come on children, let's sing
lent diary #4
When I struggle to believe in God, I listen to those who do.
This week, I want to throw a spotlight some music that populates my “god” playlist. It’s a mix that crosses faiths and denominations, a collection of anything that I feel has some sort of spiritual power.
Gospel, folk, New Age chanting, rock, soul; the main thing they have in common is that, when these musicians play these songs, I believe that they believe in something. If you want to check out the full thing, here it is.
I’ve picked out seven + one highlights to analyze that’ll take you across a few of these genres and voices.
now come on children, let’s sing
“Take My Hand, Precious Lord” (Mahalia Jackson)
On my balcony, smoking, searching for the strength to walk. On the midnight bus, feeling more lost than I’ve ever been. In the backseat of a car, struck with a sadness I cannot name. Every dark valley, every lowest moment, every void of doubt - Mahalia Jackson has lifted me out of it. Her recordings (I particularly love 1954’s Gospels, Spirituals, & Hymns) are either boisterous church numbers or searching arias, like the performance included here. Nobody has a voice as deep, as honest, and as devout as her, forcefully yet gently worshipping alongside the piano, more duet than accompaniment. A force - a beacon of light.
“Jesus Christ” (Woody Guthrie)
I point to Woody’s 1940 protest song whenever I’m pressed to reckon my Christian beliefs with its long, terrible history of oppression, nationalism, and capitalist expansion. It’s not something I can easily answer or resolve, but this folk hymn gives it a good go by staging the Passion as the martyrdom of a revolutionary, someone killed by cops, landlords, and politicians. Woody connects his present political moment with the historical Jesus, not the White myth worshipped by Evangelicals. Give Reza Aslan’s Zealot a read if you’re interested more in the topic of Jesus’s oft-ignored radicalism.
“Passing Away” (Sacred Harp Singers of Cork)
While “Jesus Christ” is a solo lament, this performance is an example of a collective folk style, one that pulses and surges. Sacred Harp Singing blends disparate, untrained voices into a wholly unique sound, one only really heard in the Southern U.S. (though here performed in Ireland). It is the sound of people trying to find a sound of worship that can be learned by anyone.
“I WHO BEND THE TALL GRASSES” (Lingua Ignota)
Lingua Ignota, the now abandoned project of Kristin Hayter, is known by some as the other indie darling reckoning with Southern Christianity’s treatment of women.
But while Preacher’s Daughter is an ode to the girls who have died in the church’s shadow, SINNER GET READY is the work of the women who stain its walls with blood. A vicious, hallucinatory saga of revenge and God in the Appalachians, the album’s defining song is a bloody, bloody prayer. Hayter howls for God to punish the man who wronged her, who violated and maimed her body. An organ is the only thing grounding the screams, transforming rage into something transcendent and terrifying. This is not a God of mercy.
“Oh My God” (Kevin Morby)
While writing my own songs, I’ve become aware of the thin line between spiritual, honest folk and stomp-clap megachurch slop. The lyrics are almost exactly the same; the trick lies in the music, the performance. The ostensibly simple ode that opens Morby’s album of the same time is straight-forward enough to be learned quickly and taken at face value, but something in the performance complicates it. His vocals echo the dry contradictions of Lou Reed, and the lilting piano and ambient saxophones are evoke an atmosphere more than a pop structure. Something lies beneath the prayer, something that keeps me coming back to it.
"Om Shanti” (Alice Coltrane)
Repetition, repetition, repetition.
Chanting, chanting, chanting.
Building, building, building.
Ascending, ascending, ascending.
Peace, peace peace.
One voice becomes many before we fully realize it.
“Shine a Light” (The Rolling Stones)
Exile on Main St. has as much gospel in its veins as it does speed. I was tempted to include the murky, atmospheric “I Just Want to See His Face,” but decide on the band’s classic, beloved song that combines grime and heaven. Seeing someone drunk in an alley, bent over a toilet, crying at a party, a friend who’s fallen from grace, and just wanting them to be better, to save themselves. As sincere and pained as the band’s ever sounded.
“Reason to Believe” (Bruce Springsteen)
Hope despite everything seeming to point to its futility. Signs in barrenness. A man at war with himself, trying to understand the people he grew up with. He doesn’t know how to go on.
So he sings a song for those who seem like they do.
YAYYYY sacred harp :)