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Underground > Radio & Music >

Music about god

  
 
doctorbeck
07:44 / 16.04.08
some of my favourite music is, in a broad and sometimes narrow sense very religious or spiritual. i get a great sense of emotional involvement and pleasure from it. yet i am an aetheist.

music i particularly like is old gospel, from rare gotham records reissues to stuff like the aretha franklin gospel lp, johnny cashs religious stuff on the american recording series,john and alice coltranes jazz (love supreme, journey to satchananda) and even van morrisons astral weeks, which seems at times like to most awesome evocation of god i have ever heard.

but i find this puzzling, given my lack of faith, and was wondering how you lot got on with the god music?
 
 
Anna de Logardiere
08:26 / 16.04.08
I was brought up an atheist but sang hymns at my primary school and absolutely loved it. Hymns are wonderful and I love being part of a singing congregation. Even now I adore hymns, peculiarly I sometimes watch Songs of Praise for five minutes at a time, it's a little like a religious karaoke session. I really enjoy listening to gospel music, which is often uncomplicated and showcases singer's voices so well.

Music is appealing, if it has been written as an expression of faith that doesn't mean it has to be listened to or played in that way each time. The vast majority of religious music isn't going to be understood by atheists as it would be by the members of the religion. Depending on the religion and the individual the experience of the religious might vary as well.
 
 
doctorbeck
12:19 / 16.04.08
god yes, hymns, i forgot those. quite a guilty pleasure aren't they?

really like listening to radio 4 on a sunday morning, usually high anglican hymn singing, totally lacking in anything i would describe as edge or soul (iykwim) but lovely none the less. also recommend aled jones sunday evening show called the choir, features some awesome vocal music from a great spread of largely christian traditions. some of it is really out there to my ears.
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
12:44 / 16.04.08
when I lived in Boise I found myself listening to the Christian station quite a bit in my car, as it was the only one without commercials. Sooner or later I always flipped there to get away from some used car salesman and then it would take me a while to notice.

Anyway one singer I liked so much I ended up buying the album - Ginny Owens. I don't consider myself Christian but, allowing myself a bit of metaphor and reinterpretation, her lyrics seemed really in line with how I was feeling at the time, a search for divine movement and faith in my own life. I'm still quite fond of her and tend to throw bits onto mix CDs for my friends.

As for hymns - often (always?) the most enjoyable bit about church for me, growing up Methodist. my sister's now Wiccan but she still sings in the local choir, as does my grandma and other family members - kind of a tradition. I always thought if I were in a more energetic church, more interaction, more singing, less trying not to fall asleep while the pastor talked about whatever...that I might have stuck with the Christian thing. church should be fun!
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
22:03 / 16.04.08
I'm another atheist former-choirboy who enjoys religious music- the aforementioned Johnny Cash, Gospel, Coltrane and so on.
One of my favorite albums of all time is, in its idiosyncratic way, a Christian* album: Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. I could write a book length treatise on this album (Kim Cooper beat me to the punch with an excellently written and researched pocket-sized book of the album for the 33 1/3 series), but, to sum it up and reveal why I like it so much: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea isn't cool. That is, whereas the other great indie albums of the nineties (Slanted and Enchanted, Ok Computer, Loveless and so on) had, even in their rawest moments, a layer of detachment, textualisation or irony, Aeroplane isn't afraid to tell you, repeatedly and earnestly, how much its feeling what its feeling.
Case in point is the album's most religious track, King of Carrot Flowers Parts 2&3. Singer Jeff Mangum repeats 'I love you Jesus Christ...Jesus Christ I love you, yes I do' in his admittedly not great singing voice and the listener is left with no doubt that he's not saying 'Jesus Christ' as an expletive but as the name of his Lord and Savior.
When I first heard this song (it was the first NMH song I'd ever heard in fact) I was deeply unsettled by it. Secular culture teaches us to be repelled by earnestness in any form, especially religious fervor. We are shown films like Jesus Camp and footage of people weeping, laughing or speaking in tongues in churches and the implicit message is: these people have lost control, they have no idea what they're doing even though what they're doing and what they believe is nonsense. However, loss of control is human, very human, and Humanists should honor that- being unable to do anything but proclaim your love for someone, even if that somebody is Jesus, strikes me as a pretty wonderful thing.

So, based on Neutral Milk Hotel and the smattering of other Christian artists I've sampled over the years I'd like to propose a hypothesis: for a secular person religious music serves a similar function to punk rock- it's a cathartic view into a less restrained world that we normally deny ourselves.

*= As a side note, I notice we're talking about Christian music a lot here- what about music that comes from religious cultures other than the one you were raised in? How does an atheist from a predominantly Christian country relate to Islamic/Jewish/Hindu/Buddhist devotional music?
 
 
astrojax69
07:35 / 19.05.08
just read this thread and was going to get to chanting - thanks phex... i am also atheist (is anyone on 'lith a practising anything?? ) but got into a yoga group a few years back and really dug the whole-body sensation of chanting, which are invariably invocations to some high power within you to worship yourself, so a form of prayer.

and really, good music is always going to be good music, whatever it's genesis. am also an old reggae fan and much great reggae is invocations to jah. that said, the particular lyrics of many hymns for some god to come and do/be stuff that i don't intellectually endorse does rub me the wrong way, so not always my faves there... but soul/gospel music is rich and wonderful and occasionally even the 'lord save me!' cries give me a psychological boost, even though it is someone else's imaginary friend...
 
 
Jack Fear
10:25 / 19.05.08
(is anyone on 'lith a practising anything?? )

Oh ho ho! What a jolly jape! (The smiley just makes it.) What a ridonkulous thought! Ha ha ha, it is to laugh!

(Yes, incidentally.)

