Here's the talk I shared as part of today's Music Concert organised by Spring of Hope Church:
Rev Matt Simpkins is a former curate of this Parish and an amazing musician, who performs as Rev Simpkins. I interviewed him about his music a year or two ago and he had many insightful things to say about music:
“Music is just such a brilliant expression of our humanity and my faith is that all these things have something to do with grace. Christianity is music: the Psalms are the bedrock of Christian faith and worship. All is melded into one. I’m obsessed with the Psalms and the violent mood swings they contain. Their emotional honesty intertwines music and human life with grace. The richness of creation and human experience – for good and ill – mean that I’m not willing to believe that parts of that are somehow untouched by grace and redemption – even our own suffering and sorrow.”
“I came back to music because I got ill. After ordination I thought that music was something that formed me but was not part of my ministry. When I first got ill, I found it hard to pray, so I read those ancient songs - the Psalms - as I always have. I became especially interested in the bits people often leave out. We need to see the difficulties that underly the songs but also see the joy like the Psalmist. This is the darkness of grace. Shit happens but grace remains.
We know that Jesus prayed the Psalms and believe that he takes all human experience up on himself on the cross. So, if I’m having a scary experience like an MRI scan why not think what I might do creatively with that shuddering racket in a song? I take up my experiences in the faith that they have some connection to grace. Human experience and shared experience can result in emotionally dynamic and authentic songs.”
The music that he has made as a result, however, has been joyful: “I’m trying to give an authentic sense of joy in my music. I find that joy in making music with people I love. We just get together and make music. They know it’s authentic. It’s fun, really fun, and has been incredibly therapeutic. Music is bound up with identity and community and reconnecting with music has been good for my faith. Light and gathering together are part of the Holy Spirit’s personality.
This combination of joy and lament is what we find in Gospel music. It’s plenitude and plurality is composed of worship, lament, joy, word, breath, community, and improvisation. It celebrates using praise, breath, and community while exploring the innermost emotions that are shared through religion, aiding the prospect of surrender and ecstatic freedom and cultivating spaces where art thrives and expresses a unifying language for all. That’s because the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is democratic, filling all and enabling all to prophesy, speak in tongues and create.
As Matt says, the Psalms are the bedrock for all music-making in the Church. The Psalms are the worship songs of the people of Israel as recorded in the Old Testament and are the first occasion in ancient literature where the voice of victims is heard and valued.
The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann in his book Spirituality of the Psalms provides an insightful and structured overview of the Psalms using three categories: orientation, disorientation, and new orientation. Orientation is the establishment of structure and order. Disorientation is a place of imbalance and nonsense, which is potentially unjust. New orientation is moving forward away from what was and toward new possibilities. As a result, the Psalms provide us with expressions of suffering and hope in the seasons of everyday life. In his book, Brueggemann explains how Psalms of negativity, cries for vengeance, and profound penitence are foundational to a life of faith, and establishes that the reality of deep loss and amazing gifts are held together in a powerful tension.
That is what Matt has experienced personally and has expressed through his music. I want to end by reminding us of a musical family who have expressed and exemplified this understanding of what music is and can be in Church.
Gospel great, Mavis Staples, began singing with The Staples Singers in 1950, aged 11. From 1963, the group began supporting the civil rights movement with Pops Staples saying of the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr, ‘If he can preach it – we can sing it.’ From 1968, through Stax Records, they became soul stars known for their ‘message songs’; songs that were both politically and religiously charged. Since the last Staple Singers album in 1984, Mavis’ solo career has soared by mining the seam of R&B/Gospel developed by her father Pops and taken forward by Mavis through collaborations with the likes of Ry Cooder, Ben Harper and Jeff Tweedy. Through it all the deep resonance of Mavis’ voice drenched in the stylings of Pentecostal churches has been constant; a voice that as Renée Graham noted, ‘doesn’t so much sing a song as baptize it in truth’.
Mavis has spoken of bringing joy, happiness and positive vibrations. This is the transformation that she, and Gospel music generally, achieve; the transformation of struggle into salvation. ‘It’s more than just a feeling–it’s a philosophy’; a philosophy that Mavis Staples lives in concert with every fibre of her being.
The musical journey undertaken by The Staple Singers was an emotional tale and trip combining elation in the gospel with defiance of discrimination, as the group crossed boundaries — first, by combining blues, country, and gospel to create their unique sound, and then by merging spirituality and social comment at civil-rights marches and the Newport Folk Festival, before re-sacralising soul as Stax stars in the Black Power period characterised by the Wattstax Festival of 1972, a benefit after the Watts Riots in 1965.
The story of the Staples Singers is one of the strength that faith and family provide for the long walk to freedom. While the tale and its telling involve anger and loss, it is ultimately, as Mavis states emphatically at the beginning of her concerts, about joy, happiness, inspiration, and positive vibrations; and the tears that it inevitably evokes are tears of joy.
