The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music 9781474237338, 9781474237352, 9781474237345, 2016048845

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The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music

Bloomsbury Handbooks in Religion Bloomsbury Handbooks in Religion explore major and new areas of research within the field of religious studies. Topics covered by the volumes will range from the intersections of religion and popular music, religion and race, to Christianity in America. Their focus is on cutting-edge research, and to make an ideal reference tool for researchers in the field.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music Edited by Christopher Partridge and Marcus Moberg

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Christopher Partridge, Marcus Moberg and Contributors, 2017 Christopher Partridge and Marcus Moberg have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-3733-8   ePDF: 978-1-4742-3735-2 ePub: 978-1-4742-3734-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Partridge, Christopher H. (Christopher Hugh), 1961- editor. | Moberg, Marcus, 1978- editor. Title: The Bloomsbury handbook of religion and popular music / edited by Christopher Partridge & Marcus Moberg. Description: London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. | Series: Bloomsbury handbooks in religion | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016048845 | ISBN 9781474237338 (hb) | ISBN 9781474237352 (epdf) Subjects: LCSH: Popular music–Religious aspects. Classification: LCC ML3921.8.P67 B6 2017 | DDC 781.64/112--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016048845 Cover image © James Starr/www.screenprintjim.com Series: Bloomsbury Handbooks in Religion Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

List of Images List of Contributors

viii ix

Introduction 1 Marcus Moberg and Christopher Partridge Part One: The Study of Religion and Popular Music: Theoretical Perspectives, Methodologies and Issues

11

1

Ethnography, Popular Music and Religion Andy Bennett

13

2

Emotion, Meaning and Popular Music Christopher Partridge

23

3

Music, Religion and Protest Ian Peddie

32

4

Censorship, Religion and Popular Music Michael Drewett

43

5

Feminism, Gender and Popular Music Alison Stone

54

Part Two: Religious Perspectives

65

6

The Bible and Popular Music Michael J. Gilmour

67

7

Theology, Imagination and Popular Music Gavin Hopps

77

8

Christianity, Worship and Popular Music Tom Wagner

90

9

Contemporary Christian Music Shawn David Young

101

Contents

10

Islam and Popular Music Jonas Otterbeck and Göran Larsson

111

11

Jews, Judaism and Popular Music Jon Stratton

121

12

Hinduism and Popular Music Anjali Roy

131

13

Buddhism and Popular Music Jeffrey W. Cupchik

144

14

Japanese Religion and Popular Music Jennifer Milioto Matsue

160

15

Chinese Religions and Popular Music Vicky Ho

175

16

Paganism and Popular Music Donna Weston

184

17

Popular Music and the Occult Kennet Granholm

198

18

Caribbean Religions and Popular Music David Moskowitz

210

Part Three: Genres

221

19

Heavy Metal Marcus Moberg

223

20

Pop and Rock Clive Marsh

232

21

Punk and Hardcore Ibrahim Abraham and Francis Stewart

241

22

Reggae 251 Christopher Partridge

23

Folk Music Vaughan S. Roberts

260

24

Country Music and Religion Leigh H. Edwards

269

vi

Contents

25

Electronic Dance Music: Trance and Techno-Shamanism Graham St John

278

26

Blues and Jazz David Cheetham

286

27

Psychedelic Music Christopher Partridge

294

28

Rap and Hip Hop Joseph Winters

306

29

Goth Music and Subculture Isabella van Elferen

316

30

Ambient Music Rupert Till

327

31

Popular Music and the Religious Screen Mark Evans and Brent Keogh

338

Notes 347 Bibliography 356 Discography 392 Filmography 402 Index 404

vii

List of Images

Figure 14.1 Torii at Fushimi Inari Taisha

162

Figure 14.2 Shishi ‘lion’ dance

163

Figure 14.3 ‘Hannya Shingyo’

164

Figure 14.4 Psytrance party clothes

171

Figure 14.5 Psytrance sunrise

172

Figure 14.6 Hardcore vocalist

173

Figure 16.1 Breakdown of playlist styles across three websites

189

Figure 16.2 Breakdown of styles classified as folk

189

Figure 16.3 Paramusical expression of Pagan themes

190

Figure 23.1 Folk Music: Axes of sacred and profane

265

Figure 23.2 Acoustic axes as a musical-spiritual social imaginary

268

Figure 29.1 Gothique Classique poster. Design Frank Wiersema

318

List of Contributors

Ibrahim Abraham is a postdoctoral researcher in the discipline of social and cultural anthropology at the University of Helsinki, Finland, where he is carrying out research on contemporary religion and culture in South Africa with the support of the Academy of Finland. He has published on various aspects of the role of religion in the seemingly secular social spheres of sex, finance and rock ’n’ roll in journals including the Bible and Critical Theory, Contemporary Islam, the Journal of Beliefs and Values and the Journal of Business Ethics, and in edited books including Islam and Homosexuality, Reception History and Biblical Studies and Sacred Tropes: Tanakh, New Testament and Qur’an as Literature and Culture. A graduate of Monash University and the University of Bristol, UK, he has also lectured in social sciences and cultural studies at the University of the West of England and Deakin University. A full list of publications is available at ibrahimabraham.net. Andy Bennett is Professor of Cultural Sociology in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, Australia. A leading international figure in sociological studies of popular music and youth culture, he has written and edited numerous books including (co-edited with Richard A. Peterson) Popular Music and Youth Culture, Music, Style and Aging and Music Scenes (2012). He is a Faculty Fellow of the Yale Centre for Cultural Sociology, an International Research Fellow of the Finnish Youth Research Network, a member of the Consortium for Youth, Generations and Culture and a member of the Regional Music Research Group. David Cheetham is Reader in Philosophical Theology at the University of Birmingham, UK. His interests include contemporary philosophical theology, theology and aesthetics. He is the author of numerous articles in journals such as The Heythrop Journal, New Blackfriars, Religious Studies, Sophia, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. His books include Ways of Meeting and the Theology of Religions (2013), (with M. Cartledge) Intercultural Theology (2011) and John Hick (2003). In his spare time he plays jazz piano in a jazz quartet. Jeffrey W. Cupchik is an ethnomusicologist focusing on anthropological approaches to Buddhist ritual music research as well as popular musical culture and religion. He has also researched popular music historiography, exploring George Harrison’s creative adaptation of South Asian classical music sonorities into ‘raga rock’. His book The Sound of Vultures’ Wings: The Tibetan Buddhist Ritual Chöd Practice of the Female Buddha Machik Labdrön (2017) reveals the integral role of music in the Chöd (severance) practice. He is currently Faculty Instructor in Anthropology with the Carleton-Antioch Global Engagement Program: Buddhist Studies in India. Michael Drewett is an associate professor in Sociology at Rhodes University, South Africa. He is co-editor (with Martin Cloonan) of Popular Music Censorship in Africa (Ashgate 2006) and (with Sarah Hill and Kimi Kärki) Peter Gabriel: From Genesis to Growing Up (Ashgate 2010) and is currently working on a book concerning popular music censorship in South Africa. He produced the documentary film Stopping the Music (2002) about an instance of South African

List of Contributors

music censorship. He is also the coordinator of the Cutting Grooves Censorship of Popular Music in South Africa Archive. Leigh H. Edwards is Associate Professor of English at Florida State University and author of Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity (Indiana University Press 2009), Dolly Parton and Gender Performance in Popular Music (Indiana University Press, forthcoming), and The Triumph of Reality TV: The Revolution in American Television (Praeger 2013). Her work appears in Feminist Media Studies, The Journal of Popular Culture, Journal of Popular Television, Film & History, Narrative, FLOW, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Global Media Journal, Journal of American Studies and Southern Cultures. Editorial Boards include Journal of Popular Television, The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Pop Culture Universe and Invisible Culture. Her work in media studies and popular culture includes research on popular music, television, film and new media. Mark Evans is Head of the School of Communication at the University of Technology Sydney. He is Series Editor for Genre, Music and Sound (Equinox Publishing) and currently Editor for The International Encyclopedia of Film Music and Sound. His recent books include (with Phillip Hayward) Sounding Funny: Comedy, Cinema and Music (2016) and (with Mary Fogarty) Moves, Movies and Music: The Sound of Dance Films (2016). His upcoming volume is entitled The New Music Industries: Disruption and Discovery (co-authored with Hughes, Morrow and Keith). Michael Gilmour teaches English literature and New Testament at Providence University College, Manitoba, Canada. His writing on music and religion includes God’s and Guitars: Seeking the Sacred in Post-1960s Popular Music (2009), and entries on Bob Dylan in The Oxford Handbook of Reception History of the Bible (2010) and The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and the Arts (2015). Kennet Granholm is an independent researcher and expert on contemporary esotericism, particularly popular culture and the occult. His publications include Contemporary Esotericism (2014, co-edited with Egil Asprem), Dark Enlightenment: The Historical, Sociological, and Discursive Contexts of Contemporary Esoteric Magic (Brill 2014), and Religion, Media, and Social Change (2015, co-edited with Marcus Moberg and Sofia Sjö). His previous work on popular music has appeared in journals such as Numen (2011) and Correspondences (2013) and edited volumes such as Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production (2012, edited by Carole Cusack and Alex Norman) and Anthems of Apocalypse: Popular Music and Apocalyptic Thought (2012, edited by Christopher Partridge). He also plays drums in the metal band Saturnalia Temple. For more information see kennetgranholm.com Vicky Ho is Assistant Professor in Creative Arts at The Open University of Hong Kong, China. She earned her PhD in communication at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She teaches communication, advertising and public relations, new media culture and cultural industries. Her research interests include popular culture, popular music, media and religion, cultural industries and cultural policy. Gavin Hopps is Senior Lecturer in Literature and Theology at the University of St. Andrews and Director of the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts. He has published widely on Romantic literature and is the author of Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart (2009). x

List of Contributors

He is currently writing a book on the ‘extravagance’ of music with David Brown, and another on popular music and the experience of wonder, entitled The Kitsch Epiphany. Brent Keogh is a musician and academic, specializing in the areas of popular music studies and ethnomusicology. He completed his doctoral studies at Macquarie University examining the discourse of World Music in Australia. He has published in the areas of arts policy, musical sustainability, music ecology and music festivals. He also plays and performs on the oud, and has studied for a number of years with oud virtuoso and triple ARIA award winner Joseph Tawadros. Göran Larsson is Professor in Religious Studies at the Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. While his research is focused primarily on Islam and Muslims in Europe, he has also written about Islamic theology, Quranic studies and issues related to religion and the media. Some of his most recent publications include (co-edited with Thomas Hoffmann) Muslims and the New Information and Communication Technologies: Notes from an Emerging Field (2013) and Muslims and the New Media: Historical and Contemporary Debates (2011). Clive Marsh is Professor at the Vaughan Centre for Lifelong Learning, University of Leicester, UK. He has been an active researcher in the field of theology and popular culture for twentyfive years. He co-edited Explorations in Theology and Film (1997) and co-wrote, with Vaughan S. Roberts, Personal Jesus: How Popular Music Shapes Our Souls (Baker 2012). He is also the author of a number of publications, including Cinema and Sentiment: Film’s Challenge to Theology (2004), Christ in Focus: Radical Christocentrism in Christian Theology (2005), Christ in Practice: A Christology of Everyday Life (2006) and Theology Goes to the Movies (2007). Jennifer Milioto Matsue is an ethnomusicologist at Union College, New York, specializing in modern Japanese music and culture. She has conducted research on numerous music cultures in contemporary Japan, including the Tokyo hardcore rock scene, nagauta (chamber music featuring the three-string lute shamisen), taiko (Japanese ensemble drumming), Vocaloid Hatsune Miku and now religious dance in Japan and Bali. She is the author of the monograph Making Music in Japan’s Underground: The Tokyo Hardcore Scene (2008) and Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan (2015), as well as several articles on related topics. Marcus Moberg is a senior researcher in the Department of Comparative Religion at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. His primary research interests include the sociology of religion, the discursive study of religion, religion media and culture. He is the author of Christian Metal: History, Ideology, Scene (2015) and co-editor of Religion, Media, and Social Change (with Kennet Granholm and Sofia Sjö, 2015). His work on the relationship between religion and heavy metal music has appeared in journals such as Popular Music History, Popular Music and Society and Journal of Contemporary Religion. David Moskowitz is Professor of Music and the graduate coordinator for music at the University of South Dakota. His publications include the monographs Caribbean Popular Music: An Encyclopedia of Reggae, Mento, Ska, Rock Steady, and Dancehall (2005), The Words and Music of Bob Marley (2007), Bob Marley: a Biography (2007), and The Words and Music of Jimi Hendrix (2010). Most recently, Moskowitz was the editor and primary author of The 100 Greatest Bands of All Time: A Guide to the Legends Who Rocked the World (2016). xi

List of Contributors

Jonas Otterbeck is Professor of Islamic Studies at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University, Sweden. His main research interests are Islam and Muslims in Europe and different contemporary expressions of Islam, especially in connection with popular culture, not least music. He is the author of several books and articles, including ‘The Sunni Discourse on Music’, in Islam and Popular Culture, eds. K. Van Nieuwkerk, M. Levine and M. Stokes (2016), ‘What is Islamic arts? And what makes art Islamic? The example of the Islamic discourse on music’, CILE Journal (2014) and ‘Battling over the Public Sphere: Islamic Reactions on the Music of Today’, Contemporary Islam (2008). Christopher Partridge is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University, UK. His research and writing focuses on alternative spiritual currents, countercultures and popular music. He is the author of Mortality and Music: Popular Music and the Awareness of Death (2015), The Lyre of Orpheus: Popular Music, the Sacred, and the Profane (2013), Dub in Babylon: Understanding the Evolution and Significance of Dub Reggae in Jamaica and Britain from King Tubby to Post-punk (2010), and The Re-Enchantment of the West: Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture and Occulture, 2 vols (2004, 2005), the editor of several books, including The Occult World (2015), and co-editor of Holy Terror: Understanding Religion and Violence in Popular Culture (2010) and The Lure of the Dark Side: Satan and Western Demonology in Popular Culture (2009). He is also co-editor of the series ‘Studies in Popular Music’ (Equinox) and ‘Studies in Religion and Popular Music’ (Bloomsbury). Ian Peddie teaches English at Sul Ross State University, Texas, and has lived and taught on three different continents. A true internationalist, Peddie’s research reflects a lifelong commitment to addressing social divisions, especially class, forms of injustice, the lived reality of inequality, and human rights. He has written and edited several books and countless articles on British and American literature, class, popular culture and popular music. Vaughan S. Roberts is Rector at the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, UK, the home of a renowned, annual folk festival. His research and writing focuses on how religion interacts with contemporary and organizational culture. He is co-author with Clive Marsh of Personal Jesus: How Popular Music Shapes our Souls (2012) and publishes widely in numerous academic and popular journals and websites on religion, music and film. He is on the steering committee for the ‘Theology, Religion and Popular Culture Network’ in the UK and a member of the American Academy of Religion. Anjali Gera Roy is a professor in the Department of Humanities of Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. She has published numerous articles in literary, film and cultural studies. Her books include Cinema of Enchantment: Perso-Arabic Genealogies of the Hindi Masala Film (2015), Bhangra Moves: From Ludhiana to London and Beyond (2010), Imagining Punjab, Punjabi and Punjabiat in the Transnational Era (2015), The Magic of Bollywood: At Home and Abroad (2012), (with Chua Beng Huat) Travels of Indian Cinema: From Bombay to LA (2012) and (with Nandi Bhatia) Partitioned Lives: Narratives of Home, Displacement and Resettlement (2008). Francis Stewart is a teaching fellow in the Critical Religion at the University of Stirling, UK. Her primary research interests are punk rock and its various connections, dismantling and

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interaction with ‘religion’, and the role of music in the creation and sustaining of an Irish identity both in situ and diasporic. She is the author of Punk Rock Is My Religion (2016) and co-editor of a special edition (Punk and Piety) of Punk and Post-punk (with Jim Donaghey, 2015). She has published a number of journal articles in relation to punk music and ‘religion’ including ‘From Blue Suede Shoes to Doc Martin Boots: Music, Political Protest and Implicit Religion’ (2016); ‘Straight Edge Punk – Religious Mutation or Over-reaching?’ (2014); ‘Dharma Punk’ (2015); ‘Beyond Krishnacore’ (2012) and on the ‘Orange Order in Northern Ireland: The Orange Order: Political Positioning or Implicit Religious Spinning?’ (2015). She has also contributed book chapters on punk in Northern Ireland in Tales From The Punk Side, chapter title (edited by Greg Bull and Mike Dines, 2014) and in Catholics, Protestants and Muslims: Religious Conflict in Comparative Perspective’ (edited by John Wolffe, 2014). Graham St John is an Australian cultural anthropologist specializing in event-cultures and entheogens. Among his eight books are Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT, Global Tribe: Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance and Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures. He is Executive Editor of Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture, and Senior Researcher in the Department of Social Science, University of Fribourg, Switzerland. His website is www.edgecentral.net. Alison Stone is Professor of European Philosophy at Lancaster University, UK. She is the author of Petrified Intelligence: Nature in Hegel’s Philosophy (2004), Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference (2006), An Introduction to Feminist Philosophy (2007), and Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Maternal Subjectivity (2011), and The Value of Popular Music (2017). Jon Stratton is an independent scholar and retired Professor of Cultural Studies. He has published widely in Cultural Studies, Jewish Studies, Popular Music Studies, Australian Studies and on race and multiculturalism. His most recent books include When Music Migrates: Crossing British and European Racial Faultlines 1945-2010 (2014; co-edited with Nabeel Zuberi); Black Popular Music in Britain since 1945 (2014); Uncertain Lives: Culture, Race and Neoliberalism in Australia Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2011); and Jews, Race and Popular Music (2009). Rupert Till is Reader in Music at the University of Huddersfield, UK. The relationship between popular music, spirituality and religion is a focus of his research. He is the author of Pop Cult: Religion and Popular Music (2010). He is also a composer and producer of ambient music and electronica – sometimes using the alias ‘Dr Chill’ (https://www.facebook.com/RupertChill/). He studied composition with Gavin Bryars and Katharine Norman, and has released tracks with the group Chillage People. He is currently Chair of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) UK and Ireland Branch, and an editorial board member of the IASPM journal. Isabella van Elferen is Professor of Music, Director of Research of the School of Performing and Screen Studies, and Director of the Visconti Studio at Kingston University, London. She publishes on film and TV music, video game music, music philosophy, gothic theory and subcultures, and baroque sacred music. She is the author of Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny (2012 – winner of the Alan Lloyd Smith prize for best book in Gothic Criticism 2011–13), Mystical Love in the German Baroque: Theology – Poetry – Music (2009), the editor of Nostalgia or Perversion?

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Gothic Rewriting from the Eighteenth Century until the Present Day (2007), and, with Jeffrey Weinstock, author of Goth Music: From Sound to Subculture (2015). She is the first vice-president of the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts. She is editor for The Soundtrack, member of the advisory board of Horror Studies and Aeternum and was guest editor for Journal for the Fantastic in the Arts (2013), Horror Studies (2016) and Contemporary Music Review (2016). She was a member of the AHRC-funded network Music-based Games, Creativity and Music Education and member of the Advisory Panel of the EC-funded project Europeana Sound led by the British Library. Tom Wagner is an ethnomusicologist living in London. His primary research interests involve the interplay between music, marketing, meaning and transcendent experiences in consumer culture. Recent work on the subject has appeared in the Journal of World Popular Music and the Focaal Blog’s special feature on Music and Capitalism. He has also co-edited two collections on congregational music: Christian Congregational Music: Performance, Identity and Experience (2013) and Congregational Music-Making and Community in a Mediated Age (2015). Donna Weston is Deputy Director of the Queensland Conservatorium (Griffith University) Gold Coast campus in Queensland, Australia, and director of its popular music programme. Her research focuses on popular music education, popular music and Paganism, ecomusicology, and connections between music, spirituality and place. Recent publications include ‘Towards a Definition of Pagan Music’ (co-authored with Andy Bennett) and ‘Rememberings of a Pagan Past: Popular Music and Sacred Place’ in (eds. Donna Weston and Andy Bennett) Pop Pagans: Paganism and Popular Music (2013); (co-authored with Dan Bendrups) ‘Open Air Music Festivals and The Environment: A framework for Mapping Ecological Engagement’ (2015); ‘Bearn Folk Rock: Language, Place and the Soundscape of the New Europe’ (2012); and ‘Basque Pagan Metal: View to a Primordial Past’ (2011). Joseph Winters is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Duke University in the United States. His interests lie at the intersection of African-American religious thought, critical theory and continental philosophy. He is the author Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy, and the Agony of Progress (2016). His current project examines hip-hop culture using various conceptions of the sacred and profane. Shawn David Young is Director of Music Industry and Recording Technology at York College of Pennsylvania, where he also teaches courses in American Studies. The author of Gray Sabbath: Jesus People USA, the Evangelical Left, and the Evolution of Christian Rock (2015), he has published research on the counterculture of the 1960s, communal living, music festivals, the politics of popular music, and Christian rock music in a number of journals, including VOLUME! The French Journal of Popular Music Studies, Religion Compass, Religions and the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture.

xiv

Introduction Marcus Moberg and Christopher Partridge

The relationship between religion and popular music has been a somewhat under-researched subfield within the broader interdisciplinary study of religion and popular culture. However, ‘the times they are a changin’, and there is a burgeoning body of literature, including a series (Bloomsbury Studies in Religion and Popular Music) devoted to the subject, articles in leading journals and a growing list of substantial monographs and edited volumes with either a broad exploratory scope (e.g. Gilmour 2005; Bossius, Häger and Kahn-Harris 2011) or a more specific focus on some particular genre of music or religious tradition (e.g. Barzel 2015; Beeber 2006; Knight 2009; Miller, Pinn and Freeman 2015; Moberg 2015; St John 2004; Stowe 2011; Weston and Bennett 2014; Young 2015). There are also several studies of the relationship between religion/ the sacred and popular music (e.g. Partridge 2014; Sylvan 2003; Till 2010), as well as a good number that focus on the close relationship between sacralized discourses and a particular genre (e.g. Partridge 2010; Sylvan 2005; St. John 2009; 2010; 2012) or specific issues of religious and cultural significance (e.g. Kalra 2015; Partridge 2015). However, while the presence of religious themes, ideas, symbols and discourses can be found across the spectrum of popular music, much of the focus of the growing scholarship in the area has tended to be on popular music cultures which contain more ‘obvious’ or overt religious components such as electronic dance music (particularly psytrance), reggae and heavy metal. Nevertheless, as discussed below, increasingly, thanks in part to the development of critical musicology, more attention is being given to the ways in which discourses of the sacred and the profane are embedded and developed within popular music culture. While scholarly explorations of the relationship between religion and popular music cover an increasingly broad range of theoretical positions and methodological approaches, what follows is a general introduction to the field. The aim is simply to equip the student who is new to the area with enough knowledge to benefit from the more detailed discussions that follow.

The study of religion and popular music When it comes to the ways in which previous studies of religion and popular music can be situated with regard to some main areas of focus in the study of religion and popular culture more broadly, Forbes’ (2000) classic typology provides a crude, but nonetheless still useful, way of navigating the field as a whole. He makes a general distinction between four main, albeit frequently overlapping, areas of focus: ‘religion in popular culture’, ‘popular culture in religion’, ‘popular culture as religion’ and ‘religion and popular culture in dialogue’ (see also Moberg 2015, 23–6; Partridge 2015, 195–243). The ‘religion in popular culture’ approach focuses on both the explicit and the implicit presence of religious themes, subject matter, imagery, symbols, language and so on throughout

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music

popular culture. However, Forbes observes that studies within this category contribute most to a better overall understanding of the contemporary relationship between religion and popular culture when they attempt to discern and identify broader patterns and trends instead of focusing on isolated examples. Chapter 15 (‘Chinese Religions and Popular Music’) by Vicky Ho provides an example of this as it accounts both for the presence of Chinese religious themes in different forms of Chinese popular music and for the ways in which certain forms of popular music have been appropriated by religious practitioners themselves. Similar points are made in relation to Buddhism (Chapter 13), Caribbean religions (Chapter 18), the Occult (Chapter 17), Hinduism (Chapter 12), Japanese religions (Chapter 14), Judaism (Chapter 11) and Paganism (Chapter 16). There is some particularly interesting work currently being done by Christian theologians such as David Brown (2007) which understands popular music to mediate the presence of the divine (see also Keuss 2011). Such work is thoughtfully discussed by Gavin Hopps (Chapter 7; see also Gilmour’s discussion in Chapter 6). By contrast, studies within the ‘popular culture in religion’ category examine the appropriation of different forms of popular culture by religious (typically Christian) groups. Most previous studies in this category have focused on different aspects of the evangelical popular culture industry in the United States (e.g. Hendershot 2004; Luhr 2009) such as the phenomenon of contemporary Christian music (CCM) (e.g. Howard and Streck 1999). This volume also contains a few contributions that would primarily fall within this category of studies. Chapter 9 (‘Contemporary Christian Music’), for example, by Shawn Young provides a detailed up-to-date account of the main traits of the CCM phenomenon and its development and diversification over time. A more specific instance of this particular relationship between religion and popular culture is explored in Thomas Wagner’s analysis of Christian worship and popular music (Chapter 8). Again, the discussion of Islam by Jonas Otterbeck and Göran Larsson (Chapter 10) also touches upon issues regarding the appropriation of popular music by religious traditions, focusing particularly on the often complicated negotiations involved in reconciling popular musical practice with Islamic theology. Likewise, Jon Stratton addresses related issues in his overview of Judaism and popular music (Chapter 11). Although they tend to focus on post-1950s popular music, studies analysing ‘popular culture as religion’ differ from all other categories in their particular theoretical perspective and approach. These types of studies are typically based on highly functionalist approaches to the category of religion. Such studies are based on the theoretical presumption that popular cultural forms have started to replace previous, more traditional and established forms of religious expression and developed into contemporary ‘surrogates’ or ‘substitutions’ for religion for growing numbers of people today. In other words, studies within this category typically argue that various types of popular music and their associated cultures have in and of themselves taken on religious dimensions or functions (e.g. Sylvan 2003; Till 2010). These approaches have been criticized for their insufficiently self-critical employment of highly functionalist perspectives which essentially allow for virtually any cultural practice to be labelled as ‘religious’ and which thus risk obscuring all distinctions between religious and other social or cultural practices (e.g. McCloud 2003; Lynch 2007; Moberg 2012). The shortcomings of functionalist approaches are also discussed by Marcus Moberg in Chapter 19 (‘Heavy Metal’) in relation to previous arguments concerning the religious dimensions and functions of heavy metal music and culture in and of itself. 2

Introduction

Finally, the (perhaps somewhat redundant) category of ‘religion and popular culture in dialogue’ designates an area of study that focuses on how religious communities and groups engage in wider public debates on popular culture in an either accommodating or confrontational spirit. One of the most widely known and debated past instances of such ‘dialogue’ taking confrontational forms occurred in the United States in the mid-1980s when conservative Christian groups allied themselves with secular lobbying groups such as, most famously, the Parents Music Resource Center, in order to campaign against popular music’s perceived role in the erosion of traditional morals and family values. Examples of when such dialogue takes more accommodating forms are when religious groups view popular culture as an ‘ally’ (Forbes 200: 16) and vehicle through which to engage in wider cultural conversations and promote certain religious or ethical values or causes (cf. Moberg 2009: 90–1). See Michael Drewett’s analysis of issues relating to censorship (Chapter 4).

Methodologies While the above discussion outlines some main areas of focus in the study of religion and popular music more generally, it will be helpful to consider some main methodological approaches. Arguably the easiest way of doing this is to follow Lynch’s general distinction between ‘authorfocused’, ‘text-based’ and ‘ethnographic/audience-reception’ approaches, each of which ‘brings a different set of questions and methods to the study of popular culture’ (2005: 112).

Author-focused approaches Author-focused approaches are directed at exploring the ways in which a particular song or album, for example, ‘reflects the background, status, personality, and intentions of its particular author or authors’ (Lynch 2005: 112). When employed in the study of religion and popular music, this approach begins from the assumption that a thorough knowledge and understanding of an artist’s personal history, aspirations and religious interests provides important clues for a fuller understanding of the deeper meaning of their work. In short, then, the artists are treated as auteur, with auteur criticism being based on the assumption that the more we know about the individual who created a particular piece of music, the more we will also learn about the ‘meaning’ of that music. In using this approach to study of how ‘religion’ surfaces in the work of an artist, the scholar is drawn into asking a particular set of cultural, authorial intent-related, and perhaps psychological questions. We might, for example, ask how a piece of music or a body of work can be understood in relation to artists’ sociocultural backgrounds, how it articulates their attitudes to religion, whether it conforms to or breaks with the conventions of a particular genre and so on. This approach connects to a long-standing tendency in Western culture ‘of placing a high value on the creative abilities of the individual artist’ and, as such, it also reflects ‘romantic and neoromantic understandings of art as the process of expressing the artist’s inner world’ (Lynch 2005: 117). This way of thinking about the endeavours of individual artists has had an enduring influence and still commonly surfaces in contemporary debates about musical authenticity. It is, for example, reflected in a general tendency, whether in the music press or scholarship, to make qualitative distinctions between the work of the ‘true’ artist as opposed to the purely 3

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commercially oriented work of the metteur-en-scene skilled musical craftsman (Lynch 2005: 118). This tension, which has constituted a central theme in popular musical criticism and the academic study of popular culture since at least the early 1960s, is discussed by Clive Marsh (Chapter 20) on the relationship between pop and rock music. While, of course, auteur criticism has much to commend it, analysis can be skewed by too much attention being directed towards an artist at the expense of other areas of analysis, such as reception (see Vaughan S. Roberts’ excellent discussion of the reception of folk music in Chapter 23). Again, an unduly strong focus on the background and personal history of an individual musician may obscure the often collective and collaborative nature of musicmaking. Indeed, the approach risks exaggerating the supposed coherence and continuity of an individual artist’s body of work at the expense of analysis being directed towards discontinuities and variations. Overall, auteur criticism is poorly equipped to acknowledge the possibility that particular authors may have been uncertain about their influences and motivations (Lynch 2005: 119). That said, if based on careful and balanced analysis and an open recognition of these potential problems, the approach can nevertheless provide interesting perspectives on the work of particular artists or bands – especially when employed in combination with text-based and ethnographic approaches. Author-based approaches have been employed in several previous studies of religion and popular music (e.g. Lynch 2005; Martens 2005; Larsson 2011; Gilmour 2004; 2011) and are also partly employed in some of the contributions to this volume. For example, in Chapter 11 (‘Jews, Judaism and Popular Music’), Jon Stratton makes some use of an author-based approach in his discussion of Bob Dylan’s music and its engagement with biblical themes. Similarly, Chapter 24 (‘Country Music and Religion’) by Leigh H. Edwards attempts to gain a deeper understanding of the religious themes of Johnny Cash’s music through viewing them against the backdrop of his personal history and religious life. The author-based approach also surfaces in a slightly different way in Chapter 17 (‘Popular Music and the Occult’) by Kennet Granholm in relation to its discussion of the ways in which musicians involved in the contemporary ritual black metal scene view their musical practices as a form of personal religious practice.

Text-based approaches Text-based approaches are interested in exploring the various ways in which popular musical ‘texts’ (understood in a broader sense) may convey a range of different meanings and how they open themselves to a range of different interpretations. In this approach, the possible intentions of the authors or producers of particular popular musical texts are of less relevance, in that this approach focuses on exploring the ways in which ‘language and symbols convey cultural meanings’ (Lynch 2005: 113). Given its foundations in 1960s post-structuralism, this approach typically employs perspectives and methods from fields such as linguistics, semiotics, narrative analysis and discourse analysis. In this approach, musical meanings are neither viewed as being static nor viewed as being stable in any sense. Rather, they are viewed as socially, culturally and contextually specific and are thus open to continuous reinterpretation. Moreover, as discussed in Chapter 2 (‘Emotion, Meaning and Popular Music’), when considering a ‘text’, scholars of popular music focus just as much, if not more so, on the music itself, on the sonic environment, as they do on lyrics (see Partridge 2015). 4

Introduction

Robert Walser articulates the basic premise of text-based approaches well when he writes that musical meanings ‘are developed, sustained, and reformed by people, who bring a variety of histories and interests to their encounters with generic texts’ (1993: 27). As such, text-based approaches are also interested in exploring the ways in which popular music functions as a resource in people’s construction of personal and cultural identities. For example, as Frith has argued, we frequently tend to talk about popular music by making value judgements about it. But disputes about popular music are not, he says, ‘about likes and dislikes as such, but about ways of listening, about ways of hearing, about ways of being’ (1996: 8). Text-based approaches have often been utilized in the study of popular music in the more specific form of discourse analysis. More concretely, discourse analytic approaches focus on how musical meanings emerge through the ways in which particular forms of music are talked about and represented through language and other modes of representation such as symbols, images and aesthetics. In this perspective, no form of music is adequately understood as possessing any particular meanings in and of itself. Rather, musical meanings derive from the ways in which they are constructed through discourse: ‘Musical meanings are always grounded socially and historically, and they operate on an ideological field of conflicting interests, institutions, and memories’ (Walser 1993: 29; cf. Partridge 2015: 13–59; Santana and Erickson 2008: 68–9). Text-based approaches have been employed in several previous studies of religion and popular music. While some studies have mainly focused on the interpretation and analysis of the religious content of song lyrics (e.g. Kessler 2005; Penner 2005), others have instead utilized various forms of discourse analysis in combination with ethnographic approaches (e.g. Moberg 2015; Coggins 2015). Several contributions to this volume employ or otherwise enquire into themes that connect with text-based approaches. For example, in Chapter 28 (‘Rap and Hip Hop’), Joseph Winters touches upon a central theme in text-based research in his discussion about how the musical and cultural meanings of hip hop are sometimes constructed differently among artists and fans on the one hand, and academics and researchers on the other.

Ethnographic/audience-reception approaches Following the pioneering studies on subcultural styles by researchers associated with the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the mid and late 1970s (e.g. Hebdige 1970; Willis 1978), ethnography has become a widely used approach in the study of popular music cultures generally. As Andy Bennett explains in his contribution to this volume (Chapter 1), ‘Ethnography denotes the researcher’s attempts to collect data about the social world’ of the audiences or participants of a particular popular music culture through methods such as in-depth interviewing and participant and/or non-participant observation. As ethnographic methods also focus on investigating the embodied and experiential aspects of participation in popular music cultures, they provide researchers with valuable additional information on the lived experiences of participants and audiences themselves. The rapid development and increasing availability of the internet now also provides researchers with additional ways of conducting ethnographic research in the form of the so-called virtual ethnography. Previous studies of religion and popular music vary when it comes to the extent to which they have employed ethnographic methods. While some studies have involved extensive mix-method ethnographic research spanning several years (e.g. Moberg 2009; Abraham 2012; Coggins 2015), 5

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others have instead utilized particular ethnographic methods such as virtual ethnography, indepth interviewing and participant observation. While most previous ethnographic studies in the field of religion and popular music have focused on some type of electronic dance music (e.g. St John 2009; 2010; 2012; Sylvan 2005), a fair amount of attention has also been devoted to various forms of heavy metal (e.g. Bossius 2003; Moberg 2009; Coggins 2015; Granholm 2011, Chapter 19). See, for example, the interesting discussion of Goth subculture provided by Isabella van Elferen in Chapter 29. Ethnographic approaches may also take the form of or be combined with audience-reception research. Audience-reception research is aimed at exploring participants’ or audience members’ own thoughts or experiences of a given popular music culture or some particular popular musical event such as a concert or music festival. While ethnographic approaches can contribute with valuable additional perspectives and not least a fuller understanding of the lived meanings of popular music culture participants themselves, they also bring with them a set of challenges which mainly have to do with individual researchers’ relationship or positioning vis-à-vis their topics, objects and subjects of research (again, see Andy Bennett’s discussion in Chapter 1 and van Elferen’s discussion in Chapter 29). For example, similar to many other academic fields, it not uncommon for scholars of religion and popular music to have a personal interest in their topics of research, whether this concerns an interest in some particular form of popular music, religion or both. While scholars are naturally drawn to study something they have a personal interest and perhaps personal investment in, this still raises a number of important methodological issues that need to be properly addressed in any ethnographic research project. These issues principally relate to the abilities and capacities of individual researchers to account for any ‘insider’ presumptions and biases and remain sufficiently self-reflexive in their research. These issues, which are very well known in the study of religion (see Knott 2016), are dealt with in detail in relation to popular music in Chapter 1 by Andy Bennett, which also accounts for the basics of all commonly used methodological approaches in popular music culture research. As indicated above, reflexivity is important, in that not only is it necessary to reflect on the conduct of research but also on the standpoint of the researcher, thinking carefully about the significance of these for research outcomes. That is to say, the researcher always plays an active role in the very production of any type of material or data that is gathered by means of ethnographic methods. Consequently, ethnographic data should be considered a form of data that the researcher has been actively involved in co-producing. In order to partly level the unequal relationship that inevitably arises between researcher and researched, some ethnographic studies employ the additional practice of so-called member checking or member validation (Taylor 2001: 321–2), whereby the participants (i.e. the ‘objects’ or research) are purposefully given the opportunity to comment on and provide feedback on the researcher’s interpretations and analysis. Several contributions to this volume are partly based on ethnographic research. For example, van Elferen’s analysis of ‘Goth Music’ (Chapter 29) is a careful analysis of Goth subculture. For example, Chapter 21 (‘Punk and Hardcore’) by Ibrahim Abraham and Francis Stewart draws on the earlier ethnographic research by both authors. Donna Weston’s Chapter 16 discussion provides an interesting combination of virtual ethnography with a text-based approach in its

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Introduction

examination of the interpretive process, whereby the work of various artists becomes designated as ‘Pagan’ through the internal discourse of various online communities.

Critical musicology and the sacred Popular music is, of course, as Scott Wilson has noted, ‘an integral part of people’s lives’. Indeed, ‘it becomes a way of life, a way of reacting and relating, determining sets of tastes, attitudes and opinions’ (2008: 7). This is because it is able to evoke meaning through its peculiar appeal to human emotion. In other words, music has a peculiar ability to construct affective spaces within which meaning is made (see Chapter 2). Hence, some scholars have argued that while analyses of lyrics can be insightful in the study of popular music, far more attention needs to be afforded to music’s relationship to emotion and the significance of that relationship to a range of phenomenological and existential features of social life relating to constructions of the sacred. That is to say, there is an increasing interest in the sociological analysis of musical experience, in music’s role as an active ingredient of social formation and subjectivity. Such an appreciation of the non-cognitive dimensions of agency can be enormously helpful for understanding the complex relationship between popular music and the values and norms, texts and discourses, rituals and symbols, codes and narratives of modern Western culture (see DeNora 2000; 2001; Partridge 2015). The relationship between popular music and religion is an emerging, but still neglected, area of study within the general discipline of ‘critical musicology’ (or ‘new musicology’ in the United States). Essentially, critical musicology focuses on the ways in which music interacts with society and culture. As such, it is necessarily interdisciplinary and multi-methodological, as is evident from the contributions to this volume. It uses theories from a range of traditions, including sociology, anthropology, literary studies, religious studies, psychology and psychoanalysis, in order to excavate the wider significance of popular music. Hence, it is perhaps odd that religion has been something of a blind spot in popular music studies. To some extent, this is simply a reflection of certain blinkered discourses within academia, including the dominant ideological positions informing much critical theory and the study of popular music. Perhaps some of the obstacles can be overcome if we think in terms of the ‘sacred’ rather than, more narrowly, ‘religion’ (see Partridge 2015). While the sacred is, of course, typically concerned with religious discourses, it is not limited to them. Rather, it can be understood in the sociologically nuanced sense articulated by Émile Durkheim. In other words, it relates to the articulation of what people perceive to be absolute – or, to use Paul Tillich’s term, what is of ‘ultimate concern’ to them (1957: 44). Hence, the sacred, whether imbricated with religious discourses or not, concerns those ideas which exert a profound moral claim over peoples’ lives. As such, it is organized by cultures into specific, historically contingent, manifestations. These manifestations of the sacred, or ‘sacred forms’, comprise historically contingent expressions of particular cultures, the products of particular histories and contexts, rather than being ontologically fixed in any way. They change over time according to the shifting cultural contours of the societies in which they are constructed (see Alexander 2003: 27–84). Moreover, sacred forms need to be understood in a relational or oppositional sense. That is, cultural constructions of the sacred are tied to constructions of the ‘profane’ – that which

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constitutes a threat to the sacred. Not only is the profane constructed as a threat to the sacred, but it accrues a transgressive charge relative to the strength of the sacred: the stronger the sense of the sacred, the greater the revulsion evoked by that which threatens to profane it. Indeed, the revulsion – the sense of profane threat – occasioned by the transgression of a sacred form, such as the abuse of children or the violation of human rights, can be so powerful that it can lead to moral panic and, for some members of society, sanction extreme levels of violence. The threat of profanation must be expunged at all costs in order to limit its pollution within society and restore the authority and integrity of the sacred. In short, sacred forms communicate the core values of a society, those collective certainties that must be protected from profanation. Popular music is transgressive. As is evident throughout this volume and explicitly discussed in Michael Drewett’s analysis of censorship (Chapter 4) and Ian Peddie’s comments regarding the history of protest (Chapter 3), in a number of ways (not simply verbally), popular music articulates the profane in the contested spaces of the modern world. ‘Governments, political groups, moral lobbyists, religious groups and others have’, as Drewett says, ‘regularly objected to music for a variety of reasons, with these objections often culminating in calls for censorship. The targets of censorial action are varied, including the music itself, lyrics, musical instruments, musicians and performance venues.’ In other words, popular music is closely tied to those constructions of the sacred it seeks to transgress. Often composed at the liminal edges of hegemonic culture, on the rejected periphery, it has always, in varying degrees, constituted a threat to the sacred centre. Of course, this is not to say that all popular music is explicitly profane or conspicuously transgressive – although some self-appointed, religious gatekeepers of the hegemonic sacred would beg to differ (see Partridge 2015: 201–8). For example, it might be argued that some popular music tends to support dominant constructions of the sacred, such as those relating to gender and relationships (see Alison Stone’s thoughtful discussion of popular music and gender in Chapter 5). However, whether we think of The Spice Girls, Patti Smith, The New York Dolls, Tori Amos, Madonna, Katie Perry, Lady Gaga or Conchita Wurst, such discourses tend to be contested and negotiated within popular music cultures. While it may not always be done particularly cogently, this is, to some extent, beside the point. Within the liminal cultures of popular music, the power of the hegemonic sacred is weakened, interrogated and challenged. In other words, popular music discourses and cultures are typically transgressive and, as such, politically significant. Understanding this helps us to grasp its affective force and its appeal within the liminal lifeworlds of youth culture. ‘The story which precedes the commission or acknowledgement of a transgressive act’, notes Chris Jenks, ‘is the constitution of a centre, a centre that provides for a social structure, and a structure of meaning that is delimited or marked out by boundaries’ (2003: 15). Popular music typically tests those boundaries, pushing against the fences erected around sacred forms. ‘There are no rules, there are no limits,’ insisted Jim Morrison of The Doors (quoted in Hopkins and Sugarman 1980: 232). Indeed, the analysis of the cultural and social significance of popular music’s relationship to the sacred can be usefully framed in terms of a Dionysian–Apollonian dialectic, as a challenge to order and stability. Hence, whether it functions explicitly as a vehicle of protest (see Chapter 3) or not, popular music tends towards transgression. As such, it often explicitly oppugns religious discourses and, more often, is perceived as a challenge by religious communities, which, of course, tend to defend conservative constructions of the sacred.

8

Introduction

Overall, the aim of this volume is to provide the reader with an introduction to the study of religion and popular music, as well as, more widely, to indicate the significance of ‘the sacred’ in the cultural work of popular musicians, their listeners and the recording industry. While, of course, we cannot claim to have covered all the areas necessary for a comprehensive understanding of the subject, it is hoped that, together, the chapters in the Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music, all of which are written by acknowledged experts, will furnish the reader with an adequate understanding of the approaches taken and the issues addressed.

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Part One

The Study of Religion and Popular Music: Theoretical Perspectives, Methodologies and Issues

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Chapter 1

Ethnography, Popular Music and Religion Andy Bennett

There is a long tradition of ethnography in research on contemporary popular music forms beginning with work such as Becker’s (1957–1972) seminal study The Professional Jazz Musician and His Audience. As the study of popular music has grown, so have the ways in which ethnographic research methods have been applied across an array of often interrelated themes, including music-making practices (Bennett 1980; Cohen 1991), music scenes (Bennett and Peterson 2004), venues (Bennett and Rogers 2016), memorabilia, history and heritage (Cohen et al. 2015). In the related field of youth cultural studies, and what can increasingly be seen as ‘post-youth’ studies of ageing fans and musicians, ethnographic work has been used to study aspects of popular music’s influence on themes such as biography, lifestyle and identity (Bennett 2013; Hodkinson 2013). Another important field in academic research, and one focused on in this handbook, examines the relationship between popular music and religion (see Reed 2003; St. John 2004; Lynch 2006; Partridge 2014). The purpose of this chapter is to consider the basic principles of ethnographic research and their application in the study of popular music and religion. Although the positioning of religious identity and discourse with the frame of popular music production, performance and consumption may exhibit some distinctive characteristics, in most respects these connect with other ways in which popular music has been – and continues to be – used as a medium for the expression of identity, culture and ideology in contemporary society. As such, the primary aim of the chapter will be to work with a range of examples from popular music studies in order to demonstrate the value of ethnographic research in studying the relationship between popular music and religion. The chapter is divided into two parts. Part 1 provides the reader with a brief overview of the origins and development of ethnography and its applications in sociocultural research. Part 2 looks at different techniques involved in the conduct of ethnographic research and the ways these have been used in empirical work on popular music.

Part 1: Ethnography: Origins and trajectories The origins of ethnography as an approach applied in qualitative research date back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Indeed, some of the earliest examples of ethnographers were European missionaries who observed and wrote reports on the culture and customs of the native peoples they encountered in places such as the Americas, Africa and the South Pacific (see Esler 2004). During the nineteenth century ethnography became a key research method for anthropologists engaged in the social scientific study of peoples around the world in order to understand the process of human evolution. Influenced by the principles of social Darwinism,

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many intellectuals at the time believed that all human civilizations were linked by what Lovejoy (1965) has referred to as ‘a great chain of being’. A key exponent of this idea was by founding sociologist Émile Durkheim, who, in his book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912 [1995]), suggested that through studying –what he referred to as more ‘primitive’ peoples – one could discover the early roots of the social evolutionary process that had led to the birth of Western civilization. Using the examples of naturism, animism and totemism, then commonly observed in the religious practices of indigenous peoples in places such as Africa and Australasia, Durkheim argued that one indication of humanity’s transition to a more ‘civilized’ state of being was the abandonment of such forms of religious practice and their replacement with a form of external faith inscribed in a god or similar form of religious deity. The mission of the nineteenth-century anthropologists to uncover and explore the culture and custom of world peoples according to the grounding principles of social Darwinism was refocused during the twentieth century with the end of Western global colonialism and a concomitant attack on Western ‘ethnocentricism’. At this point the practice of ethnographic research assumed a broader currency in academic research, including among sociologists interested in examining phenomena occurring in their own societies. A pertinent example of this and one that would indirectly come to have an influence on ethnography’s later application in popular music research was the work of the Chicago School sociologists during the early to mid-twentieth century. Early examples of Chicago School research include Frederick Thrasher’s (1927) The Gang and William Foote-Whyte’s (1955) Street Corner Society. A key focus of these studies was to challenge the then-dominant notions of deviance as a biologically determined characteristic of the human condition (see Sapsford 1981). By conducting ethnographic research in workingclass neighbourhoods in Chicago’s Southside, an area of the city which had an established reputation for crime and deviance, the Chicago School theorists sought to generate findings that would counter the notion of deviance as biologically ingrained, positioning it instead as a socioeconomically determined feature of social life (Bennett 2000). As the twentieth century progressed, ethnographic research was applied to examine a range of other patterns in social activity. For example, Becker’s (1963) important work Outsiders focused on how different forms of ‘deviant’ behaviour, and particularly drug-taking, are socially created as deviant through the ascription of social labels by the dominant society that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behaviours. During the early 1970s, Stanley Cohen (1987) applied Becker’s concept of labelling in his highly influential book Folk Devil’s and Moral Panics, a study that examined how the media created a moral panic around the mods and rockers (post-Second World War British youth cultures) of the mid-1960s. As Cohen observed, this was achieved through the media’s selective reporting of incidents of violence occurring between mods and rockers during bank holiday weekends on the south-east English coast. In a revised version of this book (see Cohen 1987) Cohen also emphasized the importance of ethnographic work on youth cultures as a means of better understanding their lifeworlds. Indeed, at this point in time, research on youth culture was still largely dominated by textual and semiotic analysis (see Hall and Jefferson 1976); Hebdige 1979). A notable exception here was Willis (1978) whose study Profane Culture was among the first studies of style-based youth cultures to use ethnographic research methods. Willis thus applied semi-structured interviews and non-participant observation (see below) as a means through which to obtain empirical data on the stylistic practices and musical tastes of working-class bikers and middle-class hippies. In the field of popular music 14

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research, an early, if largely overlooked, example of ethnographic research is H. S. Bennett’s (1980) On Becoming a Rock Musician. In this book, Bennett examines the music-making worlds of young rock musicians as they strive to become proficient on a musical instrument, form a band, perform gigs and pursue a recording contract. Cohen (1991), in a study that has received far more attention, develops this ethnographic approach in her work on amateur popular music bands in the UK city of Liverpool. In the case of Cohen’s work, the focus on music-making practices is broadened out to examine the influence of space and place on the opportunities presented to young musicians to make music and on their general perceptions of the value of music-making in their everyday lives. By the early 1990s and the early 2000s, the use of ethnography in work on popular music had become a more well-established and, indeed, accepted methodological approach, ranging across a plethora of musical worlds, including the music industry (Negus 1992), clubbing and club culture (Thornton 1995; Malbon 1999), musicianship (Berger 1999), music fandom (Cavicchi 1998) and local music scenes (Bennett 2000; Bennett and Peterson 2004). With reference to these and other studies, the remainder of this chapter focuses on how key methods of ethnographic research have been applied in examining aspects of socio-musical life and the resonance of this for our understanding of the role played by popular music in the understanding, practice and articulation of forms of religious life in contemporary society.

Part 2: ‘Telling it like it is’: Ethnography, popular music and everyday life As Jennifer Mason (1996) explains, ethnography is a form of qualitative research that ●● ●●

●●

attempts to engage with sociocultural realities of groups and individuals. is interpretivist, that is, flexible and sensitive to social context in which data are produced. is based on methods of analysis and explanation building which involve understandings of complexity, detail and context.

In essence, ethnography denotes the researcher’s attempts to collect data about the social world in two main ways: (1) through interviews with research participants and (2) by observing aspects of the particular social setting in which the researcher is interested. A critical aspect of the ethnographic research process is familiarization with the lifeworld of the research subjects. In many instances the ethnographer will attempt to become a part of the research subject’s world, sometimes living there for a period of time. Indeed, as Whyte (1955) observed in his ethnographic research on young racketeers in Chicago, simply by ‘hanging around’ with his research participants, he learned the answers to questions that he would never have thought to ask. Despite such advantages garnered from proximity to research participants in this way, however, it is also crucially important that the ethnographer remains impartial in the research setting. Such a need for impartiality in the ethnographic research process is underscored by Vidich and Lyman in their observation that for every individual and group, ideologies and faiths define the distinction between good and evil and lead to such nonsociological but conventional orientations as are involved in 15

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everyday judging and decision making. The [researcher’s] task in ethnography is not only to be a part of such thoughts and actions but also to understand them at a higher level of conceptualization. … Qualitative ethnographic research entails an attitude of detachment toward society that permits the [researcher] to observe the conduct of self and others, to understand the mechanisms of social processes, and to comprehend and explain why both actors and processes are as they are. (1994: 23) These, then, are a few basic definitions of what is meant by ethnographic research. In a bona fide ethnographic study, the researcher tries to learn about the social world from social actors themselves and in a way that is empathetic to those actors. Typically, this necessitates the researcher suspending their own particular beliefs and casting the research participants in the role of experts, whose local, everyday knowledge will assist the researcher in acquiring an objective sense of the particular social world under investigation from the participants’ subjective accounts. In conducting ethnographic work, the researcher may choose to combine a range of data collecting techniques, including interviews, participant or non-participant observation and focus groups. Since the early 2000s it has also become increasingly commonplace for researchers to use the internet as a means of conducting, in whole or in part, ethnographic studies of music scenes (see Kibby 2000; Bennett 2002a). Similarly, ethnographic researchers may also draw on their own pre-acquired ‘insider’ status as a means of investigating particular aspects of sociomusical life, a trend that can be observed in more recent research in the related fields of popular music scenes and youth (sub)cultures (see Bennett 2002b, 2003; Hodkinson 2005). All of these approaches, and their particular value for research in the field of popular music and its related cultural practices, will presently be considered in more detail. An important exercise before going on to consider the different approaches applied in ethnographic research is to establish the limits of what one can justifiably claim as ethnography in the field of popular music research. Certainly, in a field such as popular music studies, there is a bountiful supply of secondary data sources at the researcher’s fingertips, including an increasing number of rock and pop (auto)biographies, biopics and documentaries that offer ‘first-hand’ accounts of particular music scenes, genres, festivals and so on. In addition, since it became more widely accessible during the mid-1990s, the internet has proved to be a valuable resource for the archiving and retrieval of various popular music artefacts, including vintage performances by ‘classic rock’ artists and rock/pop documentaries (see Bennett and Rogers, 2016). Similarly, a range of other methodologies is also available to and frequently used by popular music researchers. Such approaches, however, should not be conflated with ethnography. The same applies in the case of more quantitative approaches to data gathering. Thus, as Cohen observes, many so-called ethnographic studies in the field of popular music studies continue to ‘rely upon pre-formulated questionnaires, surveys, autobiographies or unstructured interviews which study people outside their usual social, spatial and temporal context’ (1993: 127).

‘This is my truth’: One-to-one interviews There are two primary interviewing approaches applied by ethnographers: structured and semistructured interviews. Structured interviews tend to comprise a relatively fixed agenda and make use of ‘closed questions’ that seek particular information from research participants. Semi-structured 16

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interviews, on the other hand, pursue a more loosely formulated agenda characterized by open-ended questions allowing for more interpretation on the part of the research participant (see Mason 1996). In the case of popular music studies, the researcher typically uses the semi-structured interview approach. This is largely down to the topic matter which necessitates tapping deeply into the aesthetic subjectivity of the research participants and allowing them scope to elaborate on things such as the personal significance that a music artist and/or musical genre has for them, their involvement in a music scene, attachment to a set of musical artefacts, memories of a particular era of music and so on. An interesting example of this is seen in Cavicchi’s (1998) study of fans of the American rock artist Bruce Springsteen. Through interviewing individual Springsteen fans, Cavicchi was able to deduce that something common in their personal accounts was what he referred to as ‘Bruce stories’. This term describes the highly individualized stories offered by fans regarding how they initially formed an attachment to Springsteen and his music. Similarly, in a more recent study, Green uses semi-structured interviews with music fans and musicians in the Brisbane, indie, rap and dance music scenes to uncover what he refers to as peak experiences of music. According to Green, ‘Peak music experiences can … provide concrete insight into the question of how encounters with music can affect people in enduring ways’ (2016: 340). Finally, Bennett (2013) has made extensive use of semi-structured interviews in research on music and ageing to uncover the ways in which research participants perceive their musical tastes to have influenced their biographical trajectories from early adulthood through middle age and, in some cases, later life. Studies of popular music and religion share much in common with the above cited studies, in that they are also in many cases examining the way in which popular music, as a cultural medium, works to inform and enhance a set of beliefs that are experienced at both an individual level and a collective level. As such, a similar principle pertains in this area of research, in that the researcher needs to provide scope for research participants to reflexively engage with their individual subjectivity in explaining the importance of music for them as a means through which to acquire a religious understanding and participate in religious life. Critical here is the use of interviews to provide a medium through which an interviewee can openly articulate their religious and/or spiritual self and the importance religion has for them in the context of everyday life. Indeed, in this sense, there may be strong parallels with the issues previously discussed, for example, in relation to ‘conversion’ stories, peak experiences (in this case music and religious experiences) or the importance of music as a barometer for religious belief and faith across the course of life.

‘Through a different lens’: Participant and non-participant observation Participant observation describes an approach whereby a researcher takes on a role within the research field setting in order to blend into that setting more effectively. Depending on the particular topic of the research, a participant observation role can be either overtly or covertly staged. While ethical considerations pertain to both overt and covert participant observation, the issues of deceit embedded in covert observation need to be very carefully considered in opting to carry out this kind of work and will typically require special ethical clearance.1 Non-participant observation also involves periods of immersion in the research setting. In this case, however, the 17

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researcher does not take on a role in the research field and is purely there to observe the actions of others (i.e. the research participants). Sometimes a researcher may choose to incorporate elements of both participant observation and non-participant observation in their work. This was the case with Armstrong’s (1993) work on football hooliganism where a non-participant observation approach was modified to involve some element of participation in order to gain the wider trust of the research participants. Popular music researchers have successfully used both participant and non-participant approaches in their work. For example, during the 1950s, eminent American sociologist Howard Becker (1957/1972) utilized his love for jazz music and skill as a jazz pianist to conduct participant observation of the jazz scene. Through his deep immersion in this scene, Becker was able to gain a rich impression of the life and career of the itinerant jazz musician and their invariable disdain for the jazz audience, whom according to jazz players Becker spoke to, were often illiterate when it came to an understanding and appreciation of jazz music and the skill involved in performing it. Non-participant observation can also be a highly effective method of research in popular music studies. For example, Sara Cohen (1991) used non-participant observation in her work on young indie rock bands in the mid-1980s Liverpool music scene. Through spending long periods of time observing the musicians in rehearsals, performing live and recording their music at local studios, Cohen was able to generate important data relating to the lifeworlds of these musicians and how the latter are shaped by the local socio-economic environments in which the musicians lived and where their music was made. In research on popular music and religion similar opportunities for conducting participant or non-participant observation apply. For example, a member of a Christian punk band may be able to use that position and experience to explore the way in which Christian punk, as a subgenre of the broader punk scene, perceives its role in spreading the Christian message through its music and through the interaction of bands with their audience. In the same way, participation in an electronic dance music festival may provide an opportunity to gain a personal sense of how these events, often staged in regional and remote settings, are intended to offer the audience a more ‘natural’ and ‘spiritual’ experience, as is the case, for example, with events such as Goa dance parties and Burning man (see St. John, 2014). Or, alternatively, non-participation in a Pagan music festival or at rehearsals of a black metal band may provide the researcher with an opportunity to understand how each of these events frame particular discourses of spirituality and connection with the metaphysical and transcendent ideologies through which these and similar music scenes provide opportunities for resistance to the technocratic norms of mainstream Western(ized) societies.

