COMMENTARY: Music Isn’t Neutral

c. 2003 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.) (UNDATED) As I write _ home, early morning _ music plays beside me. Today it’s “Chant,” a recording of Gregorian chant by Benedictine monks from Spain. Quiet, contemplative, gently swelling […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) As I write _ home, early morning _ music plays beside me.


Today it’s “Chant,” a recording of Gregorian chant by Benedictine monks from Spain. Quiet, contemplative, gently swelling and subsiding, male voices in unison _ a strange counterpart to the New York Times online edition, which I always read before writing my daily meditation.

At work my tastes are eclectic. Jazz; New Age; classical; vocalists from Paris, Cape Verde and Spain; a country chorus singing gospel hymns; and two jazz musicians playing gospel hymns on piano and bass. My current favorite is Iris DeMent, a country singer whose flat Arkansas voice and haunting lyrics bear unflinching witness to the sadness of life.

Each recording sets its own mood. How could I document our firm’s implementation methodology while listening to Dave Brubeck’s “Time Out” and not be influenced by his quartet’s exuberance? Diana Krall’s zesty love of life must shape my complex budget proposal. Willie Nelson’s lilting “Stardust” must soothe the irritation of responding to certain aggravating e-mail.

Surely my PowerPoint presentations bear subtle signs of Cesaria Evora, who sings in Portuguese of a relaxed island world I will never see. When I lose myself in Charlie Haden and Hank Jones and then am roused for a meeting, surely I bring a nuanced self to the table.

For music isn’t neutral. Good music, at least, cuts deep and touches places we usually keep hidden. Slave masters in America eventually forbade their slaves from singing, not only because chants like “Follow the Drinking Gourd” contained code on how to escape to the North, but because the act of singing gave them hope, and hope gave them humanity.

DeMent sings to her dying father: “I’ve memorized each line in your face,” but affirms, “There’ll be laughter even after you’re gone.” A church choir from rural Missouri offers the same juxtaposition of sadness and hope in “It Is Well With my Soul.”

To touch the sadness is to touch one’s soul. To touch hope is to touch God. Wherever those touches occur _ at work, in a car, in church _ something is felt, something changes, some cover falls away.

What, then, do we do with our newly exposed self? We can go back into former niches, of course, which is probably why people leave church so energetically. We can pretend nothing happened and lose a little more contact with ourselves. Or we can step forward, exposed, with the surging hymn still echoing in our ears or the lament still disturbing our calm.


When Jesus healed a leper, a turning point arrived. The leper couldn’t go back to his old life, but where could he go? Jesus warned him sternly of what lay ahead. The assumption is that Jesus wanted him not to broadcast the news of his healing, because it would compromise Jesus’ ministry and stir up opposition to him prematurely.

I wonder about another possibility: Maybe Jesus warned him of what happens when those touched by God return to a world where most are avoiding God’s touch. Singers aren’t welcome in a world where song is forbidden or shoved, unheard, into the background.

Hope is threatening to the oppressor. Change is threatening to the fearful. Self-awareness is threatening to those who stifle and control. The unison voice is threatening to those who rule by dividing. Laments are threatening to the determinedly cheerful. Different languages are threatening to those chasing conformity. The flexibility and uncertainty that sadness requires are threatening to those rigid and prideful leaders whose only thought is, “Stick to plan. Don’t waver. Don’t show weakness.”

A leper who spoke of his healing might well find himself under assault. For a world grounded in sickness wouldn’t welcome his health. A world grounded in oldness wouldn’t want him made new. A world grounded in constraint and prejudice wouldn’t want him released from bondage. A world grounded in right opinion and self-righteous anger wouldn’t want him to wonder or wander freely.

Those who dare to hold in their hands both sadness and hope won’t always encounter rejoicing when they raise their voices in song. For the song of a soul reaching out to God is terrifying to the darkness.

DEA END EHRICH

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