Hoo boy, we’re going to get lost in the various issues really fast if we don’t stick to the original problem. Of course we run into lots of issues when we expect peoples of different cultures to understand music from a totally different cultural context. And we can get off topic pretty fast when we bring academic vs. non-academic differences into this as well. Such topics require an agreed definition of culture (i.e. Is a person part of an academic culture in the same way that a Christian shares a Christian "culture"?; How then do ethnic "cultures" fit in to these other kinds of "cultures"?) and an exploration of the contours of musical interpretation from various cultural standpoints. We can do all this, but I don’t want to lose sight of what seems to me the original question of this discussion:
Why do people who are united by Christ differ so much on what they consider "Christian" music?
This is an important issue for Christians, as it should be for others who claim some kind of communal identity. If Christians claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit, how do we make sense of the various interpretations of this supposedly unifying Spirit? And what kind of "unity" do we Christians have that seems to break down when it comes to something as community-defining as music?
I’m not as ready as Dan to consider this issue of little importance. I’m actually a bit surprised that someone who is an educator would not also feel the relevance of this issue. When my 4th generation Dutch Reformed middle-class graduates of "Christian" education living mostly in white suburban neighborhoods come to my classroom, I can feel the negative effects of their lack of exposure to many kinds of cultural expressions (and even often their own). I don’t expect them to be able to read all the nuances of Plato, but for many of them their sense of wonder has been stifled at an early age by our education system or their family or society (as presented by radio, tv, internet etc). They consider anything outside their narrow experiences to be weird and therefore don’t understand the inherent value of exploring something new or mysterious. Their range of musical and artistic taste is very narrow and seems to go with their ability to be open to new ideas.
Their musical taste is reflective of their over-all lifestyle, to be sure. But it also works the other way, because often all I have to do is put something in front of them, a film about an artist or a song they’d never heard, and their world expands. They start to reflect on the break-through and on why they hadn’t seen things like that before. It’s kind of like Plato’s captives in the cave! Music definitely has ramifications for their lives, for their ability to see outside society’s prescribed path for how to live. It was important that Bob Dylan challenged American middle class values in the 60’s. It changed people’s lives. Music of that generation helped open up the way people understood themselves and the world they were living in.
Bad, unimaginative, uninspiring, unchallenging music can harm people, yes biologically as well as spiritually (for historical evidence, check out the connection between Hitler and the German music of the early 1900’s which inspired the dictator’s vision for his nation in a recent book called "The Rest is Noise"). Communities are greatly affected by music. So I stand by the value of my food-music example if only to protest the reduction of the idea of "harm" to [i:5c73665adf]what causes an individual to suffer biological death[/i:5c73665adf]. Though I am willing to argue that music indeed does have biological effects as well (scientists are currently discovering some interesting things in the field of music therapy and music cognition), we should not limit our understanding of harm to such a concept.
grant
Nov 27 2007
04:54 pm
Hoo boy, we’re going to get lost in the various issues really fast if we don’t stick to the original problem. Of course we run into lots of issues when we expect peoples of different cultures to understand music from a totally different cultural context. And we can get off topic pretty fast when we bring academic vs. non-academic differences into this as well. Such topics require an agreed definition of culture (i.e. Is a person part of an academic culture in the same way that a Christian shares a Christian "culture"?; How then do ethnic "cultures" fit in to these other kinds of "cultures"?) and an exploration of the contours of musical interpretation from various cultural standpoints. We can do all this, but I don’t want to lose sight of what seems to me the original question of this discussion:
Why do people who are united by Christ differ so much on what they consider "Christian" music?
This is an important issue for Christians, as it should be for others who claim some kind of communal identity. If Christians claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit, how do we make sense of the various interpretations of this supposedly unifying Spirit? And what kind of "unity" do we Christians have that seems to break down when it comes to something as community-defining as music?
I’m not as ready as Dan to consider this issue of little importance. I’m actually a bit surprised that someone who is an educator would not also feel the relevance of this issue. When my 4th generation Dutch Reformed middle-class graduates of "Christian" education living mostly in white suburban neighborhoods come to my classroom, I can feel the negative effects of their lack of exposure to many kinds of cultural expressions (and even often their own). I don’t expect them to be able to read all the nuances of Plato, but for many of them their sense of wonder has been stifled at an early age by our education system or their family or society (as presented by radio, tv, internet etc). They consider anything outside their narrow experiences to be weird and therefore don’t understand the inherent value of exploring something new or mysterious. Their range of musical and artistic taste is very narrow and seems to go with their ability to be open to new ideas.
Their musical taste is reflective of their over-all lifestyle, to be sure. But it also works the other way, because often all I have to do is put something in front of them, a film about an artist or a song they’d never heard, and their world expands. They start to reflect on the break-through and on why they hadn’t seen things like that before. It’s kind of like Plato’s captives in the cave! Music definitely has ramifications for their lives, for their ability to see outside society’s prescribed path for how to live. It was important that Bob Dylan challenged American middle class values in the 60’s. It changed people’s lives. Music of that generation helped open up the way people understood themselves and the world they were living in.
Bad, unimaginative, uninspiring, unchallenging music can harm people, yes biologically as well as spiritually (for historical evidence, check out the connection between Hitler and the German music of the early 1900’s which inspired the dictator’s vision for his nation in a recent book called "The Rest is Noise"). Communities are greatly affected by music. So I stand by the value of my food-music example if only to protest the reduction of the idea of "harm" to [i:5c73665adf]what causes an individual to suffer biological death[/i:5c73665adf]. Though I am willing to argue that music indeed does have biological effects as well (scientists are currently discovering some interesting things in the field of music therapy and music cognition), we should not limit our understanding of harm to such a concept.