‘Of one and many voices’: Focus groups Originally designed for use in market research, focus groups can best be described as a structured conversation involving between six and ten research participants. If used effectively, focus groups can generate very useful data in that they provide an opportunity for research participants to converse about a range of topics in a relaxed setting that allows the researcher to rely to some extent on group interaction and interpersonal dynamics to create the atmosphere for the data collection. That being said, the successful conducing of focus groups does require an element of skill on the part of the individual researcher or research team in keeping the group conversation 18

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on topic. Effective moderation on the part of the researcher is also necessary in order to make sure that all participants of the focus group have their say and to also prevent particular members of the group effectively leading the conversation. It is seldom productive to favour focus groups over one-to-one interviews as these are quite different approaches that typically yield specific kinds of data. Focus groups can, though, be a useful way of selecting research participants for follow-up one-to-one interviews. Indeed, involving research participants in both focus groups and one-to-one interviews can be useful in terms of seeing if and how their views and attitudes concerning particular themes are modified, or perhaps even significantly change, depending on the context in which they interact with the researcher (see Morgan 1997). Focus groups are a lesser used research method in popular music research, although evidence suggests that when this approach has been used it has proved effective in gathering high-quality data. Thus, for example, Lamont et al. (2003) made use of the focus group method in their research on young people’s use of music in and outside of the school environment and also to assess levels of involvement in music-making by young people. Similarly, Bennett (2000) used focus groups in combination with one-to-one semi-structured interviews and non-participant observation to gain an understanding of the ways in which young people’s local sociocultural environments informed their appropriation and inscription of musical texts with both individual and collective meaning. Finally, Lowe (2004) adopted a focus group approach in an innovative work that examined how young ‘tweenie’ girls’ (i.e. girls in the early years of adolescence) preference for mainstream female artists such as Britney Spears is bound up with a politics of resistance in the forms of mainstream culture they find morally questionable and/or repressive. As this brief overview of the focus group method and its, thus far, more limited application in popular music research illustrates, it is a methodological approach that may also have significant currency in empirical work on popular music and religion. Religious ritual and belief is simultaneously both an individual and a collective form of faith. As such, the use of both one-to-one interviews and focus groups can provide a means of comparing how popular music informs individual and collective forms of involvement in contemporary forms of religious life.

‘Across the great divide’: Insider research If popular music studies have perhaps always been the purview of academics with a special interest in music, popular music scholarship in the twenty-first century has seen an increasing tendency for those who have cut their teeth as members of particular youth (sub)cultures in returning to study the latter from an academic perspective. Typically starting out as PhDs, studies by the likes of Malbon (1999), Hodkinson (2002), Haenfler (2006), Kahn-Harris (2007) and Phillipov (2012) have all been produced by researchers whose writing, if not necessarily written from the perspective of an ‘insider’, nevertheless draws on first-hand experience of participation in the youth cultures and musical scenes they are writing about. While there are ostensibly a number of advantages to be had from this approach, there are also challenges confronting the researcher in choosing to draw on their insider knowledge. Thus, as Bennett observes: Anyone making the transition from youth cultural practitioner to academic researcher will go through a process of personal transformation, an inevitable part of the research training process (see Hobbs 1993). This will involve an ‘unlearning’, or at least the objectification, 19

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of those ‘taken for granted’ attitudes and values which underpin the life of a committed youth stylist and music fan. (2003: 190) In his seminal study of punk style, Hebdige (1979) famously claimed that the subjects of his work would probably not recognize themselves in the analysis of punk presented in his book. In many ways, the ‘insider’ researcher is confronted with a broadly opposite problem, that is, how to utilize existing knowledge of a youth culture and/or music scene while at the same time realizing a need for objectivity and critical reflection in the way that things are reported, analysed and discussed in academic writing. That said, there is little doubt that insider knowledge and acquired cultural competence (Driver 2011) in a specific scene context will, if used properly, yield specific advantages for the researcher. Indeed, as Malbon states: My own background as a clubber was, I believe, crucial in establishing my credentials as someone who was both genuinely interested in and could readily empathise with [clubbers’] experiences rather than merely as someone who happened to be ‘doing a project’ on nightclubs as his ‘job’. (1999: 32) Again, however, the insider researcher also needs to err on the side of caution as the ease of access offered to a researcher through their insider status can often generate its own specific problems too. Thus, as Hodkinson (2005) observed, as a Goth researching Goths, he found that his research participants would sometimes fail to provide fully comprehensive answers to interview questions as they assumed knowledge on the part of the researcher which removed the need to elaborate. Notwithstanding the challenges facing those wishing to use their insider knowledge to gain access to and research particular cultural settings and related scenes, there are clear resonances here with research on religion and popular music, not least of all that for many of those involved in this area of research their interest will be informed by previous involvement in some aspect of popular music and religion in a non-academic, everyday capacity. As such, given that similar principles of understanding and caution as those discussed above are applied in popular music and religion research, the insider researcher perspective may provide a highly fruitful means of accessing the field and collecting data from research participants.

Worlds within worlds: Virtual ethnography With the increasing availability of the internet during the late 1990s came a proliferation of websites dedicated to a range of different cultural activities, lifestyles and aesthetic beliefs and practices. Among these, popular music was particularly prominent, with the concept of the ‘virtual music scene’ quickly gaining currency in academic scholarship (Kibby 2000; Bennett 2002a). According to Peterson and Bennett: Whereas a conventional local scene is kept in motion by a series of gigs, club nights, fairs, and similar events, where fans converge, communicate and reinforce their sense of belonging to a particular scene, the virtual scene involves direct net-mediated person-toperson communication between fans. … This may, involve, for example, the creation of chat-rooms or list-serves dedicated to the scene and may involve the trading of music and images on-line. (2004: 11)

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During the twenty-first century the capacity for using digital media in musical life was significantly enhanced through the introduction of more interactive forms of digital media, including online social networking services such as Facebook (Robards 2014). Blogging also became a highly popular form of online communication during this period among followers of particular music genres and music scenes (see Hodkinson 2006). Inevitably, social researchers were quickly drawn to the internet given its significance as an emerging domain in which new forms of trans-temporal and trans-local social interaction were taking shape. Coining a new term, ‘virtual ethnography’, Hine casts the virtual realm of the internet as a ‘social’ space, co-produced by the interaction of human agents and technological possibilities – and limitations – afforded them by the internet technology. Thus, according to Hine, the internet ‘has been treated as a performative space in which users need to act appropriately. Through this, the technology is stabilised by users themselves’ (2000: 12). The interactions of music fans on the internet have offered some important new ways for ethnographic researchers to observe and report the means through which fans create forms of online scene activity. Bennett (2002a) in work on the remaking of the Canterbury Sound as a virtual music scene observes how fans bring to bear their knowledge of Canterbury music in creating discourses of authenticity as regards the definition of a Canterbury Sound. Likewise, Lee and Peterson (2004) explore the role of virtual scenes in the crystallization of the alternative country genre through their contribution to the creation of a canon of alternative country music. Finally, Jung (2014) examines how early fans of the Korean popular music genre now commonly referred to as K-pop were instrumental in the growth of its popularity across Asia though their online discussions about and promotion of particular tracks and artists. In the sphere of popular music and religion the internet also plays an integral role. There are numerous online forums dedicated to a range of religious and spiritual beliefs and practices, including sites dedicated to new age forms of spirituality and beliefs such as Paganism (McCoy 2013). The value of virtual ethnography in such areas of research also pertains in assessing the extent to which connections between popular music and religions range over time and across different regions of the world. As with other forms of virtual ethnography, researchers making use of the internet in research on the connections between popular music and religion will also benefit from the access that this medium gives to broader, more trans-local communities than would typically be possible when conducting ethnography in offline face-to-face contexts.

A work in progress: Limitations of ethnographic research This purpose of this chapter has been to consider the value of ethnographic research in relation to popular music’s significance in everyday life, including its connection to forms of religious practice and belief. The chapter began by examining the history and origins of ethnographic research before going on to offer some basic definitions of ethnography as a methodological approach in sociocultural research. Following this, a number of key methods associated with ethnography were examined; these included interviews, observation, focus groups, insider research and virtual ethnography. As the chapter has illustrated, there are many critical advantages in the use of ethnography, including in the context of research that examines the relationship between popular music and religious life. That said, in concluding this chapter, it is also useful to

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bear in mind some of the limitations embedded in the ethnographic approach. Generally speaking, ethnographic research relies on small data sets. As such the problem of adequate representation of a social group is always difficult. Likewise, there are challenges around issues such as objectivity, including interviewer bias or the Hawthorne effect – following on from the famous experiment on American factory workers in the 1920s when it was later deduced that the effect of being observed by researchers had had a biased effect on workers’ productivity (see Wickström and Bendix 2000). A further point to make here is that, by very nature of the researcher’s involvement in the research, analysis and writing up of the research findings, ethnographic studies involve a degree of interpretive licence on the part of the researcher. As such, the partial truths offered by participants in the subjective interpretations of their sociocultural worlds are overlain in the analysis and writing process by the researcher’s own interpretation. To this extent, while the skilled ethnographer can offer important insights about the world(s) of their research participants, through their analysis and writing, at the same time they unavoidably co-produce for the reader the worlds they investigate.

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Chapter 2

Emotion, Meaning and Popular Music Christopher Partridge

In recent years there has been an appreciation of the significance of music’s relationship to emotion. Conceptualized as a device for the constitution of emotive action, it can be thought of as a ‘prosthetic technology’. That is to say, in a number of complex ways, it is able to move us emotionally and physically. It immediately engages us as embodied beings. It evokes emotional states, which, in turn, guide thought, helping us to make sense of our lives, our relationships and who we are; through its engagement with emotion, imagination and memory, it is able directly to organize the internal world of the listener. In other words, while, of course, music means more to some people than it does to others, generally speaking, it is able to create an ‘affective space’ – an emotional bubble – within which reflection occurs, and within which we are encouraged to act in certain ways, from dancing to relaxing, from marching to meditating, from smiling at a happy memory to being overcome with sadness. It helps us celebrate with friends, share important moments with lovers and cope with the loss of those close to us (see Partridge 2015). Again, this is why music is so effective in the manipulation of a viewer’s response to scenes in a film. It is able to manipulate emotional responses, often by relating the narrative to our own emotional histories. The importance of the non-cognitive dimensions of musical agency in relation to spirituality is well known. Indeed, while some forms of worship are principally silent and contemplative (as in Quakerism), typically worship involves the manipulation of emotion by music. Through music, worshippers are encouraged to praise, to meditate, to reflect and to commit their lives to their deities, just as they are encouraged to dance and to sing at live music events. There are, of course, no specifically religious emotions. Context provides content, in that it informs the affective spaces created by music. Hence, similar emotions to those produced during worship can be produced at electronic dance music events, where, for example, ‘euphoric trance’ or ‘psytrance’ can evoke an almost mystical feeling of ecstasy and oneness with other dancers, whereas ‘ambient’, ‘lounge’ or ‘chillout’ can lead to relaxing, contemplative and spiritual states of mind (see Green 2015; St John 2012; Sylvan 2005).

The social meaning of popular music While much work has tended to focus on music production and semiotic readings of musical forms, in more recent years there has been an appreciation of music as a dynamic medium in the construction of personal and social identities. This is important for understanding the extent to which popular music might contribute to an awareness of the self and to the social and religious

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networks in which it is embedded. While it is of course important to understand how music evolves, and how it is enabled and inhabited by its cultures and worlds of production (see Martin 2006), it is equally important to understand the extent to which it meshes with emotion, with thought, with action, and with the phenomenological and existential features of social life. As Tia DeNora has commented, ‘Even when sociologists considered music consumption, the focus was directed less to the matter of musical experience than to the ways in which tastes, musical values, and listening practices served as symbolic boundaries for status groups and status differences’ (DeNora 2001: 165). However, in the last decade or so, ‘music’s role as an active ingredient of social formation and subjectivity has been restored. Within this “new” music sociology of emotions, it is possible to conceptualize music as a device for the constitution of emotive action in and across a range of social settings’ (DeNora 2001: 165). This appreciation of the non-cognitive dimensions of agency will, of course, help us towards an understanding the relationship between popular music and religion. Concerning the notion of ‘affective space’, this is important because, first, music has a fundamental relationship with emotion and, second, human emotionality is central to meaningmaking and an individual’s ‘lifeworld’ – the latent, taken-for-granted core values, beliefs and understandings about who we are, how we relate to others, what the world is like and how we fit into it (see Habermas 1987: 113–98). This, in turn, is important for understanding the religious and moral life. Hence, treatments of popular music and belief that focus on the details of performers’ biographies, performances and lyrics (as many do), but do not attend to ‘affective space’, ignore perhaps the most significant aspect of music listening as meaning-making. This brings us to the work of the philosopher Theodor Adorno, for whom music, determined by its composition, is able to manipulate consciousness and contribute to social management: ‘Music is largely social cement. And the meaning listeners attribute to a material, the inherent logic of which is inaccessible to them, is above all a means by which they achieve some psychical adjustment to the mechanisms of present-day life’ (Adorno 1990: 311–12). That is to say, Adorno explored the idea that, as Tia DeNora puts it, ‘music interiorizes and is able to instigate forms of social organization in and through the ways that it works on and configures its subject-recipient. Put bluntly, Adorno conceived of music as active, indeed formative, in relation to consciousness. In this regard, his work makes some of the strongest claims on behalf of music’s power in any discipline’ (DeNora 2001: 165). These are important observations. Adorno, however, was not a fan of popular music. Along with a group of Marxist, Jewish intellectuals, he was a founding member of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research in 1923. When Hitler rose to power in the 1930s, the Institute relocated from Frankfurt to Columbia University, New York, with some members moving to Los Angeles. In 1949 the ‘Frankfurt School’ moved back to Germany, although some members remained in the United States. These geographical, political and cultural contexts are important, in that they shaped the School’s analysis of popular culture. On the one hand, the School was concerned about the influence of Hollywood and, particularly in the case of Adorno, the cultural prominence of Tin Pan Alley compositions and the emergence of jazz. On the other hand, directly affected by the rise of Fascist and Stalinist totalitarianism and a virulent anti-Semitism, their Marxist analysis was shaped by a deep concern for human freedom. Acutely sensitive to totalitarian social control and attempts to monopolize the production of culture and the construction of social and personal identities, they interpreted the prevalence of popular culture in the United States in terms of the totalitarianism 24

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they had witnessed in Europe. Hence, Adorno argued that while they may have escaped fascism, freedom was nevertheless being threatened by a more subtle form of totalitarianism, a system over which people had no control and which shaped their understanding of the world, ‘the culture industry’ – a term he coined to refer to the products and processes of ‘mass culture’ (Adorno 1991). He was particularly sensitive to the increasing influence of popular music in this respect: ‘The power of the street ballad, the catchy tune and all the swarming forms of the banal’ had, he argued, ‘made itself felt since the beginning of the bourgeois era’ and now ‘the power of the banal extends over the entire society’ (Adorno 1991: 34). Popular music, he observed, ‘seems to complement the reduction of people to silence, the dying out of speech as expression, the inability to communicate at all. It inhabits the pockets of silence that develop between people moulded by anxiety, work and undemanding docility. … It is perceived purely as background’ (Adorno 1991: 30). The problem, of course, is that, as Simon Frith has pointed out, ‘the actual use of music by pop fans is scarcely examined – passivity is assumed. The supposed effects of pop are, rather, deduced from the nature of the music itself’ (Frith 1981: 45). Hence, Frith was one of a number of scholars in the 1980s whose work encouraged a quite different view of popular music than Adorno had presented. As the discipline of popular music studies was beginning to coalesce, a new appreciation of the social significance of music evolved. Drawing on the work of cultural theorists such as Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall, as well as the renewed interest in the writings of political theorists such as particularly Antonio Gramsci, scholars such as Paul Willis, Simon Jones and Dick Hebdige reversed the sociological gaze. In an attempt to demonstrate that popular music functions as a resource in and through which agency and identity are produced, they examined its social presence and the subcultures it generated and supported. The development of these methodologies and foci were, of course, inevitable since the early study of popular music was, for the most part, undertaken by sociologists, anthropologists and cultural theorists, rather than musicologists. That said, in more recent years these developments have begun to inform musicology. Influenced by the social sciences, since the mid-1990s, the discipline of critical musicology (often referred to as ‘new musicology’ in the United States) has emerged out of a conviction that the production and reception of music can only properly be understood with reference to its social and cultural contexts. To this end, critical musicology is not only necessarily multidisciplinary, but it has been enormously important in bringing musicology into conversation with the social sciences. Indeed, while much recent analysis of popular music has been highly critical of Adorno’s assessment, the theoretical trajectories of critical musicology generally support his central thesis, namely that it is fundamentally connected to habits of mind, to social organization and to modes of subjectivity. ‘Dedicated to exploring the hypothesis that musical organization is a simulacrum for social organization, Adorno’s work conceives of music as formative of social consciousness.’ It is in this regard, says DeNora, that Adorno’s work ‘represents the most significant development in the twentieth century of the idea that music is a “force” in social life, a building material of consciousness and social structure’ (DeNora 2000: 2). It is not difficult, working from these theoretical foundations, to see how popular music might have a significant relationship to religion, in that, at a very basic level, it binds people together around shared meanings. For example, Adorno’s analysis of the relationship of music to social being is evident in more recent work that explores homologies between social situations, subjectivities and music. Hence, based on an empirical analysis of the production and reception of music, Paul Willis’s Profane Culture (1978) provided an essentially class-based discussion of the 25

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uses of music by middle-class hippies and working-class bikers. The latter, seeking an ‘antidote to boredom’ (Willis 1978: 68), preferred rock ’n’ roll with its simple musical arrangements, because it stimulated the production of adrenaline and, therefore, the dynamism associated with their social world: ‘If you hear a fast record you’ve got to get up and do something’ (Willis 1978: 73). Hippies, on the other hand, preferred the more complex and intricate compositions of progressive rock. These articulated a more contemplative attitude of ‘serious listening’, as well as a desire to restructure ‘normal time’, to expand it into a reflective, affective space. Unlike a biker’s preference for singles – which articulated their desire to be on the move at speed – the hippie preferred the LP format, which provided extended musical worlds to inhabit, sonic environments populated by sound effects, reverb and feedback, all of which engendered an impression of ‘space and lateral extension’ (Willis 1978: 157, 167–8), particularly if accompanied by drug-induced altered states. This, in turn, made its confluence with ‘spirituality’ and metaphysical reflection natural and easy (see Partridge 2010: 154–61). This ability of music can be enhanced by the inclusion of culturally specific sounds. For example, typically conducive to the engendering of affective spaces informed by countercultural spiritual concerns in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the use of mantras and instruments associated with India. As Sheila Whiteley notes of the period, ‘Raga motifs … tambouras, dilruba, tabla and sitar resonate both with the beads, bells and joss sticks of the underground and with the India of the Bhagavad Gita’ (Whiteley 1992: 50–1). Mantras and the sitar, which referenced India and ‘the East’, accompanied by music aimed at producing relaxation and contemplation, introduced conspicuous spiritual content into the affective space of the listener. As Susan Fast comments of fans’ responses to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir’ (Physical Graffiti, 1975), ‘They make … a general association between the East and spirituality, including mysticism’ (Fast 2001: 91). This is obvious in the music of Quintessence (In Blissful Company, 1969), John McLaughlin (My Goal’s Beyond, 1971), the Mahavishnu Orchestra (The Inner Mounting Flame, 1971) and Carlos Santana and Alice Coltrane (Illuminations, 1974), and, perhaps most famously, several tracks by the Beatles, on which George Harrison plays sitar, such as ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ (Revolver, 1966) and ‘Within You Without You’ (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967). The point is that the early ethnography of popular music began to reveal music as dynamic, ‘a kind of aesthetic technology, or an instrument of social ordering’ (DeNora 2000: 7) capable of informing values, shaping habits, controlling the perception of time and structuring religious experience. Similarly, this is conspicuous in contemporary electronic dance music, particularly in the ‘spiritechnics’ of contemporary psytrance culture (see St John 2012).

Intertextuality and the construction of affective space Music contextualizes and constructs meaning for listeners because of its intertextual relationship to compositional conventions. A piece of music, which can be thought of as a ‘text’, presupposes, following Julia Kristeva, ‘the existence of other discourses. … This is to say that every text is from the outset under the jurisdiction of other discourses which impose a universe on it’ (quoted in Culler 2001: 116; Kristeva 1980). Kristeva’s notion of other discourses imposing a universe upon a text is an evocative and important one. Again, we might also think of Stanley Fish’s social reader-response thesis. For Fish, because one cannot speak of texts without also speaking of readers and contexts, the range of available meanings is limited by the ‘interpretive 26

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communities’ to which one belongs. In other words, readers’ subjective responses to texts are, in the final analysis, not particularly subjective, in that ‘interpretive communities, rather than either the text or the reader … produce meanings’ (Fish 1980: 14). An interpretive community is, he argues, made up of those who share ‘the interpretive strategies’ which are always, wittingly or unwittingly, brought to texts. Whereas some people will be fully cognizant of the interpretive strategies they employ, such as worshippers at an Evangelical church or Goths at a Sisters of Mercy concert, others will be unaware that they belong to any interpretive community at all. Of course, we all do belong to interpretative communities, the strategies of which are shaped by various presuppositions that influence our expectations as to what meanings we might discover in a text/piece of music. Readers come to texts already predisposed to read them in particular ways. Bearing the above in mind, meanings can shift and thereby evoke a range of affective spaces. Take, for example, ‘Personal Jesus’ by Depeche Mode (Violator, 1990). The song is about personal relationships and the way in which one partner can be significantly dependent on the other. In this sense, one partner becomes ‘the savior’, ‘the confessor’, ‘the Jesus’, of the other partner. However, the meaning of the text shifted radically when it was covered in 2002 by Johnny Cash (American IV), a convert to Evangelical Christianity, and then again in 2004 by Marilyn Manson (Lest We Forget), whose misanthropic rhetoric and membership of the Church of Satan is well known. Sung by the Christian Cash in old age, ‘Personal Jesus’ becomes a touching devotional song. Sung by Marilyn Manson, it drips with irony and profane meaning – made explicit in the video, which is conspicuously transgressive in its careful mixing of sacred and profane imagery. Thinking of music in this way, as text, we are also helped towards understanding why sounds have particular meanings. Again, the sitar is able to evoke associations with Indian spirituality, which, because of an intertextual relationship with a relatively recent history of orientalist discourse in the West, suggests the ethereal and the mystical. Again, music frequently has historical social and cultural associations. For example, Eric Coates’ ‘Dam Busters March’ from the 1955 film The Dam Busters, signifies, for some people, a nostalgic form of post-war British patriotism. Consequently, it is now played at military parades in the UK as a way of evoking British identity and binding a community together around shared values. Powerfully evocative in a different way are the dramatic stabbing jabs of strings in their upper registers, which, because they were used in Bernard Herrmann’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho, now consistently signify menace. The point is that, because of this intertextuality, whether we think of the use of strings in Psycho, the ‘Dam Busters March’ or, indeed, the theme from The Twilight Zone, music is invested with meaning by the listener. Our encounter with music, therefore, elicits particular values and attitudes: aggression, calm, patriotism, subversion, mysticism, devotion, sobriety, eroticism, fear and unease. It creates an affective space within which meaning-making occurs. While we may read particular meanings into specific pieces of popular music because of their associations with moments within our own histories, the same pieces may also convey meanings as a result of their associations with ideas in wider culture, ideas that have formed within the interpretive communities to which we belong. In this sense, Frith is correct to insist that ‘we are not free to read anything we want into a song’. Rather, ‘the experience of pop music is an experience of placing: in responding to a song, we are drawn, haphazardly, into affective and emotional alliances with the performers and with the performers’ other fans’ (Frith 2007: 263), as well as with wider interpretive strategies. It is in this sense that we can speak of music communicating meaning and emotion in much the same way that language does (see, Patel 2008). 27

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Again, thinking specifically of religious meanings, because Gregorian chant, the central tradition of Western plainchant, is culturally associated with a particular form of devotion and a particular ecclesiastical setting; it is difficult to detach it from that context when we hear it. Hence, emotionally, we respond accordingly, in that, because, it is a gentle form of music associated with Christian worship, the affective space it creates is, for many people, calming and ‘spiritual’. But there is of course usually more than this. Our reading of Gregorian chant will typically include feelings of reverence, informed by, perhaps, Romantic, possibly gothic notions of medieval ecclesiastical life and processions of chanting, cowled monks. This is why in popular culture the gravity of occult ritual is often conveyed visually with cowls and candles and aurally with liturgical chant. It is, for example, used to great effect in films such as Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999) and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Again, just as cowls and candles are used in music videos by bands wanting to evoke a sense of gothic gravity, so is Gregorian chant employed for similar reasons: ‘The Song of the Sibyl’ by Dead Can Dance (Aion 1990) and ‘Sign of the Cross’ by Iron Maiden (The X Factor, 1995), both of which focus on biblical apocalyptic themes, use chant to evoke a sense of the medieval sacred. Because such meanings are relatively stable, chant can be used creatively with other music to evoke particular affective spaces. A good example of this is Enigma’s confluence of the sacred and the profane through the incorporation of Gregorian chant into electronic dance music. For example, ‘Sadeness’ (MCMXC a.D., 1990), one of the most internationally successful records of 1991, although a piece of music linked with the Marquis de Sade, including sexually suggestive female vocals, incorporates Gregorian chant. Hence, when juxtaposed with that which would typically, in a Christian culture, be considered profane, the effect is powerful, creating a particularly evocative dissonance, which, in turn, suggests sexual transgression. To unpack this point a little, the track begins by introducing the listener to a strong, repetitive dance beat and heavy bass. This is significant because, generally speaking, we have learned to think of this sound in terms of the profane, largely because music is motoric: wittingly or unwittingly, we keep time to rhythm; music is corporeal; it is immediately related to the bodily; ‘we listen to music’, observed Nietzsche, ‘with our muscles’ (quoted in Sacks 2008: xii). In a Christian culture, this focus on the body has tended to be treated with suspicion, in that the body is viewed as a site of potential transgression. For example, Susan McClary’s thoughtful analysis of the opera Carmen, shows that ‘Bizet grounds Carmen’s music in the physical impulses of exotic, pseudogypsy dance’, he links it to rhythms that indicate ‘she is very much aware of her body’ and, as such, she is portrayed musically as the profane ‘dissonant Other’ (McClary 1991: 57). Whether one considers that ‘it is by now a deeply rooted commonsense assumption that a funk beat necessarily means sex’ (Frith 1996: 102), or that much rock music is essentially ‘cock rock’ (Frith and McRobbie 1990: 374), or that Elvis Presley’s ‘breakthrough was that he was the first male white singer to propose that fucking was a desirable activity’ (Wise 1990: 392), or that disco can be described in terms of ‘“whole body” eroticism’ (Dyer 1990: 413); the articulations among popular music, dance and sexuality have been widely discussed. So, because of the meanings dance music possesses, on beginning to listen to Enigma’s ‘Sadeness’, we arrive particular meanings which engender a confidence as to how to respond to the sound and (whether we are conscious of it or not) anticipate a number of possible ways in which the piece might progress – all of which include ideas associated with the affective spaces normally encouraged by contemporary dance music. These expectations 28

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circumscribe the possible meanings of the next layer of music, Gregorian chant, which arrives unexpectedly. The problem is that, rather than following the music along a well-known path – determined by the conventions of electronic dance music – the inclusion of chant leaves the listener to look for a way forward. While seeking resolution for the conceptual dissonance between the sacred and the profane, the ancient and the modern, the dissonance is actually increased by the explicit inclusion of breathy female vocals and explicitly erotic signification (made conspicuous in the video). The spiritual and the sexual are merged within the same affective space. This transgressive impact, produced by the confluence of sacred chant and corporeal profanity, was significant in the appeal of ‘Sadeness’. Analysing popular music using ‘reader-response’ criticism, we can map the pattern by which the music structures the listener’s emotional response while listening. As such a piece of music becomes an event which acts on a person, does something to a listener, stimulating the creation of an affective space. Again, while we may have some agency in our use of music, this is limited by our cultures, our backgrounds, our social contexts and the meanings the music itself possesses. Gregorian chant, Christian hymns, Buddhist mantras, dance music and heavy metal carry certain meanings that are difficult to dispense with. Understanding this enables analysis of some of the issues surrounding religion and popular music.

Music as a prosthetic technology Music can be understood as a prosthetic technology, in that it has the power to extend the natural abilities of the body and the mind (see DeNora 2000: 102–8). It can be used to organize subjects, to increase the flow of adrenaline, to slow the body, to manipulate the perception of time, to provide rhythm, to aid relaxation, to control feeling and to manage thought. Again, Willis’s ethnographic work with ‘hippies’ demonstrated this prosthetic potential, in that it showed music to be clearly ‘capable of influencing feeling and emotion. People who were depressed or in a period of personal crisis often turned their attention massively to music’ (Willis 1978: 164). Indeed, where people couldn’t help a person, he notes, music often could, in that it was able ‘to take over and express disorganised feeling in a way that was impossible in words. The music itself partly shaped the form of emotion, so that in accounts afterwards of “strange” or “depressed” episodes, music would figure prominently, and would be used as a way of explaining what happened. Occasionally people would say that a certain track has “made them understand”, had “changed them”’ (Willis 1978: 164; cf. Green 2015). Again, DeNora’s research into the use of music by airlines to calm passengers, to demand their attention and to inculcate their faith in ‘expert systems’, indicates just how powerful it is as a prosthetic technology (DeNora 2000: 9–14). Similarly, marketers and social planners have not been slow to exploit music’s power, whether in the manipulation of consumer behaviour in stores or in the reduction of vandalism in social spaces. Adrian North, David Hargreaves and Jennifer McKendrick, for example, have demonstrated that stereotypically French and German music influences the choice of French and German wines by supermarket customers. Over a 2-week period, French and German music was played on alternate days from an in-store display of French and German wines. French music led to French wines outselling German ones, whereas German music led to the opposite effect on sales of French wine. 29

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Responses to a questionnaire suggested that customers were unaware of these effects of music on their product choices. (North, Hargreaves and McKendrick 1999: 271) In a similar way, music has been shown to be enormously powerful in the manipulation of mood and in the creation of spiritually significant affective spaces, from the use of ambient electronic music at emerging church gatherings to hymns and choruses in more traditional worship settings. Similar results can be found in studies of the relationship between music and health (see Hanser 2010). For example, in their overview of the literature on physiological responses to music and sound stimuli, Wendy Knight and Nikki Rickard have shown that, in clinical populations, ‘music appears to quite consistently reduce sympathetic nervous system-related indices of stress’. For example, they note that ‘coronary patients exposed to music showed lower heart and respiratory rates than patients who were not exposed to music’. Likewise, when surgical patients listened to music, they ‘showed a decrease in blood pressure and heart rate … and a reduction of cortisol levels … when compared to patients not exposed to music’. Finally, they note that ‘immune responses were found to be enhanced in patients exposed to music when compared to patients not exposed to music’ (Knight and Rickard 2001: 256). For most people, such research does little more than state the obvious (see Marsh and Roberts 2015). That music manipulates mood is hardly a groundbreaking revelation. It is common knowledge that music has the power to influence ‘how people compose their bodies, how they conduct themselves, how they experience the passage of time, how they feel – in terms of energy and emotion – about themselves, about others, about situations’ (DeNora 2000: 17). This is why it has such significant prosthetic potential. John Sloboda’s psychological research is worth noting here: When 67 regular listeners of music were asked to describe the nature of their most valued responses to music, two common themes emerged. The first theme was of music as a change agent, in which it helped the individual to move from a less desirable to a more desirable psychological state. This was evident in statements such as ‘music relaxes me when I am tense and anxious’, ‘music motivates and inspires me to be a better person (e.g. more agreeable and loving)’. The second theme was of music as promoting the intensifications or release of existing emotions. This was indicated by statements such as ‘Music helps me discover what I am actually feeling’, and ‘Music reconnects me to be myself when my emotions are ignored or suppressed through sheer busyness’. (Sloboda 2005: 215–16) This type of response to music is movingly expressed by Mike Oldfield. As a sufferer of recurring panic attacks, he recalls that, at times, he was ‘sick … couldn’t eat … was really upset … completely freaked out’ and ‘just couldn’t go on …’ Indeed, he remembers that ‘when I was going through my worst times I felt I was possessed.’ However, ‘when it all became too much’, he says, ‘I could retreat into my musical world. It was like a cocoon around me, everything inside was just beautiful and safe. I could imagine every single instrument saying something – the bass wouldn’t just be a bass guitar, it would be a big, deep personality. Music was as familiar to me as the human voice and human language, with proper words and sentences. It all made sense, in its own musical way.’ He continues, ‘the wonderful musical world was … a kind of nirvana in music, a place of safety that I lived in and that stopped the panic attacks from coming’ (Oldfield 2008: 98–9, 160–1).

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Concluding comments: Music, emotion and religion Bearing the above in mind, it is unsurprising that music, an invisible force that structures affective space, has been formally theologized. For example, in Hinduism, the notion of Nāda-Brahman refers to the divine as ‘sound consciousness’ or what Guy Beck has translated as ‘sonic theology’ – the experience of the universe as sound. There is understood to be an integral relationship between music and Nāda, which, in turn, is ‘essential to Indian views of the soteriological significance of music, for music, as a manifestation of Nāda is seen as a mode of access to the highest reality’ (Beck 1995: 108). Similar sonic theologies can be found in cultures around the world, all of which understand music to be, at some level, a source of spiritual growth and social cohesion, a method of communicating the sacred and achieving mental states conducive to enlightenment. The point is made explicit by the popular Qawwali singer, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: ‘When I sing for God, I feel myself in accord with God. I feel like I am in another world when I sing, the spiritual world. I am not in the material world. … I’m totally in another world. I am withdrawn from my materialistic senses, I am totally in my spiritual senses’ (quoted in Ehrlich 1997: 121). It is, of course, significant that the term ‘music’ is derived from Greek word mousikē, the sacred realm of the Muses. Through its peculiar ability to construct affective space as a site of meaning-making, music encourages psychosomatic states that much spiritual practice seeks to cultivate. Again, it is hardly surprising that, on the one hand, it can evoke religious meanings and, on the other, it is useful in religious contexts. It is one of the principal ways in which humans manipulate emotion and construct meaning in their lives. In other words, it is used as a prosthetic technology in the construction of sacred space. This, in turn, of course, makes music peculiarly potent within the contexts of not only worship but also healing and pastoral care. Hence, healing rituals often include both music and prayer. This is particularly conspicuous in indigenous communities. As Benjamin Koen comments: Most, if not all, traditional healing contexts consider religion or the supernatural critical to the success of any intervention, which virtually always includes some form of music, specialized sound, and prayer. … In some cases, prayer and its sound or musical form are one. Notably, the relationship between music/sound and prayer is such that one component might make an intervention (that includes music or prayer) efficacious or powerless (Koen 2008: 99–100).

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Chapter 3

Music, Religion and Protest Ian Peddie

Beginning a chapter on music, religion and protest with a quotation from poetry may seem incongruous. Yet the poet in question, Seamus Heaney (1939–2013), who was the recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, possessed one of the most tuneful of ears. In ‘Song,’ a delicate, almost ethereal octet, Heaney speaks movingly of nature’s ability to marry the genus and the species with pitch and sound. The result of this natural phenomena is, the poet concludes, ‘the music of what happens’ (1999: 173). The phrase is useful beyond its obvious utility as a departure point; we might, for example, pause to consider the extent to which Heaney, or artists more broadly, conceived of ‘what happens’ in terms of music. The idea, writ large, is that music is one of the key tenets that coheres our world: we use it to understand emotion and being; we employ it to define resistance and to organize protest, and that we, in fact, absorb it intrinsically seems axiomatic. And, without sounding glib, much the same conclusions might be drawn about religion. Like music, which Thomas Mann once suggested ‘belongs to a world of spirits’ (1997: 11), religion is also difficult, challenging, often problematic and sometimes consoling: despite our expectations and desires then, neither religion nor music as we receive them have ‘perfect pitch’ of quotidian life. What religion and music can express are the tensions and contradictions at the heart of protest. Yet even at this early juncture in this chapter, the dream of a socio-musical teleology eludes us: there is no simple way of expressing how religion did or did not influence music, or vice versa, just as there is no easy calibration of how protest responded to such influences. Instead, for instance, the broad aggregations and shared identities often attributed to religion, a term I use in the broadest sense, incorporate the kind of inherent conflicts that open a space for music – and for protest too. Here recourse to Methodism, a denomination that E. P. Thompson concluded had established itself as the religion of the exploiter and the exploited in nineteenth-century England and beyond, is illuminating, for John Wesley enjoyed music as much as it worried him. Would music, he wondered, weaken the devotional resolve of the faithful? ‘What had counterpoint to do with the passions?’ he continued, ‘for it is merely to the ear, to the imagination, or internal sense.’ Variation of note and the addition of melody compelled Wesley to complain that ‘this astonishing jargon has found a place even in the worship of God’ (quoted in Russell 1987: 155). Wesley was less keen on the popular tradition than he was on the sacred music that was fundamental to his own conversion. Yet, he must have understood that even the most pious of sacred Methodist hymns would lend themselves to forms of collective community beyond the adhesive of religion. This was particularly the case in early twentieth-century America where the tunes of hymns were readily adapted to social and political causes. Critics such as Serge Denisoff

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have pointed to the religious roots of protest music, suggesting that the church appropriated popular tunes and used them as a means of creating hymns that promulgated their evangelical message. What followed, so this interpretation goes, was the re-appropriation of religious tunes by workers and union members keen to spread their message. Thus, the International Workers of the World (IWW), a US-based union, issued an annual Little Red Songbook, a title which clearly alluded to many a version of hymnbook, with songs which included adaptations of standard hymns. These songs, which championed unions and workers, had a tactical immediacy which could be adapted to almost any situation. For example, ‘Stand Up, Stand Up, for Jesus’ became ‘Stand Up, Stand Up, Ye Workers’ (1927). This tradition was, however, largely confined to the white American proletariat. For black Americans the situation was much different: a fraught and agonized history ensured that overt musical protest was relatively rare. Instead, their forms of protest had to be subtle, covert, coded and implied; anything else was far too dangerous. Of central importance here was the rise of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the early 1800s, which emerged as a response to racial discrimination by white Methodists, and which became associated with a hymnody in which scholars now identify the faint sound of protest. Almost a century later, and echoing this connection between religion and protest, the African-American poet and educator James Weldon Johnson rendered the vocabulary of emancipation in musical terms. ‘Lift every voice and sing,’ he wrote, ‘Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,/Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us’ (‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’).1 These were sentiments that, in retrospect, expressed more hope than realism: at the time when Johnson articulated his vision, there were many symphony orchestras and opera companies that prohibited black players. But blacks did benefit from the arrival at the National Conservatory in 1892 of the Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák. Whether apocryphal or not, the conviction often attributed to Dvořák, that ‘in the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music’ (quoted in Listemann 1893) certainly found expression in his Symphony No. 5 in E Minor (From the New World), which premiered in 1893. Not only did this work infuse Negro spirituals with a good deal of authority, it inspired other black composers like Harry Burleigh (1866–1849), a protégé of Dvořák’s, whose Old Songs Hymnal (1929) was designed to provide traditional Negro songs to be used in church. While not overtly protestatory in nature, work such as that by Burleigh and similar composers provides a bridge between a rising black cultural emancipation and the more open forms of opposition found in genres such as the blues. In fact, it is no exaggeration to suggest that such is the fundamental role that the blues plays in the relationship between music and religion, that ragtime and perhaps even jazz, its immediate predecessors, seem subordinate preliminaries. The rise of the blues is commensurate with the changing role of the church in African-American life. For over a century, the church had been at the heart of African-American life. Social historians and ethnomusicologists have identified a change in black religious consciousness that began to gather pace at the turn of the twentieth century. The blues nourished this change, which brought the secular more and more into contact with the sacred; it was the blues that provided the means through which received ideas about religion could be contemplated and even challenged. Similarly, it was the blues, buttressed by movements such as the Harlem Renaissance, that provided a vehicle for African-American expression unencumbered by religious edict.

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Demonizing music Not surprisingly, the church saw all this as a threat and countered by condemning the blues as ‘the Devil’s music’. This condemnation, a variation of which, as we shall see, was associated with rock and roll as well as with heavy metal, assumed its authority from three important sources. First, the blues was and is associated with poverty and oppression; second, blues lyrics often spoke of sex, violence, suicide and so on; and third, and most intriguingly, the blues became a site of the alleged struggle between God and the Devil in American culture. It was through this struggle between the sacred and the profane that the blues became associated with the mythology of the demotic. A good deal of the impetus for this form of demonology arose from the increasing independence of the black male, which slowly grew as the twentieth century progressed. Though caution must be observed in suggesting even incremental selfdetermination for African Americans, the fact is that there was a sense of advancement that ran commensurate with the decline in influence of the church. The waning influence of institutional dependency suggested that the avenues of social control formerly applied to African Americans were beginning to be eroded. Worse still, as a symbol the blues player seemed worryingly itinerant, able to come and go as he pleased, critical of the church and keen to advertise the hardships fundamental to black life; as if to confirm his own self-determination, the blues picker also carried his own tools, specifically a guitar, a string instrument which, like Satan’s favoured violin, has diabolical connotations. Because populist visions of the bluesman elicited a sense of threat that was socially and politically derived, it followed that his music must also be devilish. The key figure here is the ‘High Sheriff of Hell’, Robert Johnson (1911–38), who legend had it had sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his virtuoso guitar skills. While Johnson was not the only bluesman to allegedly have made this Faustian pact – the same was later said of Howlin’ Wolf – he readily contributed to the myth through songs such as ‘Me and the Devil Blues’ (1938) and ‘Hellhound on my Trail’ (1937). Thus, the sociopolitical disquiet over an independent African American willing to chronicle in great detail the still desperate plight of millions of his people was particularly attuned to the kind of blues realism that eschewed theological responses in favour of the quotidian. In so doing, the bluesman did more than document social evils: he dragged the sacred and the profane into the light. ‘It is not that the Blues reject God,’ wrote the critic and theologian James Cone, ‘rather they ignore God by embracing the joys and sorrows of life’ (1972: 99). A more accurate appraisal might suggest what the blues is actually disavowing is the omnipotence of God, because for all its secularism it is worth remembering that the blues is far from being an absolutist rejection of theology. Instead, the distance between the Blues as social/secular protest and the blues as theological affirmation increased as the social and political circumstances of African Americans changed. Indeed, there are numerous examples where the previously revered is normalized. Thus, the appearance of figures such as the greedy or sexually predatory preacher, and themes such as the efficacy of prayer, the function of the Bible and the real presence of hypocrisy, all of which found their way into the blues, suggest that forms of protest were alive and well. As these interpretations imply, simple distinctions between the sacred and the secular in African-American culture remained elusive. As the century passed its midpoint, there is little doubt that the mantle of ‘Devil’s music’ was passed from the blues to various genres of rock and roll.

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As the role of the church as the collective conscience of black Americans began to weaken, so the function of Gospel to musically express that conscience also began to lose ground. Yet while it would be simplistic to state that black America was sundered between the secular and the sacred, there is little doubt that supernatural interpretations of the world African Americans experienced carried progressively less and less weight. These growing divisions are often understood from within a framework of socio-political change: that is, the northward migration of millions of blacks between the wars, the weakening of forms of segregation and the growing public consciousness and identity of hitherto deeply oppressed blacks all had significant impact. In fact, these changes fostered and nourished something of an intra-racial protest that was articulated through culture. Nevertheless, there are many ironies at play here, not least in terms of those artists who appropriated gospel songs for a populist audience. Such a list would include Ben E. King, Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett, Martha Reeves, the Vandellas and so on. As the above discussion implies, the dominance of British and American culture has tended to set the agenda regarding music, religion and protest. And, as we shall see, though there is much to say about world music, religion and protest, the ambiguities and contradictions that surround the sonic, the sacred and the remonstrative were vigorously contested. For every contested category, for every competing genre, there existed a series of ideologies as to the efficacy and suitability of popular music to fulfil particular aims. And while it would be too reductive to state that, historically, the relationship between popular music and religion is perceived either as a stairway to heaven or a highway to hell, there has been much protest against music from within the church. Historically, of course, music has occupied competing positions among religious practitioners; it was often a means of encouraging community participation, as it was with some Quaker elements, where ‘how can I keep from singing’ and ‘rise up and sing’ rescued nineteenth- and twentieth-century Quakers from silence; likewise, the Salvation Army deployed music as a tool of recruitment and a means of fostering cohesion; and despite popular perception, early settlers in the New World also turned to music to enhance their sermons. It is, however, no coincidence that such uses of music were at their core performative, for the contest over the utility of music is an argument over how its performative aspects are to be interpreted: Is music an enhancement to religion or does it undermine worship? Not surprisingly, it is capable of both, but the complex questions that surround this rhetorical reduction to two binary opposites typify the extent to which the problem of music and religion is stronger on emotional appeal than it is on hard analysis. Indeed, there are a number of books that explore the putative satanic corruption of youth by a manipulative and sinister music industry, including Jeff Godwin’s The Devil’s Disciples: The Truth About Rock (1985) and Rock & Roll Religion: The War Against God (1995). In the same vein, though even more extreme in its condemnation of communists, Africanism, the Beatles and so on, is the dean of the Christian Crusade David A. Noebel’s book Rhythm, Riots, and Revolution: An Analysis of the Communist Use of Music – The Communist Master Music Plan (1966). These studies suggest not so much a division between religion and music but rather the presence of a paranoid group of conspiracists. If this kind of thinking recalls the communist scares of the 1950s, it is worth noting that popular music was advanced by right-wing commentators as a conduit through which communism might gain a foothold and subsequently undermine Western society. Though such specious dichotomies are nothing more than an old story, they hold such surprising sway because popular music is, as Christopher Partridge points out, at heart a transgressive act (2014: 63–114). In other words, then, 35

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popular music becomes something against which religion is often defined. Such definition by negation becomes useful because it allows religion to challenge who has the right to protest. What emerges from this struggle over who holds the moral ground of righteous protest is the following conundrum: How are the questions that surround religion, music and protest politicized? For advocates of popular music, part of the answer can be found in the kind of discontent that allows them to view society in ways radically different to the established version. In turn, for advocates of religion, the new identities and new enemies that the rise of popular music traditionally suggests encourages the demonization of large swathes of popular music. It was not that attacks on rock and roll were the exclusive province of those the historian Richard Hofstadter called purveyors of the ‘paranoid style’ (1965: 3–40); in an article that appeared in the London Daily Sketch on 30 October 1957, Frank Sinatra had only one reservation in his enthusiastic advocacy of the positive worldwide effects of American popular music: My only deep sorrow is the unrelenting insistence of recording and motion picture on churning out the most brutal, degenerate, ugly, violent form of expression it has been my displeasure to hear – I refer to rock n roll. It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phony and false. It is sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons and by means of its almost imbecilic reiterations and sly, lewd – in plain fact dirty – lyrics, and as I said before, it manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth. This rancid smelling aphrodisiac I deplore. (quoted in Turner 2004: 104) One might be tempted to laugh at this level of hyperbole, but these fears were, remarkably it now seems, very real. Neither were they confined to the west. In the Muslim world, for example, the extent to which popular music is seen as a threat to the social fabric and a threat to the Muslim faith exceeds the worst of Western paranoia. Given that the more religious a society purports to be, the more it relies on superstition and myth, the fear that popular music might undermine society has resulted in censorship or the kind of ‘repressive tolerance’ designed to hinder and harass musicians. A useful point of discussion here is the presence of heavy metal in the Middle East and North Africa over the last two decades. As a means of protest against prevailing regimes in the area, it is difficult to find a more antagonistic genre than heavy metal; it is no surprise, then, to see heavy metal musicians and fans vilified as apostolic and satanic, and as a kind of enemy within. These and similar assertions and condemnations no doubt played a part in creating a climate where the ‘most popular forms of metal have been its more extreme genres: death, black, Goth, doom, grind, grind-core, progressive, and nu metal’ (LeVine 2011: 56). Not only do these extreme genres attest to the deep sense of discontent that pervades the zeitgeist of youth in the Middle East, they also indicated the lengths to which people will go to in order to express protest. After all, in some countries merely walking in the town centre wearing, say, an Iron Maiden T-shirt involves considerable risk. At the risk of labouring a point, at stake in such forms of protest are the various identities permissible within countries and cultures. To authorities, what makes the kind of metal scenes in Iran and surrounding countries so threatening is the fear that the subcultures themselves may either provide much of what a religion might offer, or else the subculture might function as a surrogate that jettisons religion altogether. Even more threatening is the fact that by defining 36

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itself as antithetical to the spirit-crushing, deadening conformity of the official culture and ideology of a society, as the Iranian heavy metal band ArthimotH did against the Islamic republic, the subculture and its adherents harbour a social critique significant enough to border on the revolutionary. Accompanying ArthimotH’s ‘Baptize’, from their album Flowers in the Desert (2010), was a provocative video that showed a man sitting in a prison/laboratory with electrodes on his head. He is made to drink various mysterious liquids, a mouse gnaws his brain before the top of his head is sewn back on and he staggers away in a near-lobotomized state (LeVine 2011: 64). Not surprisingly – given the clear implications of what this video says about adherents to state ideology and culture – the band members and video production team were quickly arrested. The lengths to which states will go to oppress, ban or silence musical opposition attests to the perceived power of popular music. Iran’s Googoosh (Faegheh Atashin) and Sri Lanka’s Nanda Malini, for example, have been subjected to bans and attempts at silencing, while Pakistan’s Islamic leaders have made considerable attempts to restrict the music of London-based Nazia Hassan. Whatever these or other similarly oppressed artists sang about, their music tended to meet with a similar official response. One of the reasons that we can generalize with such conviction here is because authoritative regimes and religion are both hierarchical. Popular music, on the other hand, has something faintly democratic about it, as Eastern Europe found out after 1989: popular music certainly played a part in eroding the ideologies of Communist regimes while, at the same time, and unlike the dictatorial societies of the Warsaw Pact, it seemed to open a space wherein popular music ‘debunked Marxist-Leninist assumptions about the state’s ability to control its citizens’ (Ryback 1990: 5). In this light, then, as the hierarchical view of authoritative regimes and religions must be continually reasserted and reinforced, popular music is continually repudiating and rejecting that which is perceived to be oppressive and illegitimate. Not surprisingly in this Manichean vision, which is political, social and spiritual, the struggle between religion and popular music also turns on to what degree each can lay legitimate claim to spirituality. Attempts at carving a middle ground have been made. In ways not dissimilar to Soviet attempts to contain and domesticate rock music, Christian music was an attempt to utilize existing musical styles and overlay them with sacred lyrics. It began with evangelicals in the 1970s expressing concerns over the alleged fate of America’s youth, though one wonders to what extent the ubiquity of social and political protest in the Vietnam era, along with accompanying protest music, played a role in the rise of ‘Jesus music’. Thus regarded, Christian music articulated a fairly commonplace view based on the dubious assumption that it was the guardian of certain moral values. Certainly Christian music was conservative, it was messianic, and it had an imperialistic bent which encouraged practitioners to sonically ‘share the good news’. Yet as numerous commentators have pointed out, much of the problem with audience acceptance of Christian music is that it appeared to do little more than use established forms while adding Christian lyrics. Poor production quality and lack of access to mainstream forms of exposure compounded the problem that Christian music’s point, its evangelizing aim, was its own obstacle. These inherent problems did not end there: Was Christian music saving souls or selling songs? What is worth noting here is that by the 1960s religion had to embrace a medium it had for so long regarded as profane. In fact, this had happened years earlier through the rise of gospel. Just as Christian music used the melodies and musical forms of popular songs, so gospel appropriated familiar tunes and added sacred lyrics. The genre has deep roots in African-American spirituals and work songs, though modern Gospel, endorsed by the National Baptist Convention in 1930, 37

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ironically owes much of its development to the blues: ‘Sung in the same improvisatory tradition with piano, guitar or instrumental-ensemble accompaniment Negro gospel music became essentially the sacred counterpart of the city blues’ (Southern 457). Thomas Dorsey, the legendary black gospel singer and so-called father of gospel – and the person who had a hand in the rise of Mahalia Jackson – was a key figure in the rise of gospel. But Dorsey, like so many artists, adopted the commercial techniques of popular song writers and gospel was soon seen in the theatre, in night clubs, in casinos at festivals and so on. The extent to which these dealings with the profane world of popular music and its commercial aspects affected the evangelical message of religious music is difficult to gauge. What they do indicate is that the deep divisions between the sacred and the profane, between religion and popular music, may never have been as profound as we have been led to believe. Indeed, there had – and always has – been much borrowing from either side. Consider, in this light, the popularity of early gospel, which encouraged political and social activists to appropriate gospel music as contrafacts. Songs such as ‘In the Sweet By and By’ (1868), written by S. Fillmore Bennett and Joseph P. Webster, was employed by labor organizer Joe Hill, who transformed it into the protest song ‘The Preacher and The Slave’ (1911), where the refrain became ‘You will eat, bye and bye,/In that glorious land above the sky;/Work and pray, live on hay,/You’ll get pie in the sky when you die’ (quoted in Adler 2011: 20). Just as there are countless examples of this nature, so there is quite a history of religious popular music. The idea that religion and music, in the guise of the sacred and the profane, remain sundered is questionable if one considers genres such as soul, hip hop, trance and reggae. The latter, which emerged from poverty-stricken communities like Trenchtown, was immediately criticized; it was seen as threatening in part because it sought to illuminate injustice, poverty and social inequality. But it was arguably perceived as still more threatening because of its association with Rastafarianism and its deep suspicion of politics in general. After all, the Rastafarian Movement Association had rejected the myth of Jamaica as a classless society comprising a variety of groups. Instead, the Movement asserted that Jamaica ‘indulges in an inferior[ity] complex – a pretentious class system, so it becomes a hypocritical, segregated society’ (quoted in King and Foster 2013: 256). In its infancy during the late 1960s, and before it became something of a mainstream tourist signifier, reggae was a challenging and vital music. Rastafarianism, which is central to reggae, was built upon a belief in the divinity of former Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie and a broad aim of a return to Africa. In fact, in the 1930s, it is probably no exaggeration to say that the precursor to Rastafarianism in Jamaica was ‘Ethiopianism’. Ethiopianism promoted a sense of Negro awakening of a scattered and oppressed people. It also promoted a sense that they were a ‘chosen’ people. And it was Ethiopianism that made connections with Jewish history and thus reinforced the negative connotations associated with Babylon. Worth recalling here is the biblical origin of the Rastafarian diaspora story and how it was borrowed from another source. In fact, the destruction of Jerusalem and the razing of its temple walls in 586 BC gave rise to a central folk memory of oppression and victimhood that often appears in diasporic tradition. The destruction itself was a response to the Jewish leader Zedikiah, who sanctioned a rebellion against the Mesopotamian Empire. The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar brutally suppressed the rebellion, forcing Zedikiah to witness the execution of his own son. Zedikiah was then blinded and dragged in chains to Babylon, along with key civic, military and religious personnel. Subsequently, 38

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Babylon became a code word among Jews for oppression and isolation – and it served the same function to Africans and, latterly, in a rather modified form, to Rastafarians and to Caribbean immigrants in the UK, the place where reggae was to emerge as an international music.

