Sad But Familiar Voices
October 30, 2011
In a previous post, I cited some examples of Christian life in the Middle East I found strange and hard to reconcile to my own experience. Two were to do especially with violence, one toward and one by Christians. At a certain point in my reading From the Holy Mountain, I was beginning to despair of ever really feeling at home with them, and thus (not that this is a bad thing) the book was relativizing my inherited beliefs. Luckily for my mental health, later in the memoir I race across a few stories that shot the narrative through with glorious light.
One such story is that of the Christian town of Kafr Bir’im near Nazareth. Dalrymple comes to the village of Safad and is welcomed by the married Marionite priest to have Turkish coffee while he tells him the story of what happened to Kafr Bir’im. Not long after everyone is getting situated, an old man comes in with a piece of paper with all sorts of dates and information relating to the story written on it, lest someone tell the story wrongly. (Enter sarcastic comment against the normal comparison of ‘modern history’ to ‘popular history’ here…)
On October 29th 1948, Haganah soldiers arrived in the village, who were received by the old men and priest with a white flag. The villagers gave them food and allowed them to occupy some houses for a little while. After 15 days, though, the villagers were told they must leave. They had to be five kilometers away from the village or they’ll be shot and killed. So it was in the cold of December they were forcefully evicted without shelter or aid from the village to live in caves or squat under trees, all without justification despite longstanding ‘friendly’ relations with Jews to this point. Several babies died from the exposure.
A twist in the story comes with the information that all 1,050 people of the town were given Israeli citizenship. When the Minister for Minorities arrived and saw them living under trees he ordered the Christians be given the homes of the nearby village Jish, which had been abandoned by fleeing Muslims. After 15 days, the minister said, they would be allowed back to their homes in Kafr Bir’im. There were even allowed a few men back into Bir’im to guard the houses and crops. But after six months, even these were ordered out of the village.
At this point, the village brought their concerns before the Israeli High Court.
The (Maronite!) priest here told Dalrymple:
“The people of Bir’im have never resorted to violence. We have always fought by law and by Christian principles.”
This story came as a surprise in this the last fifth of the book. It was as an oasis in a desert. I noticed immediately the casual matter-of-factness with which the Father indirectly said that ‘Christian principles’ would not allow his village to offer reaction with guns and violent retaliation. Sadly, the story continues all the way to an ironic post-apocalyptic end.
The people of Bir’im won the case. The court declared the evictions unjust and ordered them back to their village. Yet the very next day the Israeli army declared the area a military zone and they were once again forbidden from coming home. In the afternoon, by an aerial bombing, they destroyed Kafr Bir’im, the buildings with all their possessions, as the people watched from afar, as if at some bizarre fireworks show, on a hill subsequently named the ‘Crying Hill.’
Their fields were given to a new Jewish settlement and the town made into a National Park. The history of the town, and the fact that their real citizens were still alive and nearby, is erased from the public memory. Instead, signs draw attention to the ruins of a second temple synagogue near the center of town, yet the homes built by the people of Bir’im, are imagined as ancient ruins by the Israeli school children who come for field trips; a well dug by one who told the story was labeled instead as one built by a leader of the Jewish revolt circa 66AD.
Now, the villagers – at long last! – can visit their homes, but only if they pay the entrance fee and compete with tourists for a view. Fr. Suleiman laments:
“They say that once you let one Arab back, you admit that the others have rights too. That is why, despite everything, they dare not give us back what is ours. Israel says it is a democracy, and it is true. But it seems that for us Palestinians there is no justice.”
There are many more interesting details, and I strongly recommend you read this engrossing book for them and all the other stories.
Theses on: Whither Youth and ‘Classical Music?’
