Last Sunday was the first Sunday in Advent and with that, another year is drawing to a close. The year has gone pretty quickly for me. Half the year was spent in Napier, another few months in Europe, and only a handful in Auckland. I must admit that I am starting to feel my age. This was most noticeable whilst in Mass last Sunday at Our Lady of Hal (not Hal 9000, but Hal the place in Belgium).
There was a time back when I was a teenaged lad where I used to appreciate the odd electric guitar, bass, and drum combo during Mass. It really seemed to liven the place up. The singing seemed more enthusiastic, why it felt almost like a religious concert. Rock on.
Anyhow, when the electric guitar kicked in last Sunday I found myself wishing fervently for the nice gentle drone of the venerable old church organ. Put away the bass and break out the bass pedals. At least they had some nice old school tambourining instead of the drums. I didn’t really dig any of the new fangled hymns on offer but got fully stuck into ‘Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silence’ which is a cracking good hymn. Very solem and mournful sounding. Out with the new, in with the old I say.
I know some will say that music is a good way of bringing the youth into Church and getting them involved, but there’s a time and place for everything and Sunday Mass isn’t the place for rock ‘n roll music. Well not anymore for me anyway.
Yup, I’ve gone through the same progression as you Meth. I used to be one of the ones rocking it up on the stage, I mean altar, I mean music area.
But only a few short years later I cringe when people do the same. Aren’t I a hypocrite!
Here’s the thing though. I don’t think that sort of music brings young people to church in any sort of authentic way. At best this music is a bad copy of what you’ll hear on the radiograph, or even the technicolour television.
The odd thing is that if people choose to play the same style of music as the popular secular music, then it will be compared along with it. And always fail miserably. How many parishes have multi billion dollar music production budgets?
“Not many, if any, I don’t know anybody.”
I mean, I’ll crank up my Chilli Peppers, Linkin Park, Pearl Jam, The Living End (rock on!) etc at home and at work. So the We-Love-Jesus band at your local seem, at best, complete amateurs.
But at Mass I’m there to pray. And I need music to help me do that. My brain can’t compete with the horrific banality of the emo post-alternative version of “Shine, Jesus, Shine”.
Simple, beautiful, holy music can’t be compared to modern secular music. It’s impossible. The only objective of this music is to lift the mind and heart to Heaven. Done well, this music doesn’t turn of young people. It lift’s THEIR minds and hearts to Heaven as well.
I found this out while I was playing in our local post-kumbuya-semi-acousitc-rock group. We were pretty darn good. Heh. But every Sunday we would get teenagers coming up afterwards say :
“That real old school song you guys did during communion, you know the one where, like, it was just singing, and all four of you sang different bits. Yeah. That was really cool. I like that one. You guys should, like, do more of that. What language was that in? It sounded cool.”
They couldn’t care less about the songs we did that rocked the house. Baby.
I started to realise that perhaps we were onto something.
There is a flip side though.
I gotta disagree with you on the gentle droning of the old organ. I spew a litle in my mouth when I hear that crank up. An overly slow, droning, organ spewing out banal hymns with no substance or emotion written by cadigan wearing, tone deaf composers are the reason people turned to rock and/or roll in the first place. That music sucks. THe replacement music sucks in a different way.
Beautiful, holy music that is played and sung well. Timeless music that holds no truck with trendy nonesense. Gloriously written words that speak of deep and wonderful truths. That’s what we need.
Since we need it, we should probably start doing something about getting it.
(btw – hello everyone. It’s been a while!)