Self-determination The idea then, that Rastafarians could ‘Chant Down Babylon’ (Bob Marley, Confrontation, 1983) incorporated a desire for redemption and a return to Africa. This hope, in turn, was inspired by the notion that the black or African diaspora might return to an African homeland. Central to this interpretation is the concept of liberty, which is invariably at the core of protest music too. It is no coincidence, similarly, that as protest, music and religion were described and debated with intensity, the language and visions associated with colonialism loomed large. In fact, the possibility of forging a diasporic identity around a correlation between black America and emancipated peoples in 1950s and 1960s Asia and especially in Africa became a key feature of the African-American quest for rights. Inevitably it now seems the seismic changes that wrought the continents of Africa and Asia, of which independence and self-determination were central, exerted a profound influence on American music too. The critic and musician Archie Shepp’s contention that ‘Black music has transmitted the seeds of Black experience far more effectively than mere words acquired second hand’ (1981: xii) indicates that we might look to music for expressions of African-American self-determination. It is worth reiterating that references to the struggle for decolonizaton and self-definition were almost always more than mere gestures of assent; so high were the stakes that contemporary musicians were in no doubt that a defining moment was at hand. As jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins explained in the liner notes to his portentous 1958 album Freedom Suite, ‘How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America’s culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed; that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.’ Freedom Suite (1958), the full version of Charles Mingus’ Mingus Ah Um (1959), and Max Roach’s We Insist: Freedom Now (1960), the latter with songs titled ‘All Africa’ and ‘Tears for Johannesburg’, suggested a similarity of interests between the growing US Civil Rights Movement and newly freed Third World countries. Further implied similarities between the struggles of black Americans and newly decolonized countries are coded throughout music from the mid-1950s onwards. Notable in this respect is John Coltrane’s ‘Kulu Se Mama’ (Kulu Se Mama, 1965), a sophisticated composition replete with African percussion that produced a sound one critic described as ‘like a man strapped down and screaming to be free’ (Sidran 1981: 142). Such meditations on Africa helped foster a myriad of compositions calling for equality, of which perhaps the most notable include Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change is Gonna Come’ (Ain’t That Good News, 1964), and The Impressions’ ‘Keep on Pushing’ (Keep on Pushing, 1964) and ‘We’re a Winner’ (We’re a Winner, 1968) – both of the latter were written by Curtis Mayfield. These and other similar compositions articulated a disturbing vision of inequality and oppression in a society riven along racial lines. They also suggested that, by mid-century, a good deal of black spirituality was invested in an ‘aural landscape of resistance’ (Neal 1999: 80). In ways reminiscent of how the colonized exclusion from the public sphere encouraged a ‘reactive vocabulary of violence and retributive justice’ (Bhabha 2004: xx), the rhetoric of rebellion among African Americans frequently embraced anti-colonialist terms in ways that 39

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implied frustration over their own absence of real power. Though Sam Cooke was correct that a change was ‘gonna come’, as this account has made clear, what the changes were, how they were effected and enforced and what they meant was far from transparent. The idea that religion and music simply grew apart is difficult to maintain. Even so-called black anthems, which appear as statements of liberation, are often connected to religion in the most arcane of ways. A useful example is (Gene) McFadden and (John) Whitehead’s 1979 double platinum single ‘Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now’ (1979). The title intimates growing black emancipation and, at some level, it certainly embodied this aspiration. Yet McFadden and Whitehead had been in dispute with Kenny Gamble (of Gable and Huff fame), boss of Philadelphia International Records. According to the artists, the song ‘was a declaration of our independence from Gamble’ while lyrical reference to the ‘things that were keepin’ us down’ (quoted in Jackson 2004: 228) was not social comment at all. The significance of this incident becomes clear once it is known that in 1976 Kenny Gamble converted to Islam and became Luqman Abdul-Haqq and that he saw Philadelphia International Records as a platform from which to proselytize, espousing a worldview that obliquely revealed his private belief in the tenets of Islam’ (George 1988: 145). In the same way that Bob Marley’s exhortation that people should ‘get up, stand up, stand up for your rights’ (‘Get Up, Stand Up’, Burnin’, 1973) could be dismissed as mere rhetoric were it not steeped in social, political and cultural resonance, so the familiar motifs of longing for change, of agitating for equality, were, understandably, aimed more at keeping the quest for equality in the forefront of public vision than anything else. Yet they were a form of cultural witnessing, too, that like every account we have considered so far, crystallized as a history of struggle, a chronicle of emancipation, and one of many narratives of self-definition that remain an essential part of American society. They were also, however one wants to envisage the term, spiritual. At stake in the search for black self-determination was the extent to which the landscapes and structures that defined African-American experience were irrevocably changing. An equally profound if more subtle change was the extent to which the church was finding it increasingly difficult to control the vocabularies over which it had once held sway. Spirituality, as has already been intimated, was a term to which religion could no longer lay sole province. Such was the extent to which the term ‘spirituality’ and its synonyms were brought into communion with the social and the political, and often by artists whose backgrounds were deeply religious, that we might confidently advance the idea of a spirit[uality] of protest. Curtis Mayfield’s 1965 offering ‘People Get Ready’ (The Impressions, People Get Ready, 1965), which was inspired by the 1963 March on Washington, is a blend of gospel and social comment; by the early 1970s, Marvin Gaye on What’s Going On (1971), Mayfield on Super Fly (1972) and Stevie Wonder on any of his albums from the early 1970s had all began to question the social efficacy of religion. In so doing, these artists repudiated the social and spiritual hierarchy that had granted religion primacy of authority. Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions (1973) is an illuminating example of how music, religion and protest coexisted, albeit rather uneasily. By the early 1970s, Wonder, himself a child protégé and former church singer, began to question religion’s ability to articulate the African-American experience. The tensions evident in Innervisions are not between the religious and the secular, but rather between Wonder’s own spirituality and his attempts to ascertain what religion might offer society. Intriguingly, Innervisions resists elemental contrasts that advance religion as the preserve of hope poised in opposition to the difficulties of the sociopolitical world; to do that would be to ignore the artist’s growing sense that in addressing the problems of what he called ‘my 40

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people’ he was, in fact, dealing with an advanced sense of social marginalization that was driving certain ethnic groups to the wall. In fact, the provocatively titled ‘Jesus Children of America’ (Innervisions) explores the occasions and reasons behind some of the artist’s doubt about the efficacy of his own beliefs as well as the ways in which religion is deployed in society. After an opening verse assuring children of divine love, Wonder raises, not the spectre of hypocrisy, but rather questions of genuine doubt. The vocabulary of incertitude continues through an indictment of the ‘holy roller’, a figure who recalls the ‘faith healer’ Wonder encountered in his youth, and who tried to ‘cure’ him of his blindness. Nor was this questioning of religion’s province over spirituality, communion and so on confined to America and soul music. Heavy metal, both in the West and in the East, has long been envisaged in terms of its rebellion; more recently, the culture of heavy metal, particularly the ritual of communion available at concerts, has been considered in terms of its similarities with religious gatherings, none more so than in the Muslim world where the 2007 Dubai Desert Rock Festival, headlined by Iron Maiden, was labelled ‘the Mecca of Metal’ (quoted in LeVine 2011: 68). If anything, the sense that music might provide a similar yet alternative possibility to religion continued to grow as the century progressed. And the more those alternatives to religion asserted their claims, the clearer it became that the old oppositions between the sacred and the profane, between the spiritual and the secular and between protest and passivity, were, depending upon how one approached the problem, either clearer or more opaque than ever. Certainly, with the arrival of rap and hip hop in the 1980s, it was clear that the church’s exclusive rights on the rhetoric of ritual, sacred or otherwise, were over. Both rap, with its shamanic MCs often functioning as communal spokespeople, and hip hop, with the DJ driving the shared spirituality implicit in the vibe, harboured pretensions towards spirituality – and both genres were noted for their social protest. The social protest of hip-hop legends such as Public Enemy, with It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) and Fear of a Black Planet (1990), and N.W.A., with Straight Outta Compton (1988), is as much the music of affirmation as was the blues half a century before. It is worth repeating that this sense of affirmation is secular and not religious. At work here, then, and in future genres, is the sense that the social and political articulacy religion once carried has been somewhat eroded. On the other hand, religion could be something against which an identity could be demonstrated. In its claim to spirituality, for example, rave culture arguably appropriated the tenets of religion more fully than any musical genre has yet done. By 1998 the emblematically named British electronica band Faithless declared that ‘God is a DJ’ (Sunday 8PM, 1998). This pronouncement, in a song with a repeated refrain of ‘this [the rave club] is my church’, merely echoed what many clubbers of the era felt. As a metonym for the state of music, religion and protest, it was illuminating, for rave was invariably envisioned as spiritual: it was contingent upon the idea of a benevolent community, and it was frequently described as ‘an experience’. Crucially, too, ravers have always been at pains to point out that that the genre and its social manifestations are more than mere hedonism, more than techno atavism, more than ecstatic release. In fact, rave at times can be overtly political. Critics have begun to recognize that dancing at rave cultures offers possibilities of the mingling of people of different classes, races and sexualities. It is noteworthy, for example, that young Afrikaners in 1999 chose rave as a means of ‘redefining Afrikaner identity in the wake of Apartheid’s demise’ (Marlin-Curiel 2001: 150). Likewise the Reverend Chris Brain organized the ‘Rave Mass’, which 41

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saw a gathering of working-class youth attend ‘services’ which combined rave with Episcopalian liturgy. Thus regarded, rave and its associated cultures could – and did – lay claim to an implicit sense of social justice. Rave offered ritual; it offered community, rapture, ecstasy and joy. It can, therefore, be no coincidence that many dance and rave clubs use names redolent of religion: The House of God, The Cross, God’s Kitchen and The Ark (Till 2010: 139) are but a few of scores of examples of this nature. Rave culture speaks of an alternative vision of society that again recalls my earlier comments on discontent. Ravers, perhaps more than any other genre examined herein, were able to imagine an alternative to religion. As the twentieth century gave way to the new millennium, the claims to social denomination that religion had historically asserted were slowly being eroded. Religion, which has traditionally been asserted in conjunction with state power, and which a good number of musicians perceived as hierarchical, faced challenges that questioned its role in the natural order of things. Ritual, spirituality and community were all socially contested to a degree hitherto not seen. Such conflict, of course, implies protest rather than deference, and it takes its place in popular music’s great tradition of transgression. Yet, as we have seen, music, religion and protest cannot be reduced to binary interpretations, for they continually inform and challenge one another. What results is ‘the music of what happens’.

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Chapter 4

Censorship, Religion and Popular Music Michael Drewett

Historically, there has been an integral connection between music and censorship, with documented calls for the censorship of music going back to Plato’s Republic (375 BC). As noted by John Street (2012: 9), ‘The urge to censor music for fear of its effects is as old as music itself.’ Governments, political groups, moral lobbyists, religious groups and others have regularly objected to music for a variety of reasons, with these objections often culminating in calls for censorship. The targets of censorial action are varied, including the music itself, lyrics, musical instruments, musicians and performance venues (Korpe, Reitov and Cloonan 2006: 240). This chapter will explore the relationship between religion and the censorship of popular music, considering why popular music constantly provokes the ire of religious followers. It is in no way a comprehensive analysis of all religions but focuses particularly on Christianity and Islam, as two of the most dominant religions with a rich history of calls for music censorship.

Religion as a moral regulator Religious leaders locate themselves at the centre of the moral universes of their religious groups, navigating the choppy waters of morality on behalf of their followers based on their interpretation of the will of the deities they represent. While religion and morality are autonomous entities, religious bodies characteristically conflate the two, so that the will of the deity in question is regarded as morally good and anything said or done against the deity is declared immoral or bad. In other words, their religion is right and anything which goes against it (or in many cases, anything which is not part of that religion) is wrong. Thus, many leaders or representatives of religious groups become moral crusaders on behalf of that group, making moral declarations, speaking out against bad or sinful behaviour, calling on their followers to abstain from such behaviour and, in extreme cases, taking action against immoral or sinful people, even when they are not members of that religious group. Popular musicians and their music fall clearly within the ambit of this moral contest, with religious leaders often calling on their followers to boycott some or all popular music and placing pressure on governments to censor music and on musicians to practice self-censorship, even at the expense of their musical careers. With reference to Christianity, David Chidester (1996: 753) notes that popular music ‘has often been the target of Christian crusades against the evils that allegedly threaten religion in American society. From this perspective, rock music appears as the antithesis of religion, not merely as an offensive art form but as a blasphemous, sacrilegious, and anti-religious force in society.’ At times the religious group ascends to power and by becoming the government is able to more readily inflict its censorship on society as has happened in Afghanistan and Iran.

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This chapter begins with a focus on areas of popular music with which different religions have taken issue, leading to instances of censorship. The central concern has had to do with the music itself, the lyrical content and the image or ideology of musicians. While condemnation itself does not constitute censorship, it always feeds into a censorial climate, which itself often informs and leads to different forms of censorship as will be shown later in the chapter.

The inherent evil of popular music Christian anti-rock crusaders such as Frank Garlock, Bob Larson and David Noebel argued that entirely apart from the lyrics, ‘rock music is inherently evil’ (Howard and Streck 1996: 39) because it lacks harmony, coherence and organization. Rather, it is ‘primarily rhythmic, unbalanced towards tension and dissonance’ (Nekola 2013: 412). Reacting to the sound of Elvis Presley and other early rock ’n’ roll musicians, Reverend Riblett of Michigan claimed that, ‘Rock and roll is the devil’s diversion. It’s been traced back to jungle drums. That’s where it all comes from. The headhunters use the same beat before they go out and hunt heads’ (Blecha 2004: 26). In agreement, Larson (1972: 88) argued that the ‘primitive rhythmic legacy’ of the rock beat is problematic, derived as it is from Pagan religious rites in Africa and Asia in which ‘rhythmic savagery … incited heathens to frenzy and cannibalism’. Larson concludes that ‘it is the nonchristian spiritual environment of Africa and Asia that has historically produced the more primitive musical forms’. To emphasize the relationship between the rock beat and African society, Brian Neumann (1997: 44) argues that the process is not a one-way street: ‘In Africa certain tribes even use the music of such composers as Jimi Hendrix in their Voodoo rituals since the beats and atmospheres as found in his work, and that of other rock musicians, so closely resemble the rhythmic style of the native jungle groove.’ The argument continues, that, because this is Pagan music (or, as some maintain, the Devil’s music) dancing to it becomes a form of idol worship, offering one’s body to Satan, rather than offering it to God in praise. Christians are therefore urged to avoid such music, and even Christian rock bands are condemned for being misled. For example, Christian evangelist Jimmy Swaggart argued that Christian rock music ‘has nothing to do with the ministry. … It’s wrong and it’s bad’ (quoted in Howard and Streck 1996: 38). However, not only is the beat evil because it represents Pagan religious worship but because it can have a ‘savage’ effect on the listener even leading to rape and murder (Larson 1972: 107, 108) and because it can sexually arouse listeners. Larson argues that there is ‘a connection between hormone secretion, the obscene nature of the dances, the propelling effect of the beat, and the energy output rock dancers maintain in spite of such enormous energetic activity’ (Larson 1972: 115). The belief that the beat within popular music is ungodly because it leads to eroticism and sensuality is shared by at least some Muslim fundamentalists. Ameneh Youssefzadeh (2008: 40) points out that within Islam, ‘music is said to unsettle the soul, to put people into a kind of trance and make them take leave of their senses. It leads them to forget their duties and indulge in the pure sensuality of the physical experience of their bodies.’ This potential for music to lead believers astray motivates ‘hardliner’ Muslims to put forward two central arguments against music as a form: first, some music destroys public morals, and secondly, ‘most music, as such, is an evil distraction created by Satan and should be avoided altogether’ (Otterbeck

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2008: 223). Similar to the Christian belief, listening to music is viewed as a useless activity which takes time away from worshipping (in this case) Allah while it also encourages sinful living, especially encouraging sexual transgression (Otterbeck 2008: 233). Otterbeck (2008: 233) concludes that ‘the most problematic notion is the alleged power music has over the human soul. Music is seen as a competitor of the passions of humans that should, according to the hardliners, be directed to Allah alone. If the passion for music spreads in a society, so does immorality and indecency.’ The connection between music and sexuality in fundamentalist Islamic thought is clearly seen in the example of Rai music in Algeria. Rai music is a sensual form of popular music which originated in Western Algeria but infused initially with other North African musical styles and later with Western styles such as rock, funk, salsa and techno (Mehdid 2006: 200; De Angelis 2003: 284). Its sensual style and typical lyrical topics such as drinking and sex became a target of militant Islamists in the early to mid-1990s after the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) won the 1990 local elections. Consequently, the Armed Islamic Groups (GIA) declared war on Rai musicians, producers and promoters (Mehdid 2006: 211). These attacks on Rai music were based on ‘the perception of Rai as vulgar and anti-Islamic, and … that Rai offers an alternative to the same youth that are potential supporters of radical Islam’ (DeAngelis 2003: 278). Angelica DeAngelis argues that the GIA used the argument that Rai music was an ‘un- or anti-Islamic form of music’ (DeAngelis: 2003: 298) in order to safeguard its political goal of recruiting the youth who were its fans. The dominant position within both Christianity and Islam is that music is a contested terrain. While in both religions, as has been shown, there are those who argue that music is inherently evil and should be avoided, the dominant view is that music is not necessarily evil or harmful. This argument extends to popular music and is usefully illustrated in the debate about music among Islamic scholars. Otterbeck (2005: 25) notes that for Islamic scholars, controversy surrounds ‘instrumental music, serious metered songs, pre-Islamic and non-Islamic music. Depending on the interpretation of the Hadith this controversial music can be labelled halal (allowed), makruh (blameworthy) or else haram (forbidden).’ Shaikh Ibrahim Ramadan Al-Mardini, speaking at the 2005 Freemuse Conference on Freedom of Expression in Music (Freemuse) in Beiruit, noted that ‘there is no ban on music in the Qur’an, and those talking about which music is haram and which music is halal have very weak evidence’ (Korpe and Reitov 2005: 26). As a consequence, in most cases Islamic scholars are not opposed to all music but to instances in which it is believed to be haram. An example which clearly illustrates this is the Africa: Tears and Laughter (1979) album released by the South African jazz musician Abdullah Ibrahim. The album included the track ‘Ishmael’ which includes two verses of the Holy Qur’an, The Fatiha and Ayatul Khursi, being sung to jazz music. In 1980 the South African Supreme Council of the Muslim Judicial Council submitted an objection to the apartheid government’s Directorate of Publications, arguing that the record should be banned because: ‘a) It seriously offends Islamic sensitivities and is an attempt to commercialise the Holy Quran (and) … b) It will create ill-feelings among the Muslim community as this sacrilegious act lowers the dignity of our faith.’ The Directorate of Publications agreed to ban the record because the specific Muslim prayer that is worded on the track, plays an important role in the Muslim religion. The believer is supposed to recite the prayer seventeen times a day. In the

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more than 1400 years of the existence of the Muslim religion, the prayer has never been put to music, because putting it to music will transgress the holiness of the prayer. On the record the prayer is not only accompanied by music, but is presented in a way that belongs in the home or in the dance hall, and this while the Muslim religion is strongly opposed to dancing. In essence it is a highly unworthy manner in which the Muslim prayer is presented on the record. In a similar example, in 1999 Sunni Clerics in Lebanon ruled that Marcel Khalife had committed blasphemy by singing verses of the Qur’an. After appearing in court he was found not guilty of blasphemy (Korpe 2004: 135). In these instances it was not the music per se which was problematic, but the particular context in which the music was used, or in a sense, because of the lyrics. Most religious calls for popular music censorship focus on objectionable lyrics. As in the example of the South African Muslim reaction to Abdullah Ibrahim, most religions are opposed to blasphemy but in addition religious leaders are generally opposed to lyrics which promote sexuality, homosexuality, drug use, alcohol abuse, offensive language, vulgarity, Satanism, opposition to their religion, rebellion, communism and various other political ideologies (depending on the context). For example, in 1984 a Bible belt Baptist minister, Jeff R. Steele, rallied against rock lyrics: ‘Rock music has proven itself to be evil over and over again. It has broken down the barriers of decency and smeared smut all over radio, television and movie screens. … It has preached rebellion, hatred, drug abuse, suicide, fornication and the dark things of Satan for too many years’ (Blecha 2004: 54). This sort of sentiment has led to a relentless attack on the lyrics of popular music songs by religious leaders in many contexts (for more detailed examples of such critiques, see Mackenzie 1987; Neumann 1997; Nuzum 2001; Blecha 2004; Ferrell 2006). Closely related to an attack on lyrics is the Christian objection to subliminal messaging via the process of backward masking, which, according to John Vokey and Don Reid (1985: 1231) occurs when ‘recordings are played in the normal, forward fashion the messages are not consciously perceived; however, played backward intelligible messages can be heard’. Vance Ferrell (2006: 93) provides a typical Christian critique of the process when he argues that backward masking is the placement of special messages in the rock music, intended to affect the hearers on a subliminal level. Messages pass the conscious mind and go directly into the subconscious. If a backward message is embedded in a song, the listener’s conscious mind will not pick it up because it is not obvious. But, subconsciously, he will get the message. The music is frequently listened to over and over again. It is dangerous, in the extreme, to listen to satanic music or attend concerts where it is presented! Do not frequent such places. It is claimed that the effect of repeatedly hearing the music is that the youthful listener will be led ‘down a path of loose morality and behavioural abnormality’ (Vokey and Reid 1985: 1231). The most famous examples of backward masking include Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ (1971), Queen’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ (1980) and the Beatles’ ‘Revolution 9’ (1968) which allegedly, respectively, include the subliminal messages ‘Here’s to my sweet Satan, no other made a path’, ‘It’s fun to smoke marijuana’ and ‘Turn me on, dead man’. However, Eric Nuzum (2001: 120) illustrates a lack of agreement among Christian critics on what the

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backward lyrics of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ actually say. The same applies to many examples of backward masking. In addition to criticizing the lyrics of songs, many religious attacks on music also focus on the lifestyles and utterances of musicians and their fans. Bob Larson in The Day Music Died (1972) includes two chapters in which he systematically criticizes the lifestyles of the lives of Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, James Taylor, Grand Funk, Alice Cooper, Jefferson Airplane, Steppenwolf, Iggy and the Stooges, The Grateful Dead, Elton John, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. His commentary is scattered with lamentations on the life styles of these musicians, including his observation that it is a ‘sad commentary that a woman (Janis Joplin) dedicated to drunkenness, debauchery, drugs, obscenity, and licentiousness, one given over completely to demon power, should be found so attractive by millions of America’s youth’ (Larson 1972: 45–6). In Egypt, Muslim and Christians leaders were infuriated by newspaper photographs depicting a heavy metal fan at a concert carrying an upside down cross and reports appeared of fans involved in sexual orgies (LeVine 2009: 36), while in Algeria Muslim religious leaders have condemned ‘Rai singers for promoting illicit and vulgar behaviour’ (DeAngelis 2003: 294). In these instances lifestyles associated with certain musicians and/or styles of music are regarded as sinful and to be avoided.

Popular music censorship While the religious arguments against popular music are both vociferous and abundant, the moral standing of religious groups provides the context within which popular music censorship is situated, but does not necessarily entail censorship. As I have argued elsewhere (Drewett 2006: 23), popular music censorship involves a wide variety of inter-related practices (both legal and extra-legal) which combine to explicitly interfere with the freedom of expression, association and movement of popular musicians to ensure that the articulation of certain facts, opinions or means of expression are stifled, altered and/or prohibited. Popular music censorship focuses on various situations in which an attempt is made to stop musicians from expressing certain ideas, not only focusing on the music itself, but also on where people can go to perform or listen to music and with whom they can do this. It involves the actual suppression of facts or means of expression but does not include calls for people to stop listening to music, although censorship regularly follows from such calls. Thus, the famous and oft-cited example of Christian leaders in the Bible belt of the United States calling on Christians to hold bonfires in which to burn their Beatles records and paraphernalia did not in itself constitute censorship, although it created a censorial climate. The call was made in 1966 after John Lennon claimed that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. Some Christian leaders and radio DJs viewed this statement as blasphemous and retaliated by making the call for Christians to destroy Beatles records and other related items and to boycott Beatles concerts. Strictly speaking, as long as people were not forced to destroy their records against their will or if their records were not destroyed by others without their permission, the anti-Beatles campaign did not constitute

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censorship. However, severe pressure was indeed placed on Christians: the Reverend Thurmun H. Babbs of Cleveland threatened to excommunicate church members who listened to Beatles music or attended one of their concerts (Nuzum 2001: 122; Martin and Segrave 1988: 179) while band members received death threats prior to the concert in Memphis (ibid). Direct censorship was practised by radio stations such as WAYX in Waycross, Georgia, KMIL in Cameron, Texas, KZEE in Weatherford, Texas, and KTEO in San Angelo, Texas, who refused to play Beatles music (Martin and Segrave 1988: 179; Sullivan 1987: 313). The Beatles example emphasizes the dangers of the moralistic high ground of religious moral crusaders who begin with condemnation of what they regard as immoral music but who do not stop at warning fellow adherents of their religion. Instead, they often attempt to legislate for a far wider audience, putting pressure on influential bodies to censor music and musicians and even threatening audiences and musicians who have no interest in conforming to the ways of the religion in question. Above all, the relentless attack on popular music by religious groups keeps popular music in society’s spotlight, maintaining the pressure on some musicians and audiences to consider what music they perform or listen to. As John Lynxwiler and David Gay (2000: 69) have argued: The PMRC (Parents Music Resource Council) and right wing Christian organizations such as Focus on Family have pressed for the regulation of heavy metal music, while rap has been vilified by powerful organizations within the African American community. … While these legalistic solutions have been unsuccessful, they prompted a great deal of media attention and public awareness over deviant music. Within this climate of condemnation, censorship is placed on the public agenda.

Forms of religious censorship Religious condemnation of popular music has regularly led to its censorship. Censorship can be broadly divided into two categories: direct state and civil society. In the following discussion, a variety of forms of censorship are documented, with examples provided from different contexts.

Direct state censorship The most formal type of religious popular music censorship is implemented by governments which profess to officially represent a particular religion. In all these instances, although the relationship between the religious establishment and the state varies, censorship acts as a means to maintaining the state’s control and religion is used to legitimize censorial actions. The most extreme examples of this being popular music censorship under the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran, where the state itself claimed to be the religious authority and Islamic interest groups not directly part of the state used the law (and were to varying degrees allowed) to carry out censorial actions on behalf of the state. To a lesser degree the apartheid government in South Africa claimed to be a Christian government and that official censorship was guided by general Christian principles. In these instances censorship varies from banning some or all popular music, sometimes including a ban on musical instruments, to banning music performances and placing restrictions on the broadcast of popular music. 48

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In Iran after the 1979 revolution, playing music and possessing musical instruments was illegal, while all music concerts and radio or television broadcasts of foreign and Iranian, classical and popular music were banned and even the payment of musicians was outlawed (Youssefzadeh 2008: 38). Solo female singing was also illegal and popular music was completely banned (Rastovac 2009: 65). People caught in possession of cassette tapes were fined and risked being sent to jail while revolutionary guards stopped cars in search of cassette tapes and raided homes if they suspected a party was being held inside. If found, musical instruments were destroyed and musicians who performed were arrested (Rastovac 2009: 65–6; Youssefzadeh 2004: 131). By 1989 Khomeini began to relax restrictions on the possession of music and as a result of increased liberalization, music was allowed, although officially controlled by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (Youssefzadeh 2008: 43). However, restrictions on women singing in public have continued, according to a post-revolutionary order that ‘the solo voice of a woman should not be heard by men’ (Vahdat 2005: 42). In Afghanistan the Taliban banned all music and musical instruments. Musicians caught performing music and people caught listening to music or in possession of music cassettes and instruments were imprisoned, and if a shopkeeper was caught selling instruments or cassettes, not only was he imprisoned but the shop was locked up. Similarly if cassettes were found in a vehicle, the owner was locked up and the vehicle impounded. Instruments and music cassettes that were apprehended were either smashed, confiscated and burnt or otherwise ‘executed’ (Baily 2001: 35, 42). In 2002 the Kano State in Northern Nigeria established a Censorship Board in its quest to implement Sharia Law. Ali Bature of the Kano State Art and Culture Bureau explained that the intention was ‘to maintain and to protect the culture of the people of Kano State … whether in films, whether in music, whether in dance, or in writing’ (Servant 2003: 79). Similarly, the Jigawa state banned public drumming and singing because they were ‘a public nuisance and run contrary to the teaching of Islam’ (Servant 2003: 81). In apartheid South Africa at the level of formal state censorship, the public, customs officials and the police could submit items to the Directorate of Publications who would deliberate over the item, applying various criteria (including moral and religious standards) to their decisionmaking. On a moral level these included criteria guided by general Christian values so that music would be banned if it was deemed indecent, obscene, offensive or harmful to public morals. This included swearing, inappropriate sexuality, drug abuse and nudity (in the case of album covers). On a directly religious level music could be banned if it was blasphemous or offensive to the religious convictions of religious adherents (thus, for example, Satanism was outlawed). Depending on how ‘undesirable’ a piece of music was regarded, it could be banned either for possession or for importation and retail (Drewett 2003). In some contexts, such as Algeria, Mali and Sudan, severe forms of censorship have been practised by militant religious groups (functioning in a vigilante manner), operating alongside those in power, for example, the execution-style assassinations of Rai musicians cheb Hasni, Rachid Baba Ahmed and cheb Aziz in Algeria in 1994 and 1995. Cheb Aziz’s execution in particular was chilling: After he left a party where he had performed, he was ambushed by an armed gang, abducted and killed and his body mutilated (Mehdid 2006: 199). In August 2012 the Movement for Unit and Jihad (MUJAO) in Mali declared that ‘we … henceforward forbid the broadcasting of any western music on all radios in this Islamic territory. This ban takes effect from today, Wednesday. We do not want Satan’s music. In its place, there will be Qur’anic verses. Shari’a demands this. What God commands must be done’ (Morgan 49

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2013: 13). This ban included music by Malians who incorporate Western influences such as Salif Keita and Ali Farka Toure. Following this announcement, a systematic attack on musical instruments, musicians and people listening to popular music took place. Andy Morgan (2013: 13) reports how in different incidents a ghetto blaster playing a Bob Marley song, a cell phone with a tune by local musician Seckou Maiga as a ringtone and a family’s TV broadcasting a musical tune were confiscated and smashed, while a musician’s instruments were removed from his car and set alight, and community music gatherings were stopped and people sent home. There were also reports that radio broadcasts were jammed (Fessy 2012). On a terrifying note, Islamic extremists broke into the home of Malian singer Khaïra Arby and broke all her musical instruments. She was away at the time, but the extremists threatened to cut out her tongue if she carried on singing (Fessy 2012). After the National Islamic Front coup in Sudan in 1989, all music which did not glorify Islam was prohibited from broadcast (Verney 1998: 78). The government’s Morality Monitoring Unit clamped down on musical performances at weddings, leading to the arrest of seven musicians at the beginning of 1993 (Verney 1998: 77). Musicians performing non-religious music were ‘denounced as morally corrupting’ as part of a general attack on non-Islamic music and musicians, leading to the murder of singer Khojali Osman in November 1994 (Verney 1998: 78). When the means to broadcasting is owned and controlled by the state, radio and television play can be dictated to by the state, including directly religious states, as was the case in Iran and Afghanistan. In South Africa, the government’s South African Broadcasting Corporation carried out censorship by means of its own censorship committee who implemented the same Christianinfluenced categories as the government’s Directorate of Publications (outlined above). As a result songs with blasphemous, Satanic or morally questionable lyrics or titles were not played (Drewett 2003).

Civil society censorship In more democratic contexts in which states adopt a secular stance and do not directly represent religious factions, popular music censorship is usually the outcome of pressure from religious groups being placed on government, including formal censorship structures, on radio stations and other broadcasters and on record outlets and concert organizers. Sometimes these pressure groups might picket concerts or organize boycotts of concerts and albums, but as indicated these actions do not directly constitute censorship. Although the apartheid government in South Africa was not democratic, they allowed members of the public to submit material for consideration of the formal state censor, the Directorate of Publications. Chairperson of the Directorate of Publications Braam Coetzee (Author’s interview 1998) provided insight into how religious pressure groups in South Africa received support from religious groups in the United States and conducted campaigns in the hope of censoring music which offended them: I have had more pressure from some of these new born again Christian groups, the Pentecostal, more charismatic people … they have been endlessly, endlessly, problematic and they have given us a hard time. They linked up with groups in America, obviously very well off people, they have got lots of money, and they engage lobbyists in senate and congress nagging the people all the time and bringing pressure to bear on them. They

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have had success there, and they, in fact, were in communication with groups that were founded in South Africa all the time. … They were getting well organized and they were tremendously powerful pressure groups. In South Africa these groups would bring music to the attention of the Directorate; lobby through petitions and sometimes a flood of letters; directly advising the Directorate; and in some instances thanking the Directorate for their decisions. Songs and albums banned as a result of pressure include the Bigger than Jesus (1989) album by the Kalahari Surfers, the ‘Another brick in the wall’ (1979) seven-inch single and The Wall (1979) album by Pink Floyd and George Michael’s ‘I want your sex’ (1987) seven-inch single. The Kalahari Surfers’ Bigger than Jesus (1989) was banned after complaints were received from representatives of a Pentecostal Christian pressure group. One of the letters of complaint received from a member of a religious group stated: I send the cover of a new record, which was apparently produced by a South African pop group. The record is called Bigger than Jesus. The name alone is enough to make any Christian furious, not to mention the words. We as reborn Christians object to the publication of this record and also the distribution of it. You will find more than 600 signatures which I gathered very quickly, I can assure you, however that we are hundreds of thousands that object to this record. We call upon you, as a respected organization, to prohibit these records and tapes, which slanders our King and Saviour. (Directorate of Publications 1989: P89/05/51). Similar campaigns have been documented in the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere. In Malaysia Muslim religious officials spearheaded attacks on Western music, on occasion leading to the disruption of performances (Liew and Fu 2006: 114). In the 1990s the focus of these protests turned to heavy metal music in particular. Although a campaign to prevent a performance by the Scorpions failed, ‘many organisers became wary of bringing in metalrelated bands following the issuing of a fatwa (decree) to ban Black Metal music by religious authorities in Seremban, and the calls by State Muftis in Penang to consider decreeing Black Metal music haram’ (Liew and Fu 2006: 116). Jonas Otterbeck (2008: 215) documents how religious leaders and bodies in Muslim countries in North Africa and the Middle East act against popular music independent of the state in those countries. For example, Islamic scholars in Saudi Arabia have proclaimed fatwas against musicians accused of blasphemy, such as the case against Kuwaiti pop star Abdallah Rowaishid in 2001, which was later withdrawn. In the 1980s in the US PMRC set about campaigning against the immorality of popular music, for example, Prince’s ‘Darling Nikki’ (1984) and Judas Priest’s ‘Eat me alive’ (1984). It claimed to be a broad movement beyond the narrow confines of religion, yet it nevertheless received wide Christian support (in particular) and called upon a North Virginian ‘rocker-turned-youth pastor’ to provide testimony on the worst excesses of rock music (Nelola 2013: 421). After a heated contest in which the likes of John Denver and Frank Zappa testified against the censorship of popular music at a congressional hearing, most major labels agreed to place voluntary warning stickers on their releases with the warning ‘Parental Advisory/Explicit Lyrics’ (Blecha 2004: 54). In the aftermath some retail outlets voluntarily added their own warning stickers and some, such as WalMart, went as far as to stop stocking music which included warning stickers (Nuzum 2001: 38–9).

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In 1985 in the city of San Antonio, Texas, fundamentalist Christian groups such as Community Families in Action and Parents Against Subliminal Seduction put pressure on the city council to place restrictions on concerts which they regarded as obscene (Martin and Segrave 1993: 270). As a result, the city council restricted the concerts of musicians whose albums included warning stickers or which were ‘obscene’, defined as ‘vulgar or profane descriptions of sexual relations’. The restriction meant that people under the age of fourteen had to be accompanied by an adult (Martin and Segrave 1993: 270–1; Nuzum 2001: 34). Religious pressure groups in the United States also launched campaigns against backward masking. Acting on complaints from Christian pressure groups, Phil Wyman, California state representative, warned that backward masking in rock music ‘can manipulate our behaviour without our knowledge or consent and turn us into disciples of the AntiChrist’ (Nuzum 2001: 244). Wyman introduced a state house resolution to outlaw the practice, which was taken even further by Republican Congressman Bob Dornan, who proposed stickers warning consumes of backward masking on albums. While these bills were not passed at the level of Congress, in 1983 the Arkansas legislature did enact a law mandating warning stickers for backward masking (Blecha 2004: 52). Religious pressure groups often attempt to prevent live shows from taking place, and failing this, they sometimes arrange picketing at concerts. For example, in the wake of the release of Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar (1996) album, Reverend Donald Wildmon’s evangelical American Family Association and the Religious Right arranged several demonstrations at Marilyn Manson concerts across the United States. Other Christian groups such as the Christian National Network also campaigned against Manson’s music and performances (Wright 2000: 375). Indeed, Wright (2000: 376) noted that ‘at virtually every stop on his 1997 North American tour, Manson was harassed by religious groups, insulted by municipal and state politicians, lectured by law enforcement authorities, scrutinised by local media and in some cases prevented from performing’. In 1988 in the United Kingdom the band Christian Death were banned from performing a gig at St. Mark’s Church in Deptford after objections were raised by a local archdeacon, and in 1990 clergy in Brighton objected to a concert by the band Creaming Jesus. Canon Michael Butler said the band was ‘blasphemous’ and ‘disgusting’. After telling the church authorities that the gig was cancelled, the promoter nevertheless went ahead with it (Cloonan 1996: 239). In 1992 Muslims in Brighton objected to the way the band the Orb integrated clips taken from the Qur’an into their live performances. In response to the complaints the offending section of the show was dropped (Cloonan 1996: 240). The example of the Beatles (discussed earlier) emphasizes the power of religious leaders and pressure groups to sway the choice of music played by radio stations. Sometimes this is because the radio station management or deejays are themselves religious or because of perceived or actual pressure from religious listeners. In Tanzania Remmy Ongala’s HIV/AIDS awareness song ‘Mambo Kwa Soksi’ (2001) was censored because it encouraged the use of condoms, a message which the station believed would be met with disapproval by the station’s large Catholic audience (Kirkegaard 2004: 61–2). In Nigeria, even under the more democratic ethos of the late 1990s, various Christian groups placed pressure on the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) not to broadcast secular music. For example, songs with sexual themes like Femi Kuti’s ‘Beng, Beng, Beng’ (1998) and Charlie Boy Oputa’s ‘Big Bottom’ (1988) were not played. A 52

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foreign observer quoted by Jean-Christophe Servant (2003: 63) argued that the NBC were being ‘assailed and harassed by religious organizations demanding they censor such and such a song for reasons of moral righteousness. And the Obasanjo administration prefers to cave in to those organizations rather than publicly defend some controversial figures and get embroiled in a new religious crisis.’ Servant (2003: 54) goes on to note that ‘as a result, many musicians admit to self-censorship to escape the religious zeal that is stifling Nigeria today’.

Conclusion Indeed, the possibility of formal censorship as well as a censorial climate in general not only leads musicians and record companies to carefully consider what music they release, but can also have an effect on the audience who might opt not to listen to particular music in fear of repercussions – whether from the religious establishment or even one’s family members. Hence the anti-Beatles environment after John Lennon’s statement about Jesus Christ might have dissuaded fans from buying or keeping copies of Beatles music and Wal-Mart’s practice of not stocking albums which have warning labels might persuade record companies to avoid controversial content. Continual attempts to silence musicians in Egypt into the twenty-first century led Jonas Otterbeck (2008: 215) to conclude that ‘the threat of censorship is thus ever-present for local artists who cannot always predict if a certain song or composition will evoke a censorial body’s wrath when it is sold or broadcasted. This leads to self-censorship and caution’. Likewise, in all instances in which a censorial climate pervades, whether under Taliban rule in Afghanistan or within individual family contexts the world over, audiences and potential audiences practise a self-regulatory restraint which they would otherwise not do. Indeed, the power of religious groups in contesting the political and moral terrain within which popular music production, performance and listening takes place is undeniable. Yet, in all instances, religious groups have not been able to silence popular music, as musicians and audiences fight to determine what, where and how music will be performed, recorded and listened to.

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Chapter 5

Feminism, Gender and Popular Music Alison Stone

Initial considerations As of 2016, there are many immensely successful and prominent women in mainstream popular music: Adele, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, to name just a few. Some have heralded a new era of women in pop – but similar declarations have been issued regularly over the last twenty years or more (see Dickerson 1998). Meanwhile, the backdrop is an industry and a set of informal cultures that have been heavily male-dominated historically and remain so in many ways. As of 2008, women comprised 39 per cent of those working in the music industry (AIM 2016). Yet, the Performing Rights Society for Music reports that only 13 per cent of its 95,000 members are female (Baker 2013) and other such societies report similar figures. Over 95 per cent of music producers and engineers are male (Haruch 2010), as are 77 per cent of those in music promotion and management (Lindvall 2009). All- or predominantly female bands remain much less common than all- or predominantly male bands, and women remain less likely than men to be sole authors of music released in their names. Regarding women’s roles, roughly 48 per cent of women in indie bands are vocalists, 22 per cent guitarists, 19 per cent bassists, and 10 per cent drummers (Leonard 2007: 44) – which is indicative of where women are concentrated within popular music more broadly. And women play in local bands much less often than men – back in 1995, Mavis Baynton found that only 3 per cent of local rock musicians in Oxford were female (Baynton 1998; see also Finnegan 1989: 119–20). While things have no doubt improved, women’s participation in local music-making still falls considerably short of men’s. Thus, not only the record industry but also wider popular music culture have been and still are male-dominated – ironically for a culture that often prides itself on being ‘alternative’ and transgressive. Of course, women have always been involved in popular music and there have been many important, influential and successful female musicians across the whole range of genres (see O’Brien 2002). But the backdrop to these achievements is a playing field that is far from level.1 More positively, popular music has long been a site in which musicians and audiences alike have found rich possibilities for exploring and experimenting with their gender identities (ethnic, racial, class and sexual identities have received much musical exploration too, but these are not my focus here). This is not a matter of musicians simply giving expression to their preexisting identities as men and women. Gender identities, like other identities, are something we continually reshape and reimagine in the course of our lives. Popular music offers a set of spaces in which this reimagining can take place – for instance, through musicians inventing gendertransgressive personae, such as David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, or adopting other gendered ‘alter egos’, such as Prince’s Camille or Nicky Minaj’s Roman Zolanski.

Feminism, Gender and Popular Music

Gender identities can also be rearticulated in popular music in less direct ways, through features of musical style. For instance, Afrika Bambaataa used an accelerated sample of the main melody of Kraftwerk’s ‘Trans-Europe Express’ in his ‘Planet Rock’ (1982), a track that helped to propel rap in an electronic direction. By doing this, Bambaataa ‘disengaged black manhood from its association with primitivism and allied it instead to a different masculine trait: the calculated, rational control of advanced technology’ (Duffett 2013: 202). Bambaataa gave a new articulation to black masculinity, allying it with technology rather than nature. Alternatively, consider the Rolling Stones’ 1965 single ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’. The central guitar riff conveys aggression and frustration, as it starts out by reaching purposefully up towards the tonic but, instead of reaching it, falls back down without achieving satisfaction. This affect of frustration is clearly linked to masculinity: it is equated with the frustration of male sexual desire through the lyrics and the way that guitar riffs, as part of the arsenal of ‘hard rock’, have become coded as masculine (see Frith and McRobbie 2007). Moreover, in the case of ‘Satisfaction’, popular music by no means always explores transgressive gender identities – it can also reinforce and consolidate mainstream or oppressive identities, such as dominant forms of masculinity.2 It is not only features of musical style that can contribute to articulating gender identities – so can record cover art, fashion and performance styles, music videos and dance routines. These various elements are not straightforwardly ‘external’ to what we might think of as ‘the music itself’. Rather, these surrounding elements do much to shape how songs are received and understood, how we locate them in terms of genre and what gendered meanings we hear in them. If popular music has afforded spaces for imagining gender identities and, sometimes, reimagining them, these spaces have been more welcoming to experimentation on men’s part than on women’s. Men have experimented with various kinds of ‘feminine’ behaviour and display – in vocal expression (falsetto singing), by wearing dresses (Kurt Cobain) or make-up (the New Romantics), and with various forms of flamboyance and camp (e.g. by the disco star Sylvester, who often dressed in drag). Some female musicians, too, have presented themselves as masculine or androgynous – Patti Smith, Annie Lennox, k. d. lang, Grace Jones. But overall female musicians’ experimentation with masculinity has been less widespread than male musicians’ experimentation with glamour and femininity. This is part of a broader pattern in Western cultural practices for male artists to ‘appropriate’ aspects of femininity creatively without female artists appropriating masculinity to the same degree (see Battersby 1989). Around 1800, the (male) Romantics – such as Wordsworth and Coleridge in England – embraced their ‘feminine’ side – their emotions, sentiments and sensory feelings, capacities for imaginative reverie and spontaneous inner natures. This move made sense for men, who were presumed to have highly developed capacities for reasoning and for the spiritual transcendence of their bodies: artistic creation thus required men to reconnect with their ‘feminine’ qualities. But would-be women artists were left in a difficult position, as they were presumed to lack the rational and spiritual capacities that would enable them to transcend, spiritualize and sublimate their feelings and passions into artistic guise. And women artists wishing to defy these presumptions faced either stern condemnation or lack of support. For example, Mozart’s talented sister Nannerl was denied the support to pursue a musical career. Things have moved on, but this historical legacy lives on in popular music cultures being less receptive to female masculinity than to male femininity. 55

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Popular music allows for exploration of not only gender identities but also gendered meanings more generally. Features of musical style – as well as, again, such mediating elements as videos and cover art – can embody and convey assumptions about the meanings of masculinity and femininity, maleness and femaleness. These meanings do not reduce to ideas about gender that individual musicians may intend to communicate. Over and above individual musicians’ intentions, gendered connotations can be embedded in musical features by virtue of how they are generally received and interpreted within given social contexts. These gendered meanings are the topic of the rest of this chapter. In Section II, I look at how public evaluation of popular music is steeped in hierarchies that privilege qualities deemed masculine – authenticity, original vision, innovation – over those deemed feminine – the formulaic, inauthentic, superficial and banal. This hierarchy also maps onto that of ‘rock’ over ‘pop’. In Section III, I trace the historical roots of these hierarchies back to the aesthetic tradition and its gendered contrasts between spirit and body, art and entertainment, as these have become taken up into the popular musical field to split its ‘good’ (authentic) from ‘bad’ (formulaic) genres.3 In Section IV, I consider two cases of female musicians negotiating these hierarchies – Kate Bush and Madonna – briefly noting how religious and spiritual meanings have figured into their negotiations.

Gender and the evaluation of popular music The terms in which popular music is routinely evaluated are steeped in gendered hierarchies. Let’s take two examples. The first is from Stephen Thomas Erlewine’s review of Katy Perry’s album Teenage Dream on Allmusic, an extensive online music database and guide: Perry is smart enough to know every rule in pop but she’s not inspired enough to ignore them, almost seeming nervous to break away from … de rigeur [sic] lite club beats … the music feels familiar, so Perry distinguishes herself through desperate vulgarity. … Perry’s greatest talent is to be a willing cog in the pop machine, delivering sleek singles … with efficiency. (Erlewine 2014) In effect, Erlewine’s charge is that Perry lacks genius, the artist’s power to create new rules in an inspired break with tradition. Lacking genius, Perry can only succeed by hard work: ‘Working hard is Katy Perry’s stock in trade.’ And because she lacks genius, Perry follows tried-andtested rules, willingly complying with the industry’s preference for formulae that have proven themselves to be commercially successful. Yet if Perry’s songs become totally indistinguishable from others, they will fail to stand out and sell. So they need a veneer of ‘pseudo-individuality’ (to use Adorno’s phrase), which according to Erlewine is provided by Perry’s ‘desperate vulgarity’ – as in, say, the chorus of her song ‘Peacock’: ‘I wanna see your pea-cock, cock, cock.’ Perry, then, lacks originality, or genius, and she also lacks integrity – she willingly complies with the ‘pop machine’ rather than pursuing any personal, unique vision of her own. Similar complaints are very widely made, with ‘pop’ condemned for being formulaic and banal, driven by commercial dictates, and covering over its banality with a salacious veneer. The notion of ‘authenticity’ rolls together the interconnected valuable qualities that pop is thought to lack – integrity, personal vision, expressiveness and unique innovation. All these are part of the

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multifaceted notion of authenticity which is central to public appreciation of popular music, many revered figures, Kurt Cobain for one, being seen as committed to authentic self-expression to the point of dying for it. It is no coincidence that it is a female artist whom Erlewine judges to lack ‘authenticity’ in these connected senses, for the valued qualities collected under the rubric of authenticity have a history of being reserved for men. Historically, many aestheticians explicitly denied that women could achieve genius or rise to the heights of having a unique personal vision. Lacking genius, women were expected to follow rules, not make rules or break with precedents established by others; and when women have innovated, their innovations have tended to be overlooked (see, again, Battersby 1989 and Korsmeyer 2004). These assumptions, which we inherit from the history of Western aesthetic thought and practice, mean that music made by women is more easily seen as formulaic and trite than music by men. And female musicians are more likely to make music that can be readily filed under these descriptions, as women are concentrated in ‘pop’ more heavily than male musicians are; that is, in the family of popular music genres that are positioned as manufactured, formulaic, easy and banal in contrast to other genres deemed more authentic, above all ‘rock’. This concentration of women in pop – and in the role of vocalists, often singing songs written at least in part by others – in part reflects the informal obstacles and difficulties that women encounter when trying to participate in the latter genres, especially in rock (barriers such as struggling to be taken seriously, obtain support from music professionals etc.). After all, rock’s supposed authenticity and meaningfulness are understood in contrast to the supposed feminine qualities of superficiality and triviality – so it is not surprising that women have often been judged not to belong in rock, or to belong there only if they act like ‘one of those boys’ (hard-drinking, drug-taking, prone to bursts of aggression etc.). As a second example of gender bias in the evaluation and reception of popular music, consider the different media reactions to Taylor Swift’s 1989 and indie rocker Ryan Adams’s re-recording of that entire album: The media’s most highbrow music critics, the same ones who barely batted an eye at Swift’s release, have rushed forward to gush over Adams’s transformation of a cheesy pop album into something more serious. In the words of American Songwriter [for instance], Adams is ‘bestowing indie-rock credibility’ on Swift’s album, … ‘showing her up by revealing depth and nuance in the songs’ and ‘giving her a master class in lyrical interpretation’. (Leszkiewicz 2015) Swift’s album is deemed mere pop, skimming the surface of the emotional qualities potentially expressed by its melodies and harmonies, while Adams strips away the pop veneer to bring out these depths. Of course, Swift’s 1989 really does have stylistic features that locate it within pop: prominent synthetic timbres, softened and rounded out by ‘real’ guitar; Swift’s vocals at the foreground of the texture; songs with very well-defined and familiar verse/chorus/bridge structures; an overall sound that is highly produced. And Adams’s version really does have features that place it within singer/songwriter-style indie rock. But it is not only these genre characteristics but also the sex of the respective musicians which leads to the two versions being judged, respectively, to be inexpressive and expressive, superficial and deep.

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Such claims for rock’s superiority to pop are only part of the broader pattern for some popular music genres to claim greater authenticity, integrity or innovative merit than others. These divisions pervade the entire popular music field: Stax versus Motown; funk versus disco; genuine rap versus pop-rap. Thus, hierarchical divisions are made not only by listeners and reviewers but also by musicians, becoming embodied in the stylistic features by which genres contrast to one another and in our very understanding of these genres. Wherever such divisions are made, they tend to bring their entrenched gendered connotations with them. For example, in his history of soul music Peter Guralnick excludes Motown altogether on the grounds that Motown was ‘pop’, ‘industry-slanted’ and inauthentic. Out of a concern for ‘cultural refinements’ that would appeal to white audiences, he claims, Motown artists ‘only occasionally … reveal a flash of raw emotion’ (1988: 1–2, 7–8). The ultimate target of Guralnick’s complaint that Motown is mere white-oriented pop must surely be the Supremes, since they were Motown’s most successful act in the 1960s – reflecting the pattern for music by female artists or bands to be judged inauthentic and inexpressive. Moreover, the opposition between masculine authenticity and feminine superficiality is only part – if a central part – of a web of other gendered contrasts widely found in popular music. Let me note two more of these contrasts: 1. Sexual agency versus sexual objectification. Female performers have always been judged on their appearance, and since the beginnings of music video and MTV in the 1980s, the sexual objectification of female performers has become more and more pervasive in mainstream music videos (a situation satirized in Lily Allen’s video for ‘Hard Out Here’ – which unfortunately was widely received as endorsing the sexual objectification of women rather than parodying it). On the other hand, a good deal of popular music is expressive of sexual feelings and desires: ‘Satisfaction’ is just one example. Rock, in particular, has a history of being coded as expressive of male sexual desires, with the guitar presented as an aid to masturbation, as in ‘cock-rock’. Stereotypically, then, male instrumentalists and vocalists give their sexual desires authentic expression, whereas female musicians are constrained to objectify themselves for the pleasure of the (presumed male) viewer of music videos. 2. Technology versus nature. Women have long been imagined to be ‘close to nature’. This bears on the concentration of female musicians in the vocalist role: the voice is ‘natural’ rather than artificial, at least prior to vocals being recorded and undergoing any synthetic processing. Jobs and tasks requiring technological expertise and experience, on the other hand, are still heavily male-dominated (in the United States, for instance, just 13 per cent of engineers are women). Accordingly, men heavily predominate as studio engineers, producers, DJs and in electronic dance music. This nature/technology division might seem to favour women by putting them on the side of authenticity and the naturally expressive voice. But men remain privileged in so far as innovation and experimentation are valued, with technology as the vehicle for achieving these values. Moreover, innovation is one route to achieving authenticity: someone who innovates breaks with conventions and formulae in the name of their own agenda and vision, thereby ultimately being true to their self and goals.

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Authenticity, then, remains central to the various ways that masculine qualities are favoured within popular music. Various as these are, the key contrasts – authenticity and innovation versus commerce and banality – find their defining statement in the rock/pop opposition, which in turn is gendered. Thus, it is important that feminists working in popular music studies should critique this opposition. Unfortunately, however, some feminist theorists of popular music accept the above contrasts and use them as evaluative standards by which to judge female musicians. Such feminist writers as Lucy O’Brien, Sheila Whiteley and Nicola Dibben dismiss those who make ‘dollybird pop’ that is ‘formulaic’ (e.g. Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and Gina G), or exude ‘cute, show-biz selfconfidence’ (Helen Reddy) or favour commerce over political confrontation (Debbie Harry), or even ‘just put a lucrative sheen on mediocrity’ (Madonna; see, respectively, O’Brien 2002: 64; Frith and McRobbie 2007: 42; Dibben 1999: 334; Whiteley 2000: 113; O’Brien 2002: 224). These artists are contrasted to those who are deemed to be more authentic – such as Tori Amos and P. J. Harvey – where the latter receive more sympathetic and careful attention (see Burns and Lafrance 2002; Dibben 1999). I urge feminist theorists to be more critical of gendered evaluative standards. With this goal in mind, let’s look at the gendered history of the aesthetic values that have shaped the rock/pop division.

Aesthetics, rock/pop andthe body Aesthetics in its modern form emerged across Europe in the eighteenth century, in tandem with the new concept of fine art. Previously, ‘art’ had meant any skilled human activity, but now it marked out a category of objects and experiences different from, and superior to, both the crafts and everyday entertainment. The latter provided mere sensory pleasures, while art offered more refined, higher pleasures. Thus, art was set apart as being made for aesthetic appreciation, not sensuous gratification or practical use. This art/craft contrast was gendered from its outset, with women’s traditional activities such as quilt-making, sewing and cooking becoming relegated to the status of crafts and not art. The division between aesthetic pleasure and mere sensory pleasure is also gendered, as we can see by looking at the way in which Kant articulates this division in his 1790 Critique of Judgement (Kant 1987) – his formulation is exemplary and has had unrivalled influence. For Kant, aesthetic pleasure is ‘disinterested’, arising from the ‘free play’ into which my imagination and understanding are set by the mere form of an object. Kant does not mean that aesthetic experience bores us but that aesthetic pleasure is not self-interested, because it does not result from any gratifying sensory effects on me of the object to which I am responding. Rather, the pleasure arises because I respond to the object in a special way that temporarily frees me from pursuing my sensory interests. Hence, aesthetic pleasure involves finer feelings, not appetites; it involves the free play of my higher mental faculties of imagination and understanding, not my lower faculties of sensibility and desire. Kant’s picture is this, then: while aesthetic experience involves our senses, and thus our bodies, this kind of experience is of a more spiritual, sublimated and intellectual type than other, more immediately sensory, appetitive and bodily kinds of pleasure. The mind/body contrast thus underpins the division of aesthetic from everyday pleasure. The mind or spirit, though, has long

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been linked with maleness, and the body with femaleness – hence the idea that women are more at the mercy of their bodies than men, less able to transcend or abstract themselves from their bodily processes and impulses. These linkages go back at least as far as Plato, and became entrenched as Plato’s philosophy became fused with Judaeo-Christianity and its orientation towards the spirit rather than the sinful flesh. That sensuous pleasure is symbolized as female (personified as Eve succumbing to the temptations of the flesh) does not mean that women cannot have aesthetic experience – if anyone ever has aesthetic experience in the way Kant thought. Rather, the point is that aesthetic experience is lined up symbolically with maleness, masculinity and the capacity to transcend or spiritualize or sublimate the body, whereas sensory pleasure is lined up with femininity and with immersion in the body. Another part of this web of hierarchical aesthetic ideas is the modern concept of the genius, which Kant, again, did much to articulate. The genius is, supposedly, an exceptional individual able to create original works of fine art by a vital, spontaneous process. The genius contrasts with those who laboriously manufacture things by mechanically following existing rules and formulae, as craftspeople do. The genius does not lifelessly copy the rules established by others; rather, in creating he legislates for others. Even though genius involved spontaneous passion and women were creatures of passion and not reason, women were widely thought to be incapable of possessing genius because, lacking reason, they could not transcend their passions and sublimate them into creative forms of expression (see, again, Battersby 1989). These notions of genius fed into nineteenth-century intellectuals placing new importance upon authentic self-expression and on the role of emotional expression in artistic creation. With these ideas of genius, art versus craft, and aesthetic versus bodily pleasures in place, the terms were set for widespread condemnation and disdain of the emerging popular culture of commercial, urban, industrialized modernity, which included music hall, minstrelsy, cabaret and ‘light’ classical music for dancing. Allegedly these forms yielded frivolous pleasure, gave undue gratification to the body, mixed various musical and cultural forms irreverently, and committed all these sins in the vulgar pursuit of money (Scott 2008: 3–12, 87ff). In so far as this entire sphere was dedicated to bodily and not aesthetic pleasure, it took on a feminine connotation. As the nineteenth century shaded into the twentieth, popular culture went ‘mass’, coming to be manufactured by large-scale commercial bodies such as the sheet music publishing companies based in Tin Pan Alley. A slew of critics voiced alarm – R. G. Collingwood, for one. ‘Amusement art’, he claims, is not art but actually a mere craft: the craft of using pre-existing formulae to make objects that arouse stereotyped emotions of sadness, horror, hilarity etc. In contrast, art proper has no preset goal. Although the artist expresses his emotions in an artwork, these emotions are unique, so their content only becomes clear through their expression and articulation (Collingwood 1958: 78–9). This division of genuine art from mere amusing craft is echoed, much later, in the claim by Jon Landau – producer of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA – that ‘the criterion of art in rock is the capacity of the musician to make a personal, almost private, universe and to express it fully’ (Landau, quoted in Frith 1981: 53). But this division is also echoed in the way that male musicians are able to take up a position as sexual agents, expressing their sexual feelings musically, whereas female musicians are pressured towards objectifying themselves with a view to arousing certain ‘stock emotions’ – sexual pleasures – in the listener or video viewer.

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From its inception in the 1950s rock ’n’ roll was on the wrong side of the art/entertainment divide. Rock ’n’ roll gave immediate enjoyment. Lyrically and musically, it celebrated fun and direct pleasure – even in name it was linked to sex and the body. With its insistent backbeat, rock ’n’ roll virtually compelled listeners to dance – it aroused people’s bodies rather than liberating listeners from the immediate promptings of their bodies. Formally, too, rock ’n’ roll songs tended not to innovate but to use the same forms again and again, often four repetitions of a twelvebar blues chord progression. Writing rock ’n’ roll songs, it seemed, was a craft – the craft of skilfully using tried-and-trusted forms and devices with enough of a quotient of innovation to catch listeners’ interests. The early Beatles can be understood, and understood themselves, as craftspeople in these terms (Covach 2006: 165). And Beatlemania seemed to confirm that music so crafted appealed to the passions – of women and girls – and not the intellect. Against this background, musicians unsurprisingly came to seek greater artistic legitimacy, over the course of the 1960s – turning to instrumental virtuosity (e.g. Clapton and Hendrix), albums not singles, concept albums, studio experimentation and serious topics and lyrics. For the National Observer in 1968, then, ‘“rock” [was] getting longer, more sophisticated, more ambitious, restless with chordal limitations and the three-minute format’ (Oxford English Dictionary 2013). ‘Rock’ was born as something more complex, experimental and seriousminded than its parent rock ’n’ roll. This marked the beginning of the pattern that has persisted ever since for rock to set itself against pop. In making this gesture, rock musicians have internalized within the field of popular music what was formerly a division between art and popular culture. And, just as the art/popular culture divide was symbolically gendered, so is the division between rock and pop. But just as there are many versions of the rock/pop contrast, and many genres and subgenres of rock music, equally there are many ways in which the gendered aspect of this contrast takes shape. With progressive rock, the programme was to innovate, to experiment formally, and to offer ‘head music’ for thinking rather than body music for dancing. Another family of ways in which rock has claimed authenticity is by blending with folk to constitute folk rock; the gendered dimension here comes from the rejection of commerce and superficiality. Or, to take a very different case, consider the role of power chords in heavy metal. A power chord is an open perfect fifth interval that, played on the electric guitar, is subjected to distortion and that can be sustained at length because the distortion compresses the sound, which causes it to decay relatively slowly. These chords signify power, as Robert Walser explains in his study of heavy metal, because the distortion embodies the excessive effort needed to produce the sound, and because the sustain suggests an ‘unflagging capacity for emission’ (Walser 1993: 42). Given this connotation of power, the chief use of power chords in heavy metal is to showcase the guitarist’s mastery over the powerful energetic and sonic resources that he releases and dominates. Signifying the artist’s mastery over the materials that he uses and channels, then, these chords are aligned with masculinity construed in turn in terms of domination and agency, as opposed to femininity lined up with material passivity. Power chords were extensively used in punk rock, too, but with very different connotations – yet the masculinity remained. In punk, power chords came to embody simplicity rather than virtuosity, artlessness rather than mastery, directness rather than domination – all this reliant on the fact that these chords contain only a root note and a perfect fifth, that is, being minimal in terms of their harmonic make-up. But these connotations of simplicity and directness connected

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with the punk mission of expressing difficult and unpleasant affects – anger, alienation and disgust – without hiding away from the nastier side of life. In this way punk reinvigorated the value of expressive authenticity, and did so as a form of rock. Here, again, punk as rock was set symbolically against femininity as pop. To note these symbolic meanings is not to deny that women have participated in the various genres of rock. But women do so against the background of these genres’ pre-existing gendered connotations, with which female musicians have to negotiate. In the next section, I look at two instances of this negotiation.

