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Pagan Drums and Tambourines are unsuitable for Christian worship

Started by David Pinnegar, November 17, 2010, 05:24:49 PM

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David Pinnegar

Hi!

In Atheist's corner I have mentioned the intriguing book "The Golden Bough" by Frazer. In a section documenting the worship of the Pine Tree, brought into the heart of our Christmas rejoicings, derived from the worship of Attis and Cybele, a section of the book details why the nature of worship music is so important:

QuoteEven in our own day a great religious writer, himself deeply sensitive to the witchery of music, has said that musical notes, with all their power to fire the blood and melt the heart, cannot be mere empty sounds and nothing more; no, they have escaped from some higher sphere, they are outpourings of eternal harmony, the voice of angels, the Magnificat of saints. It is thus that the rude imaginings of primitive man are transfigured and his feeble lispings echoed with a rolling reverberation in the musical prose of Newman. Indeed the influence of music on the development of religion is a subject which would repay a sympathetic study. For we cannot doubt that this, the most intimate and affecting of all the arts, has done much to create as well as to express the religious emotions, thus modifying more or less deeply the fabric of belief to which at first sight it seems only to minister. The musician has done his part as well as the prophet and the thinker in the making of religion.

Frazer continues:
QuoteEvery faith has its appropriate music, and the difference between the creeds might almost be expressed in musical notation. The interval, for example, which divides the wild revels of Cybele from the stately ritual of the Catholic Church is measured by the gulf which severs the dissonant clash of cymbals and tambourines from the grave harmonies of Palestrina and Handel. A different spirit breathes in the difference of the music.

One thinks that Christianity might have sold out enough to the Pagan rites, without having its music bastardised in drumming.

This leads to so many skips of pipe organs

Best wishes

David P

NonPlayingAnorak

Good point. Mind you, is it right to impose our values on others? Some of the strongest Christian faith in the world is to be found around the Caribbean, and around Africa - much of that is pretty evangelical and lightbulb-screwy. It's one thing here in Western Europe, to hope to educate others to the extent that they recognise the banality of so much modern church music (and here the middle-of-the-road vaguely-traditionalists in both English and Roman churches are as much to blame as the evangelicals), but, given especially the support our own traditionalists have received from, for example, Ghana, should we just impose what we think is best on them?

I'm not disagreeing with your assessment that bad evangelical music leads to organs in skips (I do worry for the future of the wonderful big Hunter in Christ Church, Woking, which is entirely disused other than for a fortnightly Monday lunchtime recital series, and which really needs restoration now), but I just wonder if perhaps our invective could be aimed a little more carefully?

David Pinnegar

#2
Hi!

I don't think we are imposing our own views - Fraser is coming from a totally dispassionate anthropological perspective.

The fact is that drum music is dominated by beat and to some extent can be modified by tonality and dynamics. Music dominated by tonality does away with time and reaches more the eternal.

I think that what we are witnessing is an introduction to Christianity from some coming very recently from Pagan traditions and worship - and the Golden Bough thread demonstrates the extent to which Christianity has adopted and subsumed everything else . . . and then denied it, anyone challenging the denial being threatened with charges of heresy under pain of death . . .

It's for this reason that, in that thread, I challenge Christians who have taken on the mantle of Pagan worship stories as their identity to be fought about, fought for, and protected from challenge - specifically events celebrated at or near the equinoxes and longest and shortest days of the year - to step back from regarding those things as important and concentrate more on the teachings of Christ himself. Those events that we celebrate with a tree or cruxiform gallows, eggs and skeletons and flames, are but the outward sparkle in the shop window, as the invitation to those to come inside and saying to them "We understand. We understand from whence you come". But when inside, we can only be Christian if we understand the purpose of the shop window as such and enter the classroom within the heart.

Only then can we, and other religions, themselves their own shop windows, be at peace with ourselves and our neighbours and . . . the universe.

The point about this thread is that instead of subsuming older religions or ideas into the true heart of Christianity, and that music merely being a shop window to some, the music of the old ideas is subsuming and overwhelming the music of the heart and of the eternal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDpyY4LBr4c

Both St Francis of Assisi and St Hildegard of Bingen, after lifetimes of contemplation threw off the overwhelming mantel of the shop window to become mystics. Mysticism - the mystery of the eternal - is a state achieved through the understanding of God having walked through the door of outer shop window christianity. But in the nature of the Order of the Sacred Heart, christianity is expressed through Actions Not Words.

