A very interesting discussion, guys. Taste is not the only element that determines what makes something good, right? Maybe this is what Joel is getting at. How can we say something is good for people, while taking their tastes into account?
It helps me to think of music and taste in terms of food. If we think of music as food, a large population of Americans might say hamburgers and french fries from your average fast food joint can be considered "good" food. But does that make it so? Unfortunately many Americans have been raised on a particular diet and have adapted to it, thus calling it "good" because they don’t know any better. This can easily happen to a people if all they hear on the radio is Top 40 programming or all that’s offered to them as "Christian" music is CCM, which has its own biases toward music with a youth-oriented focus on individual evangelism (just as fast food has its own biases toward meeting the "needs" of people with on-the-go lifestyles).
The case of this guy who loves Pink Floyd doesn’t fit this scenario, however. He clearly has heard other stuff and does appreciate it. So It doesn’t bother me that he likes Keith Green just as it doesn’t bother me that people (including myself) occasionally eat hamburgers in fast food restaurants or cotton candy at carnivals. But if we are reducing the diet of Christians to sentimental songs of meditation and praise, that goes against the rich diversity of God’s creation. Doesn’t sound like this guy is suggesting all music should be like Keith Green.
So, from my perspective, contrasting Keith Green and Nick Cave is not an issue of whether the Holy Spirit is in it or not. It’s an issue of the music’s intentionality, what its intended use is. Clearly Nick Cave is not trying to set a tone for prayerful meditation with "No Pussy Blues" and Keith Green is not trying to make music to shock people out of their moral comfort zones as Cave clearly loves to do.
Going back to our food metaphor, even though there might not be any McDonalds in heaven, the Holy Spirit could be in a Happy Meal and a Big Mac if it’s shared between a dad and his son after a soccer game . If that was its intended use handed down from McDonald’s corporate headquarters, all the better. But perhaps corporate headquarters only wants to make a buck with ground chuck, this didn’t stop the Spirit from working in the lives of the father and son.
Now back to music. The Holy Spirit is too big a phenomenon to be contained only in a the intention of an artist’s work or preserved in the song itself. There’s the performance of the crafted work, the interpretation of the listeners, the way it’s used in different historical moments by different groups etc. I don’t like linking the Holy Spirit too much to an individual person’s taste. That seems problematic on so many levels.
grant
Nov 24 2007
02:37 am
A very interesting discussion, guys. Taste is not the only element that determines what makes something good, right? Maybe this is what Joel is getting at. How can we say something is good for people, while taking their tastes into account?
It helps me to think of music and taste in terms of food. If we think of music as food, a large population of Americans might say hamburgers and french fries from your average fast food joint can be considered "good" food. But does that make it so? Unfortunately many Americans have been raised on a particular diet and have adapted to it, thus calling it "good" because they don’t know any better. This can easily happen to a people if all they hear on the radio is Top 40 programming or all that’s offered to them as "Christian" music is CCM, which has its own biases toward music with a youth-oriented focus on individual evangelism (just as fast food has its own biases toward meeting the "needs" of people with on-the-go lifestyles).
The case of this guy who loves Pink Floyd doesn’t fit this scenario, however. He clearly has heard other stuff and does appreciate it. So It doesn’t bother me that he likes Keith Green just as it doesn’t bother me that people (including myself) occasionally eat hamburgers in fast food restaurants or cotton candy at carnivals. But if we are reducing the diet of Christians to sentimental songs of meditation and praise, that goes against the rich diversity of God’s creation. Doesn’t sound like this guy is suggesting all music should be like Keith Green.
So, from my perspective, contrasting Keith Green and Nick Cave is not an issue of whether the Holy Spirit is in it or not. It’s an issue of the music’s intentionality, what its intended use is. Clearly Nick Cave is not trying to set a tone for prayerful meditation with "No Pussy Blues" and Keith Green is not trying to make music to shock people out of their moral comfort zones as Cave clearly loves to do.
Going back to our food metaphor, even though there might not be any McDonalds in heaven, the Holy Spirit could be in a Happy Meal and a Big Mac if it’s shared between a dad and his son after a soccer game . If that was its intended use handed down from McDonald’s corporate headquarters, all the better. But perhaps corporate headquarters only wants to make a buck with ground chuck, this didn’t stop the Spirit from working in the lives of the father and son.
Now back to music. The Holy Spirit is too big a phenomenon to be contained only in a the intention of an artist’s work or preserved in the song itself. There’s the performance of the crafted work, the interpretation of the listeners, the way it’s used in different historical moments by different groups etc. I don’t like linking the Holy Spirit too much to an individual person’s taste. That seems problematic on so many levels.