Negotiating Gendered Meanings: Kate Bush and Madonna Both Kate Bush and Madonna have a status that has been fairly rare for women in the popular music world. This is the status of auteurs: artists who, while collaborating on their music with many other people (instrumentalists, technicians and others), exercise as much overall control over the process and its products as possible (Moy 2007: 72–88). Bush and Madonna do this in different ways: Bush retains as much control as possible over songwriting, recording and production, while ‘Madonna’s authorship has been more focussed in areas such as performance, image changes and promotion and constructing star personae, although … without her vital and significant musical input, [these would be] meaningless’ (81–2). On Bush’s first single, ‘Wuthering Heights’ of 1978, she sings from the assumed position of the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw endeavouring to get in at the window of a house to Heathcliff. The literary connection makes clear that we are in the terrain of art, which is confirmed by the song’s passing through changes in key and complications of time signature, situating it within progressive – thus, art – rock. For most of the song’s duration, the texture foregrounds the vocal melody and piano accompaniment, highlighting the unearthly sound of Bush’s melody. The latter is mostly in the range G♯6–G♯5, occasionally descending lower, down to G♯4. Given that middle C is C4, this is very high pitched, unusually so for popular music, giving the phrases of melody a strange disembodied sound that befits the voice of a ghost. The high pitch gives the melody’s forward movement a yearning, reaching quality, rather than the more powerful quality that it acquires if sung an octave lower. Because we understand musical pitch spatially, as ranging from low to high, Bush – as Earnshaw – is thus positioned ‘above’ the bodily realm, longing but unable to descend back into it. These connotations are confirmed in the UK video, in which Bush, dressed as a ghost in a willowy white dress with staring, unblinking eyes ringed in stark black make-up, dances in a flowing style, evocative of ballet and with elements of mime, against an empty black background and in a floor of white mist. Presented as a ghost, Bush is again disembodied, and her style of dance alludes to art, very far from the sexed body on a disco dance floor. In this way Bush escapes the position of the sexualized, objectified female musician and aligns herself, almost literally, with the ‘spiritual’ capacities that aesthetics has historically reserved for men. In taking up an identity as Earnshaw, Bush also personifies the power of the literary and artistic imagination to transcend physical boundaries of time and space. That Bush has positioned herself above or out of the physical body does not mean that she has repudiated her femininity. On the contrary, Bush identifies with Earnshaw, a female character in a female-authored novel; Bush wears a white dress, traditional symbol of feminine purity and 62

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virginity, and heavy make-up; her flowing, balletic dance style has feminine connotations, and so does her soprano-range singing. But while embracing these feminine features, Bush also lays direct claim to the spiritual and artistic powers traditionally denied to women, refusing to accept that spirit, creativity and womanhood must be opposed terms. As Moy noted, Madonna is an auteur of a very different stripe to Bush, and operates in the milieu of pop, not art or art-rock. Madonna’s oeuvre can be seen as making a claim for the positive value of pop as pop. That claim is that music that is adroitly manufactured to please a mass audience and sell widely can give pleasure, exhibit skill and constitute an ideal medium for provoking a broad audience to thought and for intervening in contemporary cultural life. Hence songs such as ‘Material Girl’, in which Madonna frankly champions pop’s commercial agenda and embraces pop’s feminine connotation at the same time: ‘We are living in a material world, and I am a material girl’ – a claim almost diametrically opposed to the one that Bush makes in assuming the persona of Earnshaw’s ghost. And yet Madonna too has created a persona as an agent who exercises transcendence in relation to her body. In Madonna’s case, she does this partly by presenting herself under an everchanging succession of very different appearances – constantly reinventing herself so that she is not tied down to, and cannot be identified with, any one of these appearances. Controversially for feminists, though, some of Madonna’s personae have been blatantly sexual, and she has seemed at times to collude in her own sexual objectification. On the front cover of her second album, Like a Virgin (1984), Madonna reclines in bed in a voluminous white wedding dress, her breasts conspicuous, and right at the centre of the shot, since the dress’s top half is little more than a basque – effectively, a piece of underwear. Reinforced by her first name and the album title, Madonna presents herself simultaneously as a virgin from the waist down – linked symbolically with the Virgin Mary, the Madonna – and a whore from the waist up – a woman not only putting her body publicly on display, thrusting it provocatively forward at the viewer, but also making money by doing so. This links symbolically with Mary’s fallen counterpart, Mary Magdalene. We could read this image as conveying a message that is of a piece with Madonna’s broader gesture of reclaiming pop. This message would then read: what might seem pure, virginal or transcendent is really caught up in the material world of commercial transactions between bodies; so let’s confront and embrace the reality. But the ambiguity of the image also makes it impossible for us straightforwardly to assume that Madonna belongs on either side of the Madonna/whore, purity/commerce divide. In this way too, by presenting herself in ways that are openly ambiguous, Madonna constructs a sense that she herself is ‘behind’ the images of herself that she presents, not reduced to them but manipulating and controlling them from behind the scenes, and enlisting the service of her many collaborators to accomplish this. Thus even while presenting herself in a heavily sexualized way, Madonna avoids being reduced to the sexualized body with which she presents us. Like Bush, then, Madonna has found ways to navigate the gendered divisions of the popular music world so that she retains the status of an intelligent agent who exercises transcendence in relation to her own body. In this case, this is the intelligent agency of a skilled practitioner of the craft of pop, and of the craft of knowingly using her own body and appearance to appeal to a mass audience. To conclude, I began this chapter by noting the long-standing numerical predominance of men at all levels of popular music culture. A deeper problem, however, is the hierarchical sets 63

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of gendered meanings that run right through this culture, bound up with further hierarchies – authenticity, reality, honesty, originality, innovation, uniqueness versus commerce, deceit, superficiality, the derivative and formulaic, and banality. These contrasts are not confined to popular music culture but are features of the Western aesthetic tradition more broadly, and indeed of the Western philosophical and religious tradition. Yet, where these contrasts do not deter women from participating in popular music altogether, their presence obliges female popular musicians to rework these inherited webs of meaning in creative and fascinating ways.

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Part Two

Religious Perspectives

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Chapter 6

The Bible and Popular Music Michael J. Gilmour

The music of John Lennon exemplifies many of the attitudes commonly associated with the 1960s, including a deep suspicion of authority and resistance to conformity. For him, religion is part of the establishment and its abuses, and he is characteristically blunt when asserting freedom from its control, as heard on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970): ‘There ain’t no Jesus gonna come/from the sky…’ (‘I Found Out’); ‘[They] Keep you doped with religion’ (‘Working Class Hero’); ‘I don’t believe in Bible/…/I don’t believe in Jesus’ (‘God’).1 Lennon is certainly not representative of all songwriters of the 1960s and beyond, but at the risk of an overgeneralization, and while acknowledging there are notable exceptions to the contrary,2 the mainstream music industry typically assumes a broadly secular posture that resists the perceived rigidity and narrow-mindedness of organized religion. Rock and roll is quintessentially an expression of freedom. So why is it that music of the last fifty or so years constantly draws on language, themes and imagery from the Christian Bible? And it is everywhere. As someone who teaches religious studies, I constantly bemoan a decline in biblical literacy evident in recent generations of students, and yet at the same time, the Jewish and Christian Scriptures remain a persistent presence in popular culture in all kinds of unlikely contexts.3 What does this engagement with the Bible look like, and what does it mean and not mean? The songs and albums selected for comment here fall broadly into two categories. The first contains examples of the Bible in popular music that are, in effect, brief moments in songs. Like the single kick of a bass drum, the sound of which is loud but momentary, these lyrical glances at Scripture are fleeting. The writer makes a point, and then moves on to something else. The second category is more like the sustained sound of a struck symbol; it lingers for a time, depending on how hard the drummer hits it. In these cases, the writers introduce, build on, explore and repeat biblical content. To switch metaphors, they are analogous to a recurring motif in a symphony or a repeated guitar riff in a rock song. In these examples, biblical passages linger throughout a song or album, giving these works a particular character or shade of meaning.

Some kicks of the bass drum: Brief uses of the Bible in popular music More times than not the biblical language heard in pop songs is relatively inconsequential, and often not even deliberate. It is easy, even tempting, to overstate the profundity of music, especially when it is music we love. However, when Elton John sings about Jesus blowing up balloons all day and wanting to go to Venus (‘Levon’, Madman Across the Water, 1971), I daresay there is no

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underlying deep meaning. Levon names his child Jesus ‘cause he likes the name’, and apparently lyricist Bernie Taupin does too. At other times, songwriters incorporate sacred material indirectly. Stevie Nicks’s magnificent ‘Annabel Lee’ from 2011’s In Your Dreams refers to angels in heaven and demons below. There are biblical precedents for these images but in this case, the song is an adaptation of an 1849 poem by Edgar Allan Poe. If there is biblical influence on the story of Annabel Lee, it is on Poe and only indirectly on Nicks. Or consider Tom Petty singing about a tongues-speaking woman with a 3D Jesus in a picture frame, dramatically shaking a snake above her head (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, ‘Red River’, Hypnotic Eye, 2014). Jesus, snake handling, and speaking in tongues all derive from biblical writings, and they appear in this context alongside a rosary, rabbit’s foot, tiger tooth, and ‘gris gris stick’ (a voodoo amulet), all as part of a rather colourful portrait of a superstitious woman. But again, this is probably not a deliberate reference to the Bible. There is no reason to suspect Petty is here making any statement about religion, and mention of snake handling and speaking in tongues does not indicate awareness of the Gospel of Mark, the writings of St. Paul or the book of Acts that reference these practices. Coming from the southern United States (Florida), he is no doubt aware that some congregations literally handle snakes and speak in strange tongues as part of their religious expression. There is biblical content in this song but it is inadvertent. It is simply part of the cultural capital available to the songwriter and his audience. A lot, perhaps even most, instances of the Bible in pop music fall into this broad category.

Deliberate uses of the Bible For other songwriters, allusions to and citations of the Bible are more deliberate. Sheryl Crow’s 2008 album Detours is explicit in its opposition to American foreign policy of the post-9/11 years, and she opens the album singing about the president of the United States leading the country ‘into a war based on lies’ (‘God Bless This Mess’). This context is significant because in ‘Peace Be Upon Us’ she cites one of the Beatitudes from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount for political purposes. She sings Jesus’s words ‘The meek shall inherit the earth’ alongside the common Arabic greeting ‘As-salaamu alykum/Wa-alaykum assalaam’ (peace be upon you, and unto you peace). By citing Matt. 5.5 this way, in parallel with this standard Muslim salutation, she offers a sharp critique in the context of the album’s explicit anti-war rhetoric. The violence of Muslim extremists and the violent response of a supposedly Christian America are both morally offensive to her.4 Like Tom Petty, she is not concerned with anything theological,5 but rather the Beatitude contributes to her critique of American militarism. Nevertheless, she introduces the citation precisely because it is one of Christianity’s authoritative, sacred texts – this context matters. If the meek inherit the earth, then Christian America’s warmongering is hypocritical because the (then-ruling) Republican conservatives she targets claim to align themselves with Christian values. As she sees it, their actions are morally indefensible precisely because their own Bible says so. At other times, deliberate use of the Bible is not at all concerned with context. ‘Hang on to Your Life’ by The Guess Who, included on their 1970 album Share the Land, is by all appearances an anti-drug song warning against the dangers of excess: ‘You can push your head, but don’t you

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push it too far.’ Rather unexpectedly, the song closes with a spoken reading of Ps. 22.13-15 in the King James Version: They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. This is remarkable. A song about a bad acid trip cites a biblical psalm, and what is more, a psalm with particular gravitas for Christians because of its association with the crucifixion of Christ (Matt. 27.35, 39, 46; Mark 15.24, 29, 34; Lk. 23.34; Jn 19.24). ‘Hang on to Your Life’ is about self-preservation so the citation of Psalm 22, in which the desperate, ancient poet wastes away, is fitting if somewhat melodramatic. Lyricists Burton Cummings and Kurt Winter appropriate a biblical poem about a dying man and reapply it as a warning against self-destructive drug use. These examples are entirely random but we gather from them something of the spectrum of ways songwriters draw on the Bible. For Tom Petty it is indirect and unintentional, reflecting the inestimable influence of biblical writings and concepts on the languages and cultures of the Christian and post-Christian Western world. In Sheryl Crow, we find an intentional and rather clever use of Scripture serving a political jeremiad. She begins with the assumption that political decision-makers of the day claim to find meaning and a moral foundation in the teachings of Jesus, and then turns those very teachings against them. How do hawkish Republicans justify their aggression, she wonders. Burton Cummings disregards the context of a psalm but incorporates the passage for dramatic effect. He sings about dangerous drug use that destroys mind and body, and appends a biblical poem similarly concerned with physical decay. The source of that ancient poem matters little, certainly less so than it does for Sheryl Crow.

Music as spirituality Of course, songwriters are often introspective as well. Whereas these Sheryl Crow and Burton Cummings songs use religious discourse to address external matters, others appeal to it when they turn inward. We see this connection between lyrical introspection and the sacred quite often in pop songs, including those that elevate music itself to the level of the spiritual. ‘I’ve found grace inside a sound/I found grace, it’s all that I found,’ sings Bono (‘Breathe’, No Line on the Horizon, 2009). Rock and roll ‘is my religion and my law,’ sings Ozzy Osbourne (‘You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll’, Diary of a Madman, 1981). In such cases, music is sacrosanct. Art becomes religion. Here too, songwriters often borrow the discourses of religion, including the Bible, to express that high praise of the music and musicians they prize. Consider this phrase from Robert Plant’s ‘Turn it Up’, included on the 2014 album Lullaby and … The Ceaseless Roar: ‘The radio inside this car/Brings guidance from above.’ Plant captures here a recurring theme in contemporary songs, which is that music itself provides a kind of solace and illumination, truth and meaning. The song begins with the narrator travelling the Charley Patton (Prides) highway, somewhere east of Tunica. He is ‘close to giving up’ and in need of ‘help and consolation’ so he looks to music for solace: ‘I’ll turn it on again/Turn it up/Turn it up.’

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The Charley Patton highway might indicate the Mississippi Blues Trail, which marks sites of historic significance for the genre. There are at least two markers commemorating the delta bluesman Charley Patton, one in Bolton, Mississippi where he was born sometime in the 1880s or 1890s, and one at his grave in Holly Ridge, Mississippi (d. 1934). Alternatively, perhaps this lyric is simply a nod to the familiar ‘life is a road’ trope so familiar to the blues. Either way, it is clear that Robert Plant’s narrator is in despair as he sings these words: ‘Alone with disconnection/And not a lonesome word/I reach out to the radio/And the clinically disturbed.’ He is lost, turned inside out, blinded and stuck, but fortunately he finds relief: ‘A touch of serendipity/A little stroke of luck/The radio inside this car/Brings guidance from above.’ What interests me about the poet’s language here is the use of religious imagery. It is explicit in the second stanza, in what appears to refer to the advice of a radio preacher – the cliché southern Bible thumper warning of hellfire jumps to mind – who recommends submission to God. The preacher promises God will chase away the man’s demons but unfortunately, the unflattering descriptor ‘clinically disturbed’ indicates this was no solution at all. Religion proves hollow. But the same car radio offers another healing balm, and given the geographical marker of Tunica, Mississippi in the opening stanza, it appears to be music – not religion, as represented by the radio preacher, but music – and perhaps specifically the blues of Charley Patton and his musical heirs.6 Music, for Robert Plant, offers a better religion than religion itself, or a different kind of religion, or an alternative to traditional religion. Plant is hardly alone in finding such a vague but rich spirituality in music, and those who do often draw on sacred language to give expression to it. When James Taylor recorded ‘Carolina In My Mind’ at Apple Studios in London in 1968, George Harrison provided backup vocals and Paul McCartney played bass, contributions meaningful enough to Taylor that he adjusted his lyrics to mark the occasion, singing of ‘a holy host of others standing around’ him in the recording studio (James Taylor, 1968).7 Or recall Don McLean’s ‘American Pie’, that catchy tune about the giants of post-1959 rock and roll, which is to say the years following the plane crash claiming the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper (American Pie, 1971). Nowhere else do we find the spiritual capacity of popular music so eloquently expressed, and the blurring of the lines between religion and the arts more flagrant and heartfelt than this tribute to the musicians McLean admires most, Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Three symbol crashes: Sustained uses of the Bible in popular music Some dislike the topic of this chapter, and for different reasons. To illustrate, dyed-in-the-wool Bob Dylan fans that are not fans of the Bible prefer not to see religion and music brought together into conversation. Those who are fans of the Bible but not Bob Dylan do not like it any better. Some religious conservatives assume the so-called secular arts have nothing to contribute to spiritual contemplation, whereas many music enthusiasts find greater meaning in pop stars than prophets. Those antagonistic to organized religion, for whatever reason, do not want their music associated with it. Still other reviewers find the very idea of studying the popular arts a waste of time, regardless of the angle. Why bother with all that lowbrow drivel? Study Margaret Atwood, of course, but Joni Mitchell? Despite such objections, conversation about the Bible in popular music remains vital because for some lyricists, it is a significant source. We turn now to three 70

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very different examples where this is the case, and in doing so, we turn also from incidental or brief interactions with sacred texts to more sustained dialogues with this material.

Bob Dylan sinks the Titanic Having just mentioned Bob Dylan, I begin with a sample from his later work. Dylan knows the Bible well and refers to it constantly (see Gilmour 2011). On his 2012 album Tempest, the release of which coincided with the one-hundredth anniversary of the Titanic disaster, there is a fourteen-minute ballad about the tragedy. The song is largely a who’s-who of passengers aboard the doomed ship, which becomes, in effect, a metaphor of humanity’s shared plight on a sea of chaos. The doomed travellers face the same fate; are equally subject to the arbitrary and disastrous; experience the same horrors and bedlam as Titanic goes down. The striking extremes in these short biographical sketches – a bishop and a brothel keeper, the rich man Mr Astor and gamblers, heroes and traitors, the self-serving and the self-sacrificing – remind listeners that calamity and death are the great levellers, ignoring wealth and status entirely. The Book of Revelation is key to the story Dylan tells. He often refers to the New Testament apocalypse in his songs and names it explicitly in this one (the ship captain reads from it). Some of his imagery and terms recall John the Seer’s language as well, such as the sky splitting apart (cf. Rev. 6.14) and a cup of tears (cf. Rev. 21.4). Within the Book of Revelation, fittingly, the sea is a recurring image. Recall the colourful language of Rev. 13.1 where we find a monstrous beast, a symbol of chaos, emerging out of the water. Furthermore, Revelation condemns extreme wealth and the decadence and abuses of power that come with it. RMS Titanic is the embodiment of extravagance and excess so perhaps Dylan is imagining Rev. 18.11-24 in particular as he depicts the splendours of the luxury liner: And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore, cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, slaves – and human lives. … And all shipmasters and seafarers, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning. (Rev. 18.11-13, 17-18) One recurring character in Dylan’s ballad is particularly conspicuous. A watchman, supposedly on the lookout for icebergs, is asleep and therefore partly responsible for the calamity. Dylan’s use of the term ‘watchman’ is possibly a playful reference to his ‘All Along the Watchtower’ (John Wesley Harding, 1967) but also recalls the application of the term to biblical prophets. A watchman sounds alerts to warn people of impending danger. According to Ezekiel, it is a serious offence for a watchman not to sound the alarm (33.6). At the same time, the warnings of the prophets of old often went unheeded. In Revelation, the wealthy that wallow in their luxuries are even guilty of killing those watchmen/prophets (18.24). Tempest is full of violence and bloodshed but there is possibly a hint of optimism in Dylan’s Titanic song as well. Humanity bobs along the chaotic sea often unmindful of the prophets’ warnings but not all is lost. Revelation anticipates a time when the sea, John’s symbol of chaos, will be no more (21.1). 71

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Again, some dismiss the pop-culture arts as beneath serious study but if we allow that writers like Dylan reward close attention, their dialogues with the Bible deserve scrutiny as well. In this case, his use of Revelation is striking and thoughtful, and to ignore this aspect of his artistry is akin to skipping over a chapter in a novel or ignoring a painter’s use of a particular colour.

Arcade Fire reads the Sermon on the Mount Arcade Fire’s 2010 album The Suburbs was a commercial and critical success, winning a Grammy for Album of the Year among other accolades. For those who enjoy exploring religious dimensions in popular culture, this Montreal-based band has much to offer with clever lyrics every bit as original as their distinctive sound. Their songs combine an imaginative blend of social commentary with an informed and creative reading of biblical literature. The most explicit reference to the Bible in The Suburbs is the warning not to ‘trust a millionaire quoting the Sermon on the Mount’ (‘City With No Children’). On one level, the phrase simply indicates things are not what they appear but I suggest there is more going on with this conspicuous naming of a biblical text. Ideas in the Sermon on the Mount lurk in the background of many of the album’s songs, not just the one referring to it by name. If we read that ancient homily (Matthew 5–7, with parallels in Luke) while listening to Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, we find it informs their lyrical narratives in subtle ways. Here are a few possible connections between the album and the Sermon. First, both share suspicions about wealth. ‘Ready to Start’ includes the vaguely Dylanesque phrase ‘the businessmen drink my blood like the kids in art school said’, hinting at misgivings about money and authority figures. There is also that warning not to trust millionaires citing the Sermon on the Mount. Those wealthy individuals would cite that particular passage is ironic; the Sermon insists, ‘You cannot serve God and wealth’ (6.24), that the poor are blessed and possess the kingdom of God, and that the hungry are blessed because they will be filled (Lk. 6.20-21). The particular millionaire in question carries a debt and the singer doubts whether ‘your righteousness could pay the interest’. Quoting the Bible is no indicator of real righteousness (hence the debt) and material wealth does not help make these particular payments. The songs contrast two different forms of wealth and here there is a thematic resemblance with teachings in the Sermon on the Mount: Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt. 6.19-21) The Sermon also distinguishes real and feigned beauty, contrasting the lilies of the field with the grandeur of royalty: even ‘Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these’ (6.29). We do not find real beauty, it follows, in the trappings of human achievement, wealth and power that King Solomon represents: ‘If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more cloth you – you of little faith?’ (Matt. 6.30; cf. ‘The Suburbs’: ‘move your feet from hot pavement and into the grass ‘cause it’s already past’). The dangers of wealth and the corruptibility and delusions of the powerful are something children living in the suburbs recognize: ‘The kids have always known that the emperor wears 72

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no clothes but they bow to him anyway’ (‘Ready to Start’). The emperors in the suburbs – so emblematic of life in prosperous Western societies – fall short of real beauty just like Solomon. Second, notice that the light/dark imagery used in descriptions of urban spaces resembles Jesus’s Sermon in certain respects: ‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid … let your light shine before others’ (Matt. 5.14-16). When measured against this image, the contemporary suburbs Arcade Fire describes are found wanting. In ‘City With No Children’, the song that names the Sermon on the Mount, the singer drives home to Houston and finds, ‘There was no light that we could see.’ Also depressing is the language of ‘Half Light II (No Celebration)’, where there is a search for a town ‘where we could live even in the half-light’. These dark places, no brighter than ‘distant stars’ (‘Suburban War’), are very different from the idealized city on a hill that nothing can hide (Matt. 5.14). The lyrics do not dwell on the specific shortcomings of the suburbs but clearly beneath a veneer of respectability, prosperity and order lays dysfunction and emptiness. Third, young people see the modern world with remarkable clarity in these songs, most of which use the terms children and/or kids, and/or include reminiscences about childhood friends and their stifled dreams (like the ‘kids in buses longing to be free’ in ‘Wasted Hours’). They are equivalent to the traditional blind seer or wise fool who unexpectedly bring clear thinking and insight to those lacking understanding. Kids see and acknowledge problems (e.g. they ‘have always known that the emperor wears no clothes’) and unlike most, are inclined towards peace. A neighbourhood ‘war’ among children ends quickly in ‘The Suburbs’ because ‘by the time the first bombs fell we were already bored’. Bringing an end to ‘war’ is not so easy for adults and their nations who rarely grow ‘bored’ with battle. The ideal of children as representatives of peace appears in the video for ‘The Suburbs’, which juxtaposes scenes of youthful innocence and play with military and police action. When the Sermon on the Mount refers to peace, it uses similar language: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God’ (Matt. 5.9; cf. 19.14: ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs’). Fourth, the Sermon on the Mount closes with Jesus contrasting a foolish man building a house on sand with a wise man building on rock. Rain, floods and wind beat on both houses and the one built on sand collapses while the one built on rock remains (Matt. 7.24-27). These songs suggest that certain ways of living, ones embodied in the sprawl of modern cities, will not endure. When only a child, the narrator of ‘Deep Blue’ saw signs in the suburbs that ‘something was ending’, and that a ‘dead star’ was ‘collapsing’. Here as elsewhere it is a child who discerns an otherwise hidden reality. In ‘Month of May’, the apocalyptic overtones continue with ‘the city’ hit from above and ‘a violent wind’ that blows away the wires. There is shock in the suburbs, ‘but the kids are all standing with their arms folded tight’. They appear to watch without surprise as everything around them collapses because it lacks a meaningful foundation. In ‘Rococo’, which also involves an urban setting (‘downtown’), wind blows the ashes down. The term ‘rococo’ indicates opulence, perhaps alluding again to the allure and destructive nature of wealth because when ‘modern kids’ (cf. reference to the 1970s in ‘The Suburbs’) sing the term repeatedly, the narrator cries out, ‘Dear God what is that horrible song they’re singin’?’ Here, as in Matt. 7.27, strong winds represent the collapse of fools’ endeavours. Finally, various knowing narrators on the album give voice to suspicions about life in the city and its suburbs, suspecting all is not well beneath a façade of respectability. In ‘Ready to Start’, 73

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when asked to come out with those knocking on his door, the speaker confesses, ‘I would rather be alone than pretend I feel alright.’ A similar contrast between private/public, in/out, interior/ exterior appears in the Sermon on the Mount (see e.g. Matt. 6.3-4, 6, 17-18). Here we learn that true piety and integrity are evident not among those who broadcast their respectability but in those who show acts of charity, kindness and religious devotion behind closed doors. Suburbia typically accentuates the values of conformity and encourages public displays of wealth, success and conventionality. Through this creative engagement with the Sermon on the Mount, Arcade Fire suggests real beauty is lost in the process. ‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’ closes The Suburbs on a self-consciously prophetic note. Someone wants the music to end, for the singer to stop being pretentious and conform by punching the clock like everyone else. There is no place for artists/prophets who hold up mirrors revealing weaknesses and flaws. This rejection of artistic commentary is not the only challenge facing the singer. Just as material wealth contrasts with a heavenly treasure far more valuable, so also the sprawl and shopping malls of suburbia offer a kind of light. This, however, is a poor substitute for the light the artist craves. The singer cries out, ‘Please cut the lights!’ of the city. Artists/Musicians need to escape the mire of suburban life, the sprawl with its blinding glare, if they are to perform their prophetic task. This involves depicting the vacuous conditions of modern life. Or, to put it in the language of the Sermon, to announce, ‘If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!’ (Matt. 6.23).

Iron Maiden goes to war I take the final illustration of the Bible in popular music from heavy metal, a genre that regularly mines Christian discourse for its otherworldly style of lyrical storytelling. Here too, buried deep in the mix and obscured by the roar of power cords, we occasionally find clever, witty and thoughtful dialogue with the Bible. Iron Maiden’s ‘Brighter than a Thousand Suns’ from the album A Matter of Life and Death (2006; lyrics by Bruce Dickinson and Steve Harris) opens with a first-person plural confession (‘We are not the sons of God’) and closes with the sinners’ prayer (‘Holy Father we have sinned’). In between these striking admissions, we learn about humanity’s Nimrod-like ambition and lust for power: ‘the power of man, on its tower ready to fall’ (cf. Gen. 11.1-9). This alludes to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel in which God confuses the builders’ language and puts an end to their overreaching endeavours (11.8). Some things never change, and it is obvious the songwriters use this ancient story to condemn a present-day equivalent. Just like the ancients, human striving and progress in the modern world exceeds reasonable limits, something suggested by the ingenuity symbolized by E = mc2, which, in the context of the song, amounts to the boastful ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens’ (Gen. 11.4). It follows that if modern societies share the ambition embodied in the ancient Babel tower builders, they face a similar fate: ‘The LORD scattered them abroad’ (Gen. 11.8). Attempts to build a city and tower – technological and military advancements described in Genesis and continued in the present (i.e. E = mc2) – are a ‘race to suicide’. The song alludes to war generally, and nuclear war in particular. Its title derives ultimately from the Bhagavad Gita,8 though as mediated through Robert Jungk’s book about atomic warfare Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists 74

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(originally published in German in 1956). The lyrics even mention the author (‘Robert’) and refer to missiles (iron fingers stabbing the sky), nuclear dust and bombers. Dickinson and Harris also draw on Jesus’s Olivet Discourse, an apocalyptic sermon concerned with the impending destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans. Twice the lyrics refer to nations rising, which recall Jesus’s words ‘nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom’ (Matt. 24.6-7; Mk 13.8; Lk. 21.10). Significantly, Jesus’s Olivet Discourse describes the complete devastation of Jerusalem (‘not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down’ [Matt. 24.2]), and the inevitable suffering military actions produce. Jesus warns his followers to ‘flee to the mountains’ (24.16) at the first signs of the crisis. A song depicting the horrors of warfare draws on an ancient speech addressing the same thing. We also find in ‘Brighter than a Thousand Suns’ a possible connection between the image of nations rising (Jesus) and the powers of darkness described in Revelation when the songwriters introduce the terms ‘hate’, ‘fury’ and ‘Satan’. The latter (Rev. 12.9) comes to the earth full of rage. Maiden fans know this well: ‘Woe to the earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you with great wrath’ (Rev. 12.12; spoken, along with Rev. 13.18, at the beginning of ‘The Number of the Beast’ [Number of the Beast, 1982]). It also comes as no surprise to those reading Revelation (or listening to Maiden’s ‘Number of the Beast’, for that matter) that the Devil’s ‘time is short’ (Rev. 12.12), so once again we find the songwriters aligning present-day enemies (overreaching warmongers) with the soon-to-be-defeated villains of biblical literature. God scatters the tower builders of Babel, and ultimately ends the Devil’s activities.9 The Bible’s ‘fingerprints’ are everywhere in popular music, not least in heavy metal where we often find a symbolic universe informed by its words, concepts, characters and stories. Sometimes the music is subversive in its engagement with sacred themes, dwelling on and identifying with, for instance, night, darkness, evil, the Devil, death and heterodoxy rather than a more expected alignment with day, light, goodness, God, life and orthodoxy. At the same time, even with its carnivalesque reversal of values, heavy metal is often a conservative art form, relying on a clear demarcation of good and evil, God and the Devil. In the case considered here, the stress on dark elements in biblical apocalyptic contribute to a forceful and emotively charged call for peace.

Closing thoughts I conclude this overly brief discussion of ways pop music engages the Bible with a few words from John Barlow, an American poet and lyricist for the Grateful Dead. His ‘Afterword’ to the 2005 publication The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics reflects on ways songs resonate with audiences. ‘All the Grateful Dead songs that will ever be written are in your hands,’ he writes. ‘Of course – and more to the point – these songs here will continue to expand and grow as others come along and fill them with their own imaginings, explicit or tacit. We’ve always tried … to give you plenty of room to flesh your own songs around the bones of what we gave you’ (2005: 418). The potential is there for songs to carry profound meanings, and this potential for meaning involves a swirl of contributing factors including the lyricists and musicians who create them, but also the listeners who bring their own experiences and needs to those words and sounds. Barlow adds: It’s not the guy who writes the words, or the guy who writes the melody, or even the guys who work up the chords and improvise the fresh miracles that occur in that space for years 75

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and years. It’s the song itself. … [And] if the song is any good, it detaches from its apparent source and enters into the hearts and minds of those who hear it to make its own home there. (2005: 420) That swirl of meaning inevitably includes the endless sources that shape lyrics. Scripture is part of that long, strange trip. Sometimes subtly, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes critically or affectionately, sometimes flippantly, but sometimes with deep insight. The sounds of the Bible are all over popular music, and its influence on that art form is inestimable.

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Chapter 7

Theology, Imagination and Popular Music Gavin Hopps

God loveth adverbs; and cares not how good, but how well. (Joseph Hall) In what ways might popular music be related to the religious? If we leave aside the Barth-like rebuttal ‘Keineswegs!’, most answers to this question appear to fall into one of three broad categories: (i) it can be made by religious artists; (ii) it can deal with religious subjects and (iii) it can aspire to elicit religious experience.1 Thus, with reference to the first category, an artist such as Sufjan Stevens, for example, who identifies himself as a Christian but who often writes songs without any overt religious references, may nonetheless be thought of as making ‘religious’ music. Stevens has said something similar himself: It’s not so much that faith influences us as it lives in us. In every circumstance (giving a speech or tying my shoes), I am living and moving and being. This absolves me from ever making the embarrassing effort to gratify God (and the church) by imposing religious content on anything I do. I mean, I’ve written songs about stalkers. Is that any less religious than a song about an ordained pastor? No way. (Stevens 2006) If this is the case, it seems that popular music might still in some way be considered religious – to the artist and perhaps for the audience too – even when it lacks ‘religious content’.2 This makes more sense if, as musicologists such as Christopher Small recommend, we cease to conceptualize music ‘nominally’ as a self-contained autonomous object and think about it ‘verbally’ as an activity, for which he coins the term ‘musicking’: The act of musicking establishes in the place where it is happening a set of relationships, and it is in those relationships that the meaning of the act lies. They are to be found not only between those organized sounds which are conventionally thought of as being the stuff of musical meaning but also between the people who are taking part, in whatever capacity, in the performance; … relationships between person and person, between individual and society, between humanity and the natural world and even perhaps the supernatural world. (1998: 13) Music, in other words, is a dynamic event, whose meaning doesn’t reside ‘immanently’ within the work but is instead more widely distributed across a relational field of subjects and objects

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in a state of performatively constituted entanglement – which, according to Small, may even extend beyond the terrestrial sphere to include the supernatural. In terms of this dynamic model of ‘musicking’, then, we might think of religious significance as an ‘adverbial’ as well as a ‘substantive’ matter – which is to say, a ‘how’ as well as a ‘what’ – since, in addition to the possibility that a piece of music may, on account of its subject matter, be seen as religious ‘in itself’, it is also possible to make or listen to music ‘religiously’, irrespective of its content. While this might at first seem somewhat odd, it is in principle no different from the commonly accepted idea that one can appreciate or perform a piece of religious music, outside its original liturgical context, purely ‘as music’, without any sort of religious involvement (playing Bach’s MatthäusPassion in a concert hall or doing aerobics to Gregorian chant). In short, what I am suggesting is that, just as one can engage with religious music ‘secularly’, it may be possible conversely to perform or listen to secular music ‘religiously’.3 The second of our three definitional categories is much more straightforward, and corresponds to most people’s default sense of what is meant when we talk about religious music. Yet, as we shall see, these ‘substantive’ engagements with religious subjects encompass a wide variety of moods or modes – such as the interrogative, the subjunctive and the optative, in addition to the indicative. So, for instance, Morrissey’s song ‘I Have Forgiven Jesus’ puts us in the midst of religious concerns, in a way that may be productive for theological inquiry, even as it interrogates and evinces an animosity towards the divine. (One of the general things I wish to do in this chapter is to suggest that theological significance isn’t simply a matter of correspondence with Scripture or its distillation into doctrinal postulates; instead, I want to widen the focus to take cognizance of what music can do and to consider the possibility that a divergence from or contestation of theological teaching may also paradoxically be of value from a religious perspective.) The third category is the widest or at least the most open, since religious significance in this case has little, if anything, to do with the author’s ‘intentions’ and is not simply determined by the text ‘in itself’. Rather, it is an ‘adverbial’ matter that has more to do with music’s affect upon the listener, which manifestly cannot be established in advance. Approaches that focus on this third category – and see the meaning of a musical event as co-constituted by the act of reception – may be helpfully explained in terms of Small’s ‘rhizomatic’ model of musicking, which reconceptualizes music as an acentred activity whose meaning is distributed across an ensemble of relations that includes the listener.4 However, they also correlate with a number of contemporary theological approaches to the arts, such as David Brown’s model of ‘sacramentality’, Richard Viladesau’s conception of music as ‘a way to God’ and Frank Burch Brown’s re-evaluation of the spiritual significance of kitsch.5 (One might also add to this list of ‘affective’ approaches Jean-Luc Marion’s work on the idol and the icon,6 and Paul Ricoeur’s ‘performative’ account of poetic revelation.7) Indeed, while there are still some theological critics, such as Jeremy Begbie, who doggedly stick to ‘essentialist’ approaches – contending that certain musical forms are somehow ‘in themselves’ more Christian than others – there has been a conspicuous shift in the field of theology and the arts in recent years away from exclusively ‘immanent’ approaches towards more ‘affective’ models of significance.8 This is doubtless in part a response to the more widespread ‘turn to affect’ across the humanities, but it is also partly a reaction against the prescriptive tendencies of ‘catechetical’ approaches such as Begbie’s, which as Heidi Epstein rather tartly observes, ‘reduces music to a mere proof-text for biblical doctrine’ (2004: 84). The correlative problem with such approaches, though, is the opportunity cost they entail, since they have a tendency 78

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to neglect music’s transformative and revelatory capacities – that is, its ability epiphanically to expand our vision, to engender a sense of being opened, to awaken us to the mystery in which we ordinarily unwittingly stand, and perhaps even to mediate experiences of divine presence.9 In this chapter, I shall focus on the two latter categories – that is, popular music’s treatment of religious subjects and its ability to elicit religious experience – attending in particular to the role of the imagination – though in the first case the emphasis will be on ‘transitivity’, whereas in the second, it will be on transformation. In highlighting these two, often interrelated ways in which popular music may be constructively related to the religious, I am implicitly arguing against several critics whose negative readings of popular music have sought to foreclose such possibilities. In particular, I wish to contest Adorno’s well-known polemical contention that popular music neither evinces nor elicits imaginative engagement, and Roger Scruton’s more recent but similarly tendentious claim that popular music is incapable of engendering contemplative affects.10 In the process, however, I also want to extend the compass of attention beyond the ‘essentialist’ catechetical approach espoused by Jeremy Begbie to take in the function and affects of music.11

What has graceland to do with Jerusalem? One of the features of the so-called re-enchantment of the West is an increased visibility of the religious as a subject in contemporary popular music (as seen, for example, in the work of artists such as Arcade Fire, Belle and Sebastian, Lupe Fiasco, The Killers, Lady Gaga, Roots Manuva, Mumford and Sons, Prince, Regina Spektor and Kanye West).12 While concurring with this thesis in general, I want to complicate it in a couple of divergent ways: on the one hand, by calling attention to the variety of theological moods in which religious concerns may be articulated, and on the other, by considering how even secular popular music might be put to religious use. With reference to our foregoing categories, we could say that in the first case the religious significance of such music is ‘substantively’ constituted, by virtue of its content, whereas in the second case such music may be ‘adverbially’ related to the religious, by dint of its affects or the experiences it affords – though obviously the former may also engender religious experience. Perhaps somewhat perversely, the sort of music with which I shall be least concerned in this chapter is straightforwardly affirmative religious music. This is not because I see no aesthetic or theological value in such music, but rather because I wish to widen the demesne of religious significance in suggesting that this is not the only sort of popular music that might be of value from a religious perspective.

Post-secular popular music If the ‘re-enchantment’ of contemporary culture involves a widening or more visible diffusion of religious concerns, most commentators on the subject agree that it also appears to involve some sort of weakening.13 A helpful way of thinking about this simultaneous widening and weakening of religion in the public sphere is in relation to the theoretical framework of post-secularism. Very briefly, the label ‘post-secular’ – which was popularized by Jürgen Habermas, but which had already been in circulation for some time – refers to a stance that ambivalently eschews purely secular constructions of reality without endorsing, in any committed or exclusive sense, a religious 79

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alternative.14 It therefore, typically, announces a fluid and porous ‘in-between’ zone, which repudiates all forms of fundamentalism – whether secular or religious – but which entertains, in a partial or ‘weakened’ sense, the possibilities of both perspectives. (A common feature of the postsecular outlook is thus a sort of self-deprecating epistemology – as propounded, for example, in Gianni Vattimo’s theory of ‘weak thought’ – which recognizes the contingency, the provisionality and always-already interpreted character of any conception of the real.) Although this resembles, and indeed encompasses, traditional ‘neither/nor’ forms of agnosticism, the post-secular outlook tends to involve a greater openness to mystery and has a more hybridized or ‘overdetermined’ character, which includes a variety of conflicted, questioning, ironic, subjunctive, ‘excessive’ and paradoxical postures. While it obviously isn’t possible to provide anything like a complete account, what I wish to try and do in the space available is to sketch out some of the most prominent forms that such a post-secular outlook might take in popular music. As a heuristic convenience, I shall identify a number of discrete categories, though manifestly things are not so neat and tidy in practice, and many songs will fall into more than one of these categories.

The in-between One of the clearest illustrations of a post-secular outlook is the restless and roving agnosticism of those who find themselves in a ‘no-man’s land’ between religious and secular commitments. This might take the form of a hesitant or interrogative engagement with the religious, as we find in a song like ‘The Eye Of The Needle’ by the British pop band The Divine Comedy, in which the song’s narrator attends a religious service and watches the worshippers taking communion, with a combination of yearning and aversion – at once drawn towards and yet unable to adopt a religious stance. The song doesn’t simply describe a past and private event, however; rather, by dramatizing the experience in the ‘timeless’ present of the narrative, the song entices the listener to imagine their way into the speaker’s predicament. This is most obvious towards the end of the song, where the final utterance (‘All through communion, I stare at the people,/Squeezing their way through the eye of the needle’) is followed by an extended outro pastiche of the most exquisitely mournful communion music, with a foregrounded ‘ecclesial’ organ harmony, which presents the events the song describes as going on in front of us, and thus draws the listener into the experiencing perspective of the speaker. In this way, the song invites the agnostic listener to enter into a stance of wondering, which manifestly keeps its distance from commitment but is open to the possibility of faith.15

Oxymoronic postures Another common manifestation of the post-secular outlook involves what John McClure refers to as the ‘double practice of disavowal and reaffirmation’ (2007: 13), as seen for instance in Antony and the Johnsons’ ‘Rapture’ – from their 1998 debut album – which slowly unfolds a litany of deterioration, playing on various senses of ‘falling’: ‘Eyes are falling, lips are falling … Teardrops falling to the ground … Oh my mama, she’s been falling … Oh my friends, I’ve watched them falling’. (This vision of all things inexorably falling is rendered all the more harrowing by the plangent vibrato of Hegarty’s voice, which quivers with a sort of electric intensity and conveys a sense of radical vulnerability.) The song then delivers its audacious 80

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punchline, as the singer sardonically asks of this tragic entropic predicament, ‘Is this the rapture?’ But the song has an even bigger surprise up its sleeve; for, in a manner reminiscent of the turn to praise in the psalms of lament, there follows a wholly unheralded peripeteia, as the song shifts into orthodox prayer: ‘Our father who art in heaven/For the kingdom, the power, the glory, yours now and forever’. It’s hard to know quite what to make of this shift. One way of reading it, though, is to see the conclusion as modelling – and inviting the listener to adopt – an ‘eschatological’ posture, which doesn’t seek to deny or escape this-worldly ‘falling’, but which reminds us that it is possible to look upon it from an alternative transcendent perspective, and thus inhabit this realm of ineluctable degeneration hopefully, even if the source of this hope isn’t rooted in any present reality. This oscillation between disavowal and reaffirmation can of course be multiplied, as it is in Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Faith’, from his eponymous 2009 EP. More precisely, the song, which is musically based around a sample from ‘Tired Of Fighting’ by Menahan Street Band, begins with a first-person consonant vignette that establishes the singer’s transgressive credentials: ‘I take a sip of Hennessy and then get pissy drunk/I ain’t a drinker, I’m a thinker, call it what you want/ But if you turn your back, know that you just missed your chance/To witness the realest shit that’s ever been told to man’. Now while this may appear to have little to do with the ensuing narratives, its braggadocio, swearing and advertised excess is in fact key to the song’s religious function – paradoxically because and not in spite of the fact that its ‘indecency’ may offend a number of mainline Christians. This is because Lamar appears to be speaking to the un-converted or undecided – to the marginalized and disenfranchised outside the church, not to the hygienically respectable Christian – audiences, in other words, who may be alienated by the voice of sanitized piety. In situating its speaker within a ‘profane’ milieu, the song may therefore be better able to reach and appeal to its target audience, who might be more inclined to attend to such a figure than someone who speaks de haut en bas from the perspective of ecclesial authority. What follows this vignette is a series of concretely realized parallel narratives about various people finding, losing and struggling to hold onto or make sense of religious faith. But what makes the song especially effective from a religious point of view is the way these narratives of wavering faith are interlaced with a beseeching lyrical endorsement of belief – sung by BJ The Chicago Kid in the song’s chorus – which seems to proceed from a different diegetic space (‘Gotta have faith … don’t you give up, don’t you give in/Faith, all you need is the size of a mustard seed’). By means of this dual vocal perspective, the song is able to acknowledge and yet at the same time offer a counterpoise to – without in any sense softening – the suffering to which its narrative points; and in this way, the song as a whole models a more realistic ‘I know very well, but nonetheless’ posture of faith in the face of suffering.

Metaphysical shuddering So far, we have been concerned with forms of post-secularism that involve an explicit engagement – however ambivalently – with the religious. But it is also possible to open up or shade over into a post-secular space without directly referring to religious subjects. How is this so? Leaving aside musical evocations of transcendence for now – though obviously these contribute to such effects – it seems to me that we find in the songs of a band like Fleet Foxes an enigmatic radiant vision of nature, which rarely involves explicitly religious references, but 81

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which uncannily evokes a ‘something more’ – a glow, a shadow, a sense of enchantment – that carries them away from a purely materialist conception of the real.16 It is therefore no surprise to find references to Yeats’ ‘Lake Isle of Innisfree’ – where ‘midnight’s all a glimmer’ – in a couple of their songs.17 This sort of ‘haunted immanence’ is even more prominent in the less wellknown work of Mount Eerie – the musical project of American songwriter Phil Elverum – who specializes in songs that dramatize mysteriously liminal intimations of epiphanic experiences in nature, whose uncanny vision is poised somewhere between Wordsworth’s Prelude and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.18 One might also include in this category songs that stage a narcotic epiphany, such as ‘Fargo’ by the Californian ‘drone-folk’ band Gowns, which itemizes in a gorgeously harmonized litany all of the drugs the speaker took when she ‘stayed up for days in the summer’, and then suddenly slows down into a dream-like vision – glowingly intoned over the tremulous stasis of a sustained organ chord – in which the everyday world is epiphanically transfigured: ‘And the light shining through the window was golden/And the days stretched out as far as the horizon/And you could see the dust float like sparkles in the air’. Once again, although we have been carried beyond a quotidian vision, we haven’t crossed over into a religious terrain. And it is in this narcotically conjured in-between space of enchantment that the song leaves the listener.

Ludic avowal Another popular post-secular strategy for weakening the status of one’s positings is what McClure refers to as ‘ludic avowal’ (2007: 16), by which he means the use of absurd excess, extravagant (im)piety and parody in the presentation of religious views. McClure’s discussion focuses on the novels of Pynchon, DeLillo and Erdrich, but we find this strategy in popular music too, as wonderfully illustrated in the song ‘Ain’t Going To Goa’ by the Brixton band Alabama 3 (also known as The First Presleyterian Church of Elvis the Divine). What is so consummately accomplished in this song – which musically blends country, blues and acid house, but which also incorporates a miniature rapped sermon by the Very Reverend Dr D. Wayne Love – is the staging of a mode of religious affirmation that shimmers indecipherably between seriousness and irony. Of course, in one sense this weakening appears to signal a suspension of commitment – and the song may, indeed, be nothing more than a very amusing and well-pointed parody. Yet such weakening can serve a more positive theological function as well, since as McClure observes, it may make the reintroduction of the religious palatable to secular-minded audiences (2007: 16). In this sense, irony may paradoxically make possible, even as it vitiates, the avowal of religious allegiance. This is not to imply that that belief today must always be conjoined with or leavened by irony; although, for some – and perhaps even for certain generations of believers, as Tom Beaudoin has argued – the posture of faith is inevitably accompanied, if not enabled, by a self-distancing strategy of irony, which advertises an insynchronicity between the speaker and their avowed stance. For Beaudoin, this means that ‘faithfulness happens with (or as) a question mark’ (1998: 42); however, it seems to me that the self-differing wink of irony can pertain to various aspects of the avowal and isn’t necessarily the insignia of scepticism. Instead, it might, for example, signal dissociation from institutionalized practices or an acknowledgement of belief as a wagering that isn’t opposed to but nonetheless reaches beyond the jurisdiction of reason. In other words, I am suggesting that while irony may indeed be a cadential question mark that 82

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casts doubt upon its own postulations, it might also be seen as a sort of ‘apophatic’ caveat, whose ‘unsaying’ is tonally rather than semantically constituted.

Subjunctive explorations Of course, tone isn’t the only way of weakening the status of one’s positings; this may be done by grammatical mood as well, in removing what’s predicated from the indicative sphere and staging it in a subjunctive realm. One of the most popular examples of this is Joan Osborne’s 1995 single ‘One Of Us’, which lures the listener into engaging with religious issues – without commitment, from the safety of a hypothetical distance – with its ‘What if’ postulates. A cheekier and more sceptical variant of this strategy is adopted in Lily Allen’s ‘Him’, which asks ‘if there is some kind of God, do you think He’s pleased?’ and goes on to wonder – and in doing so prompts the listener to wonder – in jokey but also serious terms, about the actions and attributes of God. We also find much less stable and more dramatic hypothetical positings in popular music, in which we sense a reaching through subjunctive space towards some sort of indicative stance, which the speaker cannot fully or finally maintain. Nick Cave’s ‘Into My Arms’, for example, from the 1997 album The Boatman’s Call, is a fine illustration of this kind of distended subjunctive. More particularly, the song begins with an apparently emphatic declaration of non-belief: ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God.’ But this is almost immediately countered by a conditional clause that doesn’t gainsay this initial stance, though it opens up a subjunctive space that suspends the speaker’s avowal of disbelief and allows him to engage with a God in Whom he claims not to believe: ‘But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him/Not to intervene when it came to you.’ What’s more, this sustained subjunctive engagement leads into a chorus of direct address – ‘Into my arms, O Lord’ – whose wistful vocatives seem to have shed all trace of their subjunctive lineaments and shaded over into an act of prayer, whose I-Thou orientation invites the listener into its posture of transcendental relation.

Being in darkness Although songs that speak in the midst of darkness might not seem relevant to our discussion, sorrow and suffering – as Dante reminds us – can reorient us or open our hearts to God.19 To be sure, things aren’t always so decisive in popular music; nevertheless, we often find dramatized tales of darkness that involve a religious frame of reference. Typically, post-secular songs of being in darkness signal a distance from their religious allusions and are less than convinced about the possibility of salvation on the other side of their darkness. They thus tend to involve a fugitive or inchoate stirring of religious hope that is suffused with a countervailing sense of despair. (Nick Cave and Tom Waits frequently sing of or from within this sort of darkness – as did Johnny Cash – though the latter’s work is more informed by faith and a more explicitly religious sense of sin.) A particularly affecting ‘post-secular’ evocation of the self in crisis is to be found in ‘The Exchange’ by the American singer-songwriter Torres, from her 2015 album Sprinter. What we are presented with in this sparsely accompanied song is the restrained staging of a fall into despair, whose refrain is an enervated distress call that swings between a description of her fall into darkness and an apostrophic call to her parents: ‘I’m underwater/Mother, father, I’m underwater.’ What carries it into a post-secular territory is its enfeebled and vestigial religious 83

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gestures (‘I pray to Jesus Christ incessantly’, which runs immediately into ‘I shine my shoes for the fat lady’ – an allusion to Salinger’s Franny and Zooey), which signal a frail and half-forsaken faith, as though the speaker were unpersuaded by her own acts of prayer. This forlorn stirring of religious hope – that flickers in but can’t quite lift itself out of darkness – can of course take a variety of forms. In ‘Oh My God, Whatever, Etc’, by Ryan Adams, for example, we are confronted with a poignantly aborted prayer that loses conviction almost as soon as it’s begun. (In the chorus, the song’s trapped and exhausted speaker – perhaps a prostitute, whose gender is unclear – turns briefly away from the bleak surroundings to an outside that seems to offer escape, but which in its temporal concatenations only reinforces the sense of enclosure. And it is, apparently, as this telescoped sense of imprisonment is registered that the speaker’s forlorn and foundering prayer flickers into being: ‘But the light of the moon leads the way towards the morning and the sun/The sun’s well on the way too soon to know and/Oh, oh my God, whatever etc.’) On the page, the speaker’s ‘Oh my God’ reads more like an imprecation than an apostrophe – and indeed, in any case, appears to hover inscrutably between a mournful exclamation and a prayerful call. But as it is sung and given space in the song – especially as it is plaintively repeated in the second chorus – the harmonies tilt the muted melody into the only minor chord in the song, and the phrase appears disconsolately to lift itself, if not into a fullyfledged I-Thou address then into a momentary reaching out to a beyond that its speaker cannot fully believe in but towards which something inside him or her yearns.

The interlocuted listener What conclusions can we draw from these examples? Aside from illustrating some of the manifestations of a post-secular stance in popular music, I have in this section attempted to accomplish two principal things: on the one hand, I have sought to show, against Adorno, that popular music does – frequently and in a variety of ways – aspire to engage the imagination of the listener; and on the other hand, adopting an approach that in contrast to Begbie’s takes cognizance of music’s affects, I have suggested that a divergence from, contestation of, or even perhaps an irreverence towards theological doctrine may paradoxically be of value from a religious point of view.20 Central to both of these contentions is the principle of ‘transitivity’.21 What I wish to designate by means of this phrase is the way popular music invades the listener’s space and seeks to draw its auditor into the dramatized events of the song. Of course, one can refuse or fail to register its ‘transitivity’ – that is, one can adopt a posture of detached regard. But we do so at a cost, for as D. H. Lawrence reminds us, there are certain religious and poetic experiences that cannot be known ‘in apartness’ (1928: 331). Thus, while it is possible for us to assimilate the world of the song into our time and space, it is equally possible in reverse for the ‘interlocuted listener’ to accept its offer of imaginative participation and allow the song to involve us in the time and space of its world. So, in ‘The Eye Of The Needle’, for example, the song’s dramatization of a communion celebration locates the listener in the midst of something presently going on, and in doing so relates the questions it poses about belief more immediately to the listener’s life. Similarly, in Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Faith’, the song’s exploration of the subject in the lives of concretely realized individuals, in the thicket of particular socio-economic circumstances, encourages the imaginative engagement of the listener in a way that propositional instruction might not. Likewise, the epiphanic songs of bands such as Fleet Foxes or Mount Eerie – which 84

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draw the engaged listener into a ‘shared space’ (Shearman 1992: 39) – don’t simply narrate sublime encounters for us to marvel at from without, but instead seek to stage an affective analogue of the ‘enchanted’ experiences they describe. In other words, they aspire to engender an epiphanic experience for the listener. The strategy of ‘ludic avowal’ can, it seems, also serve as a way of enticing the agnostic or unbelieving listener to inhabit a sceptically inflected space that is at least open to the possibility of faith. And, finally, even the forlorn and subjunctive acts of prayer that fleetingly surface in songs that represent the cries of an apparently isolated self, calling out in anguish – as in ‘Oh My God, Whatever, Etc’ or ‘Into My Arms’ – have a potentially ‘transitive’ dimension too, in that their apostrophic structure draws the engaged listener into their I-Thou orientation and thus invites them to adopt the posture of a believer. (In the conclusion to the next section, I shall reflect upon the importance of such aesthetic ‘practices of belief’.) In each case, the religious significance of the song is not simply a matter of what it represents, and so cannot adequately be evaluated on the basis of ‘immanent’ models of correspondence. Rather, it is more a matter of what the songs might do – that is, the sorts of experiences they afford, the orientations they foster, the questions they provoke and what they lead the listener towards – or in ‘Ricoeurian’ terms, the possibilities they open up ‘in front of’ the text. This isn’t to say that such weakened or ‘post-secular’ engagements will in every case have positive effects from a religious perspective. Neither is it proposing to do away with criteria for evaluating what is more or less conducive to the flourishing of faith. But it is to suggest, against Jeremy Begbie, that it may be better to make such evaluations not on the basis of an ‘essentialized’ system of correspondences between doctrinal criteria and aesthetic forms but rather, in an Augustinian manner, in terms of the music’s functions or affects – which is to say, their outworking in the listener’s life. It is, we might say, by their fruits that we shall know them.