Sadly so many institutions stick only to the words.

Best wishes

David P

NonPlayingAnorak

Wow. That's a bit deep for a Wednesday lunchtime. Can't say I can disagree with a word you say...

By the way, I was browsing Flickr (Yahoo's photo-hosting service) for pictures of your house and found one of you, sat on the bench of your Hunter organ... the caption read, simply, "Mental posh bloke". In a way, it's quite funny and even, dare I say it, a little apposite; yet it is lamentable for its uploader's total inability and lack of desire to understand. There is a big difference between eccentricity and insanity, as I often have to remind people...

revtonynewnham

Hi

Psalm 150 mentions all classes of musical instrument - including percussion!  And cymbals (at least) are mentioned in the context of the dedication of Solomon's Temple.

There is no one "correct" musical style for Christian worship.  Music is basically neutral - and since creativity is a God-given gift, all musical styles can be (and probably are) used in the worship of God.  The only proviso I would make is the suitability of words - and the potential issues where certain tunes have associations that are not helpful.

In the past, when classical musicans ignored everything else, a good number of organists got into deep water by playing Edwin Lemare's "Andantino in Db" as a voluntary.  If no-one comes up with the answer to "why" I'll post it tomorrow - just something to for you to think about overnight.

every Blessing

Tony

NonPlayingAnorak

It's not just words, it's quality. Most so-called "Christian rock" is utterly banal - and I speak here as a 19-year-old who knows and likes his rock music. I am, particularly, a fan of the previous owners of David's house... and the "centre-left" (to borrow a political term) worshippery rhymes that seem to predominate in so much of British Christianity these days display a reprehensible lack of musical adventurousness, inventiveness or even basic quality, with words and music an uncomfortable (mis)fit. Now, John Rutter tends to be safe and not especially original - but what he writes is at least approachable, well-crafted and often quite pleasant. I'm not holding him up as a paragon of virtue, but compared to the Inwoods and Farrells of this world, he's in a different league.

David Pinnegar

Quote from: NonPlayingAnorak on November 18, 2010, 03:48:17 AMworshippery rhymes that seem to predominate in so much of British Christianity these days display a reprehensible lack of musical adventurousness, inventiveness or even basic quality, with words and music an uncomfortable (mis)fit.

:-) You'd never guess that I started this thread very deliberately to put the cat among the pigeons . . . !! :-) I wish others would do so too from time to time.

"Hymns" I hate are the sort that sound as though they came out of the musical "Salad Days" . . .

Best wishes

David P

KB7DQH

Certainly an intriguing thread ??? ;) :) ;D :o

See what you make of the following....http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=9309 ;D

QuoteWhen Is a Pipe Organ Just a Pipe Organ?
by N. Graham Standish

I believe that a passion to help people experience the Holy, however it is defined, is at the root of every form of worship. Every liturgy developed by every movement at one point was designed to help people experience the Holy. Many congregations today, in all denominations, consistently ask themselves how they can connect people with an experience of God through their worship. And whenever they stop asking that question, others emerge to ask it and to provide new opportunities to encounter the Holy in a way that modifies tradition.

But if we continually transform worship so that it will open people to the Holy, what are we supposed to do with our traditions? Don't traditions anchor our worship? How can we discard them so readily? Isn't one of the mainline church's strengths its ability to adhere to tradition in the face of a world that blindly chases trends? All of these ques¬tions are valid, but they are misleading because often what we think of as traditions really aren't traditions at all.

It is certainly true that our faith traditions, and the forms they take, are essential to worship. Tradition links us with the source of faith. The practices, handed down across the ages, literally connect us with the original faith practices of Christ and his apostles. Taking part in these practices opens us to God by immersing us in sacred activities that help us become more available to God at our deepest levels—levels that go beyond conscious awareness. We in the mainline church inherently recognize how important tradition is to the life of faith, which is why we argue so aggressively about what to do with traditions—whether to keep, modify, or jettison them. Unfortunately, these fights over traditions also have the power to split churches.