October 23, 2011
Once, when I was waiting tables, I ran across a young lady who played an orchestral instrument (I don’t recall which one), and she asked me, exasperated, why it is that, as she put it, ‘young people don’t care about classical music anymore.’ I don’t know that that’s really answerable, but I’m gonna give a few shots at why, and what can be done about it. Specifically I’d like to encourage anyone, young or old, who has no interest in or is intimidated by classical music to venture into the waters and also maybe gently indict friends who aid in classical’s bad press and relative irrelevancy.
Whether or not it’s true, I think many people associate a classical music with upper-class snootiness: tuxedoes, ties, champagne (in champagne glasses), glove tapping, monocle wearing, nonsense. People who like classical, the thought goes, can’t like Bruce Springsteen (I actually don’t much care for the Boss, but it’s a good blue collar example). Worse yet is when classical folk, and I’ve seen this done, get down on popular music as some form of crude, barbarous, primitive, art form. Thus there is a sense of a high price for entry into the classical world. You’ve gotta have lots of money and you need to denigrate the music you actually like.
Speaking from my experience, not having any knowledge other than a few ‘big names’ made me feel overwhelmed. Here’s this mass of music with a tradition that spans centuries, how could I approach that? If someone says that I should check out a rock artist, it’s fairly easy to find them and listen to them. If I really like them, I can get through much of their entire library, usually, without much effort. But have you seen the complete works of Bach? How do you start with that? Or what about all these fancy names for genre? What’s the difference between a fugue and a symphony? And knowing that I’d not be able to ‘get’ a composer, can be a strange and frustrating feeling.
Moreover, I long found the classical music I did hear to be rather boring and unexciting. I’d only hear it in lobbies and elevators.
It was really a combination of two forces that made me start looking to get to know classical more. 1) I felt that I was rather uncultured and wanted to grow more in this regard. So I started looking at art, reading poetry, and listening to music. 2) There were several theologians who commended classical, primarily Bach and Mozart. But whatever reason works for you is fine. I think you really should give it a shot.
In that spirit, here are a few of my recommendations.
- Realize that you’ll probably never become ‘expert’ in knowing Beethoven the same way you know the entire U2 discography. It’s just harder to do and takes a ton of time.
- Don’t be afraid to say you don’t like something. Just because someone says something is great, doesn’t mean you’re stupid or a fungus if you don’t. For instance, I’ve never been able to feel anything but contempt for Joseph Hadyn’s music. It sounds like really boring math problems making love. Maybe you don’t like Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Maybe, like me, you think John Cage is a quack rather than a genius. Whatcha gonna do, pretend to like music you hate?
- Don’t be afraid to like something. I have all six soundtracks to the Star Wars films as well as that for Braveheart, Lord of the Rings, Shindler’s List, and a few others. I like them, and I listen to them.
- Find a nerdy friend who does know more classical than you and ask them for recommendations. Not just for pieces and artists, but for recordings. You’ll find that a single piece can sound radically different among recordings due to varying interpretations or sound quality, and not all are created equal. For instance I really like ‘slow’ versions of the Debussy’s Claire de Lune.
- Realize that if you’re going to experience any music, not least potentially complex and layered pieces, you can’t just throw it on in the background. You’ve gotta sit and just listen to it. Many composers will state a theme or a melody and play off it; turn certain notes minor, make unexpected shifts in emphasis. I sometimes took this to be merely vague repetition, but it’s more than that. It’s a game.
- Trust and distrust authorities. As I said, don’t be afraid to say you don’t like something. But also realize there are reasons that some consider Bach’s Mass in b minor or Mozart’s unfinished requiem to be great works. You can’t really do the ‘indie’ thing of liking ‘underground’ acts very well if you’re only just starting. Hit the big names first. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, etc…
- Find instruments or styles you like. I like pianos, organs and choruses, symphonies, sacred music, and fugues, for instance.
- Don’t denigrate popular music or John Williams soundtracks. Not only can you find genuinely creative pop music, but John Williams is the man.
- Make sure you make your kids take music lessons and music appreciation. If you want them to like it, then make sure they’re exposed to it. Take them to concerts too.