The swarming forms of the banal In this section, I want to indicate briefly how the kinds of arguments outlined above may be further extended to apply to non-religious music. In short, I wish to suggest that even ‘intrinsically’ secular music may be capable of doing religious work. At the centre of this contention is what we might refer to as the epiphanic affordance structures of popular music.22 There are of course all sorts of pervasive features of popular music that may help to elicit epiphanic experience – such as its frequently neglected beauty,23 its notorious Dionysian force or its ability to stage a moment out of time.24 In view of the limitations of space, however, I shall focus on a single and less obviously valuable quality – namely, the banality of some of its lyrics. (Having spent the major part of this chapter trying to highlight the abundance of thought, artistry and semiotic complexity that we find in the lyrics of popular music I trust it isn’t necessary to belabour the point that this doesn’t apply to the whole field – though, as we shall see, it isn’t in any case meant pejoratively.) There are, I think, at least three reasons why one might want to defend the banality of popular music. To begin with, some of its elected banalities may be seen as a version of what Tony Tanner in a discussion of American literature refers to as the adoption of ‘a vernacular stance’ and ‘a calculated act of indecorum’, which refuses the genteel hierarchies of admission into the aesthetic sphere and forms part of a larger historical quarrel concerning the constraints of artistic propriety (1996: 67 and 84). Secondly, some of the casually redundant and vacuous lyrics in 85

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popular music appear to involve a radical devaluation of the semantic function of language – which becomes more of a musical operation or an instrument of sound than a lexical gesture – and which paradoxically aspires to what Michel de Certeau felicitously describes as an opacification of the sign (1992: 144). In fact, some bands – such as Cocteau Twins or Sigur Rós – even more radically attempt to evade the semantic altogether in their lyrics, by adopting a form of glossolalia, which can convey a sense of going beyond the sayable or of a content that exceeds speech. (Most of us are familiar with the experience of being moved by a song whose lyrics we can’t hear or don’t understand. This isn’t, I suggest, a diminished form of listening experience but rather the condition to which a certain kind of pop music aspires.) The third reason for defending the banal – which originally meant ‘common’ or ‘open to all’ – is the most important for popular music’s epiphanic effects. Very briefly, this has to do with the way its lyrics ‘afford’ or invite the imaginative investment of what Vladimir Konečni calls ‘a personal associative context’ (2005: passim). What this means is that the archetypal or even clichéd nature of many lyrics – rather like the carefully vague horoscopes one finds in magazines – is part of the songs’ affective allure, which invite by virtue of their very banality association with any number of particular contexts. In this sense, like the gaps in literature that elicit the creative involvement of the reader, the broadly drawn and cornily condensed vignettes of popular music solicit the imaginative elaboration of the listener. This ‘productive’ lack has been neatly characterized by Umberto Eco: ‘A text is a lazy mechanism which demands from a reader an extensive co-operation to fill in the blanks of the non-said or of the already-said’ (1979: 53). In other words, the notorious banality of popular music – which, as Simon Frith observes, ‘represents experience grasped in moments’ (1996: 243) – may be seen more positively as a gap-filling affordance structure, whose banality is transmuted in the process of being ‘filled out’ by the particular associative context of the listener. There is an extraordinary scene in the finale of the second season of the HBO series The Leftovers that vividly illustrates this process of epiphanic appropriation. Kevin Garvey, a former police chief and principal protagonist, somehow finds himself in a sort of purgatorial realm, where he is told that in order to get back to his family – whom he loves but whom he has betrayed – he must perform a song karaoke on stage. Obviously distressed and incredulous, he eventually makes his way on stage and awkwardly prepares for the unannounced song. (In the background, fanning out either side of his head on the ‘wheel of fortune’ that determines the choice, one can see Madonna’s ‘Like A Prayer’ and ‘Angel Of The Morning’ by Juice Newton.) The song he is given is Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Homeward Bound’, and Garvey – beside himself with terror and grief – gives an excruciatingly stilted performance; until he starts to register what he is singing, that is. For as he absently follows the words of the song, and their relevance to his life starts to dawn on him – awakening memories of his failings and reminding him of those he loves – he becomes more and more emotionally involved in the song, which begins to take on a new meaning in front of us. (The advent of Garvey’s memories is represented to the viewer by means of fleeting analeptic images from previous episodes – uncannily corresponding to the words of the song – which are extra-diegetically woven into the scene.) Indeed, what began as a narrative that seemed to hold no interest to him and had no apparent connection to his life has somehow turned into an expression of his ownmost concerns – a prayer unveiling his deepest longings, a confession of his individual failings – that engenders a moment of anagnorisis, accompanied by ‘the 86

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gift of tears’. (An allusion to this strangely reflexive process – whereby the singer/listener is reciprocally affected by the song as a result of their emotional investment in it – is cleverly elicited from the line: ‘All my words come back to me.’) But that is not all. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this moving scene is that the absurd act of penitential karaoke works. That is to say, after Garvey completes the song and closes his eyes, he suddenly finds himself back with his family in the terrestrial sphere. In spite of its supernatural setting, this scene illustrates several important things not only about everyday music usage but also about its potential religious significance. First, it offers a dramatic illustration of the peculiar way popular music lends itself to appropriation – in spite of the often considerable distance between the ostensible subject of the lyrics and the listener’s associations. Typically, as in Garvey’s case, this seems to be made possible by its radically ‘underdetermined’ character – that is, its tendency to use brief, elliptical and ‘banal’ phrasings – which opens up its semantic potential. Indeed, what in one sense appears to be a semantic lack is at the same time, paradoxically, the source of its referential superabundance. If this is the case, contrary to Adorno’s claims – that the ‘standardization’ of popular forms fails to engage the imagination – it would seem that the ‘banality’ of popular music may be a productive feature and an affordance structure, which elicits the listener’s emotional investment and imaginative participation. (In saying this, I am of course highlighting possibilities – in order to contest Adorno’s blanket denunciation – and not talking about what always or necessarily occurs.) There is another, parallel version of this process, which is less witting or less related to popular music’s semantic dimension and is more a matter of serendipitous association. For popular music – which invades so many public spaces and often involuntarily accompanies so much of our lives – has a strangely adhesive or absorbent quality, such that it becomes entwined with our otherwise unrelated experiences, whether we wish it or not. Rather like the madeleine in Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, it then subsequently serves a metonymic repository or aide-mémoire for these experiences, which it can bring flooding back with a piercing epiphanic poignancy.25 With this, we have shaded over into the second thing that is illustrated in Garvey’s performance of ‘Homeward Bound’ – namely, popular music’s potential to engender transcendence or epiphanic experience. In Garvey’s case, the experience involves a dilation of his quotidian vision – in that he is imaginatively transported away from the present and attains a sort of ‘posthumous’ vision – which elicits a moment of critical awareness about the things he most values in this world. In the phrasing of Charles Taylor, the experience is ‘the locus of a manifestation which brings us into the presence of something which is otherwise inaccessible, and which is of the highest moral or spiritual significance’ (1989: 419). While Roger Scruton has attempted to persuade us that whereas classical music elicits a quasi-religious posture of contemplation, popular music is incapable of engendering such affects, this sort of epiphanic moment is a commonly reported listening experience. (The most economical way of contesting Scruton’s rather imperious attempt to deny an epiphanic potential to popular music is to point towards the wealth of empirical data that testifies to the contrary that many people do, in fact, routinely listen to popular music in a contemplative manner and, in the process, experience intimations of transcendence or an epiphanic expansion of vision.26) The final thing of relevance to our discussion that is illustrated in Garvey’s performance is how such epiphanic moments – precipitated by the experience of listening to secular popular music – may be of significance from a religious perspective. Once again, it needs to be emphasized in 87

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explaining this that what we are dealing with are possibilities and potentialities – openings that we cannot choreograph or secure, but which, pace Scruton, we cannot rule out either; this is because, for some people, such experiences may be devoid of religious significance; while for others, although they are believers, these moments may be seen as an ‘aesthetic’ event and perhaps even a step away from religious engagement. For others, like Garvey in The Leftovers, however, such experiences have a radical transformative potential. (In Garvey’s case, the song provokes a moment of illumination, which in turn appears to precipitate an experience of metanoia – since, in accord with the ‘confessional’ logic of the scene, his penitential karaoke act carries him out of the purgatorial sphere.) This experience of radical transformation might, like Garvey’s, be a matter of conscience or a conversion of the heart, which is prompted by a ‘kairotic’ moment in which one’s concerns are reordered from a transcendent or epiphanically distended perspective. But this is not the only possibility. The experience of radical transformation may equally be an epistemological matter and pertain to our sense of the possible and real. Prompted by an experience of what Tillich calls ‘revelatory ecstasy’ (which in his case was elicited by an encounter with a painting in a secular space), it might, in other words, be a moment of unobstructed and dilated vision, in which an ordinarily occluded dimension of reality is fleetingly disclosed – a mysterious ‘more’ at the heart of being, a haunting, vocative foreign iridescence that pervades and yet exceeds the material order – which Robert Johnston encourages us to view as an experience of ‘general revelation’ (2014: chapter 1). And while we might emerge the other side of this event without an adequate paraphrase or anything in the world to which we can point, it is an experience that may transfigure our disposition and customary ways of looking at the world. This sort of experience is memorably described by Wordsworth: the soul, Remembering how she felt, but what she felt Remembering not, retains an obscure sense Of possible sublimity, whereto With growing faculties she doth aspire … . (The Prelude, II, 334–8) As C. S. Lewis has argued, with reference to Wordsworth, to ‘the perfected Christian’ such epiphanic experience may appear to be a dilution of faith or a reprehensible movement from ‘Theism to Pantheism’. But to ‘the man coming up from below’, this sort of ‘anonymous’ numinous opening may represent ‘the first and lowest form of recognition that there is something outside ourselves which demands reverence’. In such circumstances, as Lewis puts it, ‘the Wordsworthian experience is an advance. Even if he goes no further he has escaped the worst arrogance of materialism: if he goes on he will be converted’ (1940: 22). It seems to me both plausible and important to advocate a parallel argument in relation to popular music. In short, what I am suggesting is that for a contemporary non-believer with no interest in or contact with religious teaching, the epiphanies elicited by popular music may constitute a fecund opening in the desert of materialism that discloses new possibilities for being in the world. And although such experiences, on their own, can perhaps only offer a ‘content-less’ glimpse of transcendence or a vista onto the infinite mystery of God, they may set us on the path to faith or awaken us to a sense that there is a path; as C. S. Lewis observes – possibly with a nod to Dante, whose pilgrim was of course lured to paradise by a representative of Pagan art: ‘When we are lost in the woods 88

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the sight of a signpost is a great matter’ (1955: 238). But perhaps we can venture an even stronger conclusion. As Graham Ward has argued in another connection, drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur, imaginative engagement with secular fiction can be seen as an analogue of religious faith, in that it offers the reader the opportunity to try out new ways of being in the world – which carry us beyond the given – in a ‘subjunctive’ context of non-commitment (2014: chapter 6). In this sense, I suggest, secular popular music, like secular fiction, offers us ‘practices of belief’, which for many non-believers (and perhaps some believers!) may be more appealing than more dogmatic programmes of evangelization. What’s more, such ‘practices’ – even though they take place in a fictional sphere – may have real-life, extra-aesthetic affects, since on the one hand they are something in which ‘the body collaborates’ and which, on account of our psychic investment and somatic involvement, bears ‘ontological weight’; also on the other hand, because this sort of practice discloses new ways of being in the world, and in doing so ‘forms, reforms and transforms’ our ‘structures of believing’. In other words, such ‘practices’ dilate our vision and affect our sense of what is possible and real. As Ward puts it, they are a form of poiesis and not, or not simply, a matter of escapism but rather an expansion of being (2014: 145, 155, 147). To be sure, these imaginative transfigurations are only incipiently, analogically or ‘adverbially’ religious, and invariably bring with them more questions than answers. They are therefore not a replacement for (though neither are they incompatible with) the ‘special revelation’ of Scripture. Nevertheless, as religious thinkers such as Coleridge, Newman and C. S. Lewis have argued, on the basis of their own biographical experiences, these transfigurations affected by means of imaginative engagement with secular works of art can constitute a sort of ‘praeparatio evangelica’ – whose italicized vision opens up and lures us towards new possibilities ‘in front of’ the text – and may thus pave the way for religious belief. As Emily Dickinson expresses it, with characteristic oracular terseness: ‘The Possible’s slow fuse is lit/By the imagination.’

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Chapter 8

Christianity, Worship and Popular Music Tom Wagner

This chapter approaches the intersections of Christianity, worship and popular music through the lens of Popular Worship Music (PWM). PWM is generally understood as a subgenre or category of Christian Popular Music (CPM) (Ingalls, Mall and Nekola 2014). However, as a device for the analysis of Christianity, worship and popular music, it is best thought of as an instrumental activity. I borrow the term instrumental from Kahn-Harris and Moberg (2012: 91): ‘A form of action that is guided by means-end rationality and that disciplines and governs the bounds of desirable outcomes.’ PWM is both an object and an activity. As an object, it is an assemblage of aesthetic components such as pitch, timbre and rhythm, as well as things like the language, dress and bodily comportment of participants. These aesthetic components are infused with semiotic content with hermeneutic and phenomenological effects experienced in specific sociocultural contexts. Because participants are aware of these potential effects, they use aesthetics to achieve specific worship goals, such as communicating scripture, fostering individual and group identity, and ultimately achieving an experience of God. Like all activities associated with Christianity, worship occurs dialectically within the conceptual binary of the ‘secular’ and the ‘sacred’. The goal of worship may be to transcend worldly existence, but worshippers must use worldly materials to do so. With the possible exception of African-American gospel music, most PWM draws on the aesthetics of popular culture, but rarely contributes to it (Kahn-Harris and Moberg 2012: 95). This means PWM always carries with it the moral baggage of ‘the world’. When engaging with PWM, then, worshippers adopt moral ‘ways of listening’ (Clarke 2005) that conceptually (re)align ‘secular’ popular cultural aesthetics with ‘sacred’ moral codes. In doing so, worshippers achieve the affectivevolitional states that afford sought-after religious experiences. It is impossible to explore Christianity, worship or popular music in a single book chapter. Each operates in such a variety of contexts and involves such a variety of stakeholders that multiple and often competing views of the three – to say nothing of how they intersect – inevitably emerge. With this understanding, I present brief working definitions of Christianity, worship, popular music and PWM to frame the discussion to follow. Christianity is a global religion, yet every instantiation of Christianity is to some extent individualized and unique to its local context. The diversity of – and contradictions between – the beliefs and practices identified as ‘Christian’ suggest that Christianity does not have a ‘single defining essence’ (Horsfield 2015: 2–4. See also Niebuhr 1951: 11–12). Christianity is a negotiated and contested range of beliefs, symbols and practices that emerged from the historical activities ascribed to Jesus Christ (Horsfield 2015). Christianity, thus understood, is a discursive field that is enacted, inscribed and embodied by participants, who experience themselves as Christians.

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Worship is an activity that takes different forms in different contexts. In the Protestant tradition, worship is conceptualized as both a corporate (group) and an individual activity. Worship can be formal, taking place in a church service or at a conference, or informal, occurring as individual prayer or as part of a home Bible study group. Many Christians think of worship as a lifestyle, an expression of identity that orients action in everyday life. In practice, the categories of group, individual and lifestyle do not exist as Weberian ‘ideal types’, but overlap and inform one another. As separate concepts, though, they provide the heuristic for the religious experiences worshippers seek. Popular music is aesthetic material through which worship is organized and experienced; this material takes on different meanings according to (sub)cultural context. Simon Frith (1996a) argues that popular music is ultimately an ideology based on three mutually constitutive discourses: bourgeois, folk and commercial. Popular music is most often understood in opposition to art music – and particularly Western art music; while art music is elitist, requiring special skills and capital to engage with it, popular music is thought of as being ‘of the people’. This ‘high-brow/ low-brow’ discourse spills into the so-called folk music contexts, where ideas of ‘authenticity’ are often based on where, from whom and how music is learned and played. Finally, the bourgeois and folk discourses in popular music rarely exist outside the commercial processes of production, circulation and consumption. In consumer culture, musical value and monetary value are often equated (i.e. ‘good’ music sells well, ‘bad’ music does not). Interestingly, for the purposes of this chapter, Frith sees the commercial music world as ‘organized around particular sorts of musical events – events (such as promotional concerts and discos) which offer a kind of routinized transcendence, which sell “fun”’ (Frith 1996a: 41). Frith acknowledges that, like the categories of group, individual and lifestyle referred to above, the boundaries that form this tri-partite system disintegrate quickly, especially in a globalized, digital music economy. However, his point is that, as conceptual categories, they are necessary in defining the discourse through which the activity of ‘popular music’ is negotiated. For the purposes of this chapter, then, ‘popular music’ refers to the range of vernacular (e.g. non-Art music) musical styles, practices and discourses that exist primarily in secular culture but are adapted to Christian culture in the form of PWM. This definition encompasses the countless varieties of ‘commercial’ and ‘folk’ styles used for worship around the world, from (for example) Punk (Mall 2012) and Go-go (Jones 2015) to Shape-note singing (Lueck 2015) and Romani Gypsy music (Povedák 2015). If Christianity, worship and popular music are best understood, as I have suggested, in terms of discourses and activities, then PWM is perhaps best understood as a sub-activity (as opposed to a subgenre) within the umbrella category of CPM. CPM is music produced by and (largely) for self-identifying Christians (Ingalls, Nekola and Mall 2014); therefore, any vernacular music style can be ‘Christianized’. Within CPM, Christians differentiate between PWM and Christian Contemporary Music (CCM). PWM and CCM are aesthetically indistinguishable from each other not only sonically but also often in the visual presentation (e.g. dress and bodily comportment) of participants. There are also synergies among the modes of production, circulation and consumption of PWM and CCM; they are circulated and engaged with through the same technologies, in the same venues and in the same economic systems (Mall 2012; Ingalls, Nekola and Mall 2014). If this weren’t complicated enough, the similarities between PWM and CCM extend to their analogous ‘secular’ music styles: with the exception of lyrics,1 Christian musics share both aesthetics and modes of production, circulation and consumption with their 91

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analogous secular music styles. Christian musicians often participate in the ‘parent’ musical cultures from which their musics are drawn, and are fluent in the cultural codes of the parent cultures. Furthermore, Christian Popular Musics use the same instruments, recording techniques and distribution channels as secular musics. Clearly, then, PWM needs to be differentiated from other music styles by some means other than aesthetics, technologies or economies. Christians differentiate PWM from other popular music styles (Christian or otherwise) through the intention with which worshippers engage in it. The term worshipper here is important: PWM is intended for the act of worship, as opposed to other music styles, which are meant for other modes of participation. However, even here there is ambiguity. Some Christian concerts may be presented as ‘entertainment’, because they share the same aesthetics and spaces as worship events, and are identified a priori as ‘Christian’, so there exists a tacit (and sometimes explicit) injunction to feel spiritually engaged (Kahn-Harris and Moberg 2012: 97). Furthermore, Christians have long understood that music functions in multiple ways; since at least the Reformation, PWM has been used to arouse the interest of non-believers, inculcate new converts and deepen the faith of the already ‘churched’ (Nekola 2009; Wagner 2015). This chapter will therefore explore PWM as an aesthetic object and as an instrumental activity that worshippers engage with and in towards specific ends. The aesthetic components of music can be manipulated to produce psychosocial effects in listeners (DeNora 2000). These effects are dependent on culturally understood meanings. Christian musics and practices are always-already bound up with the aesthetic codes and meanings of their larger ‘secular’ cultural contexts, so worshippers must actively ‘listen’ in specific ways to achieve sought-after religious experiences. This chapter will explore this phenomenon in three parts. Part one provides historical context, discussing the development of Christian understandings of the ‘power’ of music. These understandings have arisen as socio-historical admixtures of Hellenic and biblical thought along with philosophical elements of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and more recently, (post) modernity. Part two explores some of the ways Christians use the PWMs aesthetic components to structure and facilitate worship experiences. These experiences are dependent on the multi-vocal, intertextual nature of popular music’s meaning, which is inextricably rooted ‘in the world’. Part three examines how Christians work to transcend the secular world by ‘hearing’ certain meanings in PWM, positioning themselves and their worship activities as part of a Christian lifestyle. What emerges is PWM as an aesthetic object and an instrumental activity used in the construction, maintenance and control of a way of being ‘in and of’ the world. As noted earlier, expressions of Christianity, worship and popular music are diverse. Most scholarship on the subject has been limited to North American evangelical Protestant ‘Christian Rock’.2 Because this is my specialism, this chapter will retain that focus. However, the processes referred to have been documented in many religious traditions, Christian and otherwise (e.g. Beck 2006; Becker 2004). While acknowledging the cultural and contextual specificity of religious experiences, this chapter offers a framework for thinking about musical worship more broadly.

Part one: Christian attitudes towards (popular) music in worship – a short history Christian beliefs about how popular music should be used in worship did not arise in a cultural vacuum; rather, they are part of a historical and cultural trajectory, an admixture of biblical 92

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understanding, philosophical thought and musical development that can be traced back to preChristian times (Evans 2006: 24–44; Nekola 2009: 45–106). Music is considered important to Christian worship because of its ability to convey scripture and influence the thoughts, emotions and beliefs of participants. Yet this ‘power’ means that Christians have at times embraced music with enthusiasm, while at other times approached it with suspicion, if not hostility. A number of dialectical tensions inform Christian attitudes towards music and worship: the tension between church musical ‘culture’ and the wider musical ‘culture’ that informs it, the tension between emotion and intellect, and the tension among the individual, collective and institutional components of the church. Although practices and policies have varied historically, the thread connecting them is that of a struggle to transcend the earthly plane through practices rooted in the world. According to Quentin Faulkner, the musical heritage of the early apostolic church was the cultic music of the Middle Eastern Jews (Faulkner 1996: 52–3; in Evans 2006: 25. Cf. McKinnon 1990: 68–72). However, these early Jewish Christians found themselves surrounded by Pagan musical customs and culture that incorporated popular Hellenistic styles developed in the fourth century BC (Evans 2006: 25). The resulting tension between Jewish Christian music culture and the surrounding Pagan culture resulted in church elders taking a strong stand against the latter, establishing a division between ‘sacred’ Jewish music and ‘secular’ Pagan music that, according to Mark Evans, was previously ‘quite unheard of’ (Evans 2006: 25). Christopher Partridge identifies ‘sacred’ ideas as those that ‘are understood to be set apart from the rest of social life and which exert a profound moral claim over people’s lives’ (Partridge 2014: 3). These ideas manifest as ‘constellations of specific symbols, thought/discourse, emotions and actions grounded in the body’ that ‘recursively reproduce the sacrality of the sacred form and constitute groups who share [them]’ (Lynch 2012: 29; in Partridge 2014: 4). By introducing the idea of a ‘sacred’ musical practice, early church officials inserted music into the sacred constellation, an ingredient of religious experience with which a ‘single moral community’ of adherents (Partridge 2014: 4) might be formed and controlled. However, the boundaries surrounding this moral community needed constant policing, not an easy task considering that much early musical culture was closely intertwined with church culture. Thus, from the beginning of the Christian church until the Middle Ages, more and more strictures on congregational participation developed in attempts to keep the sacred free from pollution by the secular. In the early days of the Christian church, music was primarily vocal, and hymns were used to convey biblical texts. Early church officials worried that non-biblical Pagan texts could be disseminated via song. As Christianity institutionalized during its first few centuries, musical content and participation was increasingly regulated, so that by the fourth century an official canon of psalms had been established, the singing of which was restricted to authorized groups (Marti 2013: 10). As Gerardo Marti notes, the exercise of control over musical content and practice reveals ‘deep convictions regarding the power of music to shape doctrinal faith, encourage fidelity to doctrinal truth, and foster growth in Christian character’ (Marti 2012: 11) – convictions that remain deeply rooted today. Furthermore, it reveals that worship has always relied on the moral agency of individual worshippers. Concerned with using music to direct worshippers towards spiritual devotion and away from the emotionalism that characterized early Pagan-influenced worship, church leaders strictly policed the boundary between church and secular music during the Middle Ages. This was aided 93

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by the development of musical notation, which meant that, by the tenth century, the singing of the Ordinary of the Mass was restricted to a musically literate subsection of the clergy (Evans 2006: 27). However, musical notation also enabled the development of polyphony – both inside and outside the church – which became so complex that the Papal Bull of 1324 attempted to set limits on how much polyphony was allowed, as to not distract worshippers from focusing on God. This was to little avail, as church music, influenced by the sounds of the secular world, continued to increase in ‘complexity, ingenuity and ecstasy’ (Routley 1977: 5; in Evans 2006: 27). The walls separating the sacred and secular music world that church officials had worked diligently to fortify during the middle ages buckled against pressure from humanist ideas that arose during the Renaissance, and eventually crumbled during the Reformation. Before this, the locus of much music-making in Europe had been the church; yet, as the sacred and secular music worlds increasingly influenced each other, the centre of musical activity shifted from the former to the latter (Evans 2006: 29). Secular musical practice increasingly influenced sacred practice, and many church motets used popular tunes already familiar to congregational participants. As Renaissance composers drew upon both sacred and secular texts, music and lyrics (re)gained the emotional intensity early church officials had sought to discourage. The Reformer Martin Luther sought to return participation to worship, and thus, the religious experience, to the layman. A proponent of popular worship, he set new texts to well-known tunes. However, his contemporaries John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli, each of who held more austere views, did not share Luther’s zeal for musical worship. In particular, Zwingli believed that music should be used for private worship only. Ironically, the songs he composed for private worship made it into the Reformed congregational hymnbooks of the sixteenth century and eventually were adapted for use in corporate worship (Nekola 2009: 59). There are two points here: first, different interpretations of what is ‘biblical’, inflected with the neo-platonic belief in the power of music, are central to the way worship defined a Christian moral community; secondly, the membranes that surrounded those communities were permeable, especially when it came to music. The secular and sacred continued to mix in the post-Reformation period. Following Quentin Faulkner (1996), Mark Evans argues that the philosophy of secular enlightenment ‘directly affected the function and quality of church music’ (Evans 2006: 35). This included the ideas that music should ‘embody, express and excite’ human emotion and also be entertaining; that individuality and originality are virtues in both musical composition and performance; that the public is the best judge of music – in other words, that popularity is an index of value; and that the best music is natural – that is, anti-intellectual (Evans 2006: 35). Here we see an inversion of preReformation musical thought, brought about in an anti-institutional form that returned agency to the individual and group worshipper/s. These attitudes were, and remain, especially strong in the New World. During the Great Awakenings in North America, led by preacher/musician duos such as Charles Grandison Finney and Thomas Hastings, Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey, and Billy Sunday and Homer Rodeheaver (Nekola 2009; Wagner 2015), sacred songs were often the popular tunes of the times. Today, by virtue of information transmitted through an ever-expanding media ecology that includes newspapers, radio, television and the internet, popular culture and worship practices have become more intertwined, to the point where (especially in Protestant megachurches but elsewhere as well) they are separated only through discourse (Wagner 2015). However, the 94

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concern that worship music should convey only the ‘right’ theological understanding remains strong. For example, the transnational church Hillsong devotes a good deal of time, energy and resources to ensure that the lyrics of its songs, and the translations of those songs, are consistent with its reading of the Bible (Wagner 2014). Christians generally think about worship in three interconnected ways: as an individual activity, a group activity and a lifestyle. According to Anthony Giddens (1991), in (post)modern societies, actors have the freedom (within certain bounds) to ‘choose’ identities that are expressed and experienced through ‘lifestyle choices’. However, with this freedom comes a kind of existential angst: actors, unmoored from the anchor of tradition, look for new points of security in a world of increasingly fluid signs. Indeed, as Giddens points out, ‘the more post-traditional the setting in which an individual moves, the more lifestyle concerns the very core of self-identity, its making and remaking’ (1991: 81). ‘Lifestyle’ encompasses choices, behaviours, values and beliefs (Gauntlett 2002); thus, the consumption of popular music as part of a lifestyle ‘says’ important things about who one is, both to others and to oneself (Frith 1996b; Lash and Urry 1994). For Christians who understand worship as a lifestyle, it is easy to see how both the object and the act of PWM would be valuable to the creation and maintenance of it.

Part two: Using popular worship music Popular music is a ‘technology of self’ (DeNora 2000): a dynamic, aesthetically grounded object that can – through purposeful, directed action – arouse certain mental, emotional and bodily states. This purposeful, directed action may come from producers who wish to influence participants by manipulating the sonic environment. Retail stores and restaurants, for example, may play music that encourages consumers to linger and (hopefully) spend more money (Eroglu, Machleit and Chebat 2005 and Caldwell and Herbert 2006, respectively), and music has been tested in the workplace as a way of boosting workers’ moods (Lesiuk 2005). An analogue to this in Christian worship is the ‘block service’ format used for many contemporary evangelical Protestant worship services, used by worship leaders and production teams to manipulate the worship environment in ways that afford worshippers the opportunity for a religious experience. For example, during my fieldwork at the evangelical church, Hillsong in London (Wagner 2014), the service almost always opened with five songs. Usually, the first two were fast (around 160 beats per minute) and in a major key. As participants jumped up and down, clapped and sang along, they became entrained to rhythm and influenced by the cultural connotations of the major key. The third and fourth tunes were usually slower (around 60–80 beats per minutes), often without a defining pulse and dealing heavily in suspended chords. The fifth tune would build to an upbeat crescendo, at which point the service would begin. The evangelical block service and the music used in it are designed to afford participants the opportunity of an embodied religious experience with both individual and corporate aspects (Sloboda 2000: 112). Music is used to influence physiology, such as mood and heart rate, which play important roles in the altered states of consciousness sought in the rituals of many religious cultures (Becker 2004; Rouget 1985). Furthermore, PWM music makes liberal use of the repeated suspension, something that has been shown to provoke strong physio-emotional responses such as tears or goose pimples (Sloboda 2000: 122). Well-designed objects suggest, 95

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even encourage, certain ways of experiencing them while discouraging others. These affordances are often circumscribed according to social contexts. As Tia DeNora notes: Music is active in defining situations because, like all devices or technologies, it is often linked, through convention, to social scenarios, often according to the social uses for which it was initially produced. (DeNora 2000: 11) Aesthetics are communicative elements, and these elements are consumed in specific contexts according to mutually understood conventions. The block service that uses PWM ‘works’ because people know what its aesthetic components are supposed to ‘mean’. As cultural ‘insiders’ to Western music, worshippers respond differently to upbeat, rhythmic music with major tonalities, than to slower, a-rhythmic music in minor keys. As cultural ‘insiders’ to Christian worship services, they know when, how and why they are supposed to worship. DeNora’s work is useful here because it highlights the role of agency in the instrumental production and consumption of music: music is often designed to induce certain mental and physical states, and actors use it instrumentally to achieve those states. DeNora’s interlocutors use music in ways quite similar to those in the block service described above; for example, her interlocutors play CDs containing ‘ambient sounds’ when meditating and play rhythmic music at various tempos to structure the warm-up, aerobic and cool-down sections of aerobics classes (DeNora 2000: 54, 93–6). The take-away here is that, in worship as in life, people know what effects different kinds of music have on them, and use those effects instrumentally in culturally circumscribed ways. The power of PWM to entrain subjects both physically and mentally is essential to the feeling of togetherness and shared meaning that is part of corporate worship. Indeed, worship services are acts of musicking: The act of musicking establishes in the place where it is happening a set of relationships, and it is in those relationships that the meaning of the act lies. They are to be found not only between those organized sounds which are conventionally thought of as being the stuff of musical meaning but also between the people who are taking part, in whatever capacity, in the performance; and they model, or stand as metaphor for, ideal relationships as the participants in the performance imagine them to be: relationships between person and person, between individual and society, between humanity and the natural world and even perhaps the supernatural world. (Small 1996: 13) For Christopher Small, musicking is the enactment of ideal social circumstances. Christian worship services extend the act of musicking: they are not only enactments of ideal social circumstances but also eschatological experiences of ‘heaven on earth’ (Ingalls 2010). In these moments, worshippers transcend the mundane to experience the sacred. Yet, as noted by KahnHarris and Moberg (2012: 7), the divine may be understood to transcend the everyday; however, it cannot be experienced without the everyday. Indeed, it is only because contemporary participants are aware of the cultural conventions of secular popular music that they are able to respond in a collectively appropriate manner to PWM (Busman 2015). PWMs goal of transcendence is firmly rooted in the association of secular popular music with transgression on the worldly plane (Kahn-Harris and Moberg 2012). Almost all popular music styles have begun as reactions or re-imaginings of a hegemonic social order and its associated 96

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morality. It is not a coincidence that the moral discourses that surround PWM styles – not only those that shaped the Christian folk/rock ‘Worship Wars’ (Howard and Streck 1999; Nekola 2009), but also those that circulate in the Christian Heavy Metal (Moberg 2009), Gospylepso (Rommen 2007), and Gospel Go-go (Jones 2015) scenes – are the same ‘moral panics’ that accompany the secular forms of those styles. The impossibility of fully decoupling the sacred from the secular is what historian H. Richard Niebuhr ([1951] 2001) has called Christianity’s ‘enduring problem’. According to Niebuhr, Christians have always negotiated the tension between ‘Christ and Culture’ by adopting five strategies that articulate the relationship between the sacred and secular. These strategies differ by the extent to which the two worlds ‘mix’. One extreme, which Niebuhr calls the ‘Christ against culture’ view, separates the realms of the sacred and secular and calls for a withdrawal from the latter into the former. The other extreme, the ‘Christ of culture’ view, sees Christian values as the ‘best’ of human culture; thus, the sacred and secular cannot be separated. Niebuhr also posits three mediating positions, which he calls ‘Christ above culture’, ‘Christ and culture in paradox’ and ‘Christ the transformer of culture’. Each of these positions seeks, in different ways, to maintain a distinction between the realms of sacred and secular while still drawing from both. What is important to this discussion is not the categories per se – Niebuhr notes that they are heuristics – but the idea that they form a ‘moral continuum’ along which Christians position themselves to align their understandings of their activities with their worldviews. The act of musicking in worship is one of moral attunement where worshippers do the work of listening in specific ways and with specific attitudes to achieve the affective-volitional states necessary for the religious experiences they seek (Hirschkind 2001). This is ultimately an individual choice, although the decision to seek moral attunement and the choice of how to achieve it are culturally and socially circumscribed. Sacred experiences may occur spontaneously, but more often are sought in ritualized ways. Participants need to be in a ‘state of mind’ that connects the physical, mental and emotional to embodied knowledge (e.g. Miller and Strongman 2002; Poloma 1989), and this takes ‘work’ on the part of the worshipper. Worshippers have to anticipate the experience, and often have to practice to achieve it. In her book Extravagant Worship, the influential worship leader Darlene Zschech advises the worshipper to ‘discipline your mind to agree with God’s Word’ (Zschech 2001: 137). This suggests that worshippers must ‘learn to listen’ (Wagner 2014: 145–68) in specific ways to achieve the affective-volitional states needed for the religious experiences they seek. Especially in the Protestant tradition, musical worship is a means to prepare one to ‘hear’ the word expressed through preaching, and reinforced through repetition (Begbie 2000). But how does this occur? How do Christians ‘hear’ the sacred in the aesthetics of the secular? Much has been written about how worshippers and worship-leading musicians discursively frame their actions vis-à-vis celebrity culture (e.g. Wagner 2014b; Ward 2011), but less is written about how members of the latter group treat the dual act of ‘leading worship’ and ‘worshipping’. Therefore, the final section of this chapter explores the intersections of Christianity, worship and popular music through ethnographic work during 2011–13, with worship leaders at the London branch of the evangelical Hillsong Church (Wagner 2014). In mediated society, the line between secular performance and sacred worship is blurred, if not indistinguishable. Wearing the same clothes, occupying the same spaces and using the same instruments as secular pop stars, worship leaders 97

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are forced to tread a fine line between ‘performance’ and ‘worship’. How, then, do they keep one foot in the ‘secular’ world and the other in the ‘sacred’?

Part three: ‘Learning to listen’ to popular worship music As noted earlier, the interpretation of aesthetic experience is socially circumscribed. Hillsong’s worship team is led by pastors, but composed primarily of volunteer musicians. While often highly trained performers, most of the musicians are, at first, not ‘specialists’ in the specifics of Hillsong’s church culture. Therefore, Hillsong expends considerable effort to educate the musicians in the worship team about ‘proper’ worship, particularly the ‘why’ of worship and worship leading in opposition to celebrity culture. Worship team members I interviewed often admitted wanting to perform on stage was the primary motive for their auditioning. However, once on the team, they quickly changed their attitudes: A lot of people start on the worship team, especially if they do music, to get on stage and be seen. The reason I say that is that you’re on the team, and you live with the team, and you change your mind set really easy. At a certain point you get it, that it’s not about you. It’s not about your career, it’s not about your minute of fame, it’s about God; that’s why you worship. … Because I was a Christian for five months [when I joined the worship team], so I didn’t have the context. But you develop it … they put a lot of emphasis on the right reason for being on stage. (Julie, Hillsong London worship team, Interview with author; 6 February 2011) Once worship team members understand why they are on the platform, they must also learn ‘how’ to worship. A simple example in the worship context is the way a musician can ‘lead worship’ by raising his or her hands, a common practice for evangelical Christians. In ritualized situations, inexperienced participants often imitate the postures and movements of the more experienced (Becker 2004: 119–21). Hillsong’s musicians are accepted by other participants as ‘experts’ – or at least experienced – in worship; when they raise their hands, others follow suit. Through socialization, participants understand that the adoption of this posture equates to worship – not just the act, but also the larger set of cultural meanings that go along with it. The visual, observable aspects of worship are therefore bearers of cultural meaning and powerful agents of socialization (Coleman 2000). A cursory (or cynical) reading of this might imply that a worship leader could simply lift his or her hand and, by ‘appearing’ to worship, incite others to ‘really’ worship (Adnams 2013). After all, authenticity is both performed and ascribed (Alexander 2006). Contra the postmodern denial of authenticity, though, being authentic is an indispensable part of worship: authenticity and worship are both about being true to the inner experience of one’s self. This is the view of Hillsong’s worship leaders, who believe that one actually needs to be worshipping in order to lead others into worship: You have to really be worshiping God first. You have to be in the right spirit, because you won’t be able to lead people if you’re not. … We minister first to God. And you will feel inside if you are able to touch the heart of the Lord. After that, God will just anoint your 98

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worship. And that is how people will see the glory that is in you. And they will just follow. That will cause them to follow you and usher them into the presence of God. You simply have to focus yourself first to God. Like I said, you have to be praying about the songs. You really have to pray and condition your mind and your body, because once you are prepared, then people will see. (Roy, Hillsong London worship team member, Interview with author; 6 February 2011) Watching Hillsong’s worship team in action, one often observes that while either the backing guitarist or one of the keyboard players has a microphone, he or she does not sing into it. Rather, this musician will occasionally use it to communicate with the other musicians on stage, who are wearing inner-ear pieces. This individual can be thought of as the true ‘worship leader’ (as opposed to the lead singer) who directs the musicians through each song, responding to the congregation’s mood in an attempt to direct them in worship. There seems to be a contradiction here: on the one hand, to be leading others in worship, the worship team members need to be engaged in worship (e.g. focusing on God). On the other hand, the job of a worship team member is to afford participants the opportunity for a sacred experience through the on-stage performance; this requires attention to the conventions of secular performance, such as playing an instrument and singing the correct lyrics, which could potentially confine a worship team member’s attention to the secular realm. For many of the worship leaders I interviewed, this was a source of tension, for which they employed a variety of idiosyncratic strategies to overcome. Despite the difference in strategies, all were informed by the understanding that worship was integral to the Hillsong lifestyle: Worship is not just songs that you sing, it’s your life, really – a way of life. I guess that during a song somebody has to say ‘let’s bring it down’ doesn’t necessarily mean that your worship is being interrupted. Even if it is, I don’t see why it needs to take hours or a period of time to get back into it. I think it’s just a quick snap back into it. Because we are worshiping with our instruments. You don’t stop playing just to listen to them. Even though you’re not entirely focused on what you’re doing, you are still automatically giving worship. (Hristo, Hillsong worship team member, Interview with author; 13 February 2011) For Hristo, the act of playing the drums on Sunday is not necessarily ‘set apart’ from everyday life – both are worship. Worship-as-lifestyle simultaneously frames worship as part of, and also as, a holistic way of being in the world, simultaneously holding it as ‘special’ while also ‘mundane’. In the Hillsong context, the church’s teaching provides the frame; it provides both the cultural resources that participants use to direct their actions and the cultural contexts within which those actions accrue meaning. PWM, then, (co)structures individual and collective experience as an activity, and does so through the collective, instrumental use of it as an object. Worship musicians are ‘betwixt and between’ in this process; they occupy the liminal space between the secular world and the sacred beyond, a space that they attempt to transcend by understanding worship as a lifestyle.

Conclusion Following Jeff Astley and Mark Savage (2000), I suggest that Christian PWM – the object and the activity – is instrumental in ‘formative’ and ‘critical’ Christian education. Through musical

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worship, Christians both form ‘attitudes, beliefs, emotions, skills and dispositions to experience and action’ and also critically evaluate ‘Christian culture, world-view and lifestyles using the tools of logical or moral evaluation’ (Astley and Savage 2000: 231). Not without good reason, Christians have approached music with a mixture of enthusiasm and trepidation. Music is a powerful resource for shaping the experience of oneself in the world, physically, mentally and emotionally; it also plays a unique role in constructing the individual/ collective identity that facilitates enactment of the ‘imagined’ community through the ‘real’ activity of musicking in worship. PWM is an aesthetic object and a social act. Any Christian experience occurs by filtering ideas of the sacred through the ‘screen’ (syntax and grammar of the political, cultural and social matrix) of the ‘secular’. Popular music is part of popular culture in which meaning, medium and message are inextricably linked. The moral discourse over the value and meaning of popular music colours the debates over popular music’s role in the church. For Christians, the ‘enduring problem’ is that religious experience is always-already an admixture of experiential logics, both sacred and mundane. Christian ideas about what worship is, and music’s role in it, have been based on assumptions of music’s capacity to be used for both good and evil. Not coincidentally, these discourses are associated with ‘moral panics’ that accompany the introduction of almost any new form of secular popular music. Often racially tinged and almost always focusing on social deviance (e.g. sex and drug use), such discourses are vehicles for negotiating power among individuals, groups and institutions (e.g. Hebdige 1979; Thornton 1995). One could then frame this fundamental question for studying Christianity, worship and popular music: What is the ‘primary text’ (Moore 2001)? On the one hand, it is the ‘sacred’, as manifested in the Bible. On the other hand, it is the ‘secular’ cultural forms and conventions through which ‘biblical truth’ is transmitted, translated and experienced. Christian worship has a transcendent goal, but it also polices the transgressive nature of popular music’s signifiers (Kahn-Harris and Moberg 2012: 98). PWMs meaning – which is to say the embodied worship experience – is only understood by what it indexes (Mall 2015: 104); and it indexes quite a lot.

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Chapter 9

Contemporary Christian Music Shawn David Young

Evangelical popular music is connected to a mythology, a history that dates back in time to the American counterculture of the 1960s, specifically a revival of conservative Christianity known as the Jesus Movement, a new way of expressing Christian belief that largely targeted American youth. While new to some, in truth, the avant-garde of evangelicalism actually boasts a lengthy history, one where Charles Fuller, Billy Sunday, George Whitefield and Billy Graham all (in their own way) pushed the cultural envelope. For the most part, the media paradigm that emerged during the 1970s and 1980s evolved as a parallel universe in evangelical culture, which operated as chief purveyor of evangelical identity. The result was a groundswell of new activity as the evangelical culture industry rallied around new, popular methods for sharing the gospel message; the most compelling example has been the development of contemporary Christian music (CCM). But this is simply a continuation of a larger story about American evangelical Christianity.

In the beginning Connecting in the cultural vernacular has worked very well for evangelicals, realizing the endgame of reformation Christianity’s ultimate thrust to re-concentrate power from Rome to main street. Though beyond the pale for Christian powerbrokers, this approach to a culturecentred gospel lived well beyond Martin Luther and John Calvin, or the printing of the Gutenberg Bibles. In 1640 it found its way across the pond, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the Bay Psalm Book, the first publication in the New World. Later, William Billings published hundreds of psalm tunes and anthems for choirs in six collections over the span of thirty years, resulting in The New-England Psalm-Singer of 1770. Then in 1801, pastor Richard Allen published the first African-American book of hymns, titled Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns. With contributions from composers such as Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, D. L. Moody, Ira Sankey and Fanny Crosby, Christian music became synonymous with popular songs. From the late 1880s through the 1930s, vocal groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers popularized ‘camp meeting’ and ‘shape-note’ singing. Vocal quartets would go on to serve the faithful with popular religious song in the cultural vernacular. But it was African-American musical styles that had a profound impact on the Christian music industry. W. C. Handy, ‘father of the blues’ contributed an approach to music that echoed slave spirituals. Handy combined blues and jazz influences to crystallize what became a modern gospel sound, culminating in T. A. Dorsey (the ‘father of black gospel’) and his unique approach to gospel music as a genre. The marriage between

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Protestant faith, democracy and capitalism proved volatile, igniting believers to embrace group singing as the primary means of religious worship. And the printed text became emblematic for a community already dedicated to the written word. In my previous research (Gray Sabbath, Columbia University Press, 2015) I established a clear historical trajectory. Protestants have often sought to attract a crowd or appeal to the masses, while often eschewing the culture they sought to imitate. But despite this, early revivalists such as Billy Sunday (1862–1935) ‘turned to the techniques of modern show business as a means of drumming up support’, writes historian George Marsden (2001: 189). Duane Oldfield has noted the ‘populist, democratic character of American popular religion’ (Oldfield 1996: 49– 50). Evangelists have often used whatever was necessary or available, willing to speak in the ‘sensationalistic’ language of the people, notes Oldfield, with an enthusiasm reminiscent of the backwoods camp meeting and (thanks to capitalism), ‘the theatrics of turn-of-the-century baseball player/evangelist Billy Sunday, and the antics of televangelists Jim and Tammy Bakker’ wielding necessary chops to connect with a mass audience. The early 1900s were fraught with a culture war, waged primarily between liberal modernists and fundamentalist Christians. But while fundamentalists established an anti-cultural position (defined against the cultural mainstream), evangelicals sought to sanctify culture with their own version of pop media. With the rise of radio broadcasting and popular music between the 1920s and 1940s, evangelists and missionaries chose to wrest production from the hands of worldly cultural contortionists, hoping they could tame it to serve Christian evangelism’s purpose. But while these attempts would continue throughout the 1950s, Christianity would not fully engage popular culture until the late 1960s.

Baby boom As World War II came to an end, post-agrarian and post-industrial America took shape, spawning massive upheaval in urban centres while giving rise to suburbia. The post-agrarian nation made it possible for young people to spend less time working the farm and more time spending money. Pay cheques were better. Disposable time and disposable income presented the so-called culture industry with a unique opportunity to target a new demographic. The teenager was born, and parents sighed relief as their country got on with the business of enjoying life in the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II. Americans in the 1950s occupied a time and space marked by technological progress and post-war economic growth. But as technology plunged brick-and-mortar manufacturers into fiscal uncertainty, working-class Americans were forced to change. Deindustrialization was not only a matter of redirecting workers to different positions or factory locations. It was also a total remapping of life, a shift in the way property and time would be valued, creating a social backlash within urban centres nationwide. And then came more: the Red Scare; the Civil Rights Movement; beat poets; Modernism; and television. Middle-class Americans were converted to an idea, one that placed America at the centre of the universe and all others (especially communists) on the dark periphery. Ritualized by ‘beatnik’ poets and burgeoning bluesmen, this new America was called into question, an America occupied by private interests at the expense of the public sector, leading to what Todd Gitlin refers to as ‘middle-class apprehension’(1993: 18). Young people began to sense a problem, something disconnected between the American 102

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dream and the Protestant work ethic. Did wealth and prosperity truly flow from free-market capitalism? It is this curious blend of the familiar and the strange, the comfortable Middle American and the looming threat of Soviet bombs and iconoclasts, where youth flirted innocently with another world.

Rock ‘n’ roll The music of husky blues singers (mostly from the American South) was rendered safe as it rubbed alongside hillbilly (country) and gospel music. But parents were not deceived. To them, this burgeoning style also meant a valuation of African-American culture, race mixing, sexual promiscuity and (for some) a slight nod to communism. But this dalliance with the Devil also brought with it a tension that awarded enterprising musicians (a nod to capitalism) the possibility to perform on Saturday night and Sunday morning, a dichotomy that would forever define the spiritual leanings of two musical genres that shared the same parent. As fringe musical styles (independent record companies), ‘race music’, ‘hillbilly’ and gospel did not conform to business models driven by consumer trends. The genres became perfect voices for the working class. But the music also tapped a social conscience that reached far beyond the church or the saloon. Youthful queries emerged. There appeared to be a growing divide with the plastic nuclear family on one side and youth on the other. Quiet culture was about to be disrupted. Indeed, Americans value the freedom to protest authority while singing about liberty. Although our rage against the machine has become a shopworn narrative, it remains true that the emergence of youth culture (as a demographic) represented a critical mass, whereby the status of rebellion was encapsulated in a cultural form known as rock ‘n’ roll. It should not be a surprise that religious conservatives (and liberals) opposed the new genre. To conservatives, rock ‘n’ roll was no less than the Devil’s music. To liberals, it was pop culture gone awry, cheaply made ditties massproduced for profit. Both sides of the aisle, however, would come to see the immense affect this music could have: for conservatives, a tool for evangelism; for liberals, a voice for social change. But the new order would not develop until the late 1960s.

Christian hippies Southern California was ground zero for a revival of evangelical Christianity among the hippie movement. Commonly referred to as ‘Jesus freaks’, young converts challenged traditional Christian aesthetics while embracing a conservative understanding of the Bible. Donald E. Miller notes that the Jesus Movement had the makings of a new reform movement: ‘Many of the principles of the Reformation were reborn as ordinary people discovered the priesthood of all believers, without ever reading Martin Luther’ (1999: 11, 12). They questioned the authority of the church and reinstated biblical authority, but retained a countercultural aesthetic often sporting the hippie image while using pop music for evangelism. Christian hippies emerged in the midst of a perfect storm. Among many things, the late 1960s were marked by student protest movements, the war in Vietnam, race riots and disenchantment with both the Right and the Left. Zealous with a newfound faith, Jesus freaks proclaimed the gospel in the cultural vernacular. Unconventional longhaired followers of Jesus successfully combined the counterculture with the theological conservatism of evangelical Christianity. 103

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And this blending of the hippie aesthetic with conservativism became emblematic of the Jesus Movement. The movement challenged mainline liberal Protestant positions on theological certainty and commonly held evangelical positions on religious experience. In so doing, Jesus freaks reaffirmed absolute commitment to literal interpretations of the Bible while also launching Pentecostal Christianity into the mainstream. But the movement’s greatest contribution to US society was cultural: hair, clothing, publishing, film, television, festivals and music. Initially a cottage industry, evangelical popular media contributed to the growth of megachurches and new paradigm churches. And it would continue to surface in various forms, redefining boundaries and reorienting the faithful to new ways to signify the sacred.

The new ‘hip’ language Historian Eileen Luhr has argued that pop culture helped young Jesus freaks learn values associated with conservative Christian belief. The movement increased as ‘independent Christian bookstores grew from 725 to 1,850 between 1965 and 1975’, which would later serve well the sale and distribution of Christian pop (Luhr 2009: 71). Thus, the movement provided a template for cultural engagement that elevated evangelicals to new status – and the evangelical establishment would later absorb Jesus-freak cultural production. Although it would be unfair to assume these youth were automatically co-opted by the Right, it is safe to assume that the new evangelical base was a growing youth culture whose cultural products were employed in service of newfound faith. But this is nothing new. Culturally relevant missionary work can be traced back to the Great Awakenings, says historian George Marsden, recalling that ‘Charles Finney was, in fact, one of the progenitors of modern advertising technique. … His pioneering work paved the way for later twentiethcentury radio and TV evangelists to master mass communication techniques’ (Mardsen 2001: 68). And evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson preached the gospel using modern theatrics, carrying Finney’s fiery technique into the twentieth century. American Protestants have often sought mass, commercial appeal, while simultaneously demonizing the culture it sought to imitate. But unlike fundamentalists, evangelicals wrought pop culture while squeezing their message into rhetorical openings suitable to the situation. Jerry Falwell, an influential evangelical leader and co-founder of the Moral Majority in 1979, justified the use of Christian media to promote the Christian message. While D. L. Moody and Billy Graham also used popular media, CCM became ‘the most extensive attempt to merge religious music with commercialization and industrialization of the popular entertainment industry’ (Romanowski 1990: 14, 15). There was an integration of production and consumption. Much like D. L. Moody and Billy Sunday, the Jesus Movement held a general disregard for the present world: the countercultural ethos of evangelism favoured a focus on salvation of souls as the primary solution to the world’s problems. From the enthusiasm of the backwoods camp meeting to the theatrics of evangelical talking heads, the masses became the target of would-be minstrels of the apocalypse. There were two unifying threads for Jesus freaks and their music: saving souls and the wait for doomsday. Indeed, the movement’s message was communicated through multiple mediums, but ‘Jesus music’

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emerged as evangelicalism’s wayward child, one that could be trained. And what developed was a sellable hybrid of rock ‘n’ roll and Jesus music. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, commercial hits such as ‘Spirit in the Sky’ (Spirit in the Sky, 1969), ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’ (Oh Happy Day, 1970) and ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ (Turn! Turn! Turn!, 1965) piqued consumer interest in spiritually themed music. But believers embraced ‘Jesus music’ groups such as Children of the Day, Love Song, Andraé Crouch and the Disciples, 2nd Chapter of Acts, Phil Keaggy, Love Song, Randy Stonehill, Barry McGuire, Larry Norman and many more. These laid the foundation for others to play part in the creation of a new industry – the parallel universe of popular evangelical music and the birth of CCM.

Trailblazers CCM’s style is incredibly diverse, offering the gospel message through genres such as adult contemporary, hard rock, progressive rock, punk rock, heavy metal, extreme metal, alternative, funk, black gospel, hip hop and modern worship. By most accounts, it all began with one of the first Jesus freaks. Fascinated with the countercultural youth movements of the 1960s, singer Larry Norman grew his hair and tapped the hippie aesthetic. His unique mix of Christianity and rock ‘n’ roll made him the perfect icon for Christian rock. Widely regarded as the father of Christian rock, Norman founded the band People! Then in 1970, Norman and Capitol Records released Upon This Rock (1969), now viewed as the world’s first Christian rock album. Considered too Christian for the secular market and too rock ‘n’ roll for the church, Norman was rejected by both industries. But despite health problems and isolation, he launched his own Solid Rock in 1976, a record label that would produce music that was gritty, authentic and shocking. Norman’s public persona earned him respect among numerous general market rock stars. Only Visiting This Planet (1972) (which included arrangements by Beatles’ producer George Martin) was chosen as the best Christian album of all time in 1988, only to be ranked number two the following year in the wake of Amy Grant’s Lead Me On (1988). Early CCM artists paved the way for popular evangelical music to leak into the homes of mainstream consumers. A new kind of Christian artist emerged during the 1980s and 1990s, contributing to a new way evangelical youth would engage the faith. With the emergence of CCM pop stars such as Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith, Michael Card, Rich Mullins, Keith Green, Petra, Stryper, the Resurrection Band, dc Talk, Mylon Le Fevre and Broken Heart, DeGarmo & Key, Stephen Curtis Chapman, the Newsboys and Audio Adrenaline, the gatekeepers of gospel music christened the standard-bearers of what counted as true CCM, these performers (in their own way) becoming standard-bearers in the lexicon of Christian pop. Amy Grant’s effect on the general market extended beyond the cloistered world of popular Christian music. The Recording Industry Association of America compiled a list of the 365 most significant songs of the twentieth century, and placed Grant’s version of Michael W. Smith’s song, ‘Friends’ (Michael W. Smith Project,1983) at number 326, behind Elton John’s ‘Candle in the Wind 1997’ (1997). After going platinum, her career took a turn as she found herself appearing on The Tonight Show, making Grant a mainstream celebrity. The world of Christian music ‘had long awaited such general-market validation’, writes journalist Andrew Beaujon

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(2006: 34). Featured in Life and Rolling Stone, Grant was launched into the general secular market. After the 1988 release of Lead Me On, her music took on a playful feel, sending a message to Christian consumers – people of faith can have fun. Selling almost six million copies, the album created a buzz among consumers with such force that Grant’s fame, in many ways, rivalled that of Madonna. A Christian pop sensation, singer-songwriter Michael W. Smith is among the pantheon of topselling artists in CCM. In 1983 he released The Michael W. Smith Project on Reunion Records, debuting the now classic ‘Friends’, a song that would be named by critics in 1998 as the best contemporary Christian song of all time. Following Amy Grant, Smith attempted to cross over into the general market. But despite his status as an artist who caters to a niche market, Smith’s charismatic appeal earned him the distinction as one of ‘The Fifty Most Beautiful People in the World’ with People magazine (and an honorary doctorate from Alderson-Broadus College, West Virginia) (Young 2013: 213). As CCM developed its own superstars throughout the 1980s, it became apparent that evangelical consumers represented a lucrative demographic. Furthermore, popular media and mass events offered evangelicals for-profit scenarios where political ideology could (legally) be front-and-centre. After all, evangelical Christianity has always been about delivering a relevant message. But if the message was to be heard, an industry had to develop.

Production and distribution, and contributions Since the Copyright Act of 1909, Christian music has enjoyed greater mass appeal. With the formation of performing rights organizations American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 1916 and Broadcast Music, Inc., in 1939, popular Christian music offered greater protection to songwriters, making professional songwriting a possibility. With the rise of publishers such as the Stamps-Baxter Music Company (1924) and newly minted gospel celebrities such as Bill Gaither in the 1950s, Christian music (mostly Protestant) developed its own industry. Slow baked in rural America, early gospel music tapped theologies often associated with the Great Awakenings. Jubilant and revivalistic, Protestant hymns became vernacular tools for the common folk. From the Singing School tradition of William Billings to the Southern Gospel of Stamps-Baxter Music and Printing Company, gospel music evolved alongside the musical styles that emerged out of the American Southeast. Early luminaries such as Bill Gaither and Ralph Carmichael (also considered ‘father’ of CCM) set the stage for a widespread publishing industry, one that would serve as a sonic backdrop for evangelical tent revivals and the crusades of the Reverend Billy Graham. Out of this emerged a lucrative niche industry that would make Nashville its home. As the Jesus Movement faded away, the Religious Right adopted the new aesthetic, absorbing rock groups and celebrities into its own orbit. Baby boom Christian conservatives engaged the culture war with music, books and film, advancing an agenda that was more in line with the Moral Majority than anything previously associated with hippie culture. Christian record labels developed, most functioning under umbrella companies such as Columbia, EMI and Universal. Benson Music Company, Skylight Company and EMI Christian Music Group (now Capitol CMG) marshalled their resources to market CCM to teen culture and soccer moms. Subsidiaries such 106

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as EMI Gospel, Heartwarming, Impact, Bullett, Good News, Liberty, Benson, Word, Sparrow, Hillsong, Vineyard, Good News, Maranatha!, Solid Rock, Paragon, Dayspring, ForeFront, Star Song, Credential, Motown Gospel, Gotee, and Tooth and Nail carved out another niche, largely focusing on church youth groups. But a subsidiary of Word Records (1951), Myrrh (formed by industry pioneer Billy Ray Hearn in 1972), became the first major CCM label. As the epicentre of CCM, Nashville offered an environment that was conducive to topical music that would become the hallmark of family values, conservative politics and religious certainty. And it created its own fingerprint within the music industry: The Grand Ole Opry, the Gospel Music Association (GMA) and the Dove Awards (CCM’s version of the Grammy). Country music is in the city’s DNA. But although this industry was structured around specialty labels, there are those who would take CCM into the commercial mainstream.

Christian festivals Often a parallel to the secular mainstream, the commercial success of popular evangelical media can be attributed to Christian bookstores, the megachurch movement, youth conferences and music festivals. Stretching back in time to the 1960s, the most seminal reminders of a bygone era are immortalized in music events such as Woodstock, Altamont and the Monterey International Pop Festival. The emergence of a rock festival culture was simply the counterculture writ large. As an event, the rock music festival was what writer and activist Bill Mankin calls ‘a cornucopia of artistic and personal expression and experimentation’ (2013). Indeed, rock festivals have always served as a rally cry for youth. Collectively, they could realize who they were in the grand scheme of things. And more poignantly, they could explore new ways of being. Evangelicals puzzled over how to appropriately accommodate this sort of culture. With the rise of Christian rock concerts and enigmatic Jesus music festivals, young people experienced community events with other like-minded fans of rock ‘n’ roll, something yet-to-be added to Sunday morning. Solidifying the connection between conservative evangelicalism and pop music, the music festival Explo’72 ‘foreshadowed the emergence of evangelicals as a powerful voting bloc’ (Turner 2008). Sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ and led by conservative Bill Bright, the event assuaged the fears of evangelical parents with the inclusion of Reverend Billy Graham on the same billing as Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash. It was the perfect blend of pop culture and conservative sensibilities, and it would create a template, allowing evangelicals to enter the cultural mainstream in force. Explo ‘72 became ‘the largest youth training conference in church history’ (Shires 2007: 121), setting the stage for a cultural explosion that would come to define evangelical youth for the next three decades. In some ways, early Jesus festivals were simply Christianized attempts at countercultural forays, such as the original Woodstock Festival. Others would emerge, each offering a way for youth groups to engage the culture of rock ‘n’ roll. Considered to be the largest Christian festival in the United States (averaging 50,000 in attendance) Creation Festival includes offshoots such as Creation Northwest and Sonshine in the United States and abroad. Along with Creation, AGAPE, Ichthus, Godstock, Atlanta Fest, JesusFest, Creation, Sonshine, Fishnet, Purple Door and Wild Goose all serve a similar purpose. While all of these festivals tend to showcase performers who have survived the gauntlet of public scrutiny, these 107

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public expressions of solidarity help us name and categorize tensions associated with high culture and low culture, and deepening gaps between public and private iterations of culture. Widely celebrated during the 1970s, Jesus festivals went on to develop commercial relationships with theme parks throughout the 1980s and 1990s. These corporate relationships helped seal the deal between establishment evangelicalism and capitalism. And oddly, this process further blurred the thinly veiled lines between sacred and profane. This dividing line between secular music and Christian music is, in part, a development that was necessary with the birth of CCM. But one ruptured those boundaries. The Cornerstone Festival was an alternative to other Christian rock events. Its staff members were dedicated to offering a space where Christian musicians felt free to perform music that was not accepted by the Christian mainstream, and where discussions about politics, religion, and art mirrored (to some extent) what they believed to be holistic and biblical. Other Christian festivals continue their appeal to fans of mainstream CCM, but Cornerstone once highlighted a subcultural aesthetic often absent from gatherings sponsored by the gatekeepers of establishment evangelicalism. Summer 2012 marked the last Cornerstone, and this created an empty space where Christian rockers left-of-centre once called home. For twenty-nine years Cornerstone created a ripple effect throughout the Christian music industry. The way evangelicals defined popular Christian music and its relationship to evangelical Christianity dramatically changed as a result. The importance of this once-celebrated gathering is about more than the tepid nature of CCM or the ever elusive consumer-demographic of evangelical youth. With the exception of Cornerstone, few have come close to mimicking the edgy thrust associated with Woodstock. Its public evolution highlighted a noticeable difference between the subcultural expressions of CCM and establishment evangelicalism, signalling changes that would accompany current expressions of what we could more broadly refer to as ‘faith-based popular music’.

