Music and the church

I think there are a number of reflections from my time at the Sonar festival of modern music that I can make about music generally, and music in the church specifically.

The first one is that in the church we don't seem to appreciate music for its own sake. Too often "music" is simply the accompaninet to "singing". What is important, of course, are the words, not the music. Even instrumental breaks tend to be a chance for the congregation to get their breath back.

A significant portion of the performances I have been hearing have been music only. No words, or rather, words incorporated as an instrument into a performance. This music is intense and moving - worshipful if you want.

There are some places where they do perform music - usually organ or orchestral. However, this is so often treated - by the audience at least- as "performance". The style of music lends itself to this. Why can this not be considered as "worship"?

Now of course, musical creation is "performance" to an extent. But good quality musical production can also lead us to worship. No words needed. In fact, in the best cases, words just get in the way - although I accept that for me, this might be an emphasis because I play an instrument but I cannot sing.

The second one is that we don't really like to embrace the "feel" of music, when it is loud. Yes, some places do have good organists who can make you feel the deep bass notes. Much of my experience is that turning up the volumne is considered "un-worshipful". Because, of course, the important thing is to hear the congregation singing, not the music.

And yet gut thumping bass notes are visceral, intense and deep. I want to be on the front row of a concert like this, feeling the music, seeing the performers. Do I want to be on the front row in church? Do I manage to "feel" the music? Not usually. So often the music it is more connected to a hippy acoustic guitar jam than anything vaguely modern.

The style of music is also interesting. Of course no two people will agree on a musical style - which is why so much church music is bland, anodyne crap - but there is a place for the Sonar "modern" - Electronic - music. The buzzes, the drop outs, the synthesiers, the conputer created music. this is all music, and this is all a part of the rich tapestry of what music means. The problem so often is that offering one particular style of music, normally justified because "you cannot please everyone" or "it is inoffensive" does not make sense. It is offensive, because it is too bland. Not pleasing everyone means you choose who you want to please - or you please no-one. So why does no-one choose to please clubbers, or metal-heads, or electronica fans or ....

Now I should point out that there has been one significant experiment with this - the infamous Nine O'Clock Service in Sheffield. I hesitate to mention it because it is for many people associated with the abuse and manipulation that was at the heart of it in the later days. I think - from my perspective - the damage done by this abuse is far more serious, because it has damaged the reputation of such services for another generation. It is a pity, because it could have been the model for worship into the twenty first century.

And yet even that, from the videos I have seen of the services, was still very much focused on words, on the liturgy, but with background music playing. Now the music was better, but it was still - for me - far too focused on words.

Until we lose our slavery to words as the most appropriate expression of worship, I doubt the church will move from its inherently modernist standpoint. I doubt that a church based on words will survive.

Music or words?

One of the interesting things at Sonar is the lack of words accompanying the music. It is not entirely, but substantially instrumental (if that is the right word for electronic music, or electronica-inspired). Kraftwerk, one of the headliners, are (unusually, I suspect) more wordy and song-based than many of the act and artists I have seen.

For me - and I know this is not for everyone - music speaks more than words, often. In fact, words can often detract from the message, because they are a clumsy method of communication. Some of the most intense, wonderful, passionate and emotive performances involved people expressing themselves through the music, not the words. The reason is, in my view, because music expresses emotions and feelings better than words.

So why is it that church music is very substantially accompaniment to singing? Even the occasional times when the musicians or organist play something without congregational involvement, they normally play a song, something recognisable, that people might sing along to. It seems that music in church is song and hymn tunes.

That is wrong. Letting musicians express themselves using music, using the instrument that they play (and, for many of them, is a way of worshiping) may not appeal to everyone, but will be worship, and sometimes will be very powerful worship.

There are two Sonar performances that, for me, illustrate the importance of music without words. Firstly, Elektro Guzzi, who performed a musical piece for 50 minutes, and it was moving, emotive, touching, worshipful. It was three musicians who were exploring with their instruments, and this exploration was exciting, imaginative, and fun. The musicians were enjoying themselves, and this was communicated to the audience. Was it worship? Maybe.

The second performance was Beardyman. He is a performer who records sounds with his mouth and uses them to generate music. Everything we heard was sounds he had made, but very little singing (there was a little, but even this was not "songs", but words used as musical components). This was music, made with the human voice. This was an indication that the human voice can be used in music, without it being "singing".

Christianity puts too much emphasis on words, I think. We like our books, our service orders, our songs, our words. I don't mean that words are irrelevant, just that we miss out on so much else when words are always our focus. We miss the emotional engagement that music has, we miss the versatility of the voice, we miss the power of pictures and images. And so we miss out on so much of Gods creativity.

Dancing in the church

In my time at Sonar, I have been known to dance to some of the music.

I am a dad, of course, and so I fully accept that things which encourage me to dance may not be in the best interests of everyone. I am also fifty, but, apparently, I dance like someone half my age. Of course, I don't have the physique for that really, or the endurance. On the other hand, I no longer care.