As we enjoy and create music for Church, may we, like Rev Simpkins and The Staple Singers, draw on The Psalms as the worship book for the Church and echo its mix of joy and lament in all we do. Amen.
“Music is just such a brilliant expression of our humanity and my faith is that all these things have something to do with grace. Christianity is music: the Psalms are the bedrock of Christian faith and worship. All is melded into one. I’m obsessed with the Psalms and the violent mood swings they contain. Their emotional honesty intertwines music and human life with grace. The richness of creation and human experience – for good and ill – mean that I’m not willing to believe that parts of that are somehow untouched by grace and redemption – even our own suffering and sorrow.”
“I came back to music because I got ill. After ordination I thought that music was something that formed me but was not part of my ministry. When I first got ill, I found it hard to pray, so I read those ancient songs - the Psalms - as I always have. I became especially interested in the bits people often leave out. We need to see the difficulties that underly the songs but also see the joy like the Psalmist. This is the darkness of grace. Shit happens but grace remains.
We know that Jesus prayed the Psalms and believe that he takes all human experience up on himself on the cross. So, if I’m having a scary experience like an MRI scan why not think what I might do creatively with that shuddering racket in a song? I take up my experiences in the faith that they have some connection to grace. Human experience and shared experience can result in emotionally dynamic and authentic songs.”
The music that he has made as a result, however, has been joyful: “I’m trying to give an authentic sense of joy in my music. I find that joy in making music with people I love. We just get together and make music. They know it’s authentic. It’s fun, really fun, and has been incredibly therapeutic. Music is bound up with identity and community and reconnecting with music has been good for my faith. Light and gathering together are part of the Holy Spirit’s personality.
This combination of joy and lament is what we find in Gospel music. It’s plenitude and plurality is composed of worship, lament, joy, word, breath, community, and improvisation. It celebrates using praise, breath, and community while exploring the innermost emotions that are shared through religion, aiding the prospect of surrender and ecstatic freedom and cultivating spaces where art thrives and expresses a unifying language for all. That’s because the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is democratic, filling all and enabling all to prophesy, speak in tongues and create.
As Matt says, the Psalms are the bedrock for all music-making in the Church. The Psalms are the worship songs of the people of Israel as recorded in the Old Testament and are the first occasion in ancient literature where the voice of victims is heard and valued.
The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann in his book Spirituality of the Psalms provides an insightful and structured overview of the Psalms using three categories: orientation, disorientation, and new orientation. Orientation is the establishment of structure and order. Disorientation is a place of imbalance and nonsense, which is potentially unjust. New orientation is moving forward away from what was and toward new possibilities. As a result, the Psalms provide us with expressions of suffering and hope in the seasons of everyday life. In his book, Brueggemann explains how Psalms of negativity, cries for vengeance, and profound penitence are foundational to a life of faith, and establishes that the reality of deep loss and amazing gifts are held together in a powerful tension.
That is what Matt has experienced personally and has expressed through his music. I want to end by reminding us of a musical family who have expressed and exemplified this understanding of what music is and can be in Church.
Gospel great, Mavis Staples, began singing with The Staples Singers in 1950, aged 11. From 1963, the group began supporting the civil rights movement with Pops Staples saying of the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr, ‘If he can preach it – we can sing it.’ From 1968, through Stax Records, they became soul stars known for their ‘message songs’; songs that were both politically and religiously charged. Since the last Staple Singers album in 1984, Mavis’ solo career has soared by mining the seam of R&B/Gospel developed by her father Pops and taken forward by Mavis through collaborations with the likes of Ry Cooder, Ben Harper and Jeff Tweedy. Through it all the deep resonance of Mavis’ voice drenched in the stylings of Pentecostal churches has been constant; a voice that as Renée Graham noted, ‘doesn’t so much sing a song as baptize it in truth’.
Mavis has spoken of bringing joy, happiness and positive vibrations. This is the transformation that she, and Gospel music generally, achieve; the transformation of struggle into salvation. ‘It’s more than just a feeling–it’s a philosophy’; a philosophy that Mavis Staples lives in concert with every fibre of her being.
The musical journey undertaken by The Staple Singers was an emotional tale and trip combining elation in the gospel with defiance of discrimination, as the group crossed boundaries — first, by combining blues, country, and gospel to create their unique sound, and then by merging spirituality and social comment at civil-rights marches and the Newport Folk Festival, before re-sacralising soul as Stax stars in the Black Power period characterised by the Wattstax Festival of 1972, a benefit after the Watts Riots in 1965.
The story of the Staples Singers is one of the strength that faith and family provide for the long walk to freedom. While the tale and its telling involve anger and loss, it is ultimately, as Mavis states emphatically at the beginning of her concerts, about joy, happiness, inspiration, and positive vibrations; and the tears that it inevitably evokes are tears of joy.
As we enjoy and create music for Church, may we, like Rev Simpkins and The Staple Singers, draw on The Psalms as the worship book for the Church and echo its mix of joy and lament in all we do. Amen.
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