The changing face of CCM As a journalist for the Washington Post, the Washington City Paper and Spin magazine, Andrew Beaujon offers a modified approach to cultural history, providing an on-the-ground account of a complicated and controversial industry. He explores the Christian music industry an interested bystander, relying on an expert witness: one the most successful executives in Christian music. According to Bill Hearn, president and CEO of Capitol Christian Music Group (a branch of the mammoth EMI), SoundScan reporting technology ‘showed that a lot more Christian music was being sold than the secular music industry wanted to admit’. In 2006, EMI Christian Music Group accounted for ‘40 percent of the resulting $700 million business’, proving to be ‘one of the most profitable companies in the EMI system around the world’ (2006: 179, 181). The social influence of CCM is far-reaching, and has become ‘a major component of the financial underpinnings of American evangelicalism’s mass media and bookstore infrastructure’, writes historian Larry Eskridge, ‘as well as a significant aspect of everyday life and devotion in the evangelical subculture, spawning radio station formats, summer festivals, Web sites and the like’ (Eskridge 2013: 8). Although this niche genre was once relatively inconsequential, the 108

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respectability of CCM (or Christians making popular music) increased as songs crossed over from niche to mainstream markets. Historically, there has been a struggle between Christian musicians, the general market and the local church. Larry Norman was too Christian for the general market and too rock ‘n’ roll for the church. In like manner, heavy metal icon the Resurrection Band (REZ) attempted to engage the market, but the topics did not endear them to either world. Much like Norman, REZ was, according to Beaujon, considered ‘too hard for the Christian market and too Christian for the general market’. However, StarSong Records signed REZ and released what became a ‘classic of Christian rock’.  Awaiting Your Reply (1978) was one of the first truly Christian hard rock albums, creating a template for the emergence of new types of Christian rock (Beaujon 2006: 31–2). The enigmatic Cornerstone Festival (founded by REZ) influenced countless indie rockers and crossover bands who would go on to challenge the way evangelical pop was defined and marketed. The result was a groundswell of crossover groups, such as P. O. D., Switchfoot, Jars of Clay and Sixpence None the Richer. A landmark achievement for evangelical popular music, Sixpence None the Richer appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman and has enjoyed licencing deals with network television. And in scandalous form, P.O.D. shocked and inspired adoring fans by touring with Ozzy Osbourne’s Ozz Fest. For Christian groups to perform in secular venues was (at one time) anathema to the evangelical edict to be ‘in the world, but not of it’. That Christian music groups found it difficult to find employment with secular venues only exacerbated the problem, making it difficult for subcultural, evangelical pop music groups to gain exposure. In response (and unlike many of the mainstream festivals such as Fishnet and Creation), Cornerstone provided a venue where fringe groups were accepted, and those who sought to ‘cross over’ into the general were encouraged. For many years the GMA debated the matter of definitions. What is CCM? In the late 1990s, the GMA defined gospel music as ‘music in any style whose lyric is substantially based upon historically orthodox Christian truth contained in or derived from the Holy Bible; and/or an expression of worship of God or praise for his works; and/or testimony of relationship with God through Christ; and/or obviously prompted and informed by a Christian worldview’ (Powell 2002: 12). Many would defer to the so-called J-per-minute argument (the number of times the word ‘Jesus’ is mentioned), and this became problematic with the success of commercial hits that did not conform to this standard, for example, Bob Carlisle’s ‘Butterfly Kisses’ (Butterfly Kisses (Shades of Grace), 1997). A number of other questions emerged: What about instrumental music? What about indirect topics on which Christianity is based? What about metaphor? What about theological disagreements on terminology? What about the absence of terminology? While a number of CCM producers began to challenge these assumptions, academia weighed in. For Historian Mark Allen Powell, ‘Contemporary Christian music is music that appeals to selfidentified fans of contemporary Christian music on account of a perceived connection to what they regard as Christianity’ (2002: 12). Much of the debate about CCM has been due to disagreements about how Christian musicians should interact with the world around them. Sociologists Jay R. Howard and John M. Streck offer three different approaches to CCM that categorize it based on how the Christian music industry has historically dealt with tensions between faith, art, business, entertainment and culture. ‘Separational’ CCM is used to glorify God and spread the Christian message. ‘Integrational’ CCM strives to cross over into the general market. These artists are entertainers who are vocal 109

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about their faith. ‘Transformational’ Christian musicians view music as a necessary means to enter the world as God’s agents of change. These musicians do not view music as merely a tool for religious worship or evangelism, but simply as something to be valued and enjoyed, regardless of the message; any Christian message is merely incidental to what is believed to be a result of God’s presence in the world. In the late 1990s, the transformational model began to take hold as various musician-producers such as Charlie Peacock began to redefine popular Christian music. In recent years, faith-based rock ‘n’ roll has evolved into a form that coexists with its secular counterparts, largely due to festivals like Cornerstone, producers such as Charlie Peacock, and bands who defy categorization and complicate our understanding of what music and religion can look and sound like: Pedro the Lion, Switchfoot, Jars of Clay, Mute Math, Underoath. And this makes almost palpable those Christian artists whose music lends itself to a biblical narrative often confused with the world of CCM: The Call, Bruce Cockburn, Cliff Richard, Creed, Collective Soul, U2, King’s X (and even Alice Cooper). Then within the CCM underground, there emerged groups who effectively created art that challenged the CCM mainstream: The Seventy Sevens, Daniel Amos, T Bone Burnett, LSU, The Choir, Adam Again, Mark Heard, Lost Dogs, Vigilantes of Love, Starflyer 59, Vengeance Rising and Luti-Kriss (now Norma Jean). Or those rock stars who shocked us with their declarations of faith: Kerry Livgren of the band Kansas, Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad, Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, Dez Dickerson of Prince and Brian ‘Head’ Welch of Korn. Contemporary music offers us a stunning case study in the myriad ways evangelicalism engages the world. Events like Cornerstone have complicated definitions typically associated with Christian music. The result of this awakening has been a burgeoning subculture of musicians under the influence of evangelical faith who now rise to the challenge of performing in venues that are (mostly) disassociated from what is often expected of those who claim the evangelical distinction. Popular Christian music will look and sound very different in the not-so-distant future. And while evangelicals will likely continue to harness the vernacular power of culture (with continued focus on teenagers), it is equally probable that the division of ideological labour – the defining dichotomies – will fragment to the point that it will be difficult to identify and classify CCM. Thus, if the point of evangelical Christianity was to engage and tame culture, so as to be thoroughly intertwined with it, then the plan has worked. And this is, in no small part, due to the evolutionary nature of the larger social order. The evangelical subculture has always been somewhat culturally pliable. Religious history, says Philip Goff and Alan Heimert, continues to ‘shape and be shaped by larger cultural forces’ uncovering ‘today’s strange bedfellows, evangelicals and postmodernists, who together have launched a forceful objection to longstanding assumptions and paradigms’ (1998: 695–721). The fabric of US culture is such that there exists an almost symbiotic relationship between religious belief and religious expression. CCM is not immune to the forces of pluralism. Nor is it immune to the evolution of human taste. Thus it is not surprising that it influences and reflects the changing landscape of American society and culture.

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Chapter 10

Islam and Popular Music Jonas Otterbeck and Göran Larsson

When studying opinions about any topic, no matter whether it is historical, sociological and contemporary or theological, it is always necessary to ask who is speaking, who has the authority and legitimacy to provide authoritative answers, and which voices and perspectives are being downplayed or silenced in public debate in a given area at a given point in time. Evidently, this observation is true also for different Islamic opinions regarding popular music. Within the concept of what is ‘popular’, we include, first, music that is widely played, for example, in the streets and during festivals and popular feasts. Obviously, this would include the so-called folk music. Second, we apply the phrase ‘popular music’ in a more restricted sense to mean music produced as part of the rise of mass consumption and capitalism. This definition includes music that is popular in the sense that a large audience stretched out in time and space may consume it; this makes music a commodity. Global consumption is facilitated by the music industry and by modern forms of mass media such as the radio, television and the internet. This chapter starts by describing three dominant Islamic views on music in general and popular music in particular that exist or have existed in both historical and contemporary times. The second half of the chapter will be devoted to modern popular music and its relationship to Islam. While typologies are useful tools for establishing a pedagogical overview, reality is often much more complex. For example, Muslims who join or who have sympathies for movements like Hamas, Hizbullah, the Taliban or the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (Daesh) are likely to condemn all forms of popular music, but they still compose and sing nashids (‘spiritual songs’), a popular music genre that is important for the culture and propaganda of these movements (cf. Berg 2013; Seymat 2014). Likewise, many who follow Sufi orders criticize popular music, but accept the use of music in Sufi rituals. Some orders or individual Sufis even market their music as part of the genre called World Music (Shannon 2011). Other Muslims, like, Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens), are quite happy playing the guitar and singing to non-Muslims, a position that many Muslim theologians would take issue with (Larsson 2011). However, thirtyseven years ago, in 1979, the newly converted Yusuf Islam withdrew from the music scene and auctioned off his guitars exactly because he found music-making un-Islamic. At that time he argued that in order to be a ‘good’ Muslim, it was best for him to put an end to his music career and to leave his life as a pop singer (Islam 2007): ‘Then I [Yusuf Islam] heard another voice saying this is a dangerous business, you should be away from it, all the associations that go along with that way of life, you should get away from’ (Quoted in Petridis 2006). However, with the wars and genocide in Bosnia in the early 1990s he started to change his mind, coming to the conclusion that it was important to use his talent to raise awareness and to

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write motivational songs that could bring peace and testify about Islam (Islam 2007). Today, he generally has no problem singing his old songs, which he wrote under the name Cat Stevens, some of them even reinterpreted as Islamic songs. This, for example, is the case with the massive hit ‘Peace train’, taken from the 1971 album Teaser and the Firecat. Because of his current views about religion and music, he performed ‘Peace train’ and ‘Moon shadow’, two of his most popular songs, at the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, together with pop artists like Lionel Richie and Simply Red.1 Before we delve into Muslim theological debates and opinions about music in both history and the present day, it is important to stress that the vast majority of individuals from a Muslim cultural background are not likely to care much about such debates when it comes to music. This conclusion is supported by the fact that Arab music – like that played by ‘classical’ artists such as Umm Kulthum (1899–1975) or Abdel Halim Hafez (1929–77) – and Western music (whether classical or modern) have always been popular in the so-called Muslim world (Hammond 2005, chapter 5; Marcus 2007). Nonetheless, theological discourses on music are familiar even to young Muslims in Europe who have no particular knowledge of the intricacies of theology (Gazzah 2008; Skjelbo 2015). However, the question of music can become acute. Reactionary Islamist movements that conquer a city, region or country tend to take action against musicians, music venues, listeners and music shops, as have the Afghan Taliban, the Iranian revolution, ash-Shabab in Somalia and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The theological principle of hisba, namely to promote good and prevent vice, is at the heart of their understanding. Theologians embracing a more critical attitude consider music to disrupt social order. Therefore, music should be controlled, violently if necessary. Because of such reactionary policies, many musicians have had their instruments broken, fled their native countries or even been killed or maimed (Otterbeck 2008).

Muslim theologians on music In Islamic thinking, since the rise of Islam in the seventh century, music2 has been a recurring topic of discussion, an unsettled issue on which strong opinions have been expressed in action, words and writing. This is not the place for an account of all aspects of the discussions about the legality of music according to Islam (see Alagha 2016; Farmer 1929; Al-Faruqi 1985; Otterbeck 2016; Shiloah 1995, 2014). Instead, we will provide an overview, but also dwell on an often overlooked aspect – the discussions of popular music that can be sifted out of other discussions, often by paying attention to words that were uttered to condemn a genre or a style as unworthy. While discussions have taken place confronting lenient attitudes to different aspects of music with those that condemn them, most have agreed that the performance of and listening to popular music in taverns is illegitimate (haram). For example, the seminal Islamic scholar and Sufi Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali Tusi (d. 1111) writes that such music and social setting ‘is too low for us to speak of it, except to explain its lowness and that it is forbidden’ (al-Ghazali quoted in MacDonald 1901: 706). The shared, general assumption in Islamic writing is that music is immensely powerful and has to be handled with care.3 It is assumed that music arouses the strongest of feelings in people and even has the power to render a listener unconscious or dead. But what is the source of this power, and how should music be dealt with? 112

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Historically, according to the majority of philosophers and Sufis, music was part of the transcendent truth, which was often understood from an Islamicized Neo-Platonic or possibly Aristotelian perspective. Conversely, those who could be categorized as restrictive Islamic legal scholars claim that music draws people from the remembrance of God – Muslim theologians see this remembrance as the foundation of faith – and should thus be avoided. Music might even be considered the voice of the Devil. Such views as the above are not unique to Muslims debating music; similar opinions are found among other religious traditions, not the least among Christian groups (see Burch Brown 2014). Below, we will briefly introduce the ideal positions of philosophers, Sufis and Islamic legal scholars, and comment on their ways of treating ‘popular music’, understood here as the opposite of the music of the elite, that is, as the music of the people, the lower classes and not least the taverns – a reoccurring trope in the texts. We will also comment on the relevance of these interpretations in the present day. In the following it is important to stress that we are treating these ‘positions’ as ideal positions or typologies, as conceptualized by the sociologist Max Weber.

The philosophers and the Sufis Some of the best-known philosophers of the Muslim world have written on music. For example, Ikhwân al-Safâ’ (the Brethren of Purity), the famous, anonymous thinkers from Basra and Baghdad who were active during the tenth century, viewed music in relation to the cosmos in their epistle on music, claiming that the origin of music should be sought in the heavens. Just like their contemporary al-Farabi (d. 950), they used music theory, mathematics, Greek medicine (connecting the tonal system to the Greek allopathic system of the four humours) and the lute (‘ud) to explicate the relationship between true music and the true use of music (Ikhwân alSafâ’ 2010). ‘True’ is to be understood here as the conditions that reflect an assumed perfect transcendent reality. The Brethren are very close to Sufi ways of thinking and can definitely be called Neo-Platonists. Taking an elitist stand, Ikhwân al-Safâ’ claimed that music is very powerful and consequently that those who are not able to discipline or control themselves should abstain from listening to it. Ikhwân al-Safâ’ did not address popular music directly, but gave examples linked to it. For example, they wrote about how musicians can manipulate their audience members through their musical skills, giving examples of how people, drunk at parties or in a fit of rage, may be soothed by soft melodies. Even though the overall moral in their writings warned against the misuse of music when pursuing worldly passions, this is not mentioned in connection with the examples of the musicians, drinking parties and noisy drunks. This merely illustrates the power of music, hinting at the idea that even master musicians can play in such environments (Ikhwân al-Safâ’ 2010: 161), suggesting an ambivalent position on popular music. Many Sufis insist that only those who are in contact with the divine spirit (ruh) in themselves (i.e. who have understood their role as created and who yearn for God) can use music for spiritual purposes. For them, on the other hand, samaʻ (‘hearing’) nurtures their longing to unite with the transcendent reality. In those who are not ready, music will give rise to base instincts (lust, greed etc.) and can even endanger their health. Because of this, the shariʻa (the Islamic law) suggests prohibitions on listening to music with bad intentions and/or in the wrong setting, that is, at the wrong time (zaman) or place (makan) or in the wrong company (ikhwan). It does not, however, 113

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forbid samaʻ to the spiritually mature – on the contrary, samaʻ is encouraged. Several Islamic legal scholars have also taken this position (Farmer 1929; Otterbeck 2016; Shiloah 1995). Al-Ghazali (d. 1111), Islamic scholar and Sufi, wrote a lengthy defence of samaʻ in his most famous work Ihya ʻulum al-din (‘The Revival of the Religious Sciences’). In it, al-Ghazali scorned and rejected those Sufis who were libertines and who, he claimed, indulged in lascivious behaviour, and he criticized their use of music. Al-Ghazali (2002; MacDonald 1901–2) mentioned five instances when listening to music was not allowed, two relating more directly to music as he condemned music performed on stringed instruments and flutes, instruments that are forbidden ‘because they are associated with winedrinkers’ (2002: 14). Furthermore, sarcasm, satire and obscenity in lyrics are forbidden. For al-Ghazali, obscenity included, for example, a man singing a love song in which a woman’s features are described to other men. The other three reasons can be summarized as being too inexperienced to handle music; getting used to music (only permissible as a sporadic pastime); and finally when the performer and listener have a wrong social relationship in terms of gender. What al-Ghazali was criticizing was clearly the popular music of the taverns; what he was praising was a restricted form of elite music used in controlled Sufi settings. As an exception to the rule, al-Ghazali (2002) allowed folk music sung in connection with work and family celebrations or as lullabies. Despite condemnations, the music of the tavern and drinking parties sometimes feature in Sufi lore, often with a didactic twist. For example, the Sufi master Abu Bakr al-Tamistani joined a gang of drunken thieves who was playing music, and went into an ecstatic trance by means of the music. Those gathered together were so impressed by his ecstasy that they transformed their ways (Ernst 1985: 37). Regardless of the historical accuracy of this story (there are many anecdotes resembling this one), it points to a more flexible relation to popular music than alGhazali’s more highbrow theoretical criticism. From history, it is evident that different forms of chanting, drumming and the use of certain instruments (e.g. the Gumbri, a stringed instrument used in rituals associated with the Zar-Bori complex in North Africa) have long been part of Sufi rituals in the larger Muslim world (see Curtis IV 2014). Music and dance are also a central aspect of the samaʻ ritual performed by the Mevlevi order (better known as the ‘Whirling Dervishes’), a Sufi order that is said to have been initiated by the Persian poet and mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–73). Like most Sufi orders, the Mevlevi order is today established both in the wider Muslim world (especially in Turkey) and in North America and Europe (Sorgenfrei 2013). The classical thoughts presented above are still relevant to the Sufis of today, for example, the Iranian-American academic scholar and Sufi Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1990). Similarly, al-Ghazali’s position as a legal scholar is replicated by present-day scholars. For example, the well-known Iraqi-British Sheikh and academic scholar ʻAbd Allah bin Yusif Al-Juda’iʻ (b. 1958) generally agrees with al-Ghazali, although disagreeing with his call for gender segregation. Furthermore, al-Juda’iʻ claims that no particular instrument is inherently sinful; the real problem lies in the lyrics, images and company associated with music (2007).

Islamic legal scholars Most Islamic scholars agree on two issues. The first is that tonal expressions in connection with religious rituals (like the call to prayer, pilgrim chants etc.) are allowed. Some, but not all, 114

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choose not to refer to this as music. The second point of agreement is that music inciting sinful behaviour is not allowed; the association between ‘sex and drugs and rock and roll’ is certainly not a new phenomenon. For example, Ibn Abi al-Dunya’s (d. 894) Dhamm al-malahi (‘critical perspectives on instruments of diversion’) is among the oldest Muslim tracts written on music. It features a lengthy critic of music as lahwa l-hadith (idle tales, often shorten to lahw), a key concept in the discourse stemming from the Quran, Sura 31:6, in which those who spread lahwa l-hadith are condemned (Otterbeck 2014; Shiloh 2014). One of the companions of Muhammad, Ibn Masud (d. 653), is recorded as having claimed that by lahwa l-hadith is meant music. More moderate interpreters seldom deny this, but claim it is not music as such but diversions (like music) containing a message leading away from the message of God that are implied (al-Qaradawi 1997). Reading Dhamm al-malahi, it is hard to miss its edifying tone. Al-Dunya warned against the crooked path and laid down the straight path of God for the reader in no uncertain terms. For example, he quoted the Umayyad Caliph Ibn al-Walid (d. 744), saying that ‘singing decreases shame, increases desire, and destroys manliness’. Furthermore, ‘it takes the place of wine and does what drunkenness does’, meaning that it distorts one’s judgement and evokes sinfulness in one’s heart (al-Dunya in Robson 1938: 27). Other scholars have repeated al-Dunya’s position throughout Islamic history. The harshest voices forbid all use of music apart from singing and playing the daff (frame drum) on certain well-defined occasions, such as family celebrations. Hard-line Muslim theologians perceived music as the instigator of fornication, wine-drinking and other blatant sins, and admonitions are given to keep the believer on the right path according to the logic that, since a taste increases the desire for more, better avoid it altogether. A modern example of this attitude is found in the following quotation by Saudi Arabian Sheikh Muhammad Salih al-Munajjid (b. 1960). There is no doubt that modern instruments such as the violin, qânoon (stringed musical instrument resembling a zither), organ, piano, guitar, etc., are also included in the Prophet’s prohibition of musical instruments, because their effect and impact is greater than that of the ancient instruments mentioned in some hadiths./ … /Generally speaking, music and singing form one of the greatest temptations of our times. (al-Munajjid 2004: 96–7) Al-Munajjid, best known as the person behind one of the oldest fatwa sites on the internet (a fatwa is a response by an Islamic legal scholar to a question about what is right or wrong in Islam), stands firmly in the Wahhabi tradition of Saudi Arabia, known for its highly restrictive attitude to music. However, the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia are far from being alone in placing restrictions on music, which is subjected to religiously motivated censorship in, for example, Egypt, Lebanon and Iran. Furthermore, blasphemy laws in, for example, Turkey and Pakistan clearly restrict the subjects that can be touched upon in a song. Apart from states, reactionary Islamist groups may also target outspoken artists (Otterbeck 2008).

Popular music in the contemporary Islamic context When elites in Muslim countries became inspired by the European bourgeoisie to let their sons and daughters engage in the belle arts, including playing music, Islamic theologians were not 115

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thrilled, nor did they rejoice over recorded music that changed the soundscapes of Muslim societies too (see Sabri 1910). It was not until the 1980s that the theological discourse on the legality of art, not least music, started to change. Slowly, scattered texts commenting on the use of art for the sake of Islam began to become a trend in both Shia discourse (mainly in Iran and Lebanon; see Alagha 2016) and Sunni discourse (mainly in Egypt; see van Nieuwkerk 2013). In Egypt the so-called wasatiyya (‘middle way’) movement started to formulate a clear alternative that came to be known as fann al-hadif (‘purposeful art’). The idea was that art should be da’wa (i.e. a call to Islam) and that famous artists can be spokespersons for Islam, not because of theological skills, but rather by serving as examples of the fact that those whom others admire can also be devout Muslims. Not least, a purposeful art was thought to inspire young people and provide an alternative to lax morals, Western lifestyles and secularized modern life. Clean pop is a parallel phenomenon to purposeful art that merely avoids immoral lyrics and downplays the sexuality in performance but that does not directly promote Islam. Although many scholars of Islam reject this new interpretation, it has struck a chord among musicians and the public alike. After a slow start, artistic expressions exploded in the first fifteen years of the twenty-first century. New music was produced under the old label of nashid (‘spiritual song’), with British Yusuf Islam, the South African Zain Bhikha, the Canadian Dawud Wharnsby and the Malaysian Raihan recognized as pioneers of the genre. One of the first global stars, Sami Yusuf, announced his arrival on the scene with his 2003 album al-Mu’allim (The Teacher, i.e. Muhammad). After the video promoting the title song was aired on the Egyptian satellite channel Melody Hits in 2005, sales sky rocketed. As a result both Yusuf and Awakening, the recently formed Islamic media company that had released Yusuf’s album, achieved global acclaim, although they have since gone their separate ways. Awakening has signed several pop-nashid artists, among them Maher Zain, the label’s most successful artist thus far, and Mesut Kurtis, Raef and Harris J are also doing very well. However, Sami Yusuf has left pop-nashid behind and is now set on lending a modern touch to the so-called traditional music connected to the World Music scene’s thirst for spiritual music; he calls his new genre spiritique. Sami Yusuf took a very clear step towards Sufism (Islamic mysticism) with his album Songs of the Way Vol. 1 (2015), on which the lyrics are poems by Iranian-American professor and Sufi sheikh Seyyed Hossein Nasr (b. 1933), leader of the Maryammiya Shadiliya order. Awakening is among the most successful of these companies, but it is far from being the only one. All over the world, we find Muslim artists appropriating modern popular music to create a platform for music with Islamic lyrics.4 This ranges from American hip-hop artists like Native Deen, via Swedish reggae artist Omar al-Joumeyli (aka Mekka), to the Indonesian metal bands Purgatory and Tengkorak. There are also artists whose music is closer to the so-called traditional nashid or na’at (hymns). However, traditional religious music is also being marketed as a commodity, like the records of UAE nashid singer Hussein al-Jassmi, Saudi Arabian nashid singer Samir al-Bashiri, Pakistani master na’at singer Khursheed Ahmad and Huriya Rafiq Qadri, one of the most celebrated female na’at singers in Pakistan. Of particular interest is what Shannon (2011) calls Suficized music, signalling the fact that the music, although marketed as traditional, is adapted to a global market hungry for the so-

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called spiritual World Music (Bohlman 1997). Examples of this are the Pakistani Qawwali masters the Sabri Brothers and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (d. 1997), or the Sufi music of Turkish brothers Kudsi and Süleyman Ergüner, the Syrian Ensemble al-Kindi or the IndonesianAmerican group Debu. One of the prime settings for this music is the yearly Fes Festival of World Sacred Music, which will be staged for the twenty-second time in 20165 and has inspired other festivals worldwide. This genre has also been tapped into by artists who mainly produce non-religious music, for example, the Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour who, influenced by West African Sufism, made the album Egypt (2004), or the British Aki Nawaz, the creative force behind the band Fun-Da-Metal, who made the album There Shall Be Love (2001), drawing on Qawwali. Another type of venue that links Islam to popular music are the different TV shows that revive national popular, folk music. One such is the much-celebrated Pakistani television programme Coke Studio, which is committed to giving new life and a modernized form to old, sometimes religious songs of the region, as well as introducing new music. Skilled studio musicians invite old and new Pakistani stars, male and female, to perform. The programme is immensely popular and is at the time of writing (2015) in its eighth season.6 Rather than claiming to be either Islamic or not, the programme features Islamic lyrics and musical genres that are seen as integrated parts of the national heritage of Pakistan. Malaysia is arguably the most dynamic country for Islamic music. One of the first major Islamic acts to produce the new pop-nashid (in Malay nasyid) and make it big was the group Raihan (‘Fragrance of Heaven’), who Bart Barendregt (2014, see also 2011) has described as an ‘Islamic boy band’. In fact, outselling all other acts – religious as well as secular – Raihan caused a regular Beatlemania in Malaysia with their debut album Puji-Pujian (‘Praises’: 1996) and started to appear in all forms, including a sci-fi movie (Syukur 2001) and as superheroes in the animated cartoon Raihan Rangers. Soon, Raihan switched from a local label to Warner Music Malaysia. The tragic loss of one of the band’s founding members in 2001 has not stopped its success. Raihan has now recorded eleven full-length albums, and in recent years has only been outsold in Malaysia by Awakening Records’ star Maher Zain. As in many places where music permeates society, political interests have realized the mobilizing ability of popular music. Malaysia’s Islamic movement PAS (Parti Islam SeMalaysia) used to condemn all music and frivolous leisure activities, but since about 2005 has whole-heartedly embraced pop music and pop stars as a means to spread Islam (Müller 2015). The movement’s former spiritual leader, Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat (1931–2015), can be seen in press photos together with artists who were earlier condemned as scandalous but are now seen as having bettered their ways. In 2010 Nik Aziz declared that controlled art promoting Islam could be set apart from other art that was strictly forbidden according to Islamic law (van Dijk 2014). Thus, for example, the music of pop queen Siti Nurhaliza (who has dedicated a song to Nik Aziz) is acceptable, as is the music of rock artist Amy Search, who regularly performs at PAS meetings (Müller 2015). As pointed out by several earlier studies, many hip-hop and rap artists in North America and Europe have been influenced by Islamic genres and especially by Afro-American interpretations of Islam (cf. Ackfeldt 2012; Larsson 2004; Samy Alim 2006). Movements such as the Nation of Islam and the Five Percenters (also known as the ‘Nation of Gods and Earths’)

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have had a massive influence on artists such as Brand Nubian, Busta Rhymes, Fab 5 Freddy, Rakim, Queen Latifa, several of the members of the Wu-Tang Clan and many more (for other references, see Knight 2009; chapter 13). The early records by artists such as Public Enemy and Ice Cube contain direct references to the Nation of Islam. For example, on the cover of the album Death Certificate (1991), Ice Cube is shown reading the Nation of Islam’s daily paper The Final Call, while Public Enemy made use of Nation of Islam’s security force, the Fruit of Islam (see, for example, the cover of Public Enemy’s record Fear of a Black Planet from 1990). Musicians who follow this path are often labelled ‘raptivists’ or ‘edutainors’, since they aspire to both entertain and educate the masses about the ‘truth’ and about problems in society (Gardell 1995: 251). As Anders Ackfeldt and others have pointed out, the iconography of many hip-hop and rap albums is often taken from the Afro-American struggle, and the portrait of Malcolm X (the bestknown minister in the Nation of Islam) is a recurring topos in these musical styles (Ackfeldt 2012, 2013; Gardell 1995: 250–7). References to Islam and Muslim cultures are also frequent in soul and jazz music. Two examples are the saxophone player Pharoah Sanders (b. 1940), who called some of his albums and songs Tauhid (‘unity’ in Arabic, 1966) and ‘Hum-Allah-HumAllah-Hum Allah’ (Jewels of Thought, 1969), and jazz drummer Art Blakey (1919–90), who converted to Islam and took the name Abdullah ibn Buhaina. It is important to acknowledge that heavy metal and punk rock have also had an impact on the larger Muslim world. These musical forms have often been seen as a serious challenge by contemporary Muslim theologians, and young people who have gravitated towards heavy metal and punk have often been portrayed by both theologians and state representatives as misfits or even Satanists which they most certainly are not (LeVine 2008; cf. Fiscella 2012: 264). Some of these reactions recall how heavy metal and punk rock musicians and fans were viewed in Europe and North America in the 1980s (cf. Blecha 2004: 48–50). Very few bands have tried to create metal music that affirms Islam, though as mentioned earlier a few such bands can be found in Indonesia. The novel The Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight (2004), which describes a Muslim punk rock collective, is one inspiration that has encouraged young people from Muslim cultural backgrounds to start punk rock bands in parts of the Muslim world, though it is not the only one. While some of these bands are part of a counterculture milieu, and many of them are very critical of religion and of what they see as a conservative and backward culture, others are more influenced by religious and cultural traditions (Fiscella 2012). However, with a Saudi Arabian black metal band like al-Namrood7 or the growing black metal scene in Turkey with bands like Hellsodomy, the process has come full circle. Judging from interviews, the members of these bands loathe Islam, and particularly in the Turkish scene they create music specifically targeting Islam and Muslim leaders, using Islamic symbols to denigrate and debase Islam in both their lyrics and on album covers (Mattsson 2015).

Conclusions From these historical and contemporary examples, we can conclude that the topic of music has been and still is widely debated by both Muslim theologians and ‘ordinary’ Muslims. While

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some have argued that music is a problem that should be controlled or even forbidden, others have been less prepared to forbid musical expressions. There are also different opinions about what to include under the heading of music. Various forms of singing, dancing and the playing of instruments have long been part of Islamic rituals, especially among Sufi groups) for whom music is a normal and accepted part of how Muslims express their religiosity. But even more extreme groups, like the Islamic State (Daesh) and Hamas, make use of nashid songs to create community, and evoke piety and courage among their followers. More ‘moderate’ Muslims are today also producing the so-called art with a purpose and clean pop to promote what are perceived as Islamic norms and values. Many musicians in the West, both Muslim and non-Muslim, have been influenced by Islamic traditions, and today it is easy to find explicit or implicit references to Islam and Muslim ways of life in almost any musical genre (hip hop, rap, folk/world music, shaabi, punk and heavy metal). But this does not affect the fact that one can also find Muslim theologians taking a firm stand against every form of popular music. An illustrative table drawn up by the ethnomusicologist Lois al-Faruqi (1985) provides one way of summarizing Islamic theology on music:

Table 10.1  Music/non-music in Islamic discourses

Non-musiqa

Qur’anic chant Call to prayer

(Qira’ah) (Adhan)

Pilgrimage chants Eulogy chants

(Talbiyyah)

(Madih, na’t, tahmid, etc.)

Chanted poetry with noble themes Family and celebration music wedding songs, etc.)

(Shi’r)

(Lullabies,

Legitimate (Halal)

Occupational music (Caravan chants, shepherd’s tunes, work songs, etc.)

Musiqa

Military band music

(Tab/ khanah)

INVISIBLE BARRIER

Vocal / instrumental improvisations layali, qasidah, avaz, etc.) Serious metred songs tasnif, batayhi, etc.)

(Taqasim,

(Muwashshah, dawr,

Controversial (Halal, mubah makruh, haram)

Music related to pre-Islamic or non-Islamic origins OPAQUE BARRIER

Sensuous music

Illegitimate (Haram)

1 Hierarchy of Handash al-Sawt genres (the status of music in the Islamic world)

Source: Amended from al-Faruqi 1985, first printed in Otterbeck 2004: 230.

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From the figure above, it is clear that popular music ends up being either forbidden (haram) or controversial. However, some popular music, like folk music, is considered legitimate because the Sunna (custom) of Prophet Muhammad seems to consent to it. As mentioned, some scholars exclude ritual tonal expressions from music, a position supported by al-Faruqi, hence the marker ‘non-musiqa’ in the table. If we go beyond the theological debates, it is also possible to make some more general conclusions. First of all, there is a conspicuous lack of female names when it comes to musicians linked to Islamic traditions; for example, there are some female nashid artists, but far fewer than male ones. One is the Palestinian Mais Shalash, who became a star when she entered the scene as a child in the middle of the second intifada (Palestinian uprising) singing a mix of traditional nashid songs and new ones composed by her father, the theme of which was Islam and Palestinian resistance and revolt (McDonald 2013). As she grew older, some criticisms of her singing in public were voiced, but the world famous Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi rushed to her defence, saying that it is legal for a woman to sing politically sincere and meaningful songs.8 Even if we broaden the scope, successful acts are few. For example, the UK hip-hop group Poetic Pilgrimage can be mentioned as a fairly successful and interesting act. Fronted by Muneera Rashida and Sukina Abdul Noor, two university-educated women from a British and Caribbean cultural background, Poetic Pilgrimage address issues like racism and Islamophobia in their lyrics, but the duo also put the focus on devotion and what could best be described as Muslim pride.9 Their musical, political and religious activism was highlighted in the Al Jazeera-produced documentary Hip Hop Hijabis from 2015,10 in which they address, among many other issues, the fact that some Muslims have problems with music, and especially with women singing music. By browsing YouTube one can easily find television performances of veiled Muslim women singing what could be called traditional religious songs from Turkish, Bosnian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Malaysian TV, sometimes modernized, sometimes not. Comments on the uploads of these programmes show that this is a much-debated practice, one that is both criticized and praised, often revolving around the issue of whether women should be allowed to sing in front of men. Some Muslims consider a woman’s voice to be part of her awra, that is, those parts that should be covered out of decency. Secondly, it is also evident that the so-called Muslim musicians and debates about Islam and music should be analysed and understood in relation to general processes of globalization. Downloading, streaming and the digitalization of music have had a massive influence on the whole industry, and all musicians, no matter whether they are Muslims or not, are part of the commercialization of music. Bands, musicians and music in a more general sense are products that are sold on the global market. Clean pop and Muslim boy bands should therefore be seen as products promoted by commercial enterprises using the social media, the internet and satellite television to sell a new product. This commercialization of music has had a tremendous influence on the whole music industry, and the so-called Muslim musicians should not be excluded from this global trend. The boom in ‘Muslim music’ is part of this phenomenon, and since music is and has been a much-debated issue for many Muslim theologians both in history and in the present day, it is not greatly surprising that we should currently be seeing a growth in such debates about Islam and music.

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Chapter 11

Jews, Judaism and Popular Music Jon Stratton

From time immemorial we Jews have loved music, and have understood what it really is. Even our worst enemies could not deny this. … Whenever a Cantor makes his appearance in our midst, we rush off to buy tickets to hear him, let them cost us a meal, even. And, when a good musician plays at a wedding feast, we are delighted. (Aleichem 2007 [1888], 2–5) Sholem Aleichem published Stempenyu: A Jewish Romance in Yiddish in 1888. It tells the story of a marvellous musician, Stempenyu, his unhappy marriage and his blighted love for a woman with a wonderful voice whose marriage was equally unhappy. Aleichem also wrote a series of stories about Tevye, a dairyman. The most well-known adaption of these stories is the musical Fiddler on the Roof, which opened on Broadway in 1964 and ran for over three thousand performances. One of the musical’s songs is Sabbath Prayer. This is not a prayer in the Judaic liturgy but rather is a representation of Jewish faith. Jenna Weissman Joselit (in Alperin 2013) argues that Sabbath Prayer ‘“was designed to encapsulate conditions at [the] time of [the] play,” … “The language was designed to integrate the self into the body of the play [along with] concerns about exogamy, change, and the need to preserve the Jews.”’ Nevertheless, with the popularity of the musical, Sabbath Prayer has become a mainstream image of Judaic practice while the songs from Fiddler have taken a version of shtetl life into American popular culture, combining, anachronistically, early-twentieth-century Tsarist Russia with mid-twentieth-century American show tunes.

Judaic and Jewish In the quotation above from Stempenyu, Aleichem suggests the complex interweaving of the religious and the secular that has always been central to Jewish life. When a cantor performs for money are the songs he sings still religious? When a musician plays at a wedding is that music profane or a part of the Judaic celebration of the couple’s union? The answer to both questions is that both genres of music are both religious and profane or, rather, that in this context the distinction is not meaningful. The music played at the wedding would have been what today is identified as klezmer. Jonathan Freedman (2008: 18) explains that klezmer is ‘a resolutely impure cultural form. It conjoins sacred and profane Jewish melodies and harmonies with those of the peoples who surrounded the klezmorim – the gentiles at whose weddings they frequently played, and at whose taverns and inns they frequently drank and

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caroused’. Hankus Netsky (2002: 14) provides another history of klezmer’s interweaving of the sacred and the profane: Hasidim sang these melodies with an intense urgency, hoping to ascend to higher realms through their music. Klezmorim soon became indispensable at Hasidic gatherings, and the spirit of the movement greatly influenced their playing. In 1979 Zev Feldman and Andy Statman released Jewish Klezmer Music which Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (2002: 141) claims marks ‘the entry of the term klezmer music’ into popular usage. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (135–6) notes that since his religious awakening, Andy Statman insists that what is now called klezmer music was always religiously mandated and cites its role in the fulfillment of the mitzvah of simkhe on the occasion of a wedding. This is the reason he gives for calling the music he plays today Hasidic, rather than klezmer. As Statman’s position suggests, klezmer’s historical imbrication of sacred and profane raises questions about the status of the music played today. Is the music of the klezmer revival also both sacred and profane, both Judaic and Jewish? Is it possible to distinguish Judaic from Jewish? What would such distinction mean? A fundamental part of this conundrum is the relationship between Jews and Judaism. Jacob Neusner states the relationship very clearly: ‘Not all Jews practice Judaism but all who practice Judaism are Jews, that is, they are regarded as members of the Jewish community, or the people’ (1991: xi). Only those people defined as Jews can practice Judaism but not all Jews follow the Judaic religion. If a person is attracted to Judaism they must undergo conversion, they must become a Jew, before being able to practice the Judaic religion. The process of conversion is defined by Judaic regulations. However, Neusner’s definition appears to go further. It seems that the Jewish community, or more substantially the people, suggesting that Jews are racially identifiable, is only made up of observant Jews. So the question arises, what are Jews who do not follow Judaism? For Neusner, it seems, they are not authentic Jews even though they may be Jews using other definitions of who is a Jew. Conventionally, Jews are not defined by their Judaism but by their descent through the female line. A little further on Neusner adds that ‘Judaism is not only a culture or a history’ (1991: xii). It is, he writes, ‘a religion that takes over the history and culture of the Jewish people and represents them in a thoroughly transformed way’. For Neusner it is, then, a culture and a history but it is also more than this. This begs the question of the status of Jews defined lineally who may feel they have elements of Jewish culture, however way we define this, but who do not practice Judaism. The problem at this point is that Judaism is not a religion separated from a person’s everyday life, a characteristic of post-Enlightenment Christianity in all its forms. Judaism is fundamentally a part of Jewish life. Following on from this is the question of secular Jews; Jews, however, defined apart from religiously. Since Judaism is lived, this suggests that Jewish culture will be, to some degree, Judaic. Rebecca Goldstein (2011) in Moment, commenting on ‘Can there be Judaism without belief in God?’ argues that many of us make a distinction between Judaism as a religion and Judaism as a cultural and ethical outlook. Many Jewish secularists have strong emotional ties to Judaism; they are moved by Jewish history and identify with the ethics of its civilization. And although

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they don’t believe in any supernatural premises, they recognize that they are informed by Jewish values. The logic of Goldstein’s argument is that secular Jews may have in their everyday lives elements of Judaic practices, such as ethics and morality, but they may not follow the more institutional aspects of Judaism such as going to synagogue regularly or, in the home, following kosher dietary rules. Thinking here about the impact of these complexities on the relationship between Judaism and popular music what we can say is that while certain specifics of the relationship between Judaism and popular music are clear, such as the use of cantorial melodies in popular song, it is less clear if the inclusion of more general; cultural elements could also be considered Judaic. Thus, for example, we might take the case of 2 Live Jews and their first album, As Kosher As They Wanna Be (1990). The characters of 2 Live Jews were two elderly Jewish men who, the conceit went, had listened to African-American rap and thought that they were equally able to rhyme. Moishe MC and Easy Irving were, in reality, two young Jewish comedians, Eric Lambert and Joe Stone. As Kosher As They Wanna Be was Moishe and Irving’s first album. It was a parody of the African-American 2 Live Crew’s As Nasty As They Wanna Be, released in 1989, an album notorious for its upfront aggressive sexism. As Kosher As They Wanna Be was filled with American-Jewish humour. ‘JAP Rap’ (As Kosher As They Wanna Be, 1990), for example, was about a Jewish-American Princess and included a chorus in klezmer style. While this is culturally Jewish, it is unlikely that anybody would consider the track Judaic in any sense. However, the title of the album, indicating that Moishe and Irving can be kosher if they choose, and indeed as kosher as they choose to be, suggests an overarching Judaic cultural reference point. It is worth noting that 2 Live Jews’ second album was a rap parody of Fiddler on the Roof. For whatever reason – could it be because of its Judaic overtone? – one track not included in this parody was ‘Sabbath Prayer’. Kosher As They Wanna Be may be culturally Jewish rather than Judaic but is it Jewish music?

What is Jewish music? Philip Bohlman argues that the idea of Jewish music evolved in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was the result of a combination of circumstances, including the professionalization of music in urban synagogues, and the development of scholarly interest in the folk music of the shtetls. In Bolhman’s (2008) words, ‘Terms such as “Jewish music” acquire new currency by the end of the nineteenth century, inventing Jewish music for modern Jews as if that music had existed since time immemorial.’ It is important to recognize that the apparent timelessness of synagogue music is an illusion that serves to reinforce the synagogue’s importance within the Jewish community because, as Edwin Seroussi (2009: 19) notes: A constant decline in the shteyger system’s authority and practice is clearly perceptible in most Ashkenazi synagogues. As more congregations lean towards ‘participatory and experiential’ performances of the liturgy by substituting traditional nussah recitatives with metric, ‘pop’ tunes such as those composed by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, the future of the shteyger system is the object of lachrymose concern.

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Seroussi translates the Yiddish term shteyger as musical modes. Synagogue music is mutable. The point here is that the impact of popular music does not travel only one way; there is not only the movement of synagogue melodies into popular music but also the incorporation of popular music styles into synagogue music. The deployment of the concept of Jewish music has raised additional questions about identity. Marsha Bryan Edelman begins her book on Discovering Jewish Music by writing: Nearly all Jews (and many outside the faith) have had an experience of something they call ‘Jewish music’, whether in the synagogue, at a life-cycle celebration, or on the concert stage. Close examination of these various expressions of ‘Jewish culture’ will reveal enormous differences among them, and attempts to reach consensus on what ‘Jewish music’ is will yield as many opinions as there are voices in the discussion. (2003: ix) Edelman is acknowledging that what is considered Jewish music is contested. At the same time it is clear that for her Jewish music is one that has a direct relationship with Jewish history and culture, and is made with Jews in mind. Who Edelman thinks of as Jewish is significant here also. It would seem from her supplement in parentheses that she equates being a Jew with living Judaism. In her book Edelman is primarily concerned with music made in Hebrew or Yiddish. Music that is made according to Edelman’s definition but is in English makes her anxious. She includes a section on the Jewish-American group Safam. Safam formed in 1974. The group has four core members and in addition utilize a bass player and a drummer. Their music is consistently concerned with Jewish themes. On their website (Safam: The Jewish-American Sound) they write: ‘Safam’s music covers the wide breadth of American musical styles while maintaining a decidedly Jewish flavour. They use many settings – whether it be Rock & Roll, Pop, Folk, Latin, Chassidic or Cantorial – to create their tapestry of music.’ The group play traditional songs in new settings, sing in Hebrew and, and this is what preoccupies Edelman, in English. Edelman writes: Safam was also in the vanguard of a practice that would once again stretch the definition of what constitutes ‘Jewish music’: the creation of popular Jewish music whose lyrics were in English. … American Jews discussed their Jewish identities in English; it was only natural for them to sing at least some of their Jewish songs in English as well. (2003: 259) Safam sing for Jewish audiences. One of their most well-known songs is ‘Leaving Mother Russia’ (Encore, 1978), which is about the persecution of Anatoly Sharansky, the human rights activist, and was composed while he was still imprisoned. The group, three of whom act as cantors in their synagogues, have also recorded songs for Chanukah and Passover. Encore includes a reading of ‘Adon Olam’, a sacred Hebrew hymn in the Jewish liturgy about God. Edelman’s definition of Jewish music means that she would not consider, for example, Bob Dylan to play Jewish music, even though he is Jewish by descent and his compositions include references taken from the Tanakh and the Kabbalah, references that are, as should now be clear, both Jewish and Judaic. What we can see with Safam is an intersection of Jewish culture, including Judaism, with American popular music. Let us consider Dylan. Dylan’s family were not Orthodox, but they were observant Jews and Dylan studied for his bar mitzvah under an Orthodox rabbi. Dylan has never composed for a Jewish audience but Jewish references permeate his lyrics, and it has been argued that even 124

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his style of singing has a cantorial flavour. Here are a few examples. In ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ (Highway 61 Revisited, 1965) the first verse retells the story of Abraham and Isaac, the akeda (the binding). The story is from Genesis – in Judaism a part of the Torah. Conventionally, it is understood that God’s request to Abraham to take his son to a mountain and there bind and sacrifice him was a test of Abraham’s faith. Abraham does not question God and Isaac is saved by the intervention of an angel. In Dylan’s version, when God says ‘kill me a son’, Abraham’s response is ‘man you must be putting me on’. God has to threaten Abraham before he accedes and asks God: ‘Where do you want this killing done?’ God’s answer is not a mountain but Highway 61. As R Clifton Spargo and Anne K Ream (2009: 92) note: ‘Once cowed into submission, … [Abraham] prepares to murder a son, on the legendary artery of American blues music.’ Dylan’s reworking of the biblical story, to appropriate the title of his previous album, brings it all back home. There can be many readings of this verse, one suggests that performing the killing on Highway 61 links Jewish heritage with that of African Americans, the Holocaust with the middle passage and slavery. In this context we should note that Dylan’s verse does not tell us that Isaac was saved. In ‘All Along The Watchtower’ (John Wesley Harding, 1967), one of Dylan’s more ominous and apocalyptic songs, he makes use of Isaiah’s prophecy from the Book of Isaiah in the Nevi’im. Laurence Coupe (2012: 109) explains that ‘All Along The Watchtower’ … is based on the two different sets of writing that make up the Book of Isaiah. The first warns of the oppression of Israel by the Babylonians, but also of the eventual demise of the Babylonian empire itself. … The second is written after the event, and concerns the attempt to rebuild Israel when the period of oppression is over. Dylan’s intimate knowledge of Isaiah allows him to utilize the prophet’s vision to comment on what Dylan sees as the socio-political crisis enveloping the United States in the late 1960s. There are many other examples that illustrate Dylan’s close connections with Judaic thought. To give just two instances: in ‘Forever Young’ (Planet Waves, 1974) Dylan rewrites Judaic blessings on children and ‘Everything Is Broken’ (Oh Mercy, 1989) can be understood as a gloss on the Kabbalistic story of creation in which the vessels into which God pours his divine light break and scatter the light throughout the world. The ethnomusicologist Tamar Barzel offers a broader definition of Jewish music, explaining that ethnomusicologists have conceptualised [Jewish music] as a network of interrelated musical practices and genres that either (a) incorporate Jewish referential material, including texts in Hebrew, Yiddish, or Ladino, references to those texts, and melodies associated with Jewish liturgy, whatever their original (or earliest known) source; or (b) have a social function in a Jewish community, broadly defined. (2015: 15) Barzel studied the Jewish avant-garde music scene that developed in New York from around the 1980s. She tells us that her first introduction to the evolving Jewish music scene was an album titled The Jewish Alternative Movement: A Guide for the Perplexed, released in 1998. The title situates the album within the Jewish tradition by referencing The Guide to the Perplexed by the twelfth-century Jewish sage Moses Maimonides, who was brought up in Muslim Spain before moving to Cairo to avoid persecution. At the same time it signals a critique of Jewish tradition in 125

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the title, The Jewish Alternative Movement. The album collects tracks by various Jewish artists working in the broadly defined scene of avant-garde jazz. Thus, for example, there is a track by the Klezmatics, better known as a group that plays klezmer, sung in Yiddish with a musical accompaniment that combines both klezmer and jazz influences. This extols the pleasures of smoking a reefer when the singer wakes up in the morning. The song ‘Mizmor shir lehanef’ (Reefer Song) (Possessed, 1997) combines dope smoking with religion in a way that recalls the importance of marijuana to Rastafari: ‘I’m really so religious/When I light up a spliff/And start to do all right, feel real good.’ The album also contains a funked-up jazz version of ‘Hava Nagila’ and a recording of the Kol Nidre, the prayer which opens the Day of Atonement. This mix of Judaism and the everyday is an expression of lived Jewish culture. John Zorn, the composer and musician, was a key figure in the Jewish Alternative Movement. In October 1992 and during 1993 he curated the Radical New Jewish Culture Festivals at The Knitting Factory, a performance space that had opened in 1987 on Houston Street, New York. He subsequently started Tzadik, a record label for what Zorn called Radical Jewish Culture (RJC), in 1995. Through the decisions made on what to release on Tzadik, Zorn confronts the problem of what constitutes Jewish music. On the label’s website he writes: The series is an ongoing project. A challenge posed to adventurous musical thinkers. What is jewish music? What is its future? If asked to make a contribution to jewish culture, what would you do? Can jewish music exist without a connection to klezmer, cantorial or yiddish theatre? All of the cds on the tzadik RJC series address these issues through the vision and imagination of individual musical minds (2006) (the use of lower case for Jewish, Yiddish and Tzadik is as in the original). Zorn offers no answers but provides a space for artists with a jazz reference point to pursue the question. In 1997 Zorn started another label called Great Jewish Music in which he released albums covering the songs of composers such as Burt Bacharach, Serge Gainsbourg and Marc Bolan, all artists of Jewish heritage who had had success in popular music.

The Jazz Singer The classic fictional account of the relationship between Judaism and popular music is the film, The Jazz Singer, released in 1927. In the film the cantor’s son, Jakie Rabinowitz (Al Jolson), is torn between taking his father’s place singing in the synagogue or having a secular career singing in public. Having left home rather than accede to his father’s demand that he use his voice only in the service of God, Jakie changes his name to the whiter, more assimilated Jack Robin. At the climax of the film Jack has to decide whether to go on for the premiere of the musical in which he has the lead role or return to his father’s synagogue and sing the Kol Nidre in place of his father who is gravely ill. Jack chooses filial duty and Jewish tradition over his career. At this moment, his gentile girlfriend, Mary, who has come to the synagogue, comments that he is ‘a jazz singer, singing to his God’. However, Jack then returns to popular music and the end of the film finds him in blackface on stage singing ‘My Mammy’ to his mother in the audience. The film’s conflict is set up as being between the Old World of Yiddishkeit from which his family has escaped to the New World of America, a drama represented in the battle between father

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and son. However, The Jazz Singer is also a film about the different needs of Judaism and secular, commercial popular music. At one point Jack Robin says to his father: ‘My songs mean as much to my audience as yours do to your congregation.’ Synagogue music stands for tradition while the jazz songs stand for the secular, migrant future. In this film, it seems the choice is stark, either religious tradition and a culture of little relevance in the world to which the family has migrated, or a secular world in which the Jew becomes successful by appearing on stage in blackface.1 In the play by Samson Raphaelson on which the film is based, the son returns to the synagogue and stays on as the replacement cantor for his father. The change of ending reflected a more positive view of migrant life but only at the cost of sacrificing Judaic tradition. In 1980 Neil Diamond remade The Jazz Singer. Set in the present of the film’s making, Jakie’s cantor father, played by Laurence Olivier, seems strangely out of place with his Yiddish accent and Old World preoccupations. In this version, blackface takes place at the beginning rather than the end. Diamond plays Yussel Rabinovitch. Now he is a songwriter writing for an AfricanAmerican group called The Four Brothers and in this role goes by the name of Jess Robin. When one of the brothers is imprisoned for stealing a car, Diamond is cajoled into taking his place at the group’s gig. However, because the gig is in a blacks-only venue, Diamond has to black up. He omits to blacken his hands and when an audience member notices that they are white, a fight breaks out and all four brothers have to be bailed out of gaol by Jess’s cantor father who is horrified not only to find his son incarcerated but at his discovery that Jess has been writing secular songs for The Four Brothers for quite some time. Diamond’s background was as a songwriter in the Brill Building. One of the ironies of the scene is that unlike some of his peers, Diamond’s songs were not covered by African-American artists but, rather, by Jay and the Americans (most of whom were Jewish), and the Monkees. Crucially, at the end of Diamond’s The Jazz Singer, Jess does not have to choose between singing in the synagogue and becoming commercially successful. In this version, Jess’s father does not sing the Kol Nidre not because he is dying but because he has been diagnosed with high blood pressure. It is not Jess’s singing that brings about a reconciliation with his father but the birth of Jess’s son with, as it happens, not the Jewish woman to whom he is married at the beginning of the film but the Italian-background Molly for whom he has left his wife. Confusingly, in the Orthodox world of Jess’s father, this child would not be Jewish but, it seems, having a grandson is more important to the cantor who had announced his son dead to him for divorcing Rivka and moving in with the gentile Molly. The differences in the ending from the 1927 film suggest that being successful in 1980s America should not require sacrificing one’s religion, and that Jewish tradition can adapt to multicultural circumstances.2 Jess can sing both sacred and profane songs. However, as we have already seen, the divide between the two was always blurred.

Jewish-American popular music In America the line between sacred and profane, Judaic and Jewish, became even more blurred in the decades around the release of the first Jazz Singer film as Jews started writing popular music. Kenneth Kanter begins The Jews of Tin Pan Alley (1982: ix) by noting that ‘both as a business and as an expression of talent and creative artistry, American popular music was in large

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part shaped and formed by Jews, many of them immigrant newcomers to the American scene’. Kanter’s book discusses the presence of Jews in American popular music from the 1830s to 1940. The songwriters of this period include Charles K. Harris, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin (whose father, echoing the back story of The Jazz Singer, was a cantor who brought his family to the United States from Russia), Lew Brown, Harold Arlen, the brothers Ira and George Gershwin, and Lorenz Hart. Edward Pessen (1985: 1) estimates that in Tin Pan Alley’s golden age, roughly from the turn of the century to the beginning of the Second World War: ‘Seventy-five percent of the lyricists appear to have been Jewish, as do fifty percent of the composers of the melodies of the good songs.’ Suggesting some of the ways that Yiddish culture, which to a greater or less extent formed the background from which these writers and many of the singers who interpreted them came, with its deeply imbricated combination of sacred and profane, influenced the development of American popular music, Kanter (1982: 5) writes: Popular songs were soaked in the wailing of the synagogue cantorial. The Yiddish singing style, with the cry in the voice and the heart on the sleeve, was typified by Al Jolson, Norah Bayes, and Sophie Tucker, the vaudeville stars who made the Tin Pan Alley songs into hits. They fused Yiddishisms into all-Americanisms. ‘My Mammy’ may have been a Yiddishe Momma, but she was also as American as apple pie. Kanter’s point is that Jewish influence was present not only in the songs themselves but in the style in which they were sung. The ways Yiddish singing expressed emotion merged with the importation of African-American forms of emotional expression. Jack Gottlieb, whose book Funny, It Doesn’t Sound Jewish (2004), is subtitled How Yiddish Songs and Synagogue Melodies Influenced Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood, ends his account by the 1960s arguing that some of the key forces which were at work for the earlier period were no longer operative. Contextualizing his book, Gottlieb (9) explains that whereas Jews in the past metabolized foreign melodic elements into their sacred and secular music, and in the process transmuted these into something characteristically Jewish, the premise of this book is that they infused popular music of the United States with melodic elements from Yiddish folk and theatre songs and from Ashkenazic synagogue modes and tunes in the twentieth century, which came to be part of the American sound. Thus, for example, Victor Young’s ‘Lawd, You Made The Night Too Long’ (Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra: 11 March 1932), composed in 1932, ‘a synthesis of blues and Hebraic chant style, was milked dry in performance by Sophie Tucker and Ethel Waters and was recorded in striking cantor style by Louis Armstrong’ (Gottlieb 2004: 150). Yiddish melodies, and modes found in synagogue music, are woven through pre-Second World War American popular music. It is worth pausing for a moment here to remark on a stress that is similar in Jewish derived popular music to African-American music. This is the slippage from sacred to profane. Commenting on the 1927 version of The Jazz Singer, Gottlieb (123) notes: A similar conflict was known to occur among African-American congregations in the 1930s and 1940s. If a gospel singer ventured into commercial territories, he or she was chastised for being too ‘worldly’. Thomas A. Dorsey, the founding father of gospel music, also struggled with his angel, writing Saturday night music – a double-entendre song called ‘Tight Like That’ – in 1928 and Sunday hymns like ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand’ in 1929. 128

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This tension in African-American music is often discussed in relation to Sam Cooke who early in his career was lead singer for the gospel group, the Soul Stirrers, before Cooke left becoming a pioneer of soul music with, for example, ‘You Send Me’ (Songs by Sam Cooke, 1957). What both the African-American tradition and the Jewish-American tradition have in common here is the translation of the expression of the fervour found in connecting with God to the secular domain of love for another human being. In light of what I have written above about the association of klezmer music with the sacred, we can note that the celebrated Argentinian-born klezmer clarinettist Giora Feidman, descended from a family of klezmer musicians, titled his first album, released in 1973, Jewish Soul Music. Feidman called his group ‘Jewish Soul’. Here also Joshua Nelson should be mentioned. Nelson is an African Jew of Senegalese descent whose grandparents moved to the United States: ‘“Growing up as a Jew I knew I was black, but we were really more Jewish,” he recalls. “We infused African-American culture with our Judaism”’ (Klein 2015). His early influence was Mahalia Jackson. He has established a career as a Jewish gospel singer. On his album Mi Chamocha? (2005) the first track is a gospel reading of ‘Adon Olam’. Nelson also renders a gospel version of ‘Hine Ma Tov’ (Mi Chamocha? 2005), a sacred song inspired by Psalm 133. The album title (which translates as ‘Who Is Like You?’) refers to a song of praise to God for saving the Jews taken from Exodus. Among the gospel revisonings of Judaic songs, Nelson includes versions of traditional gospel songs, the spirituals ‘Go Down Moses’ and ‘Elijah Rock’ (Mi Chamocha? 2005). Nelson has also sung with the Klezmatics and is a guest on four songs of their album Brother Moses Smote the Water (2005) (see Curiel 2009).

