Aesthetics and Apologetics

[Brimshack]

So, I was listening to Cracker's "Halleluja" yesterday and it brought to mind a thing I sometimes muse about. I love the song. I mean I really freaking love that song. Part of it may be the trace of irony here and there in the lyrics, and a big part of it is definitely the pipes on that back-up singer. Jesus Dance-in-a-ditch Christ that woman has a voice. She's just getting started when the song ends, leaves me wanting more, not just a little bit, but full on need a fix now dammit crack addiction wanting to hear more. But, um, oh yeah, the point...

er, rather, the question?

How the HELL do I come to like a song with a title like "Halleluja"? By extension, why do I love "Amazing Grace" (at least the small portion that normally gets played)? "Jesus is Just Alright" by the Doobie Brothers? Why do I like so many Christmas songs (association with cookies and toys, maybe, so we won't focus on that one). But seriously, the point is that I do find some deeply religious songs to be really moving. ...and I don't think I am a unique heathen here.

...And yet, there is little that I hate more than Christian music or even most Gospel. When I have been exposed (usually by my own morbid curiosity) to some Christian music it makes me want to vomit. The last couple things Creed did before dropping off the face of the planet were so infantile I wanted to reach through the screen and slap the idiot. Why is faith so damned difficult? Cause dificult is what YOU want out of faith asshole; you're caught up in the drama of your own stupidity, and there is nothing to be done until you decide to grow up and quit mistaking the impossibility of your claims with evidence of their great profundity, your miserable little...

Bu this isn't really a rant thread. So, my question is (I know, you thought I asked it earlier, but no, I'm just now asking it ha, psyche!) ...okay, the question: What's the difference? Why does some religious music genuinely move me whereas other times it just makes me want to argue?.

...and gift people with Sardinian Maggot cheese.

Okay, so I really wrote this, because an answer has been forming, but come to think of it, I'll just leave the first post off with the question, and see what other people think.

So what do you think?

[Brimshack]

or even "Jesus Take the Wheel" (sorry Biochem Girl). I should hate that song. It's country music which is one strike, and it's God-heavy, that's like 40 million strikes against it, or at least it could be. But I just don't hate the song. In fact, I kind of appreciate the sentiment. It isn't that the power of prayer strikes me as anything but empty carbs, but I sympathize with the singer to a bit. I guess it's just that moment of feeling beyond your own means. That moment I know. And of course, it's a moment Christians fill with meaning, which is partly the point of the song. The meaning they intend, I absolutely reject, but in that song anyway, for just a little moment I can identify with something about the person expressing that meaning. I can understand the feeling of being absolutely beyond your own means to solve the problem at hand. I could even wish for a God to take over; I just don't think he's there. In a sense, the difference between this song and some other that would grate to me like fingernails on a chalkboard is the difference in which comes through stronger. That perfectly human emotion, whatever it is? Or the appeal to believe something that I absolutely reject. The difference might not even be in the songs, just in the moods I'm in when I hear them. But somehere there is a difference. Ah well...

As to why I don't hate this song on account of its genre alone, well you have to understand that most of my career country music has been the only thing available while at work. When you've heard the rest of the shit that comes through a country station these days, you'll uderstand why someone might feel a bit relieved to hear a tune like that.

[Watser?]

I have a lot of religious music, but hardly any of it Christian. I have Muslim Sufi music, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, pagan and even Voodoo religious music. Oh yeah and Rastafarian of course. Most of it is trance-inducing music and a trance is the same in every religion I suppose.
Christian rock is even worse that most mainstream generic rock: boring and even more generic musically.

[lisarea]

Maybe it's just because there are as many forms of religious music as there are religious people, and some of them are more compelling and eloquent and sincere than others.

And some of them are creepy, fire-and-brimstone preaching psychobillies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO9My5_H6dg), and so what's not to love?

[livius drusus]

I love Gregorian chants. I think the harmonies are unearthly and just beautiful. Of course, they're just psalms and stuff in Latin, so I'm not likely to feel like arguing with the lyrics.

[Brimshack]

That's a cool song Lis,

Yeah, I figure some people are more obnoxious with their beliefs than others, and you can sometimes see it in the art form. Still, I don't guess the difference always corresponds. For all I know some of the Christian musicians whose music makes me want to grab an axe and go for a hike are actually cool guys, and for all I know some of the religious music I like is written by religious assholes.

Actualy, a lot of the music I like is written by assholes of one variety or another, so it wouldn't surprise me.

I guess, I'm looking for something in the way the art is arranged that distinguishes the effect.

(Absence of lyrics one can understand is always good. I spent a year or so with the radio dialed to a classical station for just that reason. But yeah, chants are beautiful.)

[freemonkey]

Except for the little crosses and the nails, I really liked that video, Lisa. I liked the song, too, and the guy's voice.

I love me some full-on gospel music. I love Ave Maria, and the same snippet of Amazing Grace that you like, Brimshack. The secret for me is to ignore the lyrics.

I cannot bring myself to like the corporate Christian "rock" and country that is so popular now.

[Brimshack]

Ah, we appreciate it differently then. I love the lyrics, at least to that part. That one stanza that has; "I once was lost, but now I'm found." That resonates for me. Yeah there's a mythical element that does nothing for me, but the notion of being lost, without purpose, I could elaborate quite a bit, but really "lost" does it.

Here is the rest:


Amazing Grace Lyrics
"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me....
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see.



T'was Grace that taught...
my heart to fear.
And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear...
the hour I first believed.



Through many dangers, toils and snares...
we have already come.
T'was Grace that brought us safe thus far...
and Grace will lead us home.



The Lord has promised good to me...
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be...
as long as life endures.



When we've been here ten thousand years...
bright shining as the sun.
We've no less days to sing God's praise...
then when we've first begun.



"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me....
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see.
(end)


...and it does nothing for me. But that one set of lyrics expresses longing, - it's so intense - you just don't have to believe in a God to find that moving. At least I don't.

The redemption angle is interesting too, because that's starting to get more polemical, but even there. The notion that one couldn't save himself, that God had to do it for him, it's a central tenet in Christian god-talk. But I wonder if something very close couldn't be accepted, a sense that one could be (as with the earlier example) beyond their own means of solving their own problems, an understanding that it wasn't one's own efforts that got him through.

Part of what I'm thinking about here isn't just the difference between appeal to the rest of us and appeal to the faithful so much as what makes it appealing to the faithful in the first place. The self-consciously Christian pop is preaching to the faithful and it seems to tap little otehr than the desire to validate what one already believes. But with songs like Amazing Grace or Jesus is Just Alright you see a little more of the raw appeal of the faith, a sense of what basic elements in humanity it taps.

[godfry n. glad]

My wife, born in NYC and raised in Jewish Long Island, was a deep fan of folk music. She had been a player in the local Celtic scene and actually tried luthier as a career path.

She was also a fan of a good voice, and considered Alison Kraus amongst the best. One of my wife's favorites amongst Kraus' works was In the Palm of Your Hand, on the Now That I've Found You cd. Well...She ranted about the beauty of the tune for months before she actually sat down and read the lyrics....

Yep...it's about Jesus. Veiled, but clear if you pay attention. She still loved it none the less.

Just as good whiskey is good whiskey no matter where it comes from, a good voice is a good voice no matter what it is singing.

Just because they believe something I don't doesn't mean they don't have natural talent.