Rock and pop music, in large part, emerged out of the Church. Its early stars, like the ‘Million Dollar Quartet’ of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, drew on a shared background of Spirituals, Gospel, the charismata of Southern Pentecostalism and all faced anxiety over their decision to substitute secular words and movements for sacred songs and mannerisms.
This beginning, which was felt as a betrayal of sacred music by those involved and by the Churches that judged them has meant that, for the most part, Christian churches have been hostile to the music that young people choose to listen to, and the music industry has responded with equal hostility, believing that any song with 'Jesus' in the title will sink without trace. Robert Beckford made that argument in a Channel 4 programme shown a couple of Christmasses ago and to ground his argument pointed to the drug culture and Eastern religions that characterised Flower Power in the 60s, the influence of Satanism in Heavy Metal, Black Metal and Shock Rock, the commitment of many hip hop artists to the Nation of Islam and the way in which the Christian Right in the US has sought to censor many such artists since the 1980s.
That programme ended with Beckford giving an impassioned plea for the Church to effectively engage with popular culture. That is something I endorse at the same time as being amazed by the extent to which Beckford’s argument overlooked many significant figures in Rock and Pop who have sought to express their faith through their music. If you watched God Gave Rock And Roll To You you would have come away with the impression that apart from Cliff Richard, Kanye West, and Matisyahu, the Hasidic reggae star, no one else in the history of Rock and Pop has ever dared to challenge the concensus that Religion and Rock and Roll do not mix.
The reality is far more complicated and in this series of posts I'm going to highlight some of the people that Beckford overlooked in order to think about ways in which the good news of Christianity has been expressed in popular culture by musicians drawing on the influence of musical traditions from the American South.
But first, here are two stories that would seem to back up Beckford’s thesis. The soul star Al Green is one of those who has felt the tension between flesh and Spirit, secular and sacred. He left a multi-million dollar career to sing Gospel and, in the film The Gospel According To Al Green, explains that he was moved by the Spirit to do so.
When Al Green is moved by the Spirit it leads him to leave his so-called ‘secular’ recording career to sing Gospel and to pastor a Church. His decision frees him to sing exclusively about the light that he has found in Jesus Christ and to preach the Gospel as he does so. Because of his past career and because he continues to sing his old hits he is able to continue to sing to people outside the church as well as to those in the Church but for many who, like Al Green, want to sing exclusively about the light that they have found in Jesus that opportunity is not extended and they make their living in Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) singing mainly to the already converted.
Larry Norman is often thought of as one of the founding figures of CCM but actually began his career recording for mainstream record labels and singing songs that named the name of Jesus and critiqued the society in which he lived. As a pioneer in writing Rock music explicitly from the perspective of a Christian, he attracted criticism from the Church and from the record industry with critics claiming that he was “too rock and roll for the Church and too religious for the rock and rollers.”
Eventually, the pressure from the record companies became too much and he launched his own record label which played an important role in establishing the separate strand of music that we now know as CCM. However, while he was recording for mainstream labels he wrote many songs that were not simply about the light of Christ but also about what you can see by the light. An example is the song Nightmare#71 from So Long Ago The Garden which uses a dream format to speak a prophetic warning to Western society that is still relevant even though it was first released in 1973.
Is the sacred/secular divide found in these two stories inevitable? Why/Why not?
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Al Green - I Love You.
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