The new Jewish music The klezmer revival began in the mid to late 1970s. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett calls the scene ‘the result of the experience of a rupture’ (2002: 129). The klezmer revival began around the same time that Jews were some of the most important contributors to punk. Elsewhere I have argued that punk evolved in the United States and England, and across the West more generally, most fundamentally and crucially as a pre-cursive expression of the cultural trauma of the Holocaust as this trauma began to enter what might be described as the cultural consciousness of the West (see Stratton 2005; Beeber 2008). By the 1990s the New York RJC scene was evolving. What developed in the late twentieth century in the United States, in the context of American multiculturalism, was a new assertive Jewish culture in which artists were making music both for Jewish audience and for others who might want to listen. This was the context for Matisyahu, known as the Hassidic reggae musician. Born Matthew Miller and brought up a Reconstructionist Jew, he took the name Matisyahu, meaning Gift from God, in the late 1990s. In the early 2000s he became a Hassid. His first album, Shake Off the Dust … Arise (2004), includes a version of Psalm 63, ‘Tzama L’Chol Nafshi’. The reggae connection is significant as Rastafari artists have long made tracks with Rastafari lyrics. From this perspective, Matisyahu is picking up on this tradition and reworking it to use reggae as a vehicle for expressing aspects of Judaism. Matisyahu’s breakthrough came with his second album Live at Stubb’s (2005) which has the singer dressed in Hassidic clothes on the cover. The album reached number 30 on the American Billboard album chart and number 1 on the reggae chart. Matisyahu left the Hassidic calling in 2011. In 2014, with reference to the story of 129

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Abraham and Isaac, Matisahyu released akeda. The suggestion here is that he had felt bound by the rules of life of Hassidim and had now freed himself to make a new kind of Jewish life. Socalled is another Jewish artist in this new tradition. Born Josh Dolgin in Quebec, his background lies in Eastern Europe. Socalled is a performance artist who has become best known for his albums which are based in sampling and rap. His first album HiphopKhasene, a take on a Yiddish wedding ceremony revisioned through samples, beats, rap and klezmer was a collaboration with the English violinist Sophie Solomon (see Wood 2007). In 2005 Socalled released a revisioned version of the Passover seder meal, The So Called Seder: A Hip Hop Haggadah, again replete with samples and rap. Adam Greenberg (‘n.d.’) describes the album thus: The ceremonial songs sung during the night are represented and remixed. The style is somewhat reminiscent of Cut Chemist, with cuts of old, notably dated educational and cultural records intermixed with scratches and drum loops. What differentiates So Called from Cut Chemist though is less reliance on scratching, the obvious Jewish content of the samples, and a tendency for So Called to spend a fair amount of time letting guests freestyle over the top of the mix. One of the guests is Matisyahu. In this new expression of Jewish culture Judaism is not evacuated or present only in references. Rather, the artists, including also, for example, the Hip Hop Hoodios, combine aspects of present non-Jewish culture such as reggae and rap with recovered elements of Jewish tradition, Yiddish, though also Sephardic and Mizrahi, to create a new, living tradition that once again imbricates Judaism with Jewish everyday life.

Conclusion In Jewish life, distinguishing religious and profane, Judaic from Jewish, is complicated, and, indeed, fruitless. As the Judaic is so fundamentally imbricated with Jewish everyday life even secular Jews are often to some extent religious. In this chapter I have illustrated how many forms of music made by Jews carry religious associations including some forms of music, such as klezmer and punk, which in other circumstances might be considered ineradicably profane. Less contentiously, I have shown how there is a constant interaction, a borrowing of melodies, vocal styles and ideas, between Judaism, and synagogue music, and the secular culture in which Jews live and which forms a context for Jewish quotidian life. How Jewish, or indeed perhaps Judaic, the music of, say, Amy Winehouse is could be answered by looking at the ways her upbringing was Jewish and how being Jewish impacted on her life and how her music expressed this lived experience (see Stratton: 2009).

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Hinduism and Popular Music Anjali Roy

Introduction Popular Western music’s turn to non-Western musics and iconography has been viewed as a neoorientalist gesture that decontextualizes, deterritorializes and exoticizes non-Western cultural production for the pleasure of the Western consumer (Feld 1996; Brennan 2001; Sharma, Hutnyk and Sharma 1996; Hutnyk 2000; Kalra and Hutnyk 2000). These critiques first emerged in the wake of the global music industry’s repackaging and marketing of non-Western musics under the label ‘World Music’ that simultaneously exoticized and othered non-Western musics in the process of making them accessible.1 While acknowledging the global visibility provided to local producers by music companies through making their music globally available under the brand World Music, several scholars voiced their concerns about their juxtaposing geographically and generically divergent2 genres under a monolithic term, disseminating and exposing participatory musical cultures to the Western consumer’s voyeuristic gaze and disengaging musics from their originary contexts.3 While ethnomusicologists, social anthropologists and cultural studies’ scholars addressed concerns about appropriation of both sacred and profane musics, purists’ wrath largely descended on the violation of sacred musical genres. In particular, Madonna’s mispronunciation of Hindu chants in her sexually charged video and stage performances in the MTV Video Music Awards 1998 attracted the displeasure of Hindu spiritual leaders (1999: 19). The release of Beyoncé’s music video ‘Hymn for the Weekend’ on 29 January 2016 that ‘mixes cultural and religious practices, commodifying them into a banal, but beautiful message of imagined solidarity’ (Butler 2016) has reignited the debate on cultural appropriation with Rashmee Kumar in The Guardian opining that it could not be dismissed as ‘just a video’ but ought to be seen ‘as part of a system of misrepresentation that shapes how the west engages with the world’ (Kumar 2016). The orientalist system of misrepresentation that has shaped Western perception of the East, as Said brilliantly explained in his seminal work, constructed an orient through the Western gaze (1978), which is reproduced in neo-orientalist constructions of the mystical East that weave Hindu religious concepts and symbols into picture postcard images of India’s chaotic, colourful streets, crowds and festivals. Although the co-option of Hindu religious motifs, images and beliefs have been naturalized in Indian popular musical genres such as filmi git, Hindu-influenced Western popular music has been denounced as a cannibalistic invasion by Hindu leaders and organizations.. Similarly, while the appropriation of the figures of the divine lovers Radha–Krishna and Rama–Sita for the celebration of romantic love has been a long-accepted standard practice in the filmi git, the articulation of Hindu sacred symbols to Western popular music has repeatedly invited the wrath

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of Hindu purists. In contrast to the incorporation of stereotyped images of crowds, streets and slums in music videos that has, at best, been tolerated as a form of cultural appropriation, the decontextualization of religious symbols and concepts in the production of an oriental myth of the mystical East has been viewed as a blasphemous act. Through comparing the filmi git that unproblematically blends the sacred and the profane with Hindu-influenced popular music in the West, this chapter argues that purists’ objections to Western popular singers’ appropriations of Hindu symbols and concepts, which largely converge on issues of desacralization, display a deep amnesia to the amalgamation of the sacred and the profane in Eastern music and fail to address the larger question of the Orientalization of non-Western musics.

Filmi git: Co-opting the sacred into the secular Filmi git, a unique genre of film song synonymous with Indian popular music until the emergence of non-filmi music in the 1980s, is deeply entrenched in Hindu epistemological and ontological concepts. In particular, the notion of romantic love in Hindi filmi music appropriates the imagery and metaphors of bhakti or devotional poetry, particularly those related to the divine lovers Radha–Krishna and Sita–Rama, in articulating idealized romantic and conjugal love, respectively. As Heidi Pauwells has argued, Radha–Krishna’s illicit union has been privileged in the representation of romantic love in Hindi song and dance over Sita– Rama’s wedded bliss given the erotic possibilities in the playful divine lover’s cavorts with his consort Radha (2008). Hindi filmi git has conventionally drawn on the sexualized imagery of the medieval poet Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda (1977) and other tropes of the Radha–Krishna myth familiar to the Hindu listener to evolve a distinctively Hindu idiom of courtship and romance. Through appropriating bhakti poetry in which sensuous descriptions and yearnings for the human beloved serve as a metaphor for the human quest for the divine, Hindi filmi git accomplishes its objective of the articulation of erotic desires through formulaic expressions of devotion without violating the idealized notion of conjugal love with its accompanying filial and societal obligations. Sudhir Kakar and Pauwells have incisively engaged with the Radha–Krishna myth in the articulation of love in Hindi cinema (2008). Asserting that the Radha–Krishna myth forms one of the two tropes of representing romantic love in Hindi cinema, Kakar argues that the Radha– Krishna lovers are used to represent carnal love as opposed to the pure love embodied by the Perso-Arabic lovers Laila–Majnun. Both Kakar and Pauwells engage at length with the Krishna hero and Radha heroine in the Hindi film and with the allusions to familiar tropes from the Radha–Krishna myth, particularly the raslila or Krishna’s teasing banter with Radha and her friends, the gopis, vastraharan or Krishna’s stealing the garments of the gopis bathing in the river, the illicit nature of their love, their clandestine meetings and so on. In addition to filmi songs that directly engage with the names of the divine lovers, indirect allusions to the Radha– Krishna motif in the beloved’s description, her inaccessibility, her yearning for her lover, their trysts, the love triangle and so on naturalize the Radha–Krishna motif for expressing romantic love in which the beloved’s annihilation of the self in the lover elevates it to the status of divine love. Some iconic filmi songs employ an extremely sensual and sexualized imagery to articulate the idea of love for a human lover through which the human self can merge with the divine self.

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The figure of the flute-playing flirtatious, polygamous deity, who has conventionally enjoyed the status of the lover god in the Hindu pantheon and whose secret liaisons with the alreadymarried Radha and cavorting with numerous gopis or female devotees are the subject of bhakti git, is extrapolated in Hindi filmi song and dance to express carnal love and desire within a traditionally sanctioned code. aaye pawan jhakora toote ang ang mora chori chori chupke chupke baitha kahi pe woh chupke dekhe muskaye nirlaj ko nirlaj ko laaj na aaye hai With a gust of the wind My entire body begins to ache Secretly stealthily He sits somewhere silent Gazes at me and breaks into a smile The shameless one, the shameless one is not one bit ashamed. (Satyam Shivam Sundaram 1978) The Radha–Krishna motif that facilitated the articulation of romantic emotions in a religiously sanctioned idiom and behaviour in a sociocultural milieu that forbade expression of sexual desires and longings outside the conjugal framework provided the perfect grammar for courtship and romance in Hindi cinema. The hedonist, flirtatious, naughty deity who was permitted to indulge in mild flirtations and peccadilloes as well as sexual gratifications was incorporated as the template for the Krishna lover and juxtaposed against the dutiful Rama and self-annihilating Majnun. Similarly, his consort Radha, whose uncontrollable yearnings for Krishna drive her to make trysts with Krishna in secret spaces despite being married to another man, provided the model for the Radha beloved. koi sakhi.. saheli.. nahi sang main akeli koi dekhe toh yeh jaane paniya bharne ke bahane ghagri uthaye radha shaam se hai hai shyam se milne jaaye... Not accompanied by any female friend or companion I am all alone The one who spies on me would guess On the pretext of fetching water carrying a pot Radha really goes to meet Shyam. (Satyam Shivam Sundaram) Krishna’s teasing Radha and the other gopis in Hindu myths licenced sexualized teasing and flirtatious behaviour in the Hindi film song and dance. The leitmotif of Krishna’s teasing and flirtatious behaviour that causes his consort Radha to blush and to tremble with desire borrowed

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from the bhakti git has been appropriated in signposting romance even in films not set in a Hindu millieu. Hindi film industry’s syncretic cultural boundaries facilitated the integration of the Hindu myth in the Muslim historical Mughal-e-Azam (1960) in which Prince Salim’s instant attraction and falling in love with the courtesan Anarkali was captured through a classically oriented number ‘Mohe Panghat Pe Nandlal Ched Gayo Re’ (Mughal-e-Azam) rendered by the female singing legend Lata Mangeshkar in a voice so pristine that it transcended the carnal desire that Kakar has identified in the Radha–Krishna trope in Hindi cinema. Almost half a century later, another song ‘Kahe Chede Mohe’ (Devdas 2002) in a classical raga rendered by the same singer, with vocals by the actor Madhuri Dixit and choreographed by the kathak maestro Birju Maharaj, picks up the theme of teasing and the affect it produces on Radha who appears to love it even though she must protest as traditional Hindu women are trained to. The most erotic Radha– Krishna song in the history of Hindi cinema ‘Bhor Bhaye Panghat Pe Mohey Natkhat Shyam Sataaye’ (Satyam Shivam Sundaram) has the Radha character swaying her hips seductively to the dulcet tones of ‘the melody queen’ Lata’s voice as she sets off for the river-bank to fetch water and bathes under the waterfall when she is followed and accosted by the Krishna lover: bhor bhaye panghat pe mohe natkhat shaam sataye mori chunariya lipti jaye main ka karoo hai raam hai haaii When the day breaks at the riverside The naughty Shyam teases me My covering garment is blown away What should I do Oh Ram. (Satyam Shivam Sundaram) The image of the voyeur Krishna watching the gopis bathe in a river and stealing their clothes (vastraharan) is reiterated in the mandatory ‘wet sari song’ in Hindi cinema, where the hero espies the heroine bathing under a waterfall, river or sea, which invites the repetition of the erotic verbal and images derived from the bhakti git that amalgamate the sensual and the spiritual, the sacred and the profane. Pauwell’s detailed analysis of the ‘Bol Radha Bol Sangam Hoga Ke Nahin’ (Sangam 1964) song, in which the fully clad Raj Kapoor, perched on a tree, secretly gazes at Vyjanthimala bathing in a black swimsuit, presents it as a classic illustration of the concept of vastraharan associated with the lover god. However, the song’s couching of the idea of the consummation of human love in the spiritualized idiom of the soul’s union with the divine ‘Will you become one with me?’ and obtaining her consent under the threat of stealing her clothes epitomizes the strategic blending of the sexual with the spiritual in the Hindi filmi git through its borrowing the erotic language of the Radha–Krishna bhakti git. Krishna’s polygamous nature and multiple beloveds brings Radha into competition with other women, who desire Krishna and who are the object of Krishna’s flirtatious gaze and speech, and makes him the preferred metaphor for the exploration of love triangles in filmi songs. The gendered sanctioning of polygamy and multiple partners in traditional Indian societies makes both Radha and Mira rivals for the philandering god’s affections, even though Radha’s sexualized desire for Krishna is contrasted with Mira’s spiritual yearnings. Lata Mangeshkar’s singing about Radha’s and Meera’s passion for their beloved Lord Krishna in ‘Ek Radha Ek Meera Dono

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Ne Shyam Ko Chaha, Antar Kya Donon Ki Chaah Mein Bolo … Ek Prem Deewani Ek Daras Deewani’ (Ram Teri Ganga Maili 1985) composed by lyricist-composer Ravindra Jain elucidates the difference between Krishna’s twin beloveds, Radha, who desires his love, and Meera, who merely seeks his vision. More than the self-abnegating Mira, Radha’s envy and possessiveness leads her to lay her sole claim to his affections, a right that Krishna is unable to guarantee as he is conventionally represented as belonging both to Radha and Meera, as well as to his many lovers. Ravindra Jain’s evocative number ‘Shyam Teri Bansi Pukare Radha Naam’ (Geet Gata Chal 1975) sung by Arti Mukherjee and Jaspal Singh appears to have been conceived and executed from Lord Krishna’s other beloved Meera’s point of view. In response to Meera’s complaint that even though Krishna’s flute calls out only Radha’s name, people cast aspersions on Meera’s character, Krishna assures her that he belongs to both Radha and her. In addition to Radha and Meera, Krishna’s amorous play with Radha’s female companions in the raslila has engendered the filmi song fantasy of the single male hero dancing with his beloved surrounded by a bevy of female dancers. In contrast to the Radha–Krishna trope that provides the template for romantic love and carnal desire, the Rama–Sita myth is the preferred signifier of conjugal love and relationship. Jaise Radha Shyam se.. Sita milin Ram se! Jaise Radha Shyam se, Sita milin Ram se Sabko apna pyar yun mill jaaye aaraam se As Radha went to meet Shyam Sita set out to meet Ram Let everyone find their love easily Unlike the polygamous Krishna, the monogamous god Rama in Hindi film song serves as the signifier of marital fidelity whose filial and societal responsibilities come into sharp conflict with his deep affection for his devoted wife. Similarly, Sita’s exemplary loyalty to Rama in the face of enormous hardships is upheld as the model for an idealized Hindu beloved and wife. Given the difference in the life narratives of Rama and Sita and their socially sanctioned union from those of Radha–Krishna, the Rama–Sita trope is appropriated in the exploration of a monogamous heterosexual ideal that requires the subjugation of personal desires and fulfilment to filial and social obligations in accordance with the mythical model of the duty-loving king and his faithful wife. Instead of romantic love endlessly celebrated in Hindi film song, exploration of conjugal love is limited to film songs depicting serious commitments and marital harmony, fidelity and betrayal, and affirmation of the sanctity of marriage. The deep understanding between Rama and his beloved wife Sita is celebrated in a number of films that deal with the formation of the couple who fall in love after marriage (Dwyer 2004), even though the deities might not be explicitly named. The classical musician in Abhimaan (1973) who falls in love with his naïve, talented wife from a small town pens a song celebrating the consummation of their marriage that enshrines the traditional Hindu ideal of sexual gratification within the institution of marriage: Dekho na tere mere Milan ki yeh raina

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Naya koi gul khilayegi Tabhi to chanchal hain tere naina Dekho na Look The night of our union Would bring to fruition No wonder your eyes are naughty Look. (Abhimaan 1973) The mythological stereotype of Rama as the heroic rescuer who would release his beautiful and loyal wife from the wily demon’s clutches is appropriated in the Hindi film song through the abducted beloved entreating him to come to her rescue. The most direct invocation to Lord Rama is inserted in the title song of the film Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985) in which Ganga attributes her impurity to the sins of the sinners: Raam teri ganga maili ho gai Suno to ganga ye kya sunaaye Ke mere tatapara jo loga aaye Jinhonne aise niyam banaaye Ke praana jaaye para vachana na jaaye Ganga hamaari kahe baata ye rote rote Raam teri ganga maili ho ga{ee} Paapiyonke paapa dhote dhote Ram your ganga has been soiled Listen to what Ganga is trying to tell you Those who made the rule That I would give up my life rather than go back on my word Our Ganga repeats this weeping loudly Ram your ganga has been soiled Washing away the sins of the sinners. (Ram Teri Ganga Maili) In Khalnayak (1993), police officer Ram’s beloved, policewoman Ganga, who follows the villain Ballu with the objective of arresting him without obtaining Rama’s consent, begs Ram to come to rescue her: main toh khud aap hi pyaasi hoon main kaisi ram ki ganga hoon main toh bas naam ki ganga hoon meri pyaas bujha, aaja, mujhe ganga bana, aaja meri pyas bujha, mujhe ganga bana kar pura vachan aaja Quench my thirst, come, make me as virtuous as Ganga, come I’m thirsty by my own accord What kind of Ganga (River Ganges) am I? My name is just Ganga (I don’t have the virtues of River Ganges)

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Quench my thirst, make me as virtuous as Ganga Fulfill your promise, come In the eponymous film Ram Lakhan (1989), Lakhan’s beloved confesses her love for Lakhan to his brother Ram in a secretly coded plea to be rescued: O Ramji, bada dukh di na Tere Lakhan ne bada dukh di naSudh budh bisraayi meri neend churaayi Mera mushkil kar diya jeena Oh Ramji he has made me suffer a lot Your Lakhan has made me suffer so He has stolen my senses and my sleep He has made my life difficult. (Ram Lakhan) An item number from Goliyon ki Raasleela Ram-leela (2013) reinterprets the Rama–Sita motif in a mix of Hindi and English: Ram chahe Leela chaahe Leela chaahe Ram Inn dono ke love mein duniya ka kya kaam Inka toh funda hai simple sa yaar Goli maaro to panga Aankh maaro toh pyaar Ram loves Leela Leela loves Ram What does the world have to do in the love of these two They have a simple funda If you shoot it creates problems If you wink it creates love. (Goliyon ki Raasleela Ram-leela) Unlike the adulterous Radha, who delights in her sexuality, Sita, whose destiny is to be falsely accused of adultery and abandoned by her lover or husband, is elevated as the emblem of the chaste and loyal (pativrata) wife as is in an iconic filmi song from Awaara (1951): Pativarta sitamai ko tune diya banwas kyu na fata dharti ka kaleja kyu na fata aakash zulm sahe bhari janak dulari zulm sahe bhari janak dulari janak dulari ram ki pyari phire mari mari janak dulari phire mari mari janak dulari zulm sahe bhari janak dulari zulm sahe bhari janak dulari gagan mahal ka raja dekho You exiled the faithful mother Sita to the forest Why did the earth’s heart did not burst why did the skies not burst? Janak’s pet had to undergo untold atrocities She wanders about here and there Janak’s pet, suffers untold atrocities Suffers untold atrocities the daughter of Janak Watch the king of the palace of the skies. (Awaara)

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Despite her fierce loyalty to her husband, Sita, who was made to undergo a fire ordeal in order to prove her chastity and win Rama’s trust, is the leitmotif of a bhajan drawing up a parallel between Sita’s tragic fate and the protagonist’s subsequent suffering: Sita ko dekhe saara gaanv Aag pe kaise dharegi paanv Bach jaaye toh devi maan hai, jal jaaye toh paapan Jisaka roop jagat ki thandak, agni usaka darpan Sab jo chaahe soche samajhe lekin woh bhagwaan Woh toh khot kapat ke airi, woh kaise naadan Agni paar utarake sita jeet gayi vishwaas Dekha dono haath badhaaye raam khade the paas Uss din se sangat mein aaya Sach much ka vanvaas The entire village watched Sita Wondering how she would step into the fire If she emerged unscathed she would be worshipped if she got scalded she would be branded a sinner The one whose beauty soothes the world, fire becomes her mirror He who knows all but he is God The one who can sense malicious intent, how could he be so naïve Sita walking across the fire won his trust Noticed him standing by her with both arms outstretched Since that day his worshippers’ Truly experienced her exile. (Pinjar 2003) Despite the hardships she volunteered to undergo by accompanying Rama in his fourteen-yearold exile and the humiliation of having to prove her chastity despite her fierce loyalty to her husband, Sita is glorified as an emblem of female virtue in Hindi filmi git. The following bhajan from Neel Kamal captures Sita’s self-annihilating devotion to Rama that elevates her love for him to a spiritual longing: He rom rom mein basane waale raam jagata ke swaamee, he antayraamee, main tuz se kyaa maangoo aas kaa bandhan tod chookee hoo tuz par sabakuchh chhod chookee hoo naath mere main kyo kuchh sochoo, too jaane teraa kaam tere charan kee dhool jo paaye wo kankar hiraa ho jaaye You dwell in every pore of my body The Lord of the world, the omniscient one, what should I seek from you? I have dedicated my entire life to you My Lord why should I worry about it? You know your work The one who finds the dust below your feet Turns from a pebble to a diamond. (Neel Kamal 1968) 138

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Western popular music: Cultural exchange or cultural appropriation? Western popular music’s association with Hinduism is understood to date back to the Beatles’ 1966 visit to India and their initiation into Hindu religion and philosophy that set the trend for a form of ‘magical mystical tourism’, sending subsequent generations of young white music producers on similar mystical and musical journeys to the East (Hutnyk 2000). The Beatles’ visit to Hindu shrines and ashrams to meet gurus, particularly the levitating guru Mahesh Yogi, and their involvement with Hinduism made their Hindu-inspired sonic productions intersect with Euro-American youth’s 1960s turn to Eastern mysticism and philosophy as a panacea for the evils of Western materialism. While the Beatles’ repackaging of Eastern music to cater to Western tastes completely reversed the derogatory colonial stereotype of Pagan Hindu polytheism among a generation of British and American youth, it simultaneously constructed an orientalist vision of the mystical spiritual East that has since dominated Western popular musical interpretations of Hinduism. Their implication in countercultures such as International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Transcendental Meditation and the hippie movement of the 1960s articulated Hinduism to a psychedelic, drug-induced Eastern mysticism and led to the emergence of a form of pop-Hinduism converging on New Age gurus, yoga and meditation that continues to dominate Western representations of Hinduism even in the present. Harrison’s first encounter with A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada’s first album, Krishna Consciousness and introduction to the maha-mantra that he and John Lennon listened to well before the emergence of the Hare Krishna consciousness in Britain heralded a new cycle of Western fascination with Hindu mysticism and philosophy, which was manifested in iconic pop musical compositions that adapted sacred Hindu music to Western tastes. Harrison’s meeting with Prabhupada, who founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in 1966 and his consenting to record the mahamantra or the chant Hare Krishna with devotees of the Hare Krishna Society to spread the Krishna consciousness worldwide became the anthem of not only Hare Krishna followers but also of an entire generation of Western youth. Harrison’s musical compositions, inspired by Hinduism, including Hindu chants, English lyrics using Indian instruments and classical styles and collaborations with the Indian sitar maestro Ravi Shankar that followed his embracing of Hinduism became an unfailing recipe for injecting originality in a saturated pop musical space that has guaranteed commercial success for decades. Harrison’s rendering of the mahamantra supported by other devotees catapulted the 5000-yearold principal Gaudiya Vaishnav mantra to the top of popular music charts in Britain and the United States, thus ejecting Hindu sacred chants in the space of popular music. The new convert’s faith in the power of the mahamantra popularized by the fifteenth-century Hindu saint Chaitanya Mahaprabhu led to trendsetting musical experimentations that familiarized the Western listener with Indian instruments such as the sitar, the tanpura and the tabla, as well as with musical structures. In ‘My sweet lord’, Harrison attempted to fuse the messages of the Christian and Gaudiya faiths into what his biographer described as ‘a gospel incantation with Vedic chants’ through alternating the Christian and Jewish term of praise ‘hallelujah’ with the Sanskrit ‘hare krishna’ (1969). The simple English lyrics reflect the devotee’s desire to have a direct communion with god: My sweet lord My sweet lord Really want to see you, Lord, but it takes so long, my Lord. 139

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I really want to know you Really want to go with you Really want to show you, Lord, that it won’t take long, my Lord. (1970) The insertion of a choral line ‘hallelujah’ between the singing switches over to the first twelve syllables of the mahamantra before repeating ‘hallelujah’ twice before the mahmantra is repeated and closes with the gurumantra dedicated to the teacher. While Harrison’s sincere efforts to propagate Hindu religious values and Indian classical music inserted Indian music, instruments and musicians into the world sonic space, he was unwittingly complicit in making music that has ‘no desire to travel’ (Brennan 2002) enter the global sonic landscape with the complicity of his Hindu guru and collaborator. The mystical package tour of Hindu pilgrimage sites undertaken by the Beatles in the 1960s in quest of spiritual enlightenment became an initiation rite for a number of white musicians who, searching for alternatives to Western materialism, followed the same spiritual itinerary to be initiated into the mysteries of Hindu religion and returned with their new knowledge to the West ready to proselytize misled Westerners about the complexities of Hindu religion. White popular musicians’ pillaging of the 5000-year-old Gaudiya Vaishnav tradition perpetuated the orientalist construction of India’s ancient Hindu core as the quintessential Indian tradition through the marginalization of its medieval Muslim past. Three decades after the Beatles’ undertook the grand Hindu tour of India, Crispian Mills, the lead vocalist of a psychedelic band backpacked his way into roughly the same pop-Hinduism territory and returned mesmerized with Hindu religious chants that he appropriated to reinvent the band’s new identity as Kula Shaker named after a nineteenth-century South Indian saint king and triggered a new orientalizing cycle in which Vaishnava Hindu devotion was appropriated to resolve the civilizational crisis of the postmodern West. Once again Indian mysticism and instrumentation resonated with the Beatlesque and a sound heavily indebted to the 1960s psychedelic culture. The popularity of Kula Shaker’s Hindu-inspired compositions like Govinda confirms that Sanskrit chants placed against the exotic images of white men or women surrounded by Hindu women floating about in colourful saris, sadhus and deities, the river and rain, the guitar, the sitar and the tabla are guaranteed to be commercially successful even when delivered in a thick British accent. Govinda Jaya Jaya Gopala Jaya Jaya Radha-Ramana Hari Govinda Jaya Jaya. (1996) Kula Shaker perpetuates the myth of the mystical spiritual India produced by the Beatles and the orientalists through displaying stereotyped images of ancient Hindu religiosity familiar to the Western viewer even as it excises those of the modern secular nation. ‘Tattva’ begins with an image of a woman in a red sari seated holding a tanpura who rises to dance in the course of the music video and the Sanskrit chant is interspersed with English lyrics. Tattva, acintya bheda bheda tattva Like the flower and the scent of summer Like the sun and the shine

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Well the truth may come in strange disguises Send the message to your mind Tattva, acintya bheda abheda tattva. (1996) Other Western popular music producers since the 1990s have charted the same magic mystical tour of India in their narcissist self-fulfilling quests and borrowed the neo-orientalist formula of incorporating sacred Hindu chants, concepts and iconography in their repertoire to make or reinvent their musical careers. While the cult status enjoyed by these pop icons has brought increasing visibility to Hindu religion and philosophy, the construction of an essentialist Hinduism through their pillaging of ancient Hindu sources has resuscitated the 1960s popHinduism, which reaffirmed the colonial binary of the materialist West and the spiritual East, to deflect the existential crisis of late capitalism. Global capitalism’s embracing of Hinduism as an alterity to deflect the disastrous effects of market-driven consumerism is inscribed on the body and music of Madonna, ‘the material girl’, whose unexpected eastward turn appeared to be yet another professional move by the pop icon to reinvent herself. However, Madonna’s cult status and high, if controversial visibility, ushered in Indochic, or the resignification of Hindu symbols like the bindi and henna, practices like yoga and meditation and the ancient language Sanskrit as fashionable and cool. Madonna’s rebellious sexuality, however, that signified the nadir of Western decadence and promiscuity to Hindu groups, singled out the singer for her sacrilegious performance of ‘Shanti Ashtangi’ from her album Ray of Light at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1998 during which she used Hindu sacred imagery like the Vaishnava Tilak. The organization said Madonna’s use of ‘Vaishnava Tilak’ facial markings, which are traditionally worn with gravity and sincerity as an expression of devotion to the Hindu Supreme Lord, was inappropriate due to the sexual, provocative nature of the singer’s performance, which included her bumping and grinding with retro-rocker and guitarist Lenny Kravitz. (Kaufman 1998) An electronica album incorporating mystical themes in both the music and lyrics, Ray of Light, a product of her embracing the Kabbalah, the study of Hinduism and Buddhism and the practice of Hatha yoga, is considered the most ambitious of Madonna’s works marking a significant turning point in her career that earned her several awards while perpetuating her popularity. The birth of her daughter set the pop singer on an inward journey in ‘search for answers to questions’ she’d never asked herself before and follow the pop musical route to Hinduism and hath yoga in order to be able to ‘step outside [myself] and see the world from a different perspective’, as she confided to Q magazine (2002).The pop musical tour of the ancient Vedic corpus in this case ended in the relatively unknown Hindu Sanskrit prayer ‘Shanti/Ashtangi’. Madonna’s singing the adaptation of the Hindu seer Shankaracharya from the eighth-century work Yoga Taravali on Hatha Yoga in thickly accented Sanskrit with lines such as ‘vande gurunam charanarvinda/ sandarshita swatma sukhavabodhe’ to a techno beat in a techno dance album was an adventurous musical experimentation that articulated sacred Hindu music to youth rave cultures and illegal underground parties. Joan Anderman from The Boston Globe said that Ray of Light described the album ‘as a deeply spiritual dance record, ecstatically textured, a serious cycle of songs that goes a long way toward liberating Madonna from a career built on scavenged images and cultivated identities’(1998). While she is believed to have taken lessons in Sanskrit from the noted scholar

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B P T Vagish Shastri (2001), her mispronunciation of the ashtangi earned the disapproval of Hindu priests in Benaras, who invoked the vibration theory of sound in chanting mantras that lays much emphasis on correct pronunciation. While Vagish Shastri was more charitable towards his Western disciple’s inability to reproduce Sanskrit sounds, B N Chaturvedi wondered, ‘How could the shanti-ashtangi bring peace to Madonna and her audiences when she pronounces “shaanti, shaanti” as “shantee, shantee?”’ (UNI 1998): vande gurunam charanarvinda sandarshita swatma sukhavabodhe, nihashreyse jangalikayamane, sansara halahala-moha shanti I worship the lotus feet of the guru which are the source of eternal happiness and self-realisation? and work like an antidote to the lethal poison generated by worldly indulgences. (1998) Even as Madonna’s choice of the obscure Yoga Taravali, which defines the techniques of purifying the nerves for attaining a vibrational unity with the ultimate reality in 29 verses, intrigued Sanskrit scholars, her critics were left guessing whether her use of an esoteric text and yogic postures was another marketing ploy to reinvent herself or a real urge to reinvent or transform herself (UNI 1998). Irrespective of the sincerity of her desire for self-transformation or her Hindu turn, ‘the Madonna phenomenon’ ensured the Hindu invasion of Western popular musical space through her reinvention of the eighth-century Sanskrit prayer and the South Asian look that she sported in the album and live performances made South Asian popular culture globally visible. ‘Frozen’, an electronic ballad that features haunting English lyrics and Madonna’s new open vocals and South Asian look peaked in the top five in most musical markets worldwide and was labelled as a masterpiece that heralded Indochic in the West inspired by Madonna’s hennaed hands, long hair, oriental robes and so on. Rhonda Hammer and Douglas Kellner in their book Media/Cultural Studies: Critical Approaches asserted that ‘the phenomenon of South Asian-inspired femininity as a Western media trend can be traced to February 1998, when pop icon Madonna released her video “Frozen” (2009)’. As they pointed out, ‘although Madonna did not initiate the fashion for Indian beauty accessories … she did propel it into the public eye by attracting the attention of the worldwide media (2009)’. Since Madonna first put Indian cultural symbols on the global fashion map, henna, bindis and Indian sartorial designs have become part of the global popular culture reinforced by Bollywood’s Western invasion. Nearly two decades later, when Beyoncé sported the Bollywood heroine look complete with kohl-lined eyes, nose ring and bridal headband, hennaed hands and sequinned attire in Coldplay’s new video ‘Hymn for the Weekend’, allegedly inspired by India’s vibrant hues and mysticism, romanticized Bollywood images of India had already infiltrated the global popular cultural imaginary. While scoring an astounding number of hits on YouTube within a month of its release, the music video also attracted extraordinary media attention for its appropriation of Indian culture and recycling of stereotyped representations of India, including levitating sadhus, saffron-clad monks, the Hindu festival of Holi, children dressed as gods, slums, Bollywood stars and film screenings. The producers of the music video once again pandered to the insatiable

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Western desire of Hindu mysticism, festivals, rituals and Bollywood glamour to create an exotic India that elides the unappetizing reality of modern, urban India. While the media has been extremely critical of Coldplay’s cannibalization of Hindu symbols and images for increasing the video’s exotic flavour, their supporters have cited it as an example of cultural appreciation, a view that appears to have been shared by the Bollywood star Sonam, who bagged a thirty-second walk in part in the video.

Conclusion Hindu symbols, tropes, myths and concepts have been integrated in the visual and aural grammar of Hindi film song and dance, in popular Indian devotional genres such as the pop bhajan as well as in filmi git. While filmi bhajan and pop bhajan have gained acceptance in the expression of devotional sentiments through popular musical tunes and melodies, the myths of Hindu gods and goddesses, particularly of the divine lovers Radha–Krishna and Sita–Rama have been borrowed in filmi git to express romantic and conjugal love, respectively. Unlike the filmi git that successfully fuses the sacred and the profane and appropriates sacral imagery and vocabulary in the expression of human love, Western pop music inspired by Hinduism has been critiqued both for its superficial understanding of Hindu concepts and desacralization of Hindu religious concepts and symbols. Instead of interrogating Western music producers’ claim to Hindu religious heritage, their exoticization of Hindu religious ideas and practices ought to be a greater cause for concern. Western popular musicians’ relationship with Hindu religion, symbols and imagery, ranging from an authentic desire for spiritual enlightenment to a frivolous fascination with its superficial attractions, cannot be read outside the orientalizing lens.

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Chapter 13

Buddhism and Popular Music Jeffrey W. Cupchik

Introduction The global popularity of Buddhism as a fount of meditation and health has been increasing noticeably since the 1950s (Seager 2000: 4), and this trend is evidenced particularly in the work of music recording artists. Primarily, it could be said that in the past sixty years, among the different Buddhist sects and schools around the world, Zen Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism have had the most profound impact on both Western artists and audiences. Recent decades have seen a growing number of artists who have been inspired by Buddhist teachings and/or have tapped, or fed, into the mass appeal of Buddhism in its varied manifestations, and who have written songs with popular understandings in this vein. John Lennon’s chart-topping ‘Instant Karma’ (1971) is an exploration of the theme of the law of karma cause and effect, as is Radiohead’s ‘Karma Police’ (OK Computer, 1997), and even Justin Timberlake’s Grammy Award-winning song, ‘What Goes Around … Comes Round’ (2008). Western recording artists emerging from a wide range of genres and styles have adopted and adapted additional Buddhist themes in their songs. These include the Beastie Boys’ hiphop track ‘Bodhisattva Vow’ on generating the Mahayana ethic of altruistic intentionality, David Bowie’s synthesized reminiscence on renunciation of samsara, or ‘cyclic existence’, ‘Buddha in Suburbia’, scored for the BBC TV Series by the same name, and Laurie Anderson’s performance art and film Heart of a Dog on death, dying, and impermanence. Zen Buddhism likewise informed the work of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ (1971), and John Cage’s 4’33” is widely considered one of the most significant Zen-influenced performance works of the twentieth century. Moreover, indigenous sacred ritual Buddhist music, primarily from Tibetan Buddhist culture, has become admired in the West. The Tibetan Gyuto Monks Tantric Choir’s ‘multiphonic overtone’ chant, which Huston Smith first recorded in 1967, and which Mickey Hart later popularized through a recording of the monks’ chant at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch soundstage in 1988, has led to a global awareness of Tibetan Buddhist spiritual practice being combined with sonic artistry. The Gyuto Tantric Choir was nominated for a Grammy in 2011, and Universal/Decca signed them in 2013, increasing their global reach through wider distribution channels. The key trends of the past half-century include a progression of Buddhist techniques and meanings (of meditation, spirituality, practice) as well as styles of popular music. This chapter explores these in both directions – East to West, and West to East – and includes multiple genres and performance domains: monastic, modern, contemporary, and avant-garde. Pi-Yen Chen

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suggests a tripartite framework for observing the variety of genres denoted as ‘contemporary Chinese Buddhist music’: monastic liturgical chant, modern devotional song, and commercial popular Buddhist music (Chen 2005: 266). Although Chen’s analytical structure does not reflect the diversity of music produced by Buddhist recording artists, and related creative activities taking place around Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, it does offer a salient trajectory for the discussion of the landscape of Buddhism and popular music over the last fifty years – from most to least traditionally sacred. Thus, following Chen’s lead, by recounting the reception of traditional monastic liturgial performances and then shifting to modern contemporary artists, we find an appropriate order with which to approach the subject of Buddhism and popular music.

Tibetan Buddhist sacred performing arts For over fifty years, traditional Buddhist monastic ritual music has become an important part of the global popular culture’s consumption of the spiritual sacred. Key in this process of intercultural exchange has been ‘Tibetan Monk Tours’ – the presence of international delegations of Tibetan monks, and more recently nuns, who are invited to visit and live in the West (United Kingdom, United States, Europe, Canada, South America, Australia) and East (Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan) staying in locales for weeks at a time as a modern mode of monasticcommunity service and fundraising. This relationship involving a dynamic exchange between Buddhist clergy and community is modelled after the ancient role Nalanda Monastic University had with surrounding communities in North India. Given the interdependent relationships of global economic networks and the transnational sowing of Tibetan Buddhism, these monk tours are invited by sponsoring organizations within communities in various countries ‘to share their culture, practices and paths to inner peace and compassion’ (see http://www.tibetanmonktour.org/). During the formative years of this practice, typically an academic liaison from a university with a background in Buddhist studies, anthropology or ethnomusicology would serve as a sponsor, impresario, translator and cultural broker. Increasingly, however, bilingual lamas, monks or nuns work directly with local Buddhist practitioners and sangha (community) members to organize and facilitate events. In every instance, Buddhist nuns or monks are welcomed into communities to offer prayers, blessings, pujas and perform healing rituals invoking and petitioning Buddha deities (e.g. Kalarupa or Mahakala) to dispel health-related obstacles, and/or Dzambala to bring financial success. Tibetan sacred performing arts feature the artistry of hand mudras, while holding and/ or playing ritual implements/instruments – the bell and dorje (thunderbolt sceptre), symbolizing wisdom and compassion – as well as the meditative pageantry of ‘cham dances, enacting sacred geomancy in masked costumes while audiences are invited to visualize the embodiment of Buddha deities’ dance movements. The author of this chapter was himself a volunteer translator and cultural broker in this role for one year, during a period between his MA and PhD degrees in ethnomusicology. The origin story of these tours reveals a common thread in the history of transition from the initial refugee monk population’s work of clearing the land in conditions of unbearable heat and building of makeshift temples in South India, to establishing an international flow of funding that could make the monastic universities sustainable by building larger and safer structures.

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The Tibetan Gyuto Monks’ multiphonic chant Mickey Hart, renowned percussionist of the Grateful Dead, the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock band, helped to popularize the Gyuto monks’ unique multiphonic chordal chanting style1 by recording an album of their ritual music performances while they were on tour in 1988. Hart was turned on to the monks’ multiphonic chanting abilities initially when Grateful Dead vocalist and guitarist Bob Weir gave him a bootleg copy of Huston Smith’s 1967 album Music of Tibet: The Gyuto Multiphonic Choir2 on an unlabelled (audio) tape cassette in 1968. Hart was immediately transfixed by the sound. Hart read Smith’s explanation of the rarefied chant in the liner notes of the 1967 album. Smith, author of the globally popular book The World’s Religions (1958), described how he came to encounter the monk chant which, he claims, was his ‘only empirical discovery … [of] the holiest sound he had ever heard’ (Mudra 2009). Smith recounts staying overnight at the Gyuto monastery in 1964 in Dalhousie, North India, on a full moon, when at 3:00 am, he heard the 140 monks chanting and then 139 suddenly stopped, and one monk was heard singing three notes simultaneously: the tonic, third, and fifth – traversing several octaves. To explore this sonic phenomenon, Smith consulted with an ethnomusicologist and an acoustic engineer at MIT, where he was a professor, and together they subsequently published two papers (see Smith and Stevens 1967; Smith, Stevens and Tomlinson 1967). While returning to San Francisco on a plane from the funeral of mythology scholar Joseph Campbell in 1987, George Lucas mentioned to Mickey Hart that his new state-of-the-art soundstage at Skywalker Ranch, where Campbell had recorded his six-part Power of Myth series, was a large room that could facilitate an acoustic recording, with ceiling and wall panels that could be manipulated to create a delay ranging from between zero to five seconds.3 Hart decided that Lucas’s soundstage would be the perfect space in which the monks’ unique sound could be captured. He and Lucas engaged in the recording project together, which became the album Freedom Chants from the Roof of the World (1989). The album was an important progenitor of the increased global popularity of the monks’ spiritually inflected ‘sonic calling card’.

Buddhist nuns of Zanskar Transcending the masked sonic symbols and secret meanings of the Vajrayana Buddhist ritual prayers in monks’ multiphonic chordal chanting related to Mahakala and Yamantaka practices, anthropologist Kim Gutschow recorded and produced a CD of 20 nuns at a Zanskar nunnery chanting daily prayers – with tracks beginning from the early morning blowing of the conch shells and playing of the gyaling (rgya gling, double-reed oboe sacred instrument) to the unaccompanied dedication prayer ‘Puja at the End of the Day’. The album presents ten tracks that traverse a single day at the nunnery. As their voices weave in and out of the heterophonic texture, the nuns exhibit the joyful resonances of engaging in sonic Buddhist ritual practices in community.4

From audiences to disciples: Fifty years of recordings The nuns’ CD marks another shift in the changing trend of producing recordings of Buddhist ritual music for popular consumption since the 1960s, a time when the Nonesuch, Lyrichord and 146

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Smithsonian Folkways labels were releasing albums thematically centred on Tibetan Buddhist ritual music. In these early recordings, the listener’s experience was drawn towards snippets of exoticized ritual music often excerpted out of its Buddhist practice contexts. One hears recordings made in the field, with the chirping of birds in the background; these are actual ritual performances by authentic practitioners – Tibetan monks, lamas and occasionally nuns – who had fled into exile in India, Nepal and Sikkim as refugees, following the Dalai Lama, in 1959. Today, some of these same rituals are featured on albums produced by lamas recording themselves performing the rituals for their disciples to adopt and recite in their own practices, within their own specific Buddhist communities. This shift is made possible through technological advances in consumer recording technology, the ability to upload to the web, and several lamas’ productive growth of their own spiritual societies amid a process called ‘the transcultural transmission of Tibetan Buddhism into Western Buddhist communities’ (see Cupchik 2013). Yet, how individuals and communities are utilizing the web for their multi-mediated (audiovisual) spiritual/religious practices may be seen as significant in terms of the changed circumstances and mode of Buddhist pedagogy, which is traditionally aimed at inner transformation through transmission between a teacher and disciple. Expanding the audience of Buddhist teachings in terms of scale and access through online webcasts is flattening difference, but it may also require the lama to guard the more sacred and secret teachings and share these privately, in person, with select disciples, away from public sites. Already for several years, there have been password protected or semiaccessible online teachings of Vajrayana (tantric) practices, which require decisions about whether and how to make available sacred melodies when they are transmitted in this sanctified context.

Lamas take the mic Since the 1960s, the recording of Buddhist ritual music has had an unmistakable trend. The growing popularity of Buddhism in the West has led to a gradual sea change which has influenced the types of albums recorded. Increasingly over the past two decades, lamas have produced their own albums for their students utilizing (i) the availability of affordable recording technology and (ii) the ubiquity of the internet as new distribution channels of online sources such as Amazon, iTunes, SoundCloud, and Spotify. Albums such as the collaboration between Lama Gyurme and Jean-Philippe Rykiel, or the CD of the Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa’s original songs (2006), have paved a new road for the creative exposition of Buddhist music. In the former CD, Lama Gyurme’s deep baritone is produced with a cross between an Eno-esque soundscape and a Phil Spector ‘wall of sound’ through the effects of reverb, echo and other settings available through music software. A fascinating collaboration that harmonizes the melodies of the Chöd genre of liturgical songpoetry (see Cupchik 2015), between Steve Tibbetts (his real name) and the renowned Tibetan nun, Ani Choying Drolma, led to their 1997 album Chö. Tibbetts brought texture and harmonization to the sacred melodies sung by Ani Choying.

West Meets East Between Buddhism and popular music, there has been a vibrant interdependent set of relationships since the mid-1960s. The interplay has been dialogic, and marked by osmosis. It emanates from 147

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two directions – East to West and vice versa – emerging from different histories and motivations. Artists have negotiated their own musical creative identity; for many, their musical expression is an essential part of, or at least concomitant with, their spiritual practice. The project of Westerners seeking spiritual fulfilment within Buddhist lineages began with those early fieldwork forays into the Indo-Tibetan Himalayas to find meditating masters – as seen in the problematically intrusive, but nonetheless important, documentary: The Yogis of Tibet (2002). 1967 was heralded as ‘the summer of love’, the peak of the counterculture movement. Musically there was a coming together during artistic collaborations whereby West and East met somewhere close to the middle. Consider that violinist Yehudi Menuhin and sitar maestro Ravi Shankar received a Grammy Award5 in 1967 for their collaboration, the pioneering intercultural album West Meets East. That is to say, the two renowned string instrumentalists were feted globally in the same year that George Harrison’s song ‘Within You, Without You’ was the first track on side two of Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band (released 1 June) – the Beatles’ album that Rolling Stone magazine recognizes as the number one of all time. Harrison’s song was composed spontaneously on a harmonium during a party at Klaus Vrooman’s house. It featured Indian sonorities of a ‘raga-rock’ pop song with lyrics that emphasized the teachings common to Buddhism and Hinduism, and instrumentation of a tanpura (drone), tabla (drum) and dilruba (a stringed solo instrument) doubling the voice. Western guitars and keyboards were totally absent from this track; rather, it was completely in the vernacular of South Asian classical music. In that era, the sound of the ‘sitar’ used to be the most salient spiritual cue. Later, it cross-faded with the musical cue of Tibetan monastic overtone chant, which became another powerful referent for the exotic East, and the spiritual levels to which one’s consciousness could ascend. Amid this climate of interchange between lineage music traditions, was an intercultural exchange of Western students of spirituality, seeking a peaceful mind which, for many, essentially meant learning how to develop the power to control their emotional, mental and physical states. On 9 July 1967, Chögyam Trungpa and Chöje Akong Tulku Rinpoche opened the first Tibetan Buddhist Centre in the West, Samye Ling in Scotland, named after Samye, the first Buddhist Monastery in Tibet. Within a year, David Bowie and Leonard Cohen visited and spent time at Samye, and Bowie seriously considered becoming a monk. Such was the result of invitations from students to Tibetan teachers to sow the seeds of dharma in the West. Rather than welcoming Western students to their temples and ashrams located in India, Buddhist lamas were founding temples and dharma centres in the West – now a cultural norm which had its start in 1967.

West writes East, East writes back: Representing and reclaiming Buddhist music To summarize this historically complex web of relationships between Buddhist monastic ritual music performers, Western artists/record producers, Western Buddhist disciples and audiences, we can trace the underlying socio-economic, political and cultural developments that have shaped these relational and discursive shifts following a North-South divide. These may be understood to have proceeded, basically, along the following evolutionary track: 148

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from (i) a colonialist ethic of Western scholars, artists and travellers seeking Buddhist meditation practitioners from whom excerpts of rituals are recorded, as ‘samplings of the sacred’ exotic East (on Lyrichord and Nonesuch albums in the 60s) to (ii) a collaborative ethic (in the 90s) between a creative Western artist/record producer and (an) indigenous performer(s), custodian(s) of sacred ritual traditions, where the balance of power is relatively unfair because the modes of representation are in the hands of the colonizer (i.e. providing diatonic harmonies – to potentially entreat Western audiences’ aural sensibilities – as ornaments to ancient sacred melodies that were traditionally meant to be performed solo). Then, contextualizing the resultant new music in liner notes filtered through the linguistic referents and cultural understandings of a (non-indigenous) anthropologist or ethnomusicologist. (iii) a postcolonial negotiated response: lamas themselves record and perform segments of rituals to meet the desire of Westerners for access to the sacred. Given the monks’ urgent material needs and fundraising possibilities, operationalizing the mechanisms of the global market economy and the popular music industry may be more helpful than problematic given the motivation for cultural survival. Liner notes written by bilingual (ideally native) speakers, who can translate meanings effectively, are designed to entreat the spiritual interests of as many people as in order to attract sponsorship. (Lamas are aware of global audiences’ fascination with Buddhist sacred traditions – sand mandalas, chanting of mantras etc. – and world music more generally.) In this way, monastics’ Buddhist lineage commitments are not broken, but spiritual materialism is a potentially corrupting risk. (iv) a cultural survival/preservation project (from the 1980s to the present) of a lama recording his/her prayers for students to learn and memorize in order to establish the continuity of a Buddhist lineage by their engaging in meditation rituals and practices. These recordings are not for commercial use but rather for private gift, purchase or donation among the teacher’s students – a context in which the spiritual transmission of oral teachings is designed to be a complement to the musical transmission of ritual music practices (i.e. mantric utterances and, for some lamas, Chö practice melodies). (v) a Subaltern expression by an indigenous Tibetan artist, who creates a new Buddhist vernacular in original compositions – an aesthetic that emerges through genuine personal Buddhist practice and creativity. Then, making recordings of new Buddhist music commercially available in order to support the health, well-being and education of others in the dharma community, where profit is channelled within a gift economy to benefit those in need.

Contemporary Tibetan artists: Buddhist popular music as a conduit to meditation Following from the last of the above categories, we may understand better how contemporary Tibetan artists have expressed Buddhist practices through new lenses that widen the spotlight on a large and varied audience in Western popular culture. Some have gained global recognition, authoring a new brand of Buddhist-themed music. This coincides with the splintering off of specialist listener genres, and magnifying artists within those particular genres. Some artists, drawing upon Buddhist themes in their own unique ways, with their own interpretation of the meaning of musical sound, have made artistic expressions of Buddhist practice. 149

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Nawang Khechog, a former Tibetan monk hermit turned flutist, adopted an approach to playing improvisational melodies on the transverse bamboo flute that is reminiscent of the Zen Buddhist Shakuhachi performance aesthetic.6 Imbued with guru-devotion, his album Rhythms of Peace (1989) features melodies with meditative referents to a contemplative lifestyle in the sonic medium of breath-shaped melody. During his extensive career, Khechog has produced albums of meditative melodic content. Performed without liturgical song texts, his lyrical phrases create a numinous language through attention to the sound, breath, and acoustic space of the performance environment. Several of his song tracks and albums are devotionally crafted, and purposefully spiritual, in effort and design. Tracks such as ‘Zen Blues’, 1989 are Khechog’s programmatic meditations (Rhythms of Peace, 1989). When performing live, he is clear about dedicating a song to a specific Buddhist practice, for example, the lead track ‘Healing through Kindness’ on his 2005 CD, Music as Medicine (2005). In recent years, Khechog has indicated a shift towards composing albums for specific audiences and purposes. Music as Medicine, for example, is specifically designed for use in contexts such as massage therapy. Ani Choying Drolma, trained in the Chö method of the Tibetan female ascetic, Machik Labdrön (1055–1153), and, for the past twenty years, has concertized globally, singing songs in Hindi, Tibetan and Nepali. She has also composed new mantra songs, where the lyric is a sacred mantra, to fundraise for her nunnery in Nepal. She has collaborated with artists in the United States and across Europe and Asia, discovering new creative means for expressing dharma. Approached by Steve Tibbetts to collaborate, she created two albums with him; first, Chö (1997) which was received so positively, rapidly, and to such great critical acclaim, that it led the two to embark on a world tour. As she sings Chö in live performances, accompanied by the ḍamaru, a handheld hourglass-shaped drum, a percussionist provides colouristic textural effects as a background to the harmonizations that Tibbetts ‘hears’ suggested by the melodic contours of Ani Choying’s vocal lines. Second, Selwa (2004) was also well received globally. During the period in between these two projects, and since, she has released albums of her own. Yungchen Lhamo considers singing a Buddhist offering and devotional practice (HenrionDourcy 2005: 246–50). Many of her songs, similar to Nawang Khechok, are a capella offerings of mantras and Buddhist prayers. She came into exile from Lhasa, Tibet, in 1989 while in her 20s, having already established a career as a singer. Once in the West, she quickly rose to critical acclaim. She won an Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) award for best World Music/Folk traditional album for her independently released CD, Tibetan Prayer. She was then discovered by Peter Gabriel and signed to his Real World label; she has recorded new albums, given solo concerts and has been a regular feature of festivals across America, Europe and Australia. She makes New York City her home-in-exile. Her vocal stylings emerge from an inner place of deep devotion. Her soaring vocal lines and melismatic treatment of ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’, the mantra of Buddha of Compassion, is inventive and heartfelt. She has collaborated with Annie Lennox and other A-list artists including Natalie Merchant, on her platinum-selling Ophelia, as well as with Philip Glass and Sheryl Crow. The discursive reception in reviews of Yungchen Lhamo’s music makes the link between meditation, music and health. The New York Daily News writes that ‘the power that her voice

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and melodies have to still an agitated mind becomes obvious’ with respect to her debut album on Real World, Tibet, Tibet. Dadon was extremely popular across the Tibetan plateau as a singer and recording artist during 1987–92, and recorded three albums before she came into exile in the mid-1990s where she continued her career while raising her children. The ‘exiled Tibetan balladeer’ as she was termed by Rodger Kamenetz (1996), regarding her performance at a Carnegie Hall Tibet House benefit concert with Patti Smith, Emmylou Harris and Michael Stipe, is known for her song ‘My Dhondup Tshering’, which she has sung in religious contexts, such as enthronements. Although many of her songs are secular in subject matter, some touch the heart of Buddhism, such as ‘Kyab su chi’ or ‘Refuge’. In this track, she intones, in Tibetan, an original melody for the Buddhist prayer of ‘Going for refuge’ to the lama/guru (teacher), the Buddha, the Dharma (teachings) and to the Sangye (community), with the chorus: ‘Lama la kyab su chi/Sangye la kyab su chi/Chö la kyab su chi/Gedun la kyab su chi.’

Sacred lyrics, mantras and melismas Many contemporary Tibetan recording artists riding this wave of global interest in Buddhism have stayed true to their language roots in their musical expression of the dharma. Nawang Khechog and Yungchen Lhamo are similarly attuned in terms of conveying through breath, or voice, respectively, melodic escapades – journeys that transport the mind to states of peaceful quietude. Ani Choying Drolma has been diversely expressive in her musical conveyances. For example, her newly composed mantric song for which the lyric is solely the mantra of Tara, the female Buddha (‘Om Tare Tutare Ture Soha’), hearkens to the song-poems of meditative experience composed by the Indian Mahasiddha, Padampa Sangye (d. 1117) founder of the ‘pacification’ or zhi rje tradition, and the didactic dharma songs or mgur composed spontaneously by Tibet’s greatest poet-saint Milarepa (1052–1135). Traditional Tibetan melodies such as those of the Chö tradition when sung in their original language with ornamented melismas are accompanied by the ḍamaru drum and it is said that they are imbued with blessings. It is also said that the sacred qualities of the melodies are embedded in their conception: they may be sent as blessings by the dakinis, or heard in a vision or dream experience by high practitioners, or caught on the wind. Ani Choying Drolma was initially somewhat reticent at hearing the textures and harmonizations that Steve Tibbetts’ heard in the Chö melodies, and brought to a global audience in their 1997 album Chö, but later changed her mind; she now views his work as an ornament.

Limitations of home versus exile: The difference not-in-exile makes This chapter unfortunately does not have enough space to include the broad range of artists and composers both on the Tibetan plateau and throughout the transnational Tibetan Diaspora who are writing, recording and producing popular songs and videos with veiled or explicit Buddhist sentiments. However, we should mention those artists in Tibet, such as Yadong, Jamyang Kyi and Sherten, who have gained a large following and fan base of ‘netizens’ in exile by uploading videos and distributing these on websites. While some of these, such as Weibo, are visited more frequently by Tibetans within Tibet, others, such as High Peaks Pure Earth, Phayul (phayul.com), 151

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VOA Interviews (Tibet service), and Radio Free Asia (rfa.org/Tibet) are accessed beyond the borders of Tibet. More research in this area is needed.

