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Music and Identity
I remember springing around my bedroom listening to a pop song by the GoGos "Our lips are sealed" that still makes me happy when I hear it on the radio.
We were the only family I know of who had to have a rule:
No singing at the dinner table!
At our congregation's first Coming of Age Mentor-Mentee gathering this year, I asked the pairs to come up with an album they both liked. There was some general laughter at the implausibility of the assignment- how could persons from such different generations and lifestyles possibly find an album they both liked? I know that for myself the assignment was even a little scary- I would have to begin by admitting what kind of music I liked. What if it was hopelessly uncool? What if the album I chose to name was middle of the road, derivative, or self-indulgent? Would I be judged and categorized by the music I choose?
The previous spring my co-teacher Jim and I took a group of youth on retreat. We were happy to turn over the CD player to the teens for the 2-hour drive each way. They played some Ska, some punk, but most of the music seemed to be selected from a genre that included the darkest, most depressed, angry music I had ever heard. This genre was so far out of my range of experience that as much as I try to keep up with contemporary popular music, I had never heard of these artists, and still don't have anything like it in my collection. At first it all sounded the same to me- distorted and angry. But over the weekend the noise turned itself into melodies and songs, dramatic as a Verdi Aria. I remember laying on my own bed as a teenager listening to the great Renata Tebaldi singing Puccini and Verdi, swept away by the drama and tragedy of that music. I thought about the fullness of emotions that is the domain of adolescence. I thought of the tremendous anger and strength it takes one to leave the family, to find one's own path. I thought of the rage that would naturally follow the violence of today's high schools, the grim rebellion of a Stockton teenager raised in the Mormon Church. I thought of the parent's bitter divorces, the suicide attempts, the loss I knew these youth to have experienced, and realized - this is the music that feels right to them, this distortion and rage mirrors for them their felt experience of their own lives.
Some would say that music is the most abstract form of expression. It communicates in a language that penetrates beyond the mind. In fact I would be tempted to say that except for those few who have made a study of music theory, music circumvents the mind. It goes directly to the emotions, to the body. It has the capacity to define space, to delineate time, to create an environment that shapes one's experience of a given moment. It provides a context for attention as much as a subject for our attention. Its inherent ambiguities and abstractions persist in a way that both intrigues and cries out for definition. The question: "what is music" is one that was asked by the earliest artists and thinkers, by 20th century composers like John Cage who stretched our assumptions of music by writing outside the bounds of tradition, and it is the question implicit in the parent's impassioned "What is this garbage?!"
This intentional combination of sound has an aspect to it which is transcendent, but which is also firmly rooted in time and culture. I spent hours in college music theory exams trying to identify the decade an unknown composition had been created. Early, Middle or late Beethoven? Which generation of Renaissance Polyphony? Beatles before or after they went to India to follow the Maharishi? You can hear this diversity of time and place in the hymns in our hymnal "Singing the Living Tradition" if you listen for it. At the bottom of each page there is a date when the music was written. You can trace a history of church music from the reformation in its pages. There are Unitarian Universalists who were raised on "the old hymnal" called "Songs for the Celebration of Life" who find some of our newly canonized hymns a little odd. Certainly there was no "chants and Rounds" section in the older volume. And yet there are UUs of a younger generation who couldn't imagine UU worship without them.
So I ask- what is it about some music that makes it "mine" and other music that makes it "not mine?" When I am flipping through radio stations on a cross-country drive, why do I feel unsatisfied until I find "my " radio station?
The first contributor to my comfort or discomfort is history. There is comfort, familiarity and ease in a pop song I danced to in high school, and in a symphony I studied in college. Even that song I can't seem to escape which triggers a knee-jerk reaction to change the radio station is in some sense mine, because I have a historic relationship to it.
A second aspect is context- what are the genres I am likely to hear in my particular cultural niche? What music do I share with my friends and family? What music do I hear in my church, my home, my favorite stores and restaurants?