- Don’t be a judgmental jerk.
- Consider that maybe much of the abstract, abrasive, narcissistic ‘art for art’s sake’ of ‘modern classical’ is an adventure in ego stroking. If classical isn’t actually connecting with people, then it might not be attentive to the spirit of the people. Music should speak to people.
- Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in d minor – You’ll recognize the opening organ lick surely, but the whole thing is a masterpiece. As James said, Bach’s fugues are an adventure in the infinite.
- (Many of these links, btw, are to reliable interpretations by a gentleman who also uses visuals to help you ‘see’ what is going on. I’ve genuinely found his graphics helpful in visualizing pieces. He’s got over a hundred videos and you can trust that they any of them are worth hearing.)
- Bach’s cello suites are all great, but the first one – in six parts total- is probably his most famous.
- Eventually look at Bach’s Mass in b minor, his Brandenburg Concerti (sample here), and his fugues. There’s a reason that he’s considered one of the best.
- Beethoven’s fifth and ninth symphonies and his own “Great Fugue” is shockingly ‘modern’ and very powerful.
- Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune and Arabesque #1 are a great place to start.
- Among the small group sometimes called the ‘Holy Minimalists,’ I find particularly wonderful John Tavener and Arvo Part. For Tavener, see his The Lamb, Song for Athene, God Is With Us, and Funeral Ikos; For Part, Beatitudes, De Profundis, from Missa Syllabica, the Sanctus, and his organ music, like this.
- For more sacred music, Tchaikovsky’s Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrystostom is an absolute must. It truly proclaims the Gospel.
- There’s much more to add. For instance Chopin’s nocturnes and preludes, Rachmaninov’s own Divine Liturgy and Vespers, and his Prelude in c sharp minor, and others. But I don’t want to make this too long.
- Finally, if you’re on the music program Spotify, I’ve got a few classical lists that you can check out. Just search for Tony Hunt.
Published Elsewhere
October 5, 2011
I was recently given the opportunity to write a piece on immigration for The Ekklesia Project. I approached it via contemporary folk music and classical mythology…I hope it works!
Sermon for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost
October 3, 2011
For audio of this sermon go here: The Cathedral Church of St. John’s Sermon Archive and look for October 2, 2011
Our Old Testament reading this week is curious. In it the prophet Isaiah says, “Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard.” He describes the vineyard, but then informs us that instead of the expected harvest of grapes, the vineyard has yielded wild grapes. Because of this, God—the beloved Isaiah speaks of—breaks down the hedge and tears down the wall and lets his vineyard get ruined. Furthermore, God says, “I will make it a waste…I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.” Now I’m not a musical expert, but it doesn’t seem this love song has a much of a chance at the Billboard top 40.
Verse 7 makes sure that the metaphor will not be misunderstood:
“For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; He expected justice but saw bloodshed; righteousness but heard a cry!”
What a chilling statement. In Hebrew, it’s a play on words, but even that doesn’t make it less scary. The Hebrew word for justice here is mishpat while the word for bloodshed is mishpah; the word for righteousness is tsedeqah, the word for cry is tseaqah. Bloodshed then is a subtle pervsion of justice, and a cry of despair is what happens when righteousness is perverted.
These wild grapes that God is so upset about, then, are precisely these perversions of justice: turning justice into bloodshed and righteousness into a cry of suffering. That Yahweh, the Lord of Hosts is preeminently concerned about justice, and is really, really upset about the perversion of justice is a primary theme for the prophet Isaiah as it is for most of the Old Testament prophets.
Isaiah 5:16 tells us that:
“The LORD of Hosts is exalted by justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy by righteousness.”
Throughout the book the children of Israel are condemned for their unjust deeds and exhorted to make them right, like in chapter 1:
“I have had enough of your burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs, or of goats…
Rather, God says further in that same chapter:
“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”
In chapter 10 verses 1-2 we find this:
“Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that the widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey! What will you do on the day of punishment, in the calamity that will come from far away?”
