so i find myself swamped with a massive to-do list upon returning, and i'm just trying to keep my head above water. the daunting amount of tasks i have to do just to maintain any semblence of a plan for my future continues to intimidate me.
however, my topic du jour is actually music and globalization. i watched a video in pop music class the other day about a black jewish gospel singer. yea.....it's like he was asking to be marginalized.
but anyways, my whole class afterwards was like "i was so in awe of how he was able to unify people and break down barriers with his music, singing jewish gosepl songs and stuff"
my question was: is his ability to unite musical? or religious?
i find myself thinking about the phenomena of worship music, and that christians all over the world are singing the same songs! i think it's amazing that you can walk into churches from canada, to egypt, to sweden and china, and everyone will recognize the song "here i am to worship".
at the same time however, i sometimes worry if as well intentioned as this spread of worship music may be, it isn't simply a subversive means of conformity and cultural imperialism not-so-subtely taking a religious guise.
granted, people usually translate the words into native tounges, but the music itself remains the same. even more familiar than worship songs are hyms -- amazing grace is a universally recognized tune i would think among all christians.
but why? why are overwhelmingly anglo-american musical ideals the status quo? i realize that christianity is inherently westernized (ironically, since it originated from the middle east...but hey, white people will steal anything) but how come there is such a unilateral flow of culture?
why don't we here in canada ever sing swedish worship tunes? or chinese worship songs? i know they're out there. but it just doesn't happen. sure -- north american churches send out way more people than we get back -- naturally that means we're spreading more of ourselves then we're recieving of other cultures. but does that account for the fact that....by and large, we don't care for the music of other cultures?
if our worship music is driven largely by social musical convention (which is a pretty safe assumption to make in my mind) then doesn't that mean our cultural spread through missionary work and such is actually aiding in the creating of a uniform culture of christianity that values familiarity over diversity?
i guess it's not surprising. after all, as much as people like to say christianity endorses differences in people, i often find most christians actually mean christianity endorses differences*
whereby you can onyl be different in so far as you're still pretty much the same.
the truly different are either wrong, or....well.....ignored.
i understand that much of religion involves conformity to a certain extent, but.....does this ultimately mean god wants the entire world to be....well.....english speaking conservatives, who dig guitars and sing-along choruses, along with non provacative yet uplifting cliches?
often in musicals, protagonists are associated with a musical theme in a major key, while antagonists often are associated with minor keys and dissonance. unhappy music represents "otherness". happy music represents the familiar.
so....is there no room for dissonance in christianity? as a religion, is christianity just a culture of major chords? can things be reduced to such a binary relationship? is it really that cut and dry?
i have no answers. and i'm not criticizing as much as i'm questioning.
just a thought.
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