It is not so much that I still have the moves - I never had them, and even if I did, they would be different now. What I do still have is some ability to head a beat still. Of course, it helps if it is being blasted at 120Db. And is vibrating your innards.

Dancing in church is something I have not done for a long time. For which, I think, everyone should be grateful. Other people do, of course, and I am not sure it is a good thing.

Now I need to make a clear distinction here between professional, liturgical, interpretive dance and what I am talking about. I don't mind some professional quality dancing - I am not especially awed by it, but if it is done well, it can be exceptional and moving. Even liturgical dance can be an enhancement to some peoples worship, so if it is done by people who can dance, that is, in my mind, acceptable.

The problem I have is with the style of ordinary"dancing" in church. That is, ordinary people jigging to the music played as worship. There are three real problems I have with this:

1. There is a certain "way" of dancing in church. It is not actually very freeing, it is ritualistic just as much as so much else in the church is.

2. The majority of worship music is not danceable. For me, it really doesn't make me want to dance - I have because it is the done thing, but in honesty, the music never made or makes me want to dance, in the way that the Sonar music did.

3. Most people in church do not have a sense of rhythm or the style to dance anyway. This is not a problem in the Sonar environment - everyone is just having fun, enjoying themselves, and the music helps to relax people.

The thing is, if the church had music that was actually really danceable, music that was proper dance music, then maybe it would be OK to dance to it. Maybe that would discourage those who currently like to dance to it. Maybe it might make the church less embarrassing.

Dancing in the church is a good idea. The problem is that the current music is undanceable, the current dancing is humiliating, and the current dancers are too old.

The quote usually used against this is that of King David who, when his wife laughed at him, is that he said "I will become even more undignified than this." I suspect that is David came into many churches, he would say "Well, maybe I won't become quite that undignified."

It also strikes me that when church decide to organise a social dance event, what does it normally do? A Barn Dance.

I loathe Barn Dances. I loathe the formal dancing, I loathe the structure and organisation of this moving to music. If I am going to dance, in the sense of moving to the music, I want the music to tell me what to do. Yes it is pretty undignified; yes it is unstructured; but it is worship.

Or at the least, quite a lot of fun.

Church music

OK, I want to start this particular set of rants by a simple and bland statement:

99% of music in church for worship is unmitigated crap.

Note that I do not mean that the musicians are not talented, at least some of the time. Or the worship-leaders and song-choosers are not doing the best they can. If all you have is crap, and everyone expects the same sort of crap, you have to provide crap.

I am at Sonar, and have all sorts of thoughts coming from it - Sonar is a music festival in Barcelona, mainly focusing on "modern" - generally electronically inspired music. Kraftwerk were headlining one night, the band who have inspired many of the other acts, I suspect.

I went to hear Elektro Guzzi the other day. They are not everyone's style, I would accept - 50 minutes of bass, drum and guitar playing, somewhat avant-garde.And pretty load - at the ear abuse loud level.

And yet I was there dancing away (and I have another post on dancing, so I will put my comments there), along with many others, and enjoying myself. That was, for me, a form of worship. It was engaging with the music to help me touch something of the Numinous - the divine that is other.

And yet I have heard - not specifically to that, but in general - "how can you worship to that?" to which I have two answers.

1. Watch the audience, the musicians. Get involved. And then reassess your definition of worship, if you still need to.

2. How can you actually worship to some anodyne 70's MoR music? Which is roughly the genre of most "contemporary" worship music. It is boring elevator music. The words are meaningless unless you are part of the "elite" who understands Christian-speak. And are therefore a theological exploration. How on earth can you worship to that?

Later that day - well moderately early the following morning, actually - I was listening to a Skrillex set. I think I was the oldest person there - probably by over a decade. I suspect that I was the only one there with a theological qualification. It was 4:15 in the morning, and theologians tend to spend that time finishing carefully worded arguments not listening to brostep at an insane volume.

Once again, it is not everyone's cup of tea. Not entirely mine either, in fact, but I was glad I went, glad I got a chance to hear him. This raised a different question for me, another interesting one. If this is what younger people listen to - and believe me, they do - how on earth can we expect them to come into church and sing to kum-by-yah sound-alikes? Why would they? Why should they?

Of course, a lot of the answers you get to this boil down to the fact that these are not really the sorts of young people we are reaching out to. We are really looking for nice, respectable, classical-music-liking youngsters. Or at least, MoR-liking youngsters. These are the ones we can possibly reach, and they are hard enough. We will leave the clubbing-Skrillex fans to the youth worker, who can mold them into the shape we like first.

I see some 20-30 thousand young people who God loves and cares for, whom he wants to reach, screaming and shouting and having a good time, and I wonder how on earth it is possible to reach them, to enable them to engage with a wonderful, loving God. A God who, I suspect, loves the banging beats rather more than we suspect.