Just another verse of that love song.
Turning to the rest of the Old Testament we find passage after passage, injunction after injunction, statement after statement about God’s concern for justice: the Psalmist says,
“He loves justice and righteousness; the earth is full of the loving-kindness of the LORD.” And “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.” Moses tells the Israelites, “Justice and only justice, you shall pursue that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.” Amos says, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24); In chapter 22 of Jeremiah, King Jehoiakim is reminded that doing justice and righteousness, and rightly judging the cause of the needy is what it means to know God.
But as we see in our passage and many others, it did not go well for the people of Israel when they did not do justice. The Old Testament paints a picture of God’s dealings with the ancient Israelites as a cycle: God tells the Israelites they must do justice, and worship only Him. They fail to do these two things, he sends prophets to warn the people and get them to repent. They don’t. God judges them, and bad things happen. Then the people repent. Then God rescues and restores them, tells them to do justice and worship only Him and the cycle begins again. This is the story that Isaiah calls a love song.
Then Jesus comes along, and he tells the parable we heard this morning, clearly evoking the passage about the vineyard in Isaiah 5. But in this telling, there are tenants—which represent the religious leaders, the scribes and Pharisees and priests of Israel, some of whom just happened to be present as he tells the story.
Jesus tells how when the servants of the landowner, came to the tenants to ask for the fruit owed to the landowner, they were beaten and thrown out. These servants represent the prophets like Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, and Amos. And so it becomes pretty clear that this parable is describing this long cyclical story, the history of God’s dealings with His people. And then Jesus does something brave. He inserts himself into the narrative: the Son, who is sent by the patient landowner as a last ditch effort to reconcile the unruly tenants to Himself. Jesus is unabashedly calling himself the son of God. But the Son is thrown out of the vineyard and killed. Rejection, betrayal, murder; the building blocks of all good love songs.
There are at least two exceptional things about this story that I want to point out.
First, is that Jesus takes the focus from the vineyard as a whole being unruly, producing wild grapes, etc., and puts it on the religious leaders of his day. For Jesus, the blame is on them. He was a prophetic voice in the very truest sense, calling these guys out and telling them who they were, and forcing them to pass judgment on themselves. Notice they are the ones who suggest that the landowner come back and destroy the tenants, and then they realize that they are the tenants. Did they also see the irony in their reaction to finding out that Jesus was talking about them, that they immediately wished to arrest and kill him, the Son?
Second, Jesus inserts himself not just into this little story, but into the cosmic narrative of how God is saving His people; Jesus places himself in the context of this cycle of Israel being told by God to do justice and worship him alone—or as Jesus puts it, “To love God, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” Justice begins and ends with neighbor-love.
But Jesus is not just another in a long line prophets who come to warn the Israelites of impending doom. He is also the solution, the cycle-breaker. He is the stone the builder’s rejected which has become the cornerstone; God’s final answer to the problem of injustice, bloodshed and the disobedience of His people. The Gospel writers tells us that Isaiah is prophesying about Jesus when he says:
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry of lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching.”
Injustice is not an endless cycle, it has an end, and that end lies with Jesus. But it is a surprising end. Because Jesus did not come in the form of the wrath of God to destroy the unjust, he did not kill those who killed the prophets or those who had a big hand in getting him killed. Jesus’ solution to injustice is much crazier and disturbing than that. His solution to the injustice of the people is to offer himself over to that injustice. To suffer. To die. And through his death to conquer death. The cycle of injustice and bloodshed was only, can only be broken through love, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice. Salvation, freedom, justice, and righteousness can only be acquired through love, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice.
And so it is because of Jesus and his ultimate and surprising solution to injustice, that we can look back at Isaiah 5 through the lens of the Gospel and say, yeah, that is a love song. The whole narrative arc of Scripture, when it is seen through the interpretive lens of Christ, is nothing less than the greatest love song ever written, a love song of a God who yearns to reconcile all His people, all creation in fact to himself.