A third predilection comes from my vision of myself. I don't want to be seen as vapid and un-critical, so I notice myself avoiding certain radio stations and artists whom I think of as "too commercial" because of their positioning more than through any in-depth study I have made of their works. I listen to some music that is a stretch for me because I want to be able to understand myself as the kind of person who listens to experimental music, who supports underground musicians.
When people tell me they like "anything but country" or "anything but rap" I wonder if they have closed themselves off to a genre of music because they don't want to include those cultural implications as part of their self-understanding. Are there genres that you tend to pre-judge as unworthy of your closer attention? Or perhaps there are genres simply fall outside of our context or history. Have you ever had the experience of walking into a restaurant or nightclub, and get a feeling from the choice of music that you are somehow out of place?
It follows then that culture is a major determiner of the music we choose. Class and education do influence our choices whether we are aware of that influence or not. Moreover, some of our musical predilections are invariably informed by our year of birth. As with any boundaries that divide, we can and should pay attention to these boundaries as a church. If we are a community craving diversity, we must ask the question "how can we include music that feels like home to each person who walks through our doors?" "How do we create a musical common ground that includes not only all who gather this morning, but those to whom we want to extend a welcome." And as with any issues of inclusion it is hard to hold a place for those who have no voice in our community. It is difficult to let go of the familiar, to broaden our fundamental assumptions when those assumptions are held so close to our hearts, even our identities. It is hard to make room for new voices for fear they may change what we love. Do we dare risk feeling out of place in our own homes in order to make others feel at home? In some ways when we open ourselves to the music outside our comfort zone, we are taking a concrete step on the path towards diversity and inclusively. When we dare to explore the link between something as culturally definitive as music and class, race, or prejudice, we are acting for justice.
But on an equally important level, because music has the power to touch our hearts, even our souls -- by sharing it, we share something of ourselves. I know that there is music that just sounds like my life. It resonates with heart and mind and body in a way that makes me feel good. It makes me see the beauty, the strength, the meaning in the stories and settings of my daily experience. There are some songs, some pieces that so perfectly capture a particular moment in ones life, that it feels as if you and the composer have shared an experience of being alive. We have these friends whom we will never meet, who keep us company, who inspire us, who seem to understand what it is to be me. I'm driving innocently to the gym, and I hear a song by Lucinda Williams for the first time on a new CD, and I suddenly have to pull over because I can't see the road through my tears. What on earth was that? I wonder. And I'll be honest with you, There's a 90% chance that if we sing "Wake now my senses" or "May nothing evil cross this door" I'm not going to make it through more than one verse. Moreover, I still have developed no defenses against that duet from "The Pearl Fishers."
Just as many of us have sat in Evensong groups at this church sharing pieces of our journeys, we could also share a piece of the sound track of those journeys. "Here is the song that I sang with my children when they were young" "Here is the music of rebellion that gave me the strength to march on City Hall, to question authority, to know myself." I dated a guy in college who spent hours in the practice room pointing out to me thematic inversions he had discovered while practicing Beethoven Sonatas. I can still see the glee, the excitement on his face as he shared his enthusiasm with me.
What if we shared our passion for the music that moves us, with one another? What if we talked from this place about the salsa band that made the children dance, the reggae radio hour that combined religion and revolution. What if you told me about the soloist at your father's funeral who sang a melody that will always bring you back to the loss of your dad? This is the power of music. It has an intimacy to it that could foster authentic human connection between and among strangers and friends. I would listen to your music because I want to know you, what moves you, what sounds evoke the melody of your living. And when I offer you music that I dearly love, it would be because I wanted you to know something more about who I am. Let us listen deeply to one another.
What is your reaction to this sermon? Please send comments to Reverend Darcey Laine
Reverend Darcey Laine
April 22, 2001
Palo Alto, CA
I grew up in a house filled with music. My parents and other musicians taught classes in our home all afternoon and into the evening. My father practiced the saxophone many nights as I was falling asleep. I remember lying in bed as a young girl, my parent's voices right outside my door in hushed tones in a quiet house. I remember realizing that when those voices turned to music, I could tell I was falling asleep, and when the music turned back to voices, that I was waking up.
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