Doxologist ContentConfessions of a Washed Up Music Snob Part III
III.) Bib overalls, War and Peace, McDonald’s and the Cultural Mandate
Before I attended Mars Hill, church music seemed like unnecessary accessory in corporate worship. I’d observed that there were basically two types of music styles in most churches: Corny, pop oriented praise music with no theological girth or high brow, dusty orthodox liturgy that failed to connect with people. Given the two options it seemed like what Mars was going for couldn’t have been anything other than mere performance.
In the book Plowing in Hope , writer David Hegeman lays out his definition of the three basic forms of culturative expression: Folk culture, pop culture and high culture.
Hegeman lists examples of each category and credits All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes for his examples:
Folk Culture
• Home cooking
• Square dancing
• Negro spiritual
• Fairy tale
• Bib overalls
Popular Culture
• McDonald’s
• Disco
• Mystery novel
• Dockers
High Culture
• Gourmet cuisine
• Ballet
• Symphony
• War & Peace
• Tuxedo
Hegeman goes on to explain that folk culture is mostly concerned with the utility of a cultural artifact shared between groups of people that have ethnic and or religious ties. Popular culture is a modern form that attempts to speak to as many “folks” as possible in a pluralistic society and is often relegated to the “lowest common denominator”. High culture includes works that are intricate and intellectually profound and a community often passes these kinds of cultural artifacts on to succeeding generations. These artifacts sometimes contribute to the community’s sense of identity.
Of course real life is a little more intricate than this but Hegeman’s examples got me thinking about the life of our own community. How are our cultural artifacts (Mars Hill songs) perceived and experienced among our congregation? How does Mars Hill music fit into Hegeman’s tidy framework? On the one hand I see how most cultural expressions have no choice but to fall into one of these categories. But I’d like our music to have a life beyond mere utilitarian purposes and to transcend mere pop-ish here-today-gone-tomorrow novelty. I don’t believe that every one of our songs will translate well ten years from now but hopefully we’re writing material that will survive fads because of its strength of melody and depth of theological content.
What do you do with more experimental forms of music that are modern, but not necessarily high art? I believe stuff like Scott Walker, and COIL, NON, Mogwai don’t really easily fit into any of those catagories.
Could there be forms of expression in a liturgical service that are beyond the three catagories of Folk, Pop, and High Art?
you know, it’s kinda what all musicians hope to acheive: that delicate balance of present acceptability by the public and enduring beauty for the generations. very difficult to do. i think that somehow Hegeman’s trinity of art is somewhat insufficient for the times though. Marva Dawn in “Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down” uses the same categories (in fact, she may have lifted from Hegeman), but both fail to recognize how QUICKLY the culture is changing now, compared to how slowly it changed 100 years ago. most culture watchers say the that the culture is changing every five to seven years in the same degree that it changed in three generations just 100 years ago. it’s a great tension to struggle with though. to not struggle with it would be to give in to frivolity, i think. the labels are adequate, but defining what will ultimately end up in each category even 10 years from now is a little harder.
I’ll preface my own comments with one big, Chariscostal styled “AMEN!” I love your thought process, esp. with where i think i see you going with this?
For our generation, inside the church walls, i might add one further category. And that, although i question its validity, even its very right of existence is what i will call the Evangelical Religious Subculture; under which may be categorized the Christian Music (M)industry, if you will among others the Lord never intended within a perfect world (Eden?).
Perhaps i should stop before i begin going off on a rant; but it was the ‘worship wars’ coming to roost in my former fellowship that would finally lead me out to seek another (more reformed - though i came in kicking and screaming) more suitable to my intellective orientation toward faith and culture.
Good stuff, my brizzle, looking forward to more from the heart of one of those ‘old stones’….
I assume Hegeman wrote this book in a decade gone by… unless disco is back and no one told me.
From my experience, it’s very true about the two basic music styles in churches. This is one of the reasons I too love Mars Hill so much; good music combined with theological and honest lyrics.
Yeah, the few categories that Hegeman points out aren’t intended to be exhaustive. I don’t think they are anyway. I’d say I generally agree with how he chops up cultural forms for the sake of beginning to think through these issues critically though. But, just like anything else, the argument breaks down at some point.
And as far as the church and creative expression and the culture that the church produces… I still wonder if there’s any way around it (?) Is it important to combat the culture that the church produces? When? Conversely, do we take a downtown music club concert vibe and plop it into a worship service? Why or why not?
Given the opportunity I think most people could come up with their own slice and dice framework for categorizing types and styles of music. I’d be real curious Matt to see what you come up with for the three categories mentioned in the New Testament namely; Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs as mentioned in Ephesians 5:18,19 & Colossians 3:16. I’ve done some research on this and have come to the conclusion that no one definitively knows. You can find the biblical meaning of each word via a concordance but without early church songbooks which to the best of my knowledge don’t exist it’s hard to know the differences. There are a lot of opinions and some general definitions but nothing real cut and dry. What do you think?