Through his life, teachings, death, and resurrection Christ has inaugurated the reign of God on earth, and it is a reign of justice and of peace. As Isaiah prophesies again:
“His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time onwards and for evermore. The zeal of the LORD of Hosts shall do this.”
And yet this kingdom remains not fully consummated. There is still much injustice and bloodshed in this world. All of creation still groans for the day when this justice and righteousness and peace and love of God will flow like an ever-flowing stream.
It’s as if the Son, Jesus, has gone off to a distant place and has left tenants in his vineyard until his return. We, Christ’s followers, are the signs and the symbols, the first-fruits, the representatives of that now-but-not-yet Kingdom. We are the tenants in the vineyard of the Kingdom of God. Our task today then is the same as it was in Isaiah’s day: to worship only God, and to tend to the vines of justice and righteousness, to bring about the fruit of love and reconciliation in our little corner of the vineyard, in our community, and our families and our church, so that with hope and joy in our hearts, we can all anxiously await the arrival of the landowner’s Son. Amen.
I Hate End Notes – The End
September 30, 2011
Publishers have defiled the work of at least two of my favorite authors, and I am sure there are more to come. What is the dubious nature of these putrescent literary obscenities? End Notes. There is a disturbing trend in which even books that are geared toward educated readers are being published without footnotes. This is unacceptable and I demand that all such activity cease and desist immediately. I present two comparisons to make my case, N.T. Wright and Miroslav Volf. I do understand that their careers and ministries resemble the body of work produced by bands like Aerosmith or Metallica. In Rock n’ Roll and Metal terms, they were purists, pounding audiences with unadulterated music – archetypes of a genre - then, as they became more popular, their music had to become more accessible to the
tastes of the consumerist masses. They turned out music that had the obvious gloss of marketing and brand recognition. Music producers and agents did to their music what publishers are doing to the likes of Wright and Volf.
In fairness, the analogy fails on some points, I know. Wright and Volf have a pastoral duty to make the kinds of important things they say to Christendom accessible to all of the Church. I just don’t think that those of us who see the utility of footnotes should have to suffer through reading works with end notes, that’s all. Here are a couple of examples for you to make your own comparison. First, look at the Grawemeyer winning book by Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace. You’re not even done reading the first ten pages before you realize the depth of study that went into Volf’s writing. You get comments, asides, and further discussion about the content that drives the thesis of the book. It’s like you’re in a dialogue of 
sorts with the author. The Climax of the Covenant, is a great example of the same kind of experience being created with footnotes from the work of Bishop Wright. On the other hand, you get to works like Wright’s “Justification” or Volf’s “Free of Charge” (the book I am currently reading), and you have a completely different experience waiting for you. There is no longer the comfort of knowing you can glance down and get bibliographic information for a source, further insight from the author, or an explication of some complicated point. No, No… now you have to devise some system for keeping your place in two locations of the book: your progress in the material and your progress in the notes must be maintained simultaneously. I know what you might be thinking, “what a lazy bastard!” And, ordinarily, I might agree with you if it wasn’t for the fact that this causes more than the inconvenience of having to have two bookmarks (which, incidentally, you’d think the publisher could provide for the premium price we’re paying for books these days). It is about the fact that I am taken out of the rhythm of my reading to go looking for information
that might as well be easily accessible at the bottom of the page. Now, if the examples I cited were more popular works like Wright’s, “Surprised by Hope” that is intended for the consumption of laity, then I could understand the use of end notes (or no notes at all).
