Posted on 06/27/2009 1:17:11 PM PDT by Pride_of_the_Bluegrass
Full disclosure: I never watched a Michael Jackson video all the way through until today, after reading in The New York Times that “in the Philippines, a dance tribute was planned for a prison in Cebu, where Byron Garcia, a security consultant, had 1,500 inmates join in a synchronized dance to the ‘Thriller” video.” Jackson always seemed to me unspeakably silly when he wasn’t genuinely creepy, but the mass outpouring of grief at his death made me curiously enough to view the cited item on YouTube.
All music in some way is sacramental and all public performance has some religious character, but Jackson cultivated his image as a lay practitioner of pop spirituality more than any performer in his market segment, through the soppy universalism of “We are the World” as well as through his identification with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and, according to recent rumor, with Islam. The feel-good guru Deepak Chopra claims that Jackson was writing a song about the environment and wanted Chopra’s help with lyrics.
Just what sort of priest was Jackson, and what was his congregation? In the Judeo-Christian world, music enhances individuality within the congregation. That is clearest in the singing of four-part hymns, something that Protestant congregations learned as a matter of routine (the standard teachers’ manual used in Saxony in Bach’s childhood had sections on reading, arithmetic, and four-part singing). The harmonious combination of different voices recreates the unity-in-individuality of a Judeo-Christian congregation.
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
What a goofy assertion!
Not goofy at all. Music has been a part of religious rituals since the dawn of time, as far as we can determine. In addition, what do you think about all those people who claim that “rock and roll” can “soothe their soul” and then go on with various other religious images when they talk about what is essentially just pop music? In other words, music is expressive and it expresses what is behind it and what motivated its composer.
Interestingly, the only religion that now forbids music is Islam, which obviously finds it very threatening.
You may not regard it that way, because presumably you have a faith, but its followers do. That’s why we’re having the hysterical overreaction to the death of a pop star. He meant something entirely different to them that we probably don’t understand.
I don’t know if you’ve already read this in First Things, but it’s music-related and interesting.
I’m sorry but it’s obvious that the author is on crack.
It doesn’t matter what I say
So long as I sing with inflection
That makes you feel I’ll convey
Some inner truth or vast reflection
But I’ve said nothing so far
And I can keep it up for as long as it takes
And it don’t matter who you are
If I’m doing my job then it’s your resolve that breaks
Because the hook brings you back
I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
The hook brings you back
On that you can rely
There is something amiss
I am being insincere
In fact I don’t mean any of this
Still my confession draws you near...
—Blues Traveler
I, too, have been putting off watching Thrilla’ for a few years. Never guessed it was done a quarter century ago. Oh, well, that is how life goes. I will get around to it someday.
FWIW Ayn rand once wrote something about rock music and woodstock. Appollo and Dionysius, I think, and maybe in The New Intellectual? The writer is not entirely off track.
parsy, who gets closer to God when he hears The Sounds of Silence
On the one hand, there is pop music, which is certainly no longer supported by the people in the ancient sense (populus). It is aimed at the phenomenon of the masses, is industrially produced, and ultimately has to be described as a cult of the banal. “Rock”, on the other hand, is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects. However, in the ecstasy of having all their defenses torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe. The music of the Holy Spirit’s sober inebriation seems to have little chance when self has become a prison, the mind is a shackle, and breaking out from both appears as a true promise of redemption that can be tasted at least for a few moments. [The Spirit of the Liturgy, (SF, CA: Ignatius, 2000), p 148]
Judging from the way people are behaving over the death of Michael Jackson, I gotta say His Holiness has a point . . . .
Benedict XVI again:
The Church’s Tradition has this in mind when it talks about the sober inebriation caused in us by the Holy Spirit. There is always an ultimate sobriety, a deeper rationality, resisting any decline into irrationality and immoderation. We can see what this means in practice if we look at the history of music. The writings of Plato and Aristotle on music show that the Greek world in their time was faced with a choice between two kinds of worship, two different images of God and man. Now what this choice came down to concretely was a choice between two fundamental types of music. On the one hand, there is the music that Plato ascribes, in line with mythology, to Apollo, the god of light and reason. This is the music that draws senses into spirit and so brings man to wholeness. It does not abolish the senses, but inserts them into the unity of this creature that is man. It elevates the spirit precisely by wedding it to the senses, and it elevates the senses by uniting them with the spirit. Thus this kind of music is an expression of man’s special place in the general structure of being. But then there is the music that Plato ascribes to Marsyas, which we might describe, in terms of cultic history, as “Dionysian”. It drags man into the intoxication of the senses, crushes rationality, and subjects the spirit to the senses. The way Plato (and more moderately, Aristotle) allots instruments and keys to one or other of these two kinds of music is now obsolete and may in many respects surprise us. But the Apollonian/Dionysian alternative runs through the whole history of religion and confronts us again today. [The Spirit of the Liturgy, (SF, CA: Ignatius, 2000), pp. 150-51]
Good read. I never read it before. Apollo and Dionysius used to be on web as a background for any term paper particularly English literature.
parsy, who was surprised to find Renaissance on youtube and downloaded OceanGypsy and the Scherazade ones.
(I still have Renaissance's Scheherazade album on vinyl)
To quote yet another well known writer, in C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian, Susan and Lucy encounter Dionysus and his Maenads. Susan whispers to Lucy that she wouldn't feel at all safe with them if Aslan weren't with them . . . "I should think not!" said Lucy.
I am too lazy to get my books to check Narnian quotes, and I always seem to hit the website of some idiot who thinks that quotes like this "prove" that Lewis was a Satanist. She probably thinks that BXVI is one too.
I never could stand this “look at me” crap from the Jackson and Madonna era. Good riddance.
Oh so do I. I also just got a usb turntable and have uploaded 2 lps. Renaisance is on the list. I have about 3 or four of their albums.
check out this out on youtube “hitler nigerian email” Funniest thing Ihave seen in years. Also check out sundaegirl2004. She does some great stick people videos to good songs like “Running Bear.”
parsy, who loves music
Is he the one who spied on the rites?
parsy, used to have a maenad cast
Pretty much sums up my opinion of the guy. Not much more than a lightweight, oddly pathetic freak show.
I would say that there is some anti-music that is anti-sacramental.
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