For instance, the town where I grew up has two Presbyterian churches. One is the original church that started around 1835; the other is a church that split away from it in the late 1800s. Before the split, the original church was a thriving congregation. Then it decided to purchase a pipe organ, which was the musical trend of the day. Up to that point, all music was sung a cappella according to the Reformed custom of the time. Many members believed that playing organs in worship was irreverent and against Presbyterian tradition. So they left that church to start their own church, one with no organ. Of course, twenty or so years later, guess what they installed in the sanctuary? A pipe organ. Many churches still fight over organs today, but, ironically, now the fight is whether to get rid of them in favor of drums, guitars, and keyboards.

Why do churches like this one, and so many others today, fight so strenuously over tradition, only to give up their tradition a generation later? The answer is that they aren't fighting over traditions. They are fighting over accretions. People confuse accretions with traditions, and this confusion leads to worship wars.

Adrian van Kaam, a Roman Catholic priest and spiritual writer with whom I studied in the early 1990s, describes a tradition as the body of wisdom and practices that the church passes down from age to age. It connects us to the Holy. It binds us in faith with all who have come before us. According to van Kaam, we cannot be intentional about connecting with the Holy through our practices until we are able to distinguish between what is accretional and what is foundational to a tradition.

In its original meaning, an accretion is a buildup of sediment atop a rock formation or within water or soil. The sediment is not the foundation. It is the dirt, sand, or eroded minerals that accumulate over time. We confuse this junk with a foundation because it often either surrounds a foundation or is infused in it. When it comes to religious and spiritual practices, accretions are practices that build up around a tradition and become the ways a tradition is embodied in any day and age. For example, singing to God in worship is a foundational tradition. The songs we sing, which change from era to era, are the accretions. So singing is foundational, but whether we sing classical hymns, gospel, Taizé chants, a cappella psalms, or contemporary songs, they are all accretions. Instrumental music in church is foundational, but the use of an organ is accretional. While pipe organs date back to the eighth century and have been used in cathedrals and churches for centuries, they really only came into widespread, common use in the United States between 1860 and 1920. Thus, they are part of our musical accretions, not our musical foundations.

The fact is that all religions, denominations, and congregations build new accretions atop old ones. Thus, each generation adds its own hymns and songs—and fights about them in the process. Sometimes alternative movements emerge in which a generation of adherents, disgruntled over the accretions that have built up and seem to obscure the original faith, try to strip away all the accretions and start anew. This is what contemporary worship attempted to do, beginning in the late 1960s, by creating a new form of worship. They hoped to get back to the foundational passion of the original church. The contemporary worship movement may seem like it is on the cutting edge, but the reality is that it has merely stripped away old accretions, replacing them with a new accretional layer atop the foundational tradition of music and singing in worship.

Why does the church fight over these accretions? We fight because we have become attached to them. We cherish them because they are in a form that is in sync with our generation, our culture, or both. They may be meaningful for us and for others of our generation, but they may not be meaningful for prior or ensuing generations, who see them as sacrilegious or archaic. And so we fight, believing our cherished accretions are the true tradition.

But it misses the point to think simply that accretions are bad and that we should somehow strive to seek only the purest of connections with the original tradition. The sediment that builds upon a foundation often is fertile soil out of which wonderful experiences can grow. However, this soil can also become shaky when centuries of accretions build up to the point that the foundation is inaccessible.

When we continually build worship upon accretions, without regard to the original foundations, we are building worship on shaky sand. We in the mainline church, who persist in building our worship on centuries of accretions, will continue to shrink until we decide to seriously question what is foundational or accretional about our worship, and then act accordingly.

What the mainline church needs to do is to refocus on what is foundational tradition—religiously, denominationally, and congregationally—and work our way back from there. Practicing an accretion is not wrong, as long as it is built on a meaningful foundation, as long as it is fertile soil for present generations and cultures, and as long as we are willing to brush it away when it becomes an impediment to growth.


