The Story of American Music can teach Christian leaders a lot about the importance of developing personal depth in a culture obsessed with image.
Modern music was born out of a collision of cultural influences that occurred on the fringes of American society around a century ago. Slaves, many coming via the Caribbean, used a fusion of traditional African rhythms, the call and response pattern, and Christian hymns to create Spirituals, or Black Gospel music. This music became a way of communicating their suffering and hope for deliverance from slavery. Irish migrants who fled famine and poltical strife in their homeland, and who faced widespread racism upon their arrival in the United States, communicated their sense of cultural dislocation through Irish Ballads. Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe, brought to America Klezmer music, itself a fusion of Yiddish and Roma (Gypsy) musical cultures, a way of two of Europe’s persecuted minorities to through music, express the pain that centuries of marginalization and misunderstanding brought.
These musical styles smashed up against each other in big cities such as New York and mutated together in the deep South to give birth to Blues and Jazz, which in turn gave birth to Rock and Roll and Hip Hop and almost everything great that came after.
You could not find a more disperate group of cultural influences that began modern music, but the one thing that they had in common, was that they were forms of art and expression that were born of pain and suffering. This is the genius of American music and the reason why it has captured so much of the world’s attention. To use the jargon of African-American culture, Jazz and Blues had soul, its players had been through pain, they had seen the ups and the downs of life. They connected with their audiences because they could understand their audience’s pain; this created a invisible yet powerful bond, between musician and audience.
However so much of today’s commercially and marketing driven pop music, is performed by people who have not been through anything apart from a bad day at the beauty spa; you only have to listen to Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker or Bob Marley to hear the sharp beauty that can be born out of a life of pain. But when I turn on FM radio or switch on MTV I am presented with the musical musings of 18 year blonde spokesmodels/actresses/singers who due to being born gorgeous and rich, idea of a bad day is having the wrong order given to them at Laguna Beach Starbucks. So called muscians who’s songs are really penned by a team of cynical yet cunning 40 year old song writers and marketers. The older I get the more I want to listen to music by made by people who have stories to tell, people who have lived.
Sadly I am beginning to feel the same about many Christian leaders, if I am going to buy a book or go and hear a speaker or learn from a well known leader, I don’t just want to hear the musings, or teaching of someone for whom all the domino pieces of life have fallen into place. Of course conversely I don’t want to sit and listen to leaders who wear a black arm-band and compete in the ‘Woe is Me’ Olympics. But sometimes you can sit and listen to a leader, and without them saying anything about their lives, sense a humility, a depth of experience that they are speaking from. Such leaders are like wells, the deeper they go the more living water they bring to the surface. However such leaders seem to becoming rarer and rarer, as as Christian culture is influenced by secular culture’s belief in shortcuts and magic routes to the top.
More and more I meet young leaders, who expect instant success, kudos without trial and tribulation. As we move away from a language of depth, we instead turn preaching into two extremes; one based on hyped up easy answers and neat lifestyle packages dressed up as gospel, at the other extreme we find presumptuous intellectualism, masquerading as theological reform. What we desperately need is leaders who have lived life, and come out the other side; who know about failing, falling and getting up again. What we, no what the world needs is Christian leaders who have soul.
