Sword & Trowel 2015: Issue 1
A MUSICIAN’S PERSPECTIVE ON CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN MUSIC
– Neil McGovern –
‘I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts. So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me... Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profi t under the sun’ (Ecclesiastes 2.8, 9, 11).
T
HE MUSIC used in con- temporary Christianity is a sad testimony to the decline
of reverent worship and intelligent praise in many so-called reformed churches. Popular music forms have been incorporated wholesale into many churches, while traditional, simple psalms and hymns have been sidelined or degraded through modern rearrangements. This article briefl y looks at some of the reasons why certain musics are inappropriate for the dignifi ed worship of Almighty God. The focus here will be on the music itself (with examples taken from artists who have performed at Louie Giglio’s Passion Conference) rather than the lyrics or the statements and antics of secular pop artists. Modern popular music
Neil McGovern is a widely experienced professional musician.
is an industry which by its nature seeks to turn musical artists into com- modities for mass consumption. The propagation of solo singers’ music in particular is achieved by establishing a marketable image and construct- ing an identity for the artist, which is then sold through large-scale advertis- ing to the general public. A singer’s identity is intimately connected with his or her voice, which itself is a construction, insomuch as –
‘the vocabulary of professional singing is full of subtle tricks which form a cultural code of emotional sincerity, perhaps most obviously seen in the way everyone from operatic tenors to female popular singers all allow the voice to break, employing breath noises, catches and glitches in the sung line and the vocal timbre that indicate the depth of their emotion, something heard in vocalists from Pa- varotti to Alanis Morrisette. But these are the tricks of the professional singer and so, paradoxically, the very
A Musician’s Perspective on Contemporary Christian Music page 17
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