Western artists and Buddhism John Cage and the performance of Zen Buddhist thought The pre-eminent philosophical manifestation of Zen Buddhism in musical time must be registered as John Cage’s 4’33” (1952). In the twentieth century, this piece of performance art changed the notion of how we understand music, experience silence and where a musical performance and experience actually takes place – all of these were brought into question by Cage’s simple gesture of formalist deconstruction – a sleight of hand, addressed when he was forty-nine years of age. Cage’s purpose has been interpreted variously, from a serious work that interrogated the possibility of aural meaning to a provocative hoax. The work was meant to draw attention to the present moment, to one’s own mind watching a performance – one’s aural faculties perceiving anything to which its attention is called. Attending to silence, one is left with the absence of silence, and instead, the elicited sounds of one’s own mind – the so-called monkey mind of uncontrolled internal ‘mental chatter’ and sounds produced by the blood circulation transmitted aurally through bone conduction. Giving the work an unconventional title, not in words but rather in the attention to time and the temporal basis of musical experience, caused a scandal. The performer sits at a piano with a glass of water … for the duration of 4’33”.7 The performer does not play the piano, nor does any instrumentalist who performs this piece. Indeed, it is set ‘for any instrument or any combination of instruments’.8 In his book Silence (1961), Cage broaches a discussion of the scandal of his experience of non-silence when seeking to experience silence, which helped him shift closer towards the analogous ‘negative space’ in visual arts. As the Heart Sutra says, ‘Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.’ The work 4’33” emerged, in part, following his experience in a Harvard lab’s anechoic chamber in 1951 that was designed to create acoustical silence by eliminating external sound stimuli. Cage unexpectedly heard two sounds, one high and one low.9 Following this revelation, he concluded that there would be no possibility of an embodied experience of actual acoustical silence. He also understood that we bring much to the experience of aurality through both cognitive and somatic processes. Influenced by courses he took with the Zen Buddhist scholar and author D. T. Suzuki (1870–1966), Cage explored the I Ching and methods for controlled indeterminacy in aleatory compositions and taught experimental composition in the late 1950s at the New School of Social Research. He was an active participant in the Fluxus movement in New York, through which composers, poets, writers and visual artists were exploring new philosophically grounded approaches to the boundaries of Art at ‘happenings’ on rooftops and venues where experiential windows opened in the space of community. George Maciunas, who started Fluxus, avowed many of the concepts explored by Cage that flourished in social situations where a score or series of instructions formed the basis of compositions, and could be performed in potentially infinite ways. Maciunas also admired Yoko Ono’s works involving controlled indeterminacies that provided the participant opportunities to experience diverse results.

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Aleatory and improvisation: Zen Buddhism and John and Yoko Because of the mass-mediated popularity of certain figures (artists, poets and especially musicians), some highly creative possibilities cohered with Zen Buddhism – particularly the counterculture’s deflation of violence through use of the rhetoric, and thoughts, of love. Perhaps one of the most iconic representations of Zen Buddhism – an homage to iconicity as much as to originality– imitative of the notion that thoughts can revolutionize one’s own experience and society around oneself – was the Think Different poster campaign. Black-and-white imagery capturing a moment of devastatingly serene individuality in seventeen cultural change-agents, original thinkers of the twentieth century, was Apple’s flagship advertising campaign. It captured the zeitgeist of that moment at the end of the century, in 1997. The figures were viewed not only in glossy full-page magazine adverts but also on city billboards globally, casting an inspirational reflection of brilliant light from Silicon Valley into modern public spaces. Among the iconic images is Mahatma Gandhi at his spinning wheel and another is John and Yoko at their ‘bed-in’ protest in Montreal (26 May 1969).10 The couple can be seen looking directly into the camera lens, with abject honesty, inciting a hopeful plea for the possibility of humanity to make love, not war: the hype that love could revolutionize one’s attitude towards life (not only one’s own life, but all lives) was their project until 8 December 1980. Since then, Yoko has continued the struggle.11 During John and Yoko’s ‘bed-in’, friends, supporters and journalists gathered around the bed with the written slogan ‘make love, not war’, as Lennon led off the chant-cum-song ‘(All We are Saying, is) Give Peace a Chance’. Supporting the broader peace movement, and being for the constructive and powerful energy of peace and love, rather than acting against war, had strong resonance. Likewise, the chant hearkens back to a children’s playsong, with a different note for each syllable of the sing-song melody.12 The lyrics pinpoint that to which everyone’s attention was drawn at that critical historical moment with each verse beginning by listing cultural referents: ‘Everybody’s talking about … Bagism.’ A similar song in its Zen Buddhist ethos was ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’, designed to incite social change through individual and collective thought revolution. The song was released on 1 December 1971 by Lennon/Ono and the Plastic Ono Band. The song combined the spiritual sensibility of Christmas with notions of individual agency and community identification. It was accompanied by a billboard campaign in New York City’s Times Square and twelve cities globally, with a massive font-size, ‘WAR IS OVER!’ Underneath, in relatively tiny letters, ‘If You Want It’. At the bottom, it was signed: ‘Happy Christmas from John and Yoko.’13 The crux of the message was the conditional phrase, dependent on the reader’s choice: ‘If You …’ which was hardly subliminal; rather, it invited the imagination to contemplate individual and collective action.

Zen Buddhism and Yoko Zen Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism have both been sources of influence on Western popular musical expressions of philosophical changes in consciousness. The concept of choice through patterned mentation is sublimated through Yoko’s ingenious inspiration, which led John to fall for her. Yoko had an exhibition in which a ladder extends seemingly nowhere, except for the hanging of a magnifying glass from the gallery ceiling beside

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the ladder. John climbed up, took the magnifying glass and scanned only to find one word in small print, pasted to the ceiling: ‘yes’. That affirmation was a catalyst in his first experience of and perhaps a progenator of their billboard peace campaign.

David Bowie: Buddha in Suburbia David Bowie is perhaps less well known for his Buddhist sensibilities than for his embracing an hybridic identity through his transformation into the glam rock queen Ziggy Stardust. Yet, it is historically accurate that Bowie nearly ordained as a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition when he visited Samye Ling in Scotland, the first Tibetan Buddhist Centre in the West founded by Chogyam Trungpa and Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche on 9 July 1967. Bowie’s soundtrack for Hanif Kureishi’s BBC TV Series The Buddha of Suburia followed the award-winning book by the same name. The dance beat with an over-synthesized mix is standard production fare for the early to mid 1990s, and a deceivingly simple yet memorable melody creates the backdrop for a climactic moment captured in the music video. The music video to the title song, ‘Buddha in Suburbia’, follows Bowie in a daytime suburban London residential neighbourhood, walking smoothly with his confident urban gait up a pedestrian sidewalk, towards the camera, expressing his introspective tome to the plight of the site of immigrant youth ‘Screaming along in South London’, where life can feel devoid of meaning, even while being blessed with needs overly satisfied, being provoked with wants unmet. In the music video (EMI Music), a haunting image that expresses the suffering of a new South Asian immigrant experience within England’s conservative society, Bowie walks the white sidewalks, beside semi-manicured lawns with young small-trunked trees, in front of cookiecutter single family dwellings. When he stands in the middle of the otherwise empty suburban street under broad daylight, it seems he understands the suffering visited upon the protagonist in the novel/series. He arches his back, with his arms outstretched, opens his trench coat under a greyish sky, and wails the climactic line – ‘Down on my knees in Suburbia/Down on myself in everyway!’, while tilting his head back singing to the sky. The camera circumambulates Bowie, as if a Buddha shrine, a visibly thick crack in the road pavement curves under him, his downtown dress out of place from the happening scene of urban London; a sapphire blue mock turtle neck sweater, fancy slacks, and the expressive verisimilitude ‘can’t tell the bullshit from the lies’. In the video’s middle section, white churchgoers scowl at the South Asian boy passing on his bicycle. Symbolically, the clockwise circling of Bowie, as the camera zooms in, offers a view of a tormented soul, out of place in samsaric ‘cyclic existence’ – and the disgust at the petty racism and xenophobia that the story exposes offers more than a classic identity crises at the prospect of assimilation of a new immigrant. It is a bounty of renunciation, borne of the pain of displacement and shunning.

Philip Glass: Hybridic intercultural orchestration in Kundun Glass combined Tibetan monastic orchestral timbres and overtone chant with the European (Western) orchestra in his filmscore for Martin Scorsese’s Kundun, an historical biopic 154

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chronicling the Dalai Lama’s (re)birth, youth and flight into exile. Seamlessly creating a new musical vernacular for emotional modulations, he exploited the varied sonorities available within the intercultural ensemble. He utilized textures of ‘wrathful’ long horns (dungchen) combined with large Tibetan drums (rnga) and clashes of cymbals (sbub ‘chal, sil snyan) to depict fear, trepidation and prescient warnings. Glass contrasted this with a woodwind chamber ensemble with flute and strings to carry inspirational moments of spiritual connection, such as when, appearing around a corner on the mountain road south of the Brahmaputra River (also known as the Tsangpo), an elder Tibetan man bows and gently gifts his pure white horse to the Dalai Lama, to carry him safely on his journey to exile in India. The slow motion climactic sequence is without dialogue and lasts fifty seconds (from 1:59:44 to 2:00:34). It is musically driven by the nine-note lilting melodic theme carried by a flute and complemented by strings, while Tibetan dungchen horns vibrate in low bass tones, confirming the underlying dangers of the perilous journey to the Indian border. Prior to the above horse-gifting sequence, the Dalai Lama’s narration is as follows: Just like a dream experience: Whatever things I enjoy, will become a memory. Whatever is past, will not be seen again. After offering to the Dalai Lama the horse bridle, the old man walks backwards, traditionally, hands clasped in prayer. On his fourth step, the narration continues: I will liberate those not liberated I will release those not released I will relieve those unrelieved And set living beings in Nirvana. The Dalai Lama is generating this altruistic commitment not only towards the man who gifted the horse, but also, by extension, to all beings in whom the Buddha nature can be alighted. Martin Scorsese said of Glass’s Kundun filmscore: His Buddhist faith and deep understanding of Tibetan culture combine with the subtlety of his composition to play an essential role in our movie on the life of the Dalai Lama…. The beauty, magic, grandeur, and spirituality of the score allow us to feel the pulse of the story as it unfolds. For me, the images in the film no longer stand on their own without Philip Glass’s music.14 Other artists have written songs on the same subject matter as Kundun. Patti Smith and David Bowie have each written original songs exhibiting an emotional connection with the plight of Tibetan Buddhists on the plateau. Smith won a Grammy for her song ‘1959’ (Peace and Noise, 1997) about the Dalai Lama’s escape into India. Bowie’s song ‘Seven Years in Tibet,’ a devotional ballad with a thunderous refrain in insistent guitar rock chords, ‘I praise to you/ Nothing ever goes away’, was featured in the Hollywood film Seven Years in Tibet. Both have performed regularly in Tibet House Losar (New Year) benefits concerts.15

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Kung Fu: The sound of Buddhism in America (in a popular TV series) Similar to Glass’s Kundun score, the original soundtrack of the Kung Fu television series (1972–5) shaped Western understandings of how Buddhism sounded in America. The clashes, sonorous exploits, and sudden insights and revelations that Caine has through his recollections of his masters’ teachings back in the Shaolin Buddhist Monastery in Hunan Province, China. These flash forward to Caine’s encounter with the US American protagonist and villain in every episode, whom the Caine character attempts to influence with wisdom teachings, in the exemplary activity of a Buddhist priest-practitioner. This takes place post-psychedelia, during the mid-to-latter part of US military involvement in Vietnam, a Buddhist country. The score of the series – with its wide-ranging orchestral effects of tubular bells, celeste and piccolo exploring the high registers – was balanced with the quixotic transverse bamboo flute that Caine (David Carradine) played live onscreen in improvisatory ways, bending notes and adhering to the rhythmless, tempoless, melodic attention to the present moment, akin to the Japanese Shakuhachi flute, where melody is the site and cypher of thought, invoking focused meditation through the use of bent microtones in calibrated melodic phrases.

Popular culture and Buddhism: Dharma Punx and inner demons Buddhism in its relationship with popular music has been anything but marginal, riding alongside a wave of popular culture that swells close to the shores of mainstream fashion and listenership, exhibiting mass appeal. Buddhism has also been referenced widely in Western popular music culture where the ‘idea of Buddhism’ tends to signify (superficially or not) a particular set of meanings relating to ‘spirituality’, ‘tranquility’, ‘contemplation’, ‘detachment’, ‘peace’ and so on. For example, compilations of music (sometimes termed new age music or ‘ambient’ music) are produced for meditation and relaxation, and might claim association with Buddhist roots. Artists such as Noah Levine, a Buddhist teacher and writer linked to Jack Kornfield, has written Dharma Punx about the relationship between punk counter culture and Buddhism.16 Levine’s interest is in addressing Generation X’ers, like himself, who turned from an outer rebellious stance that involved taking drugs and engaging in self-harm inflicting to an inner revolution as a way to transform the energy of dissatisfaction. While he has turned to the Buddha’s teachings, he champions others who have bowed to other faith traditions to turn the revolution inward against the mind and thwart its negative tendencies.

Leonard Cohen: Poet warrior in a Zendo Cohen’s career has been associated with articulating poetry and song in creative combat with the inner workings of the mind’s malaise, in part through periods of time spent with his teacher, Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi, at the Zen Buddhist community on Mount Baldy, California. There, he spent over five years as an ordained monk in a Zen Buddhist lineage tradition, as illustrated in the film, Leonard Cohen: Spring 1996. Cohen’s rhymes and melodies, arranged in elegant verse form, sometimes express a relishing in his comfortable disjuncture with worldly life – and several of his creative contemplations were conceived and wrought in a Zendo space. He embraces his Jewish roots in Montreal, Canada, even as he sings of the euphoria 156

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of renunciation from the trappings of cultural expectations, ensconced as he is at times, in the bucolic setting of a Zen retreat space. His appreciation for the ‘voluptuous economy’ of materials, his eating dishes and utensils – as well as the regimented Zendo lifestyle that teaches how to share a meal silently, and mindfully, in community – suit his contemplative lifestyle and his humanity. While maintaining the sacred regimen, he writes, composes and records music atop the mountain retreat in his private cabin. And he serves his Roshi elder as a devoted loving disciple and friend, with conscious awareness of avoiding a guru-disciple ‘trip’ – seeing it all as part of his Buddhist practice. After returning to Los Angeles following his retreat, where he lived with his daughter and granddaughter, Cohen was prolific: writing songs, recording and releasing new albums, and concertizing globally. His iconic songs – ‘Suzanne’ (1967) and ‘Hallelujah’ (1984) – among many others, too numerous to mention – that were realized through the experiential trappings of living, are extraordinarily relatable. Cohen’s music and his music career have traversed decades since the 1960s, buoyed by Zen Buddhist teachings: a productive singer-songwriter who found his quest for religious identity and freedom – both – remarkably liberating.

Adam Yauch: Beastie Boys, Buddhist hip hop and Freedom Concerts Buddhist practitioners in the punk arena as well as hip hop and other genres gave an ‘awakening mind’ a voice, offering an alternative to self-destruction – destruction of a ‘self’ that needs to be put before the needs of others. In 1994, Yauch’s song ‘Bodhisattva Vow’ was released as track nineteen on the Beastie Boys’ fourth studio album, Ill Communication (1994). In 1997, as if enacting the vow itself,17 Yauch organized the Tibetan Freedom Concert. It was held in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, with proceeds going to the Milarepa Fund. Themes of freedom of expression, altruism, social justice, freedom of religion and spirituality drew two billion television viewers to the megaconcert, just at the dawning of the internet. At one point, Tibetan monks stood shoulder to shoulder at the front of the stage, and performed traditional monastic chant. Some cheered the monks approvingly, others stood in silence. The mimesis invoked by the awkward reception could be read as poignant – both audience responses led to what would be understood as a moment of cross-cultural displacement, which gave organizers and participants more familiar with Buddhist traditions an important confirmation of the need for the concerts. The following year, Bono and U2 cancelled a previously scheduled concert in Chicago announcing publicly that they wanted to ensure they were in Washington DC for Yauch’s second Tibetan Freedom Concert – a two-day line-up to accommodate all the artists who wanted to participate. Yauch’s song ‘Boddhisattva Vow’ was couched formally in a standard verse-chorus structure, but it expressed in the arresting and boisterous rap aesthetic of emphatic delivery that the Beastie Boys were known for. The hook was an opening half-minute of Tibetan Buddhist ritual chant, and a recurrent refrain to the same throughout. Yauch’s lyric exhorted the possibility of altruistic intentionality as a way of life, once one made the commitment – the foundational vow of the Mahayana path, recognizing the suffering beyond oneself, that of all sentient beings. 157

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Yauch’s passing at the young age of forty-seven was not without his establishing a solid legacy as having written the essential Mahayana aspect into a hip-hop song, and then acting on it by staging the multi-artist, multi-genre Tibetan Freedom Concerts.

Conclusion: Buddhist-inflected popular musical styles and context-appropriate sounds Today, many Western popular musicians and recording artists adopting Buddhism as a personal spiritual tradition have written or improvised songs with Buddhist themes and, in doing so, have transformed themselves as well as audiences.18 At the same time that Western artists have been composing songs exploring Buddhist themes – influenced, as they often are, by Buddhist teachings on meditation methods – Tibetan artists-in-exile have been expressing their personal Buddhist faith, devotion, and understanding in new musical ways for Western audiences. Buddhism is currently undergoing a renaissance in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, wherein contemporary music is likewise imbued with Buddhist philosophical perspectives. Certainly, in the West, popular musicians embracing Tibetan Buddhism do not all sound similar. The context of each community’s musical vibes and interests shape artists’ repertoires, as the following examples will illustrate. Joan Zen is currently a popular band in Missoula, a college town in Western Montana, completing their third album of faith-imbued dharma lyrics delivered in a recognizable bluessoul vibe. They have a local following in several towns and small cities nearby, where they play in both nightclubs and peace festivals. Joan, originally from Memphis, is the lead singer with a four-octave range. Her husband, Jason, from San Diego, is a recording engineer, jazz musician and producer. Both are avid songwriters, and during weekdays serve a Tibetan Buddhist master in a local dharma community to which they give tremendous effort and receive much meaning. At their recent weekend gigs, they have become less focused on playing cover tunes, which is about one-half of their repertoire, because their original songs have engaging hooks and writing and performing them is a labour of love. As Buddhist practitioners, they see their dharma-inflected music and its increasing popularity as an extension of who they are becoming. The songwriting allows them to tell the story of many of their experiences into songs, like ‘Being Mindful’, which is a genuine heartfelt expression of the benefits of meditation. They are transitioning to playing more originals by recording this new album of dharma songs in their own blues-soul music vernacular.19 Similarly, Laurie Anderson and her husband Lou Reed performed in the New York avantgarde music scene for decades. Both are students of Yongey Mingur Rinpoche, and they utilized Tibetan Buddhist practices to prepare for Lou’s passing. Anderson’s film and performance art Heart of a Dog explores her experiences of the passing of husband, her mother and her dog, all within a short period. The film includes Buddhist teachings on death, bardo (the stage in between death and rebirth), and impermanence. Performing for an audience of dogs, Anderson enacts a fundamental tenet: that all sentient beings were our mothers and fathers from former lives. Timothy Leary prescribed that such experiences as death and dying be musically induced and accompanied, in his book The Psychedelic Experience, which drew from an ancient manual

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The Tibetan Book of the Dead that describes in detail how to navigate the bardo, the states of consciousness between this life and the next. ‘Tibetan singing bowls’ are a fascinating instance of a modern hunger for sonic spirituality that was invented in the West (in San Francisco, it is believed). These now ubiquitous ‘dharma items’ (Trungpa 1973) – an example of spiritual materialism – are accepted as a musical inducement to contemplative states at the start of meditation sessions in Buddhist centres throughout the world. My Tibetan teachers have said that nowhere in Tibet – not in Kham (Eastern Tibet), Ngari (West Tibet), U-Tsang (Central Tibet) nor Amdo (Northeastern Tibet) – had they ever seen or heard of such a bowl. We might add that it likely would not have been called a ‘Tibetan singing bowl’ if it had existed in Tibet. The Tibetan exile recording artist and film-maker, Karma Emchi, has shown, through his gift for comedic songwriting, that rap can be both a powerful form of cultural survival, and a way to extoll the virtues of traditional Tibetan Buddhist culture. His delivery of Tibetan culturalspecific life lessons, within the globally popular musical medium of ‘rhythm and poetry’ (rap), has taken hold throughout the Tibetan exile community. His original song and music video about a traditional Tibetan food, Shaphaley, a meat patty, is both an expression of cultural pride and didactic in suggesting how to respect one’s parents, considered an all-important practice within Tibetan Buddhist culture.20 He has also had a popular reception for his song on the Tibetan Alphabet (featuring its thirty consonants and five vowels), which is intended to inspire Tibetans to improve their Tibetan literacy as a way to connect with their cultural identity. Songs of love and respect for one’s mother of this life, a centuries old genre of Tibetan song, has been recently popularized across China by Yadong, the national music award-winning Tibetan popular recording artist, with his ballad and music video ‘Ama’ (‘Mother’). These variegated musical expressions of Buddhism are appropriate in the particular contexts in which they are expressed, each of the artists utilizing the modern popular musical vernacular most relevant to their communities. In several cases, their music may also have global relevance and resonate far beyond their immediate audiences. In the same way, they emulate Buddha Shakyamuni’s life of teaching: for over forty years after achieving enlightenment, he taught in different ways, and gave distinctive instructions, to the various communities wherever he travelled – again, appropriate to the population and their interests at the time.

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Chapter 14

Japanese Religion and Popular Music Jennifer Milioto Matsue

At the loud cry of the priest, Ferreira did not so much as raise his head. Eyes lowered he answered like a puppet without emotion: ‘This country is a swamp. In time you will come to see that for yourself. This country is a more terrible swamp than you can imagine. Whenever you plant a sapling in this swamp the roots begin to rot; the leaves grow yellow and wither. And we have planted the sapling of Christianity in this swamp’. (Endō 1966:147)

Complicating religion in contemporary Japan Japanese religion is difficult to identify, with a complicated history and ambiguous position in contemporary society. When further tasked with locating connections between religion and popular music, little leaps to mind – no prominent performers, genres or scenes – that explicitly play with religious iconography, texts or practice. Although obviously impossible to say definitively there is no religious popular music in Japan today (as the details below most certainly prove there is a spattering of underground performers and movements), the lack of prominent ‘obvious’ intersections and absence of devotional expression reveals much about Japanese culture’s experience of religion in general. In the case of Japan then, asking why there is a lack of religious connection to contemporary popular music may be equally, if not more important than exploring where a correlation does exist. The difficulty in locating Japanese religion in popular music results first from the convoluted position of religion as ritual or philosophy, much discussed in literature (Davis 1992; Reader, Andreasen and Stefansson 1993; Kornicki and McMullen 1996; Earhart 1997; Tanabe 1999; Swanson and Chilson 2006; Ellwood 2008; Josephson 2012; Leaf 2014; Matsui 2014). Several major religions permeate Japan, including the indigenous, animistic Shintō and the self-reliant imported Buddhism, a small percentage of Christians and Muslims, and increasingly diversified so-called new religions. Even within Shintō, there exists tremendous regional variance, and within Buddhism nearly limitless numbers of sects. As of 2013 there are an estimated 88,549 Shintō, 85,282 Buddhist, 9,347 Christian, and another 36,761 organizations, including those devoted to Islam and new religions (Agency for Cultural Affairs 2013). As noted above, whether these are engaged with as actual religions or more passive belief systems, however, continues to be debated. This results from a certain relaxed attitude of Japanese in general where religion is less devotional practice and more performative, involving activities one does without engaging further in doctrine. Most Japanese in fact would probably tell you that they are not ‘religious’ and do not ‘believe’; however, when asked if they visit a Shintō shrine on

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New Year’s Day, or invite the local priest to lead a groundbreaking ceremony for a new home, or whether they expect to have a Buddhist cremation, they likely would respond ‘yes’, seemingly adhering to the tenets of one system in the morning and another at night. Religious beliefs thus are pervasive in everyday life, but not necessarily something that someone actively practises as it were, rather they are performed ritual, and play with religious ideology is quite possible. The Japanese keen ability to take what they want from imported forms and disregard the rest, no doubt also informs the ambiguous position of religion. For example, every December Christmas trees are decorated, lights strung and Santa Clause brings gifts, but there is decidedly no ‘Christ in Christmas’ in Japan. Japanese engagement with religions often demands a certain flexibility that not all belief systems allow. In the opening quote, Shūsaku Endō (1923–66) articulates one of the most famous ideas from his revered novel Silence (1966) as he identifies Japan as a ‘terrible swamp’. According to the translator Johnston, Endō wrote this novel, historical fiction about a Jesuit missionary in seventeenth-century Japan, to argue ‘Christianity must adapt itself radically if it is to take root in the ‘swamp’ of Japan’ (1969: vii). Johnston further explains, ‘Japan is a swamp because it sucks up all sorts of ideologies, transforming them into itself and distorting them in the process’ (ibid: xv). Through dialogue between Endō’s main characters Ferreira and Rodrigues, we hear a debate about the Japanese inability to grasp the Christian concept of God. Ferreira, who perceives himself a failed missionary by this point in the narrative, bemoans ‘What the Japanese of that time [of brief missionary fervor] believed in was not our God. It was their own gods. For a long time we failed to realize this and firmly believed that they had become Christians’ (ibid: 147). Ferreira concludes, ‘Even in the glorious missionary period you [referring to the priest Rodrigues] mentioned the Japanese did not believe in the Christian God but in their own distortion’ (ibid: 148). Endō, thus through his character’s dismay, paints a truly negative picture of the failure of Christianity in Japan; a result of the Japanese penchant to adapt cultural practice, and here religion specifically, to suit specific needs, rather than adapting oneself to the needs of the religion. These religious traditions and broader philosophical ideas nevertheless exert tremendous influence on Japanese cultural identity. According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 79.2 per cent of Japanese claim some level of affiliation with Shintō, 66.8 per cent with Buddhism, a small 1.5 per cent with Christianity, and 7.1 per cent with ‘others’, including the numerous new religions. The high percentage of people identifying with both Shintō and Buddhism results in the statistics totalling well over 100 per cent (Central Intelligence Agency 2012). The online Japanese Christian magazine Christian Today summarized a 2005 survey initially conducted by the well-known Yomiuri Newspaper (読売新聞) regarding religious beliefs (n.a. Christian Today 2005). Among 1798 respondents, when asked if one believes in a certain religion, 75 per cent answered no, while 23 per cent answered yes. However, when asked if one had ever prayed for assistance from the Shintō gods or from Buddha, 54 per cent responded affirmatively, while 44 per cent declined. More interestingly, 47 per cent of people who claimed no religious belief nevertheless have prayed for assistance. And of these 75 per cent who do not believe in any religion, 81 per cent regularly visit Shintō shrines, Buddhist temples, or even Christian churches and mosques. And finally, 35 per cent of respondents felt that religious belief could lead to a happier life, while 60 per cent made no such connection. Clearly for the majority of Japanese, religious rituals are performative and not necessarily associated with strong beliefs in faith in a god-like figure, or understanding of doctrine. Therefore, 161

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given the lack of devotional practice in everyday lives, the absence of which feels very Japanese, it is not surprising that Japanese popular music does not actively engage religion. Japanese could even be avoiding (whether conscious or unconscious) any association with new religions in particular, as will be seen below.

From matsuri (festivals) to Handel’s ‘Messiah’ Each of the major identifiable forms of religion noted above nevertheless incorporates traditional and folk musics and dance into devotional practice, from the formal court dances of Shintō to Buddhist chanting of sutra, and even Christian hymnody and folk song. Within these main branches there exists tremendous diversity, with local variances and many unique forms of religious folk and traditional music (Kishibe 1984; Malm 2000; Wade 2005; Tokita and Hughes 2008). Collectively, these practices inform the ways in which popular music engages with religious ideology, and therefore the following section summarizes a few of these traditions before moving on to examples of popular music. Shintō, which translates as ‘the way of the gods’, is flexible enough to allow for local beliefs with loose practice to flourish, while also serving the needs of the imperial court, which actually claims lineage to the gods, and thus requires numerous prescribed rituals (see Milioto Matsue 2015 for further discussion). Today there are many Shintō shrines (jinja) in which different deities reside that people visit for guidance and assistance, ranging from the smallest shelf in the corner of one’s house (kami-dana) to the grandest of structures and compounds that are globally recognized as national treasures. These shrines are entered through the iconic gate (torii), typically constructed of wood brightly painted red or recently with more practical concrete, which marks the sacred space beyond (see Figure 14.1). Both a healthy connection with nature and emphasis on purity are particularly important in Shintō aesthetics. In general, Shintō can be understood as marking major moments in life, such as the birth of a child, coming of age, marriage and building a home, which are celebrated in numerous rituals and festivals (matsuri). Shintō in general is less involved with the afterlife, an

Figure 14.1  Torii at Fushimi Inari Taisha.

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area of concern that falls under Buddhism’s care, thus feeding the ability for these two religions to happily coexist (Reischauer and Jansen 1995: 203–15; Hendry 2003: 126–43; Karan 2005: 70–6). The gods of Japan have long enjoyed the performing arts, as well demonstrated by the myth of Amaterasu, the sun goddess who once hid herself in a cave, consequently blanketing the earth in darkness, only to be enticed from her hiding spot by the performance of the maiden Ama no Uzume. Shintō music and dance, in general known as kagura, accompanies rituals in courtly, refined contexts (mikagura), large national shrine events (okagura) and community-oriented local folk festivals (satokagura) (Malm 2000: 48–9). The grander imperial court orchestra and its repertoire (both known as gagaku or ‘noble or elegant music’), imported from China between the seventh and ninth centuries, became associated with Shintō ritual practice. While larger shrines, for example, even today may have female attendants (miko) who perform dances for the gods (miko-mai). However, these types of esoteric performance are uncommon in the everyday life of contemporary Japanese, many of who will never experience neither the courtly orchestra nor the shrine dance first-hand, but nevertheless are aware of the existence of both (ibid: 47–65). Festivals, generally known as matsuri, on the other hand, remain a significant part of life in both rural and urban areas of Japan. Matsuri are often associated with particular seasons, with many in the autumn as the harvest season comes to a close, and of course New Year’s Day, which is celebrated quite differently than the North America penchant for ‘drinking until the ball drops’ in Times Square. Although these matsuri vary tremendously throughout Japan, they typically

Figure 14.2  Shishi ‘lion’ dance. 163

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feature lively music and dance (see Figure 14.2; see Milioto Matsue 2015 for further discussion of folk dance). Although these festivals’ origins are grounded in religious belief, many Japanese of course participate without the intent of communing with the gods. Rather, these types of religious folk festivities build community, but also may be seen as serving a function commonly associated with popular music, namely to entertain. Buddhism also exerts a strong presence both in the cultural history of Japan, evidenced by the number of Buddhist-inspired artworks and sculptures, as well as contemporary society. First introduced during the Nara period (710–94), Buddhism was promoted as the state religion, and today there are now 220,000 Buddhist monks (sō) and, as noted above, over 85,000 temples (tera or jiin), albeit distinguishing between shrines and temples is difficult as they often inhabit the same grounds (Reischauer and Jansen 1995: 203–15; Hendry 2003: 126–43; Karan 2005: 70–6). There are many sects of Buddhism, but they share a general understanding that there is one Buddha who found enlightenment and was released from the cycle of suffering (SteinnilberOberlin 2011). According to Reischaeur and Jansen, Buddhism is similar to Christianity with its concern about the afterlife (1995: 203–15). In the simplest terms, Buddhists believe in a never-ending cycle of suffering lives (samsāra or rinne in Japanese). This suffering derives from worldly attachment and desires. But one can be freed from suffering through the teachings of Buddha and be released from samsāra and reach nirvana (nehan in Japanese). Today there are many sects of Buddhism, but they share the key practice of chanting sutras (shōmyō) imported from China and Korea in the early Nara period (see Figure 14.3). And indeed, the practice of chanting or singing religious text is common throughout religious traditions (Ellingson 6249). Early components of Japanese music theory, including scale types, came from China to Japan through shōmyō, which is both meditative and incredibly musical. Shōmyō are typically a responsorial performance with a lead singer making a statement followed by choral response, slow tempo and predominantly free rhythmic feel (see Milioto Matsue 2015 for further discussion). Even when there are moments when a pulse seems discernable there is no sense of metre, but rather a spilling forth of the sutra through what Malm describes as ‘liquid, sliding

Figure 14.3  ‘Hannya Shingyo’. 164

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movement between pitches’ (Malm 2000: 70), which, depending on the sect, is supported by instruments marking passage through the text. Since the sutras originate in India and travelled through China to Japan, they can be sung in Indian dialect, Chinese or Japanese. The average Japanese would of course be familiar with the sound of these sutras, if not the actual meaning, which have existed in Japan for well over 1,000 years. Christianity, on the other hand, was first introduced in the late sixteenth century, when Portuguese priests came to Japan, of course bringing hymns along with them. These Christians at first were embraced by political leaders, but later were tortured and expelled by the Tokugawa shōgun (head of the political pyramid) during this period of Japan’s heightened isolation (1603– 1868) for somewhat ambiguous reasons (Endō 1969: ix). Protestant missionaries would arrive again in the late nineteenth century, with essentially the same music as found elsewhere during this era of global missionizing, and which now is quite familiar to the average Japanese. However, as indicated above, only between 1 and 2 per cent of the population claims Christianity as their religion, in large part due to the inability of the restrictive requirements of monotheistic belief to blend well with existing religions and the need for flexibility by the Japanese. The Christianity that was introduced into Japan was simply too Western to succeed. Johnston elaborates ‘Hellenistic Christianity does not fit Japan, neither does it (in the opinion of many) suit the modern West; if the notion of God has to be rethought for Japan … so has it to be rethought for the modern West’ (Endō 1969: xvii). And even those who embrace Christianity in Japan often participate in Buddhist and Shintō practices as well. Christianity’s limited influence through conversion, however, belies its impact via the many schools and universities of Christian origin in Japan (Reischauer and Jansen 1995: 203–15). While the popularity of Endō’s Silence ‘would seem to proclaim a Japan not indifferent to Christianity but looking for that form of Christianity that will suit its national character’ (Endō 1969: xviii). Christian music not surprisingly has immensely impacted Japan as well, first through hymns, but also the European art music infused with references to the Christian God, and even today in folk-oriented Christian singer-songwriters. But although Shubert’s ‘Ave Marie’ or Handel’s ‘Messiah’ are probably more well known than traditional Japanese music, the average Japanese is highly likely not connecting with the religious intent – the works have become secularized and are embraced for sound or style, as well as the ideological association with the West, but not necessarily for their expression of a religious belief system. Japanese, so accustomed to imported musics, often listen to vocals as sound without really connecting to textual meaning. Therefore, although it is of course possible anywhere in the world to find great appreciation for musical qualities without any connection to devotional intent in the lyrics, this is especially true in Japan. Indeed, today many Japanese are in fact extremely wary of religion, and even if devout, disinterest in publically pronouncing one’s adherence has only increased since the horrific murder committed by members of the Aum Shinrikyō. A new religion often referred to as a ‘doomsday cult’, Aum released sarin gas in Matsumoto in 1994 and Tokyo in 1995, killing nineteen people and injuring many more (Seto 2001). Sugimoto describes key historical events that shape the ‘global generation’ of young Japanese who came of age ‘during and after the collapse of international socialism following the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989’ and then this dreadful terrorist act (2010: 79). He argues these ‘two dramatic events … marked the end of ideals for political progressivism and spiritual reformism and created a vacuum for firm belief and fervent conviction. To fill the 165

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void, the global generation increasingly lives in the virtual world where the line between reality and fiction is blurred’ (ibid: 79). And one Japanese I interviewed who was in his twenties at the time remembers well an Aum campaign song broadcast repeatedly near his home in Tokyo when Shōkō Asahara (their leader, who is now sitting on death row in Japan) ran for The House of Representatives (Aum Shinrikyō 1989). This no doubt is an ominous musical reminder of this horrible tragedy that so negatively impacted Japanese of all ages. To be sure, a history of intense prosecution of Christians, coupled with Aum’s recent transgression and the consequent avoidance of being associated with new religions, has made many Japanese even more sceptical of religion, especially those requiring active, participatory and exclusionary practice, leading some to hide any religious affiliations.

Mixed messages in heavy metal, hip hop and ‘Hannya Shingyō’ Despite limited active connection with or expression of institutionalized religion in general in Japan today, popular music nevertheless may be understood as intersecting with either specific religious practices or broader concepts in myriad ways. As interest in traditional religiosity, for example, declines not only in Japan, but also around the world, popular music has become an important conduit through which one can reach youth, build community and convey meaning. As with many traditions throughout history, music especially is able to deliver the meaning of religious doctrine with power and sustain the interest of the people (Sutcliffe 2011) by appealing to the irrational, emotional and instinctive part of us, especially through the voice and dance (de Rosen 2010). And popular music in particular is capable of both reaching youth and affirming identity, all the more important with the sharp declining interest among younger generations to pursue any religion. For the extremely limited numbers of Japanese Christians, for example, singing light folk music (with acoustic guitars and several vocalists as one might find in numerous congregations around the world on any given Sunday morning) is not only intended to convert followers, but also to uphold one’s commitment as a devotional practice among established believers, albeit music may serve both functions simultaneously (Goff 2012: 298). Japanese Christian heavy metal group Imari Tones similarly uses a vernacular, and here obviously a much more edgy style, to reach young Japanese, spreading Christian ideals while also affirming their own religious identity. Originating in 2004, the Yokohama-based band claims they are ‘The First Christian Heavy Metal band from Japan!’ (Imari Tones Official Website) still active today as indicated by their Twitter account, YouTube channel and recent release of a new album, Revive the World, in October 2015. The three members Tak, Hassy and Jake, who publicize themselves in both English and Japanese, are self-described as performing an incredibly diverse hard rock/heavy metal. They further pronounce their musical and religious goals on their new album in the following: Just like any other album from Imari Tones, the driving force behind it is spiritual joy and excitement. This spiritual elevation is a result from their touring experience both in Japan and USA, playing numerous venues including street festivals, camping sites, schools, churches and skateparks. … Tak [their guitarist and vocalist] also talks about the story behind the album title and artwork. ‘The world is changing rapidly recently. Especially in Japan, after the 2011 Tsunami and nuclear power plant disaster, things are really uncertain. 166

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The future is unknown and we are all hurting. This world needs a healing. A spiritual healing. We need more Love, not Hate. So this is our spiritual healing in the music form.’ Also Tak doesn’t forget to mention the band’s most important message. ‘We wanted to prove we can do it all in a form of Christian Rock. I think Christian rock scene is very much saturated for a long time now. So, as a band from Japan where Christianity is still rare and perceived differently, we wanted to throw something fresh. I’m sure people will smile when they hear our almost-ridiculous straightforward message screaming “I ride for JESUS!”’. (Imari Tones Revive the World) The album description makes their motivation clear, first noting the general feelings of uncertainty invading Japan, especially following the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami (which could in fact inspire more people to find solace and support in religion), before moving to the specific Christian message the group desires to spread. With the majority of their songs in English, however, one wonders how compelling this message is to Japanese audiences (and currently they only have 570 followers on Twitter). The group nevertheless does connect with a global Christian heavy metal community, evidenced by attention they have received in such online sources as Christian Music Makers (Putnam 2011). The group prides themselves, and in turn inspires their limited followers, through combining original driving rock with their personal passion for Jesus. According to Putnam: To see their native Japan embrace Christianity, is what they reach for most of all, even while their sights are set on the USA and the rest of the world. Some think they’re a joke, or a contradiction, that Christianity, Japan, and heavy metal just don’t belong together. Some think they’re ahead of their time. But if you ask Tak, Hassy, and Jake, they’ll say they’re doing exactly what they love at exactly the right time, and they’re never going to stop reaching for more. (ibid.) Even within writings about the band, the perceived incompatibility of Christianity and Japan is often acknowledged, highlighting this group’s rare position all that much more. Not surprisingly, a variety of music styles are also used to spread Buddhist belief systems to a broader and potentially younger audience that has lost interest in the original esoteric shōmyō described above. Some branches within the popular Jōdo and Zen Buddhist sects have couched ideals and praise for Buddha or other great leaders and saints within Western hymn style settings (known as bukkyō sanka or sanbutsuka). This is well illustrated in a choral performance commemorating the 750th anniversary of the death of Shinran, the founder of the Jōdo sect (Jōdo Shinsyū Hongwanji 2010). As noted above, hymns long ago entered Japan and subsequently informed musical development through the modern era, and therefore today would be more accessible to the average Japanese than any traditional Buddhist chant. This example also highlights the necessary mixing of religious ideology that results, as the hymn’s original Christian association is supplanted with Buddhist sentiment, and thus further demonstrates the Japanese ability to adapt parts of a source into new religious contexts. The group Boxi, formed by Reverend Kazuhiro Sekino of the Evangelical Lutheran Tokyo Church, comprises Japanese Christian ministers and Buddhist monks (‘Boxi’ is a play on words for the Japanese term for pastor ‘bokushi’), using rock to spread a combined message, inspired by ‘daily meditations on life and the human spirit’ (Allman 2013). This example also reveals

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attempts to use popular culture to reach broad audiences, as well as the mash up of beliefshere between Buddhism and Christianity-that defines much Japanese religiosity. Other forms of popular music, however, are currently being employed to convey specific Buddhist teachings. Hip hop, not surprisingly with its primal emphasis on conveying meaningful ideas through rap, has become a powerful vehicle to reach youth in many contexts. Zanfagna, for example, explores hip hop and more specifically ‘gospel rap’ among inner-city youths in the United States who grew up surrounded by this culture. In response to concerns about declining membership, combined with recognition of the need of the church to address real social issues in the community, ‘holy hip-hop’ emerged to ‘glorify Jesus Christ to those who are living in and influenced by hiphop culture’ (78), successfully blending the secular and the sacred. Although not all adherents approve of the new genre, in large part because of the continued association of hip hop with negative behaviours, the ability for rap to convey religious meaning continues to spread globally, including in Japan. In amateur rapper and YouTuber Ryūichi’s version of the well-known sutra ‘Hannya Shingyō’, the original text (see Figure 14.3) is now translated into modern Japanese language, which both better fits rap, but also stands a greater chance of reaching a broad audience (Ryūichi 2014). Ryūichi’s motivations, however, are unclear, as he may in fact be using religion as a style in his music rather than using music to convey religious belief. In the hands of Gomyo (Kevin Seperic, an American ordained as a full priest in the esoteric Shingon Buddhist sect) there is no question about the purpose of his raps, which he developed to convey Buddhist ideals in both English and Japanese. He also established the ‘Hoodie Monks movement’ that marries Buddhism with hip-hop culture (Hoodie Monks n.d.; Blumberg 2015; Scott 2015) Inspired by the Beastie Boys’ ‘Bodhisattva Vow’ (1994) to explore rap, he later saw direct connections between Buddhism and hip hop. Hip-hop, he explains, is commonly divided into four elements or roles: the MC or rapper, the DJ or beat master, the graffiti artist and the B-boy or dancer. ‘These elements of hiphop do have a nice correlation with elements of Buddhist practice,’ Gomyo says. ‘The MC rapping is represented in Buddhism by chanting. The DJ or producer keeps the beat going; in Buddhism we use taiko drums or wooden blocks to keep the beat when chanting in a group.’ Gomyo adds that the visual element, which manifests itself in hip-hop culture through graffiti or street art, connects particularly well with the school of Buddhism he belongs to. … Gomyo says that the B-boy dancer element, or break dancing, could be matched with types of Buddhist dance, such as Bon Odori, but he acknowledges that this is an element the Hoodie Monks haven’t explored yet. (Scott 2015) Not surprisingly, this exploration is in large part motivated by the low numbers of youth interested in Buddhism. Gomyo explains: By expressing Buddhism through hip-hop culture, we hope to do two things: introduce people to Buddhist thought who might not otherwise be exposed to it, and offer an alternative to mainstream hip-hop, which is often preoccupied with materialism. In Japan, it’s not about exposing young people to Buddhism – it’s all around them – it’s more about showing them that Buddhism is more than something you do at funerals. It’s a useful tool in dealing with daily life and it can be cool. (ibid.)

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In the battle to keep Buddhism relevant, nothing could be cooler at this time than avatar Hatsune Miku, the incredibly popular personification of Crypton’s Vocal Synthesizer software (Milioto Matsue forthcoming). Today millions of fans worldwide write songs for Hatsune Miku’s digital voice to sing, or for her to perform as an anime character in 2D video and even live as a 3D hologram projected on stage. She too has released many versions of ‘Hannya Shingyō’, but in this particular example digitally voices the original sutra (see Figure 14.3) in a synthesized pop-rock setting as the text flashes across the screen (Kuwagata 2011). In this way, her modern digital body may be seen as bringing the classic Buddhist teachings to the young (at the time of writing there were nearly 139,000 views of this video, with other versions available through varying internet streaming sources). The composer is not clearly listed, and again, the intent is ambiguous – does he or she wish Hatsune Miku to encourage actual devotional chanting of the sutra? Or has religion become a musical stylization? This is a common question that must be asked of many similar examples of Japanese popular music featuring religious references. The Buddhist metal band Gokurakujodo’s actual adherence to Buddhism is similarly unclear (despite the band’s name, which translates to ‘nirvana’), with some direct references to Buddhist teachings in their earlier work, but far fewer today (Gokurakujodo n.d.). Although they may play with the visual iconography of Buddhist monks on stage, wearing traditional clothing or sporting a basket on the head as did wandering monks centuries ago, given the play with religious iconography that permeates Japan, such accoutrement simply may be seen as cool rather than committed. Japanese therefore may intertwine traditional religiosity and popular music to affirm a shared identity or spread beliefs, but on the other hand, given the penchant for play, render religion fashion through referencing musical, textual and visual ideology and iconography without any faith.

Alternative spirituality in psychedelic-trance raves Although the above illustrates various intersections between popular music and institutionalized religion, declining interest globally has concomitantly inspired an increase in a more nebulous understanding of spirituality. According to Lynch, who explores shifting attitudes about religion in the West, much media now focuses on the idea of personal spirituality, drawing on ‘alternative, mystical, or esoteric religious sources in preference to traditional, doctrinal Christianity’ and other established forms, in turn fostering the growth of new means of finding one’s unique religious identity (2006: 481). Drawing on Partridge (2005a,b), Lynch further notes that ‘popular music has been an essential medium in the transmission and popularization of [these] alternative spiritual ideologies in postwar Western culture’, which are now supplanting major recognized religions (ibid: 483). Partridge refers to these alternative traditions as ‘occulture’, which he conceives as a heterogeneous cultural reservoir of esoteric, naturecentered, and Eastern spiritual ideologies and the various media and practices that perpetuate and transmit those ideologies. … As a consequence of this cultural transition, Partridge argues, traditional forms of religious belief and identity are increasingly seen as ‘uncool’ by younger adults, and become confined to specific religious youth subcultures. By contrast, alternative spiritualties and the cultural practices that sustain them have greater

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cultural capital, and may be regarded as more credible within mainstream youth cultures. (ibid: 483) Partridge traces a range of popular musics from rock to dance forms that have been influenced by these cultural ideologies and symbols, and which are evident in lyrics, graphics, visuals at performances and in the musicians’ interpretation of their own work. Alternative spirituality is also ‘encoded in auditory ways through the use of musical sounds … that denote a sense of cultural “otherness,” mystery, and ancient wisdom’ (ibid: 483). Festivals, from hippie happenings in the 1960s to raves in the 1980s and 1990s, are important for the transmission of these new spiritual beliefs. The ability of a popular music and its related scene to foster this type of spiritual exploration is well illustrated in the scene generated by psychedelic trance, or psytrance, a type of swirling techno music that enjoyed tremendous popularity in late 1990s Japan. Although such raves were similarly popular throughout the world, within Japan these could be offering an updated version of the Shintō matsuri, the taiko drum now replaced with a synthesized techno beat, but the connection to nature and recognition of the spiritual potency of one’s surroundings, and even one’s self remains. From 1998 to 2000 I periodically conducted fieldwork on the psytrance scene within and emanating from Tokyo; a scene that attracted much attention globally precisely because of the overt references to the types of alternative spirituality both Lynch and Partridge identify. Lynch, in the same article quoted above, next explores how St. John (2004a,b,c; 2006) locates alternative spirituality in the production of psytrance music, and specifically the organization of these events and potential interpretations of meaning for participants in the scene (ibid: 484). St. John argues: Techno-shamanism, the notion of the rave as sacralized tribal gathering, Paganism and ecospirituality … are all in evidence in the narratives of psy-trance dance events organizers and various media surrounding the psy-trance scene. Indeed, the timing and location of some psy-trance events (e.g., solstice parties at Stonehenge, or the full moon parties of Goa and the Bay Area, or the global parties of Earth Healing Day) are clearly influenced by such alternative spiritualties. (ibid: 484) In Tokyo at the end of the twentieth century, a wide variety of individuals regularly attended such psytrance raves seeking refuge from an oppressive social environment; they were searching for a new and distinct ‘tribe’ far removed from urban life. Participants I interviewed professionally ranged from college students to businessmen, as well as many who simply worked part-time solely to pay for the expensive entry fees. Ages varied from early twenties to sixty, although by the time I left the scene in 2000 the popularity of these gatherings proliferated among young people, transforming the ethos of the community and disappointing some of the older adherents, as the eco-spirituality that St John mentions decreased and events became increasingly commercial and aggressive. Regardless of one’s age or background, however, there was a common ‘uniform’ worn by all performers at a psytrance rave that expressed connection with shamanism and a commitment to other levels of consciousness (reminiscent of 1960s hippie fashion and ideology), consisting of very tight Lycra ‘party pants’ in bright, psychedelic, swirling patterns for both men and women (see Figure 14.4). 170

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Figure 14.4  Psytrance party clothes.

Often women wore similarly psychedelic bikini tops, and men the various trance trademark t-shirts, with iconic images, such as the ‘third eye’ to represent opening one’s mind. Both men and women sported hip pouches and other accoutrement with references to Native American culture, just as in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco decades ago, but now with a modern flare that reflected the digital music. This clothing was designed for dancing, but also constitutes a type of religious marker; one needed the required uniform to be accepted into this exclusive community – to this unique tribe united in its search for heightened awareness through music and dance. Trance performers usually only wore this clothing in the safe space of the party, feeling overwhelmed when they emerged from a club in the foggy dawn, changing in bathrooms at stations before boarding trains to return to their humdrum ‘normal’ lives. Significant for the discussion at hand, much as in the 1960s and 1970s, many individuals claimed to be seeking spiritual enlightenment not only through music and dance, but also through hallucinogenic drugs, with the rave allowing a relatively safe space for experimentation with acid, ecstasy and speed to aid their exploration. Drug use enhanced what St John denotes ‘as a “difference engine,” a cultural mechanism through which participants may experience some form of transformation, which may be referred to in terms of salvific discourses such as a raising of human consciousness, increased self-empowerment, deeper personal and spiritual integration,

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or reconnection with the sacred Earth’ (ibid: 484). Participant’s use of mind-alternating hallucinogens to aid this transformation at the rave was furthered by the nature of the music and intensity of the dance, which actually allowed some to reach euphoria through sheer exertion without any medicinal support. To be sure, this form of techno music is designed to heighten the ‘journey’ aspect of the experience, whether ‘high’ or not (see Hallucinogen’s ‘Angelic Particles,’ Twisted [1995] for a classic example of the even more specific genre known as ‘Goa psy-trance’). A single song opens slowly with atmospheric sounds as the underlying beat enters, then adds layers of hypnotic repeating melodic motifs that spill one to the next, increasing textural density and often ascending in pitch as the piece progresses, intensifying the trip through sonic pathways until a penultimate peak moment, and thus facilitating the listener’s transformative experience from beginning to end with each track. This view can be further expanded to address the ritual process of the entire rave event, reminiscent of Arnold Van Gennep’s and later Victor Turner’s theoretical approaches encapsulated in the ideas of liminality and communitas, through which community members are symbolically transformed in a rite of passage. Japanese participants agree that the experience is centrally located around dancing through the night, culminating in a group catharsis at the penultimate moment of the rave, sunrise. Indeed, the best DJs are reserved for the early morning slot, coordinating their music with the moment the sun actually rises, whether the event is taking place indoors or outside (see Figure 14.5). When the sun rises all the performers experience an intense moment of shared emotional release, cheering on the DJ and exchanging glances with neighbours – a moment of communal religious ecstasy – shared not only by those at the particular event, but other ravers throughout the world searching for a new spirituality at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Figure 14.5  Psytrance sunrise.

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Ritual in the underground Tokyo hard-core scene Religion thus may be located not in the actual voicing of values and beliefs of an established Japanese tradition, but rather in the search for a new spiritual identity. This nevertheless may involve established ritual – such as wearing certain clothing, consuming drugs and dancing to dawn – in order to join and share in the communal experience. As with the rave culture detailed above, participation in other underground music styles in late 1990s Japan involved specific rituals, as well as an understanding and acceptance of specific values, to secure admission. Within what I label as the underground Tokyo hard-core scene – a network of individuals and institutions that performed light hard-core rock in the late 1990s (Milioto Matsue 2008a,b) – collectively performers valued perseverance above all else. This ideal is captured in two important Japanese expressions: ganbaru (to do one’s best) and gaman suru (to persevere). Ganbaru further implies working tenaciously, a common word of encouragement for students preparing for a big exam to businessmen completing a presentation for work. Gaman, on the other hand, actually originates in Zen Buddhism, and therefore has been translated as ‘enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity’ (n.a. Smithsonian American Art Museum 2010), bringing in healthy respect for suffering while working towards one’s goal. For example, female lead singers often smoked excessively to ‘crush’ voices and create the desired gravelly

Figure 14.6  Hardcore vocalist. 173

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sound, while men adorned their noses with breathing strips, to either in fact aid breathing during intense performances, or in the least, enhance the image that they were physically asserting themselves; one should suffer for this art, as doing so makes the result more worthwhile (see Figure 14.6). Although rock stars sweat and swagger across stages throughout the world, there is a prevalent cultural valuing of perseverance (both to ganbaru and to gaman) in Japan, and here we can interpret these acts as important ritual central to the identity of this community.

Conclusion Despite my own initial concern that I would not find any connection between religion and popular music in Japan, this research proved that there are intersections, even if limited or not quite what one would expect. The Japanese do customarily express religious ideas and even devotion through traditional and folk music and dance and have wholeheartedly embraced Christian hymnody and European art music inspired by the church. But in these cases, we find varying degrees of adherence to the belief systems that generate these performance practices, with Japanese participating in rituals and consuming music without connecting with the associated doctrine. Popular music also may at times convey religious meaning, but only to those interested and willing to hear the message. Otherwise the religious references become style rather than substance. Despite a general reluctance to attach to any single defined religious practice, some Japanese do look for new types of spiritual enlightenment enhanced by popular music, or find meaning through performing the rituals of an underground musical community. Therefore, if we expand definitions of religion to allow the flexibility that the Japanese employ, then perhaps we could convince Endō’s Ferreira that the swamp of Japan actually is a fertile field fostering the growth of innovative melded religious ideas and spiritual realities.

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Chapter 15

Chinese Religions and Popular Music Vicky Ho

In this chapter,1 we will venture into the intersection of Chinese religions and popular music. But before we do so, first of all, what are ‘Chinese religions’? Many scholars would concur that to study religion in the Chinese context is a daunting task, not least because ‘religion’ is a fuzzy category to the Chinese (Yang and Lang 2011). People in Chinese societies generally find it difficult to declare a clear religious identity such as a Buddhist or Taoist. This might lead to the inaccurate impression that Chinese societies are mainly ‘non-religious’. However, many Chinese who claim to have ‘no religion’ would also admit to hold religious beliefs such as supernatural retribution or practice religious rituals such as visiting Chinese temples, praying to Chinese gods and ancestral worships. Such curious phenomena have prompted further investigation and scholars have realized the inadequacy of employing Western theories, and even the Western concept of ‘religion’, to explain religious phenomena in the Chinese context (Company 2003; Fan 2011; Li 2010). Indeed, there exist significant differences in Chinese and Western notions of religion. The Western specification of ‘religion’ tends to emphasize institutional structures and systematic doctrines, and a distinct dichotomy between the sacred and the profane. In contrast to this kind of ‘institutional religion’, Chinese religions are ‘diffused’ throughout Chinese culture (Yang 1961). According to anthropologist Li Yih-yuan (2010), Chinese religious beliefs penetrate into ‘every aspect’ of the usual activities of people’s daily life. Li suggests that Chinese religions are essentially expressed as the cosmic view and ethical view of Chinese people. Chinese people are not used to identifying themselves with an exclusive religious membership. Nor do they make a clear separation between the sacred and the secular. Yet many of their daily practices, ranging from traditional medicine, the naming system, the belief in fengshui (a kind of geomancy), to ancestral worship, are richly shaped by religious assumptions. While religious and spiritual beliefs and practices that exist outside the sphere of institutional religion in the West have caught attention only in recent decades, Chinese religions have always been decidedly more diffuse in character. In this chapter, an overview of Chinese religions will first be given to familiarize the readers with some of the integral characteristics and ideas of Chinese religions. It will then discuss the relationship between Chinese religions and popular music. The topic could be treated in terms of ‘popular music in Chinese religions’ and ‘Chinese religions in popular music’. A brief section will explain how the adoption of popular music forms for religious use is related to certain basic assumptions about religious music held by Chinese religions. More detailed discussions will be devoted to the incorporation of elements of Chinese religions in popular music.

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Overview of Chinese religions The term ‘Chinese religions’ usually refers to the three main religious traditions (the ‘three teachings’) of Confucianism, Taoism (or Daoism) and Buddhism, with the addition of different Chinese popular/folk religions. A brief overview of these traditions will be provided in the following to give a glimpse of the main characteristics of Chinese religions. Confucianism is often regarded as the central organizing philosophy for Chinese (or even Asian) societies. The principal concern of Confucius’ teaching is the pursuit of perfect human conduct in a communal context as the moral foundations of a just and harmonious society (Poceski 2009). Social organization depends upon human beings’ cultivation of such virtues as compassion (ren), righteousness (yi), loyalty (zhong), and faithfulness (xin) in their social relationships. These values form an integral part of Chinese ethics. There have been recurring debates about whether Confucianism should be regarded as a religion, partly because of the strong focus on human life and general disinterest in the supernatural and afterlife in Confucius’ teachings. For instance, in Analects (Lun yu) Confucius is quoted for suggesting that one should ‘show reverence to the ghosts and the spirits while keeping a distance from them’. However, certain of Confucius’ teachings, such as the reverence for Heaven (tian) and the effort to discern its will (dao) and to act accordingly, may also be interpreted as fundamentally religious (Poceski 2009). If Confucianism might be seen as primarily humanist, Taoism addresses additional supernatural dimensions as it deals with the transcendental cosmos and a range of spiritual practices. Taoism is also arguably the only native Chinese religion, as the status of Confucianism as a religion is somewhat debatable and Buddhism, the religious tradition to be discussed next, was imported from India. Taoism has experienced close interactions and cross-fertilization with other religions in its course of development though. For example, Taoist monastic orders and formal institutions were developed under the influence of Buddhism. Taoism is also said to be an open-ended tradition with a plurality of orientations or identities and the boundaries among them are ambiguous (Poceski 2009). Even its canonical text Daodejing is open to a wide range of interpretations because of its poetic language. Thus it would indeed be difficult to nail down a simple and uniform character of Taoism. That being said, Taoism generally advocates dao as ‘a fundamental ground of reality’; ‘the one indivisible and underlying reality in the cosmos, the creative source of life in all of its richness and variