convinced that "worship" comes out of honest expression. You could sing Cockburn or Matisyahu or the songs of Bollywood, and the expression could be just as frail or as robust as singing a Charles Wesley classic. Where's the heart in all of this? Perhaps the answer becomes this: each congregation, each grouping of Christians needs to find authentic, honest ways in which to express worship - whether in song, in painting, sculpture, drama, and most especially in the realities of everyday life. That was it for me on Friday. I skipped the afternoon session to spend time alone, reading, writing, and thinking a bit about the emerging church's tendency towards cybergnosticism. You know, like, living lives on blogs and things, keeping us out of contact with the real flesh-and-blood problems in the communities where we make our homes. More to come...