(And you'd do well to not make too many assumptions.)
 
 
illmatic
12:06 / 19.05.08
Also, there's that forum - y'know the green one....

I have a whole big long post about collecting blues and gospel that which I wrote elsewhere, might have to repost it here.
 
 
Tsuga
23:34 / 19.05.08
Religion is just another motivator for people to create music, another inspiration welling up from them. I suppose at times in the past it seemed the only reason to create it, maybe because it has such seemingly supernatural power over us. Ol' Sufjan Stevens is obviously inspired alot by his Christianity, even invoking some of the language that to me seems the most arcane and archaic and abstract leftovers of biblical past. I think he's a little nuts, actually, but he's plugged in to the music part of his brain (or of the cosmos, if you prefer) like a motherfucker.
I used to have a cassette in the eighties, an anthropologist friend gave it to me, it was called "Ritual Drums of Haiti: Voodoo Trance Music". That was an intense percussion experience, I wonder if music sometimes feeds the same part of the brain that religion or theism does. To me some art— but most often music— and nature seem closest to truly divine.
 
 
doctorbeck
07:28 / 20.05.08
phex mentions religious music from other cultures, and i must admit that i listen to music from other spiritual traditions than the (christian) one i was brought up in a lot less. i have really enoyed it in situ sometimes, for example devotional hymns to ram and sita in an india temple, or balinese temple music and can get carried away to nusrat fateh ali kahn and the sufi music at times but on the whole, what moves me is largely christian of one type or another. am not sure why that is, given that i am an aethiest.


did i mention that great radio 3 programme The Choir on a sunday evening? choral music from around the world, some really out there sounds, the icelandic special last monthfor example, and largely religious. don't let aled jones presenting put you off, he is in fact great.
 
 
illmatic
11:11 / 20.05.08
I posted this on another board, which is semi-relevant. The post was about Living is Hard, a new compilation:

Picked this up at the weekend. It’s a new Honest Jon’s compilation, based on a trawl through the EMI 78s archives in Harrow. It collects 23 different recordings which were made in London between 1927-29 by African singers and musicians. This material was recorded solely for export to emerging African markets which EMI was trying to create at the time, exporting gramophones as well as the discs to play on them.

The sleevenotes make one reflect on the hidden histories of black people in this country – like a lot of great black music, it’s a by product of the colonial experience – and they go into a fair amount of depth about the early black presence in this country – seamen mostly who faced a lot of racism from their white colleagues on the waterfront. I’m left really curious to know about who/what/where exactly it was being exported to – the sleevenotes refer to EMI staking out the markets for themselves but amongst whom? Who exactly was buying this music and these gramophones?

And as should go without saying, the music itself is pretty wonderful. I love stuff like this. It’s the quality of being transported in time, right back to the beginnings of recorded music. It’s like a little window in history opening up, the closest we’ll get to a time machine. Several tracks sound very melancholic, a reflection of being trapped in an alien and unwelcoming land perhaps? Others have the call and response structure of sea shanties, while others are traditional arrangements with lyrics reflecting themes of African folklore and village life. A few tracks sound like embryonic highlife. There is also one utterly terrifying recording by Ben Simmons, which sounds like a possession rite. Unsurprisingly this didn’t get released

Link here with a lot more information: http://www.honestjons.com/label.php?...&LabelID=14815



I have a number of collections of similar stuff. Don’t know if these are familiar or not to people on this board – but a few faves are:

Shango, Shouter & Obeah – Supernatural Calyspo from Trinidad.
What it says on the tin, amazing antiquated calypsos with obeah/vodoun themes.

Good For What Ails You: Music From the Medicine Shows
Early recordings from the tail end of the American Medicine shows, travelling circuses with added pharmacies – where the phrase “snake oil” comes from. A mix of vaudeville musics and skits and some early blues soundalikes. Wicked.

Mento Madness. Motta’s Jamaican Mento 1951-1956. Something of a slightly later vintage. You can hear the foundations of reggae and ska in these tunes, I swear.

I have decided that CDs suck arse and are evil, and the ultimate format is the vinyl 7" BUT I will make two exceptions. Grime mixtapes and things like this - one of the things that makes me love these is the care and attention with which they’re packaged. Detailed fascinating sleevenotes plus lots of great pics and early artwork.
 
 
illmatic
11:24 / 20.05.08
What I was trying to get across in that post was the sense of *transportation* I can get from old/primitive/untrained music. Religious music is often made with a similar lack of commerical concerns, which is one of the things that can be so affecting about it. (Obviously, a lot of religious music can be very commerical which is another discussion).

Have you ever heard either of the American Primitive compilaions on John Fahey's Revenant Records? Amazing raw untrained proto-gospel and blues.
 
 
Eek! A Freek!
12:49 / 20.05.08
Whenever someone mentioned the term "Christian Music" I'd run away screaming: There was no way I'd listen to some preachy "Jesus loves you" weak minded BS. Just the classification alone made me judgemental. I remember having to sing all these songs in grade school: Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so! Little things to him belong, we are weak but he is strong.
I won't be melodramatic and say I was scarred by singing these songs, for the most part they were maningless to me, having been raised mostly secular, but as I grew older and was more aware of religion, I became resentful that these songs were forced on me. Then I had some friend's parents really try force the importance of being "Born Again" on me, and I guess I pushed in the other direction, hard.
I've hated "Christian" music for 30 years...
Recently someone got me to listen to the album Like a Virgin Losing Her Child by Manchester Orchestra.
I was blown away by the musicality of it. Then I started listening to the lyrics and for a moment went "Wait a minute...".
Then it dawned on me: He was singing about what his faith means to him, not singing why you should be faithful.
I dug that. I'm not so judgemental anymore and will give "Faith" rock a fair listen from now on...
 
  
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