There are, then, at least three reasons I hate End Notes. First, I like the feeling of “dialogue” that footnotes seem to create between me and the author. Not unlike when the groundbreaking series Saved by the Bell used Zack Morris to break the “fourth wall” over and over again. I feel like the barrier between me and the author is lessened when I get the notes (some of them amounting to nothing more than asides, which I like). Second, I get into a rhythm reading. It’s like a dance – the author leads my thinking around the virtual room of my mind, moving to the beat of the argument that is being unfolded. When I have to stop to go read an end note, I feel like the band has quit playing in the middle of the song. My mental interaction with the argument of the book is interrupted when I have to go fishing for a note. Lastly, it’s just inconvenient.
Unfamiliar Voices
September 11, 2011
One of the books I read over the summer was a travel memoir by William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain. In it, Dalrymple follows the footsteps of a Byzantine monk, John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist, who traveled through the Empire from Mt. Athos down to the Egyptian desert oasis Al Kharga. The book is a totally fascinating and engaging description of the very complex situation Christians are finding themselves in in the Middle East. Mostly it is a tale of the degeneration of Christianity in her historic home — an often tragic and brutal tale. Eerily, the book, written in 1997, already seems out of date. The situation is almost certainly more grim now.
The second part of From the Holy Mountain takes place in Turkey. After a brief respite in Syria, being at the time the most stable and safe home for Christians, Dalrymple moves onto Lebanon. The book to this point was unrelentingly strange to my world. Turkey, though officially a secular state, has systematically suppressed Christians there, including especially a physical and historic genocide of the Armenian Christians. By ‘historic’ I mean that the authorities literally travel around to towns and destroy any physical proof of Armenians: their churches, their homes, their graveyards, their monasteries. I found it very difficult to hear described. One thing I wasn’t expecting was for this memoir to challenge my pacifism. It doesn’t take any sacrifice on my part to say that I affirm a non-violent Kingdom here. Upon hearing these stories, perhaps for the first time in years, I became quite sympathetic to the felt need to defend oneself, one’s family, church, and home. Some monasteries that were taken over or destroyed had been there for well over a thousand years. A thousand. years.
In Lebanon, Dalrymple gives a brief history of the the Maronite eastern Rite Catholics. A shockingly bloodthirsty and cruel band of Maronite gangs had waged a long ‘civil war’ with other ethnic and religious groups in what is now Lebanon in an effort to defend what was seen as their own country — aided in no small part to a close relationship to the French. There is one particularly dark incident where Dalrymple is having a conversation with a certain Christian about the Maronite leader Samir Geagea. This man was comparing two towns, one Christian the other not:
“You can eat in Ehden, but make sure you sleep in Bsharre. Sleep in Ehden, and they will shoot you while you are asleep.’ [Bsharre was a town under the authority of Geagea. Dalrymple proceeds to question this man, listing many of the more gruesome crimes of Geagea, including the night murder of a Christian rival, the killing of women and children, a church bombing, and others.] “Geagea is a very honourable and very holy man,’ he said. ‘We are very proud of him in Bsharre…You must not believe what people say about Samir Geagea,’ said Ch’baat. ‘But you can hardly call him holy,’ [Dal.]
‘Certainly yes,’ he said, quite serious. ‘He went to mass every day and prayed by his bed every night. He had a church built wherever he was, where he fought. Every Christmas his troops expected money as a present, but instead he gave them prayer books and rosaries. Of course he went to confession ever week. He never went into battle without his cros. In his office, he always had a picture of the Virgin and a cross: never any picture of Che Guevara or anything like that.”
Another strange phenomenon was reported on multiple occasions. In some places in the Middle East there was a strange fusion of Christianity, Islam, and paganism that I found, to be perfectly honest, curious but repugnant. Apparently there are several churches, monasteries, and Mosques, where people of both faiths will come and pray to saints for healing, or for a job, to get pregnant, or for good weather. This is itself not too disconcerting, though it seems like it has potential problems. Far more troubling is that if the prayer is answered, that person will return with a goat or a sheep and the (Orthodox!) priest or Imam will sacrifice the animal in thanks to the saint! How strange! How utterly foreign to me, and foreign to the strong anti-sacrificial polemics of the Church fathers and New Testament.
