Sacred Music Of The Secular City

What do Robert Johnson, Duke Ellington, Marvin Gaye, Madonna, and 2 Live Crew have in common? Each of their respective music forms--blues, jazz, soul, rock, and rap--contains varying degrees of religious essence and theological meaning. By examining the religious roots and historical circumstances of popular music, scholars and essayists--including Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, and Andrew Greeley--delve into the religious imagination of the American populace through an analysis of popular music. In sections devoted to popular music forms once identified as "the devil’s music," religious concepts and controversies are discussed: music as "soul therapy," the darker side of pop, secular angst, and sacred aspiration.

If music has ever given you 'a glimpse of something beyond the horizons of our materialism or our contemporary values' (James MacMillan), then you will find this book essential reading. Sacred Music in Secular Society is a new and challenging work asking why Christian sacred music is now appealing afresh to a wide and varied audience, both religious and secular. Jonathan Arnold offers unique insights as a professional singer of sacred music in liturgical and concert settings worldwide, as an ordained Anglican priest and as a senior research fellow. Blending scholarship, theological reflection and interviews with some of the greatest musicians and spiritual leaders of our day, including James MacMillan and Rowan Williams, Arnold suggests that the intrinsically theological and spiritual nature of sacred music remains an immense attraction particularly in secular society. Intended by the composer and inspired by religious intentions this theological and spiritual heart reflects our inherent need to express our humanity and search for the mystical or the transcendent. Offering a unique examination of the relationship between sacred music and secular society, this book will appeal to readers interested in contemporary spirituality, Christianity, music, worship, faith and society, whether believers or not, including theologians, musicians and sociologists.

Our contemporary culture is communicating ever-increasingly through the visual, through film, and through music. This makes it ever more urgent for theologians to explore the resources of art for enriching our understanding and experience of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Annunciations: Sacred Music for the twenty-First Century, edited by George Corbett, answers this need, evaluating the relationship between the sacred and the composition, performance, and appreciation of music. Through the theme of ‘annunciations’, this volume interrogates how, when, why, through and to whom God communicates in the Old and New Testaments. In doing so, it tackles the intimate relationship between Scriptural reflection and musical practice in the past, its present condition, and what the future might hold. Annunciations comprises three parts. Part I sets out flexible theological and compositional frameworks for a constructive relationship between the sacred and music. Part II presents the reflections of theologians and composers involved in collaborating on new pieces of sacred choral music, alongside the six new scores and links to the recordings. Part III considers the reality of programming and performing sacred works today. This volume provides an indispensable resource for scholars and artists working at the interface between theology and the arts, and for those involved in sacred music. However, it will also be of interest to anyone concerned with the ways in which the Divine communicates through word and artistry to humanity.

When the basic conceptions of the world held by whole generations in the West are formed by popular culture, and in particular by the music that serves as its soundtrack, can theology remain unchanged? The authors of the essays in this important volume insist that the answer is no. These gifted theologians help readers make sense of what happens to religious experience in a world heavily influenced by popular media culture, a world in which songs, musicians, and celebrities influence our individual and collective imaginations about how we might live. Readers will consider the theological relationship between music and the creative process, investigate ways that music helps create communities of heightened moral consciousness, and explore the theological significance of songs. Contributors to this fascinating collection include: David Dalt Maeve Heaney Daniel White Hodge Michael J. Iafrate Jeffrey F. Keuss Mary McDonough Gina Messina-Dysert Christian Scharen Myles Werntz Tom Beaudoin is associate professor of theology at Fordham University, specializing inpractical theology. His books include Witness to Dispossession: The Vocation of a Postmodern Theologian; Consuming Faith: Integrating Who We Are with What We Buy; and Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Faith of Generation X. He has given nearly 200 papers, lectures, or presentations on religion and culture over the last thirteen years. He has been playing bass in rock bands since 1986 and directs the Rock and Theology Project for Liturgical Press (www.rockandtheology.com). "

This volume offers 37 original essays from leading scholars on the crucial topics, issues, methods, and resources for studying and teaching religion and the arts.

Black British Gospel Music is a dynamic and multifaceted musical practice, a diasporic river rooted in the experiences of Black British Christian communities. This book examines gospel music in Britain in both historical and contemporary perspectives, demonstrating the importance of this this vital genre to scholars across disciplines. Drawing on a plurality of voices, the book examines the diverse streams that contribute to and flow out of this significant genre. Gospel can be heard resonating within a diverse array of Christian worship spaces; as a form of community music-making in school halls; and as a foundation for ‘secular’ British popular music, including R&B, hip hop and grime.

Popular music in the Americas, from jazz, Cuban and Latin salsa to disco and rap, is overwhelmingly neo-African. Created in the midst of war and military invasion, and filtered through a Western worldview, these musical forms are completely modern in their sensibilities: they are in fact the very sound of modern life. But the African religious philosophy at their core involved a longing for earlier eras-ones that pre-dated the technological discipline of labor forced on captive populations by the European occupiers. In this groundbreaking new book, Timothy Brennan shows how the popular music of the Americas-the music of entertainment, nightlife, and leisure-is involved in a devotion to an African religious worldview that survived the ravages of slavery and found its way into the rituals of everyday listening. In doing so he explores the challenge posed by Afro-Latin music to a world music system dominated by a few wealthy countries and the processes by which Afro-Latin music has been absorbed into the imperial imagination.

Brothers Gonna Work It Out considers the political expression of rap artists within the historical tradition of black nationalism. Interweaving songs and personal interviews with hip-hop artists and activists including Chuck D of Public Enemy, KRS-One, Rosa Clemente, manager of dead prez, and Wise Intelligent of Poor Righteous Teachers, Cheney links late twentieth-century hip-hop nationalists with their nineteenth-century spiritual forebears. Cheney examines Black nationalism as an ideology historically inspired by a crisis of masculinity. Challenging simplistic notions of hip-hop culture as simply sexist or misogynistic, she pays particular attention to Black nationalists’ historicizing of slavery and their visualization of male empowerment through violent resistance. She charts the recent rejection of Christianity in the lyrics of rap nationalist music due to the perception that it is too conciliatory, and the increasing popularity of Black Muslim rap artists. Cheney situates rap nationalism in the 1980s and 90s within a long tradition of Black nationalist political thought which extends beyond its more obvious influences in the mid-to-late twentieth century like the Nation of Islam or the Black Power Movement, and demonstrates its power as a voice for disenfranchised and disillusioned youth all over the world.