Eric
KB7DQH
The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."

revtonynewnham

Hi

There is technically good and bad in all styles of worship music!  There are two problems in this debate:-

1.  Trying to separate what "I" like from what is or isn't acceptable.  Contemporary music styles, nor World music,etc, can be judged in quality terms by the standards of Western classical music, but rather by the norms of their own genre (and these days, CCM (Contemprary Christian Music) has become a genre in its own right - with multiple sub-genres - especially in the USA.

2. The Bible says very little about "quality" of worship - other than the need for skill (see again the accounts of the dedication of Solomon's Temple, where the music leaders are chosen because of their known skill.  I interpret that, and other passages about the "quality" of sacrifice in a two-fold way - firstly, doing the best possible at this time; and secondly, in working to improve our technical standards - whatever instrument we happen to play - plus training in singing!  Two examples - the pianist in my current church has a very limited technique - she learned enough to get by playing children's songs in her days as a primary school teacher.  She started playing in church because there was no-one else - and at nearly 80, learning new techniques takes a loooooong time!  However, she does take things seriously, and spends time considering the words of the hymns, and practicing - and is slowly improving.

My second example is a guitarist I used to work with in a "worship" band.  He was a semi-pro player (with his brother & father) on the clubs & pubs circuit - and was one of the best and most versatile guitarists I've had the pleasure of working with.  When he became a Christian, he decided to take lessons to learn to play "properly"!!- and within a couple of years he had passed Grade 7 in classical guitar.

Sadly, we see too little of this sort of dedication amongst many church musicians who say that they are "good enough".. Good enough is NOT good enough for GOD!

Every Blessing

Tony

revtonynewnham

Quote from: revtonynewnham on November 18, 2010, 02:55:25 AM
Hi



In the past, when classical musicans ignored everything else, a good number of organists got into deep water by playing Edwin Lemare's "Andantino in Db" as a voluntary.  If no-one comes up with the answer to "why" I'll post it tomorrow - just something to for you to think about overnight.

every Blessing

Tony

Hi

Since no-one seems to have posted an answer, here it is!  Lemare's Andantino in Db (incidentally, a fun piece to play - but there is one page where you have the melody & counter melody played on 2 manuals with the right hand (thumbing down), an accompaniment on a third manual with the LH, plus the bass line on the pedals!)  Was "purloined" (without Lemare's permission) and used as the music for the song "Moonlight & Roses".  The publisher claimed the melody was by "an old master".  Unfortunately for him the"old master" was alive and well - and when he discovered what had happened made sure he got his royalties, reputedly earning more from that one piece than from the rest of his output combined.

Every Blessing

Tony

David Pinnegar

Hi!

I teased our new incumbent this morning when she asked me if I could tune the piano in a neighbouring church. Of course in jest, I refused on the basis that percussive instruments were unsuitable for religious worship :-)

When I get to it, I'll probably tune it in Meantone, just to ensure proper appreciation of the Trinity.  (  ;D explained on another thread about how improper tuning could get musicians burnt at the stake)

Best wishes

David P

KB7DQH

...And what of the organ composer Father Davide de Bergamo ??? ??? ??? ???

Eric
KB7DQH
The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."

VELAZQUEZ

The Bata Drums and Cuban Religion


Thank you so much for letting us visit your house and listen to your marvellous playing on the pianos and organs, as well for the stimulating and interesting conversation we had.

You asked me to write something concerning what I know of  Afro-Cuban religions and their music, because we were talking so much about how music affects the soul with its resonances.

I should first of all say that I can only write for you what I have learnt from living in Cuba over a period of ten years or so and studying the Bata drums with a Cuban musician who has a profound knowledge of their rhythms, songs and dances.

I have also read something and seen some religious rites or celebrations. I find there is quite a problem with what is written because most of it comes from observers outside the practice which means they tend to translate it in terms they themselves understand and miss, perhaps, the original sense of it. Then again we are dealing with metaphysical matters which do not translate well into human words. So I can only pass on one person's experience with the caveat that others will say different things, but that it is certainly a very fascinating field to explore.

When the slaves were brought from Africa they very quickly started to die off due to the cruel conditions in which they were  kept and the terrible work they had to undertake –
working on the sugar plantations which brought enormous wealth to Cuba.

Given the appalling journey they had to suffer to get to Cuba – the slaves packed into boats in the most inhuman of conditions – and the high mortality that occurred -  it is extraordinary that they managed to conserve so much of their religious culture.

They brought with them from Africa a hugely complex and sophisticated system of music which dates back, I can only say, since time immemorial. It certainly strikes me as extremely ancient in its roots.

Different slaves came from different places with different religions. There is the sense that their gods – orishas – cosmologies -   or incarnations of the divine represent the different environments from which they came -  thus people from a group living in a hard, stony land, difficult to cultivate might develop as fighters and warriors and favour the severer incarnations of divinity, whereas people living in lush green meadowlands with rivers and springs cultivated the softer, gentler aspects of divinity.

Having visited Lake Galilee and seen its gentle softness and knowing the mountains and severity of Switzerland and Scotland I would make a comparison between the religious understanding of Jesus Christ and that of Calvin and Knox  in thinking about this.

The slaves brought to Cuba  an enormous variety of different cults or religions. They also brought a faith which must have been immensely strong to sustain them in some of the most terrible conditions humans have been forced to live.

It is therefore interesting to look at how this faith was sustained.

The Christian churches have at various times banned the use of the drum and percussive music, indeed men like John Knox banned all music and dance.  I understand that they did this because they believed music and dance to be dangerous to the maintenance of their religious control over their adherents. Music and dance inspires people individually and such imspiration may lead them out of the set paths ordained by their leaders or groups.

However other religious traditions such as Buddhism and Sufism have used music and dance precisely for its inspirational qualities – and music which leads a person to resonate to its vibrations is especially powerful. Such is the drum.

The Bata drums are a set of three, a large one, Iya, a middle-sized one, Itotele, and a small one called Okonkolo. They are made from wood with the percussive surfaces at either end
being of cowhide. In the past they were hollowed out of tree trunks by using fire and the hide was secured with the  trailers of a flexible and very strong plant. There are still some people making drums in this traditional way but I am afraid this tradition is dying out. Now they are made by fixing individual pieces of wood between the two hides which are each secured with a metal band which can be tightened or loosened by screwing the metal pegs which attach  it to the wood. The drums are relatively narrow at one end and wider at the other enabling the drummer to produce three principal sounds – the chapa at one end and the shut and the open slap at the other. The three drums are played together in interweaving, different rhythms of extreme complexity.

The survival of the religious traditions -  in which the drum and its music plays such an important part -  has been said to have been due in part at least to the very high mortality rate of the slaves first coming from Africa. As a result their owners realised they had to do something to ameliorate their conditions. They allowed their slaves therefore to form into what they thought were purely social groups or societies and to play their music and to dance. The groups were of course social but they also were used to maintain the slaves' religions, and in this way the very multi-form cults of Cuba were nurtured.

The slaves' owners were satisfied because the mortality rate fell and they understood that their slaves were honouring and worshipping Christian saints and the Trinity according to their own Roman Catholic practices because the slaves disguised their religions by equating their orishas with the Christian deity and the saints.

In this way – the permission given to form these  groups and the misunderstanding of the Catholic owners of the success of their proselytising enabled the  slaves' religions to flourish.

People talk about Santeria as the religion of Cuba as a syncretism of Catholicism and Afro-Cuban religions but it is not  therefore quite an accurate description.

So what were these extremely tenacious religious forms ?

The orishas,  the ones I have encountered,  have very striking parallels to the Gods of Mount Olympus or the Jungian archetypes. There are,  to take some examples, Chango, the god of thunder,  Ochun the goddess of love and beauty,  Gemaya the goddess of the sea, Osain the god of the hunt and the rather terrifying Oya a goddess associated with cemeteries and one might say Jung's idea of the female animus. There is also an orisha known as Olocun who normally lies bound and chained to the bottom of the ocean bed -   when this orisha escapes the tsunami arises.

The wemilere is  usually described as a feast of the orishas   -   an act of devotion and calling down or  connection with the orishas. There are drummers, dancers and singers to assist this with an attending public. The drummers play different rhythms which are each connected to  different orishas. The rhythms connect with the idea of these orishas so for example there are different rhythms for Gemaya which recall the sounds of the waters of the sea – sometimes calm and soothing, sometimes rising to a furore with lashing waves, water spouts and whirlpools.

The divinity associated with this power of which the sea waters are a manifestation is drawn by the sounds to the wemilere. In front of the drummers is a dancer who knows the steps of the divinity and is dressed in his/ her costume. So Gemaya wears blue and white for the waves and foam and the dancer, in the religious rite, is possessed by her. Thus is the connection, which humans are always searching for in their religions, made with the divine.

Drummers and dancers compete with each other : one moment the dancer is leading the drummers in ever faster rhythms another moment the drummers are leading the dancer in the resonances of Gemaya. The inspiration of the moment comes from the vibrations of the drums  to which resonate the dancer and the accompanying singers.

After the Revolution in Cuba in 1959 a great effort was made to integrate the black, white-skinned and mixed or mulatto society. As part of this a much greater value was placed on the cultural manifestations of the people of Afro-Cuban origin and their music and dance brought into the cultural mainstream and performed in  theatres and on other stages.

I have therefore seen this wemilere many, many times in this cultural context, rather than in a strictly religious comtext. It may begin with a ceremony of blessing for the dancers, the drums and the musicians and singers by an Afro-Cuban priest, but the drums used themselves are not sacred drums which must go through a religious initiation process.

However the orishas themselves do not make our  strict human rules about religion. When my husband's dance company came to England in 2001 they were staying in a rented house in Norfolk. They decided to have a wemilere for themselves in the garden. During it one of the dancers became possessed. No-one was expecting that.

The music of the drums certainly touches very profound parts of the human soul.













swellbox1

I belong to a Church which  has a very famous Ruffatti Organ Our Senior Pastor Died. Our Church merged with another
church and in came  a young Pastor the Praised band came in .Out went the sacred Music and caused a Split in the church which lead to the Organist, Choir members Left and the Music Director left Now during the Summer no Organist and the organ is Silent and with the split came the cancelling of the Concert Series. I hope and Pray that the trent of the Priase band will fade out ot Have Both traditional and Contempary Music.Both have a place in a Worship Service.

revtonynewnham

Hi

I certainly agree that there is a place for both traditional & modern music in churches - we use both, and use the organ in contemprary styles - contrary to popular OPINION, IT WORKS WELL (GIVEN AN ADAPTABLE ORGANIST).

eVERY bLESSING

tONY

David Pinnegar

Hi!

Thanks for joining and telling us of the plight of your organ.

Oh dear - I hope that perhaps the praise band fundamentalists find more compassion for the resources sitting idle and unable to play their part in encouraging people to come into the building which they occupy and serving as it was intended.

Having now got 3 negative karma points, someone must be cross with me, but in the faith section of this forum I try to encourage toleration for plurality. Whether it be the music or the religion, intolerance is the same, and is against the principle of cooperation or rather "construction" that the idea of God really fosters and it's for this reason that there is a faith (or perhaps one might look at it as a philosophy) section to this forum. For organs to survive, we have to foster toleration.

Toleration is possibly easier to take as an approach for a quantum physicist, where all things are possible all at once and even a photon or an electron can be in two places at once. Of course the symmetry to all things being possible at once is that only one thing can be possible for eternity. Perhaps the one thing that is true for eternity is that all things are possible at once. Within this comes toleration. No doubt my Karma points will sink to -4 for saying this!

I have experience of a church in the south of France where they did away with the big building and used the value of the site to raise funds, hopefully putting the money to good use, and making a meeting room and "church" on the ground floor. It serves a significant community of English speaking ex-pats and performs a valid function. Sadly, however, they literally chucked out their Johannus electronic organ and put it in a skip, with the result that hymns are accompanied on the piano. The problem with this is that piano is percussion and the sound dies away on every note. Unless the tune is bashed out entirely unmusically on the piano, with a hymn with an unfamiliar tune, one cannot hear the tune so one cannot follow the notes to sing. The constant sound of the organ is really helpful in supporting sustained hymn singing.

Hopefully your church will find excitement in the organ again.

Best wishes

David P

David Pinnegar


sean

I have to admit that the drums and dance leading the procession of the newly installed ArchB of Cant. two days ago was delightfully appropriate. The parish church versions are so often inadequately rehearsed by inexperienced amateurs that they woefully fail to enhance, or even basically fit, the liturgy.