I kept going over these sections in my mind. In the end, I found them impossible to understand. I couldn’t wrap my head around this man who praised Geagea, or this, well, gang leader, who could shoot a woman and child over 24 times one day, and go to Mass the next; or the animal sacrifice for saints. I was beginning to question myself strongly. In what ways has my Christian life been truly normative, and in what ways has it been exceptional? According to how I’ve been taught to understand the Gospels and the witness of the persecuted Church, even under severe pressure, the Church shouldn’t be reacting by taking up arms, but caring not about the risks, they should be testifying to another kingdom. Is that simply a position that one in my position can take? Or can it truly occur? Luckily for my sanity, I found several stories that filled me with joy and relief. Perhaps these Christians are not so strange after all?
Dead Shopping Malls
September 1, 2011
This is a longer version of an essay I originally wrote for The Living Church. I’m posting it here to contribute to James’s music series.
When the Grammy for “Best Album” was awarded to an alternative rock band from Canada for an album named The Suburbs over such mainstream acts as Eminem and Katy Perry, various electronic social webs were a flurry with outrage. Many people simply had never heard of them. This despite the fact that Arcade Fire is hardly a small band, regularly selling out very large venues and touring tirelessly. Critics claimed that the Grammy’s had lost touch with pop culture by making such a choice (a notable exception being Kanye West) – see for instance Steve Stoute’s letter to the Grammy’s. I take issue to this accusation. To be sure, Eminem is unquestionably more influential in the pop realm and more indicative of mainstream music in general, but Arcade Fire is among the most culturally aware bands now writing. Lady Gaga is a spectacle of contemporary culture but Arcade Fire is a mirror.
Their first record, Funeral, is a profound expression of unfettered youth, a polyphony of parts barely yet successfully held together by thunderous drums and a chorus of vocalists. It is considered universally to be a modern classic. The Suburbs, their third record (Neon Bible is the sophmore), is in many ways the negation of that record and a searching tale of the modern “Suburban” person. Their first two records abounded in movement, in running, in singing, The Suburbs struggles even to remember what movement was like (“Ready to Start” & “We Used to Wait”). Instead the “Modern Man” waits in a line, accepting with total passivity the hidden and pervasive authority of forces outside of their control. Suburbs are the erie realm of the endlessly flat “Sprawl” on the one hand, and the the rising peaks of “dead shopping malls” on the other. Such an oppressive space feels like “A City With No Children” in it, a space from which vigorous life has been drained, where there is “No Celebration” and where hours now are “wasted” and the “half-lit” nights are spent driving through the streets, recalling when friends used to listen to music together, grow their hair long and dream of getting out.
The album speaks of an exceeding aimlessness to life. Perhaps the suburbanite has a job, indeed perhaps they even have cars and a 70′s house, but there is no real life there. And this situation has been resigned to; there is no sense in which the narrator(s) show us any struggle against the powers, no anger, no zeal. This shows up sonically too. In previous records accompanying vocalists were infused in almost every song, but on The Suburbs they show up rarely and never have the effect of rallying the listeners. Likewise there is a near singleminded focus on the guitar which either drives a fuzzed and droning tempo or drifts listlessly above the chord structure, but the organs, pianos, violins and accordion that we’d become accustomed to are very rarely heard.
Does this sound nothing like a youth culture where there is endless stimulation but few job prospects? Where one might simultaneously be poor yet have several electronic devices and where college is still normed but where students remain skeptical that such education leads to a more prosperous future? Where kids live at home into their 30′s and change careers multiple times?
It is this uncomfortable clarity with which Arcade Fire sees contemporary youth culture that makes them so important. If what they say is true, then it poses the political and social question, to what extent are the politicians and the preachers adequately dealing with this widespread pessimism and skepticism.
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
