Archive for music

Taizé Community – Cantarei ao Senhor

November 9, 2012 / / Comments Off on Taizé Community – Cantarei ao Senhor

The Taizé Community in France is an ecumenical monastic order of Protestants and Catholics–a “parable of community” that seeks to be a sign of reconciliation between divided Christians and between separated peoples. Taizé songs are intended to support personal prayer, and reveal to us a glimpse of heaven’s joy through the beauty of human voices.

The community is made up of about one hundred brothers. After a time of preparation, a new brother in the Taizé community will make his lifelong commitment. Here are a few of the words used to express this commitment:

…The Lord Christ, in his compassion and his love for you, has chosen you to be in the Church a sign of brotherly love. He calls you to live out, with your brothers, the parable of community.

So, renouncing from now on all thought of looking back, and joyful with boundless gratitude, never fear to run ahead of the dawn, to praise, and bless, and sing Christ your Lord.

Receive me, Lord Christ, and I shall live; may my hope be a source of joy.

 

Category: hope, joy, music, praise, Taizé, video /

Ain’t no grave can hold my body down

November 4, 2012 / / One comment

The only time I ever got stopped for speeding was early one Sunday morning when I was driving to church listening to this song.  It was surely grace and mercy that kept me getting a ticket, for I do believe that, though I wasn’t going more than 10 miles over the speed limit I was in fact flying. Transported.

I love hearing Bozie Sturdivant sing this song.
 

 

But it wasn’t until years later I learned that, while Sturdivant was the first to record “Ain’t No Grave,” the song was actually written by a Pentecostal Holiness preacher named Brother Claude Ely. Listen to his version. It’s the same song, but what a difference! Sturdivant sings like a man pulling against heavy chains. Claude Ely is out to blind Death with a bright light and escape on wings of joy.

 

So where did this song come from? Claude Ely was born in Pucketts Creek, Virginia in 1922. As an adult he became a traveling revival preacher, driving from city to city. By one account, “He would drive a car, steering it with one hand, and with the other he would announce with a bullhorn, ‘Later tonight at 7:00, I’ll have a tent set up in the middle of town, please come out and experience the fire and Holy Ghost.'” Gladys Presley and her son Elvis went to one of those meetings.

Brother Ely’s ministry and influence spread. He become the first Pentecostal Holiness recording artist signed to a major label for strictly sacred music and songs.  “Ain’t No Grave” became so well-known that today it is sometimes credited simply as “traditional,” as it is on Johnny Cash’s posthumous release. Cash’s interpretation of “Ain’t No Grave” has since became the foundation of a global collective art work, The Johnny Cash Project.

“Ain’t No Grave” is one of those songs you can’t believe somebody wrote. There are so many versions and they are so different. Each one powerful, haunting, defiant, triumphant. How can one human creation become the vehicle for all these individual expressions of the collective hope? How can a person be open enough to let that much of the Spirit flow into the world? How can a three-minute song reveal the miracle of the Church–we, though many, are one. One body in Christ.

When the final trumpet sounds, I’ll be getting up, walking around. Ain’t no grave can hold my body down.

Category: African-American, music, Pentecostal, resurrection, video / Tags: , ,

Singing and praying

October 29, 2012 / / One comment

This quote from singer Iris DeMent who grew up in a Pentecostal family:

“My mom, who sang straight up until the day she died, told me one day: ‘You know, Iris, singing is praying and praying is singing. There ain’t no difference.’ So I think, even though I’ve left the church and moved away from a lot of the things that didn’t do me any good, I continued to pray — and that is singing for me. That’s as close as I get to praying.”

Category: music, Pentecostal, prayer, quotations / Tags: ,

O Sing to Me of Heaven

October 28, 2012 / / One comment

Today is Reformation Sunday and if you found yourself in a Lutheran church (or some of the other Reformed church congregations) you’re likely to have sung “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” The Reformation, of course, was one of the Church’s Great Disagreements that yielded both good things and bad, and eventually resulted in a whole slew of denominations.

Among the many groups born from theological disagreement are the Primitive Baptists.  Also known as Hard Shell, or Anti-Mission Baptists, these American Christians split off from other Baptists in the 1800s due to a controversy over missions and the understanding of grace and atonement.

Because they believe the New Testament only commands us to sing, Primitive Baptists do not usually play musical instruments as part of worship.  All singing is a cappella.  The hymn “O Sing to Me of Heaven” is sung here by a congregation from southwestern Virginia, and is another example of lining out.  It’s an ecstatic song about dying and the joys of heaven. When I listen to it, the plainness of the voices, the interplay between the leader and the congregation, and the over-the-top imagery unexpectedly combine to convey strangeness and power.  It’s an other-worldly sound.

 

O Sing to me of Heaven –  words: Mary Dana Schindler

O Sing to me of Heaven.
When I am called to die.
Sweet songs of holy ecstasy.
To waft my soul on high.

CHORUS:
There’ll be no sorrow there.
There’ll be no sorrow there.
In Heaven above where all is love.
There’ll be no sorrow there.

When cold and sluggish drops.
Roll off my dying brow.
Break forth in songs of joyfulness.
Let Heaven begin below.

When the last moments come.
O, soothe my dying face.
To catch the bright seraphic gleam.
Which o’er my features play.

Then to my raptured ear.
Let one sweet song be given;
Let music charm me last on earth,
And greet me first in Heaven.

Then round my senseless clay.
Assemble those I love,
And sing of Heaven, delightful Heaven,
My glorious home above.

Category: Baptist, Church, hymns, mountains, music, New Testament, video / Tags:

Faith is your steering wheel

October 23, 2012 / / 3 comments

You’re probably familiar with images of the Old Ship of Zion and the Gospel Train, but in 1957 the Dixie Hummingbirds updated the mode of transportation for the journey to heaven.  “Christian’s Automobile” features the incomparable Ira Tucker, who sang with the group for an astonishing 70 years.  Like many of the gospel train songs, this one is both serious and playful as the metaphor gets stretched further and further.  Tucker tells us

You gotta check on your tires
You got a rough road ahead
And when you are weary from your journey
God will put you to bed….

You’ve gotta check on your lights
And see your own faults
Stop while you can see them, children
Or your soul will be lost….

But my favorite image comes at the end, when Tucker sings:

And I’m not worried
About my parking space
I just want to see,
See my Savior face to face

What better way to express “I go to prepare a place for you” and the hope of the beatific vision at the time when Americans dreamed of seeing the U.S.A. in a Chevrolet.

Prayer is your driver’s license.

Category: African-American, beatific vision, faith, fun, gospel music, humor, music, prayer / Tags: , , ,

With sweet accord

October 16, 2012 / / 2 comments

Isaac Watts (1674-1748)
from: Project Gutenberg eText 18444

 

I’m constantly being surprised by the unlikely, peregrine paths of grace.

There was a time when English church singing was limited to settings of Biblical poetry and especially the Psalms. Isaac Watts (1674-1748), a prolific and popular writer of over 500 hymns, helped to change that.  His works (which include “Joy to the World” and “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”) are now sung worldwide by Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Pentecostals, and Episcopalians.

 

 

Here’s a well-known Watts hymn, “We’re Marching to Zion” (sometimes titled “Come Ye That Love the Lord”) from The Redemption Hymnal.

 

 

Most of us are familiar with this type of congregational singing. Another form of hymn singing is “lining out,” a form of call and response where the leader first sings a line which is then repeated by the congregation. Lining out was especially useful in churches with few hymnals and many people who could not read.  In African-American musical tradition, lining out is also known as “Dr. Watts hymn singing” though not all of the texts sung were written by Watts. This words to this hymn, “I Love the Lord, He Heard My Cry,” first appeared in Watts’ The Psalms of David. 

 

And if being a hymnist was not enough, Watts was also a logician.  His logic textbook Logic, or The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry After Truth With a Variety of Rules to Guard Against Error in the Affairs of Religion and Human Life, as well as in the Sciences, went through 20 editions over the course of a hundred years. His writings for children were so well known that one of his poems was parodied by Lewis Carroll (himself a logician). But of all these many accomplishments, Isaac Watts is best remembered as the “Father of English Hymnody” who enriched Christians’ experience of worship in ways he could surely never have imagined.

Category: African-American, diversity, hymns, music / Tags: , ,

Godzdogz blog

October 15, 2012 / / 2 comments

 

 

Yesterday while roaming the internet, I discovered something delightful:  The English Dominican Studentate at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford have created a snazzy blog with lots of lively and thoughtful posts, and a fun section on Biblical Beasts.  They have audio and video, explanations and sermons, and they’ll even take your questions via email.  It a website that’s well worth a visit.

If you’re not familiar with the Dominicans, the blog takes its name from a Latin pun.  Here’s how they explain it:

The name ‘Dominican’, although derived from the name of our holy father and Founder, St Dominic, is also a pun on the Latin phrase “Domini canes” which means ‘Dogs of the Lord.’

This was itself based on a dream which St Dominic’s mother, Blessed Juana de Aza, had in 1170 when she was pregnant: she saw a black and white dog with a torch in its mouth setting the world ablaze. This was interpreted to refer to St Dominic and his spiritual children, the Dominican Order – in their black and white habits – whose preaching brings the light of Gospel truth to shine upon and inflame the world with divine love.

And so, this site represents the ‘barks’ of this pack of ‘God’s dogs’, hopefully gathering all into the flock of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd!

 

Category: blogs, Catholic, Dominicans, music, sermons, video /

Ring out! Bath Abbey bells

September 30, 2012 / / Comments Off on Ring out! Bath Abbey bells

Looking down on the River Avon from the windows of our flat, we could often see canal boats below us and hot air balloons above us, and sometimes we could hear the abbey bells calling us.  It was an altogether joyous sound.

This type of bell ringing, where tuned bells are rung in a mathematical sequence, was developed in England in the 17th century and is called change ringing.

 

 

Category: joy, music, video / Tags: , ,

Son House – John the Revelator

September 24, 2012 / / One comment

When it comes to Delta blues, there is no singer who moves me like Son House. To my ears, no one can match the purity and intensity of his performance on tracks like “Death Letter,” “Grinnin’ in Your Face,” and “Empire State Express.” Like a lot of blues and gospel musicians, Son House had a complicated relationship with the church. His many occupations included time as a Baptist preacher, but ultimately he became a blues singer, playing the kind of music in the kinds of places of which the church did not approve. Still, his belief in God and his sense of a Judgement Day can be heard throughout his recordings. Here is his version of “John the Revelator,” a traditional call and response gospel song first recorded by Blind Willie Johnson.

 

Category: blues, music, Revelation, video / Tags:

No hay nada imposible

September 19, 2012 / / Comments Off on No hay nada imposible

Luke 1:37 in danceable form by Juan Luis Guerra, singer, songwriter, producer, and winner of three Latin Grammy awards.

For You nothing is impossible…

 

“Para Ti”

Oh Señor Jesús con tu grandeza , (oh señor)
Hiciste los cielos y la tierra, (oh señor)
Los rios, los mares, las estrellas, (oh señor)
Eres verbo y tu palabra es fuerza, todo lo puedes

Coro :
Para ti no hay nada imposible, para tí
Para tí no hay mal ni tormenta, para tí
No hay problemas, ni enfermedades, para tí
Para ti no hay nada imposible, para tí

A Noé sacaste de las aguas, (oh señor)
A Daniel libraste de las fieras, (oh señor)
A Moisés abriste el mar rojo, (oh señor)
Y Sara dió a luz a los noventa, todo lo puedes

Coro :
Para ti no hay nada imposible, para tí (ay, nada imposible)
Para tí no hay mal ni tormenta, para tí (ni mal ni tormentas, no)
No hay problemas, ni enfermedades, para tí
Para ti no hay nada imposible, para tí ( oh no !)

Hiciste llover maná del cielo, (oh señor)
Pan y peces tu multiplicaste, (oh señor)
El buen Lázaro resucitaste, (oh señor)
Y un milagro para mí yo quiero, todo lo puedes

Coro :
Para ti no hay nada imposible, para tí (nada imposible)
Para tí no hay mal ni tormenta, para tí (ni mal ni tormentas, no)
No hay problemas, ni enfermedades, para tí
Para ti no hay nada imposible, para tí (ojooye !)

Nada imposible, ajá eh !

No hay problemas ni enfermedades, (para tí, para tí)
No hay divorcio ni droga en la calle, (para tí, para tí)
Ya no hay cáncer ni sida ni males, (para tí, y no, no, no, no, no, para tí)
No hay tormenta ni calamidades, (para tí), y todo lo puedes…

 

 

Category: Bible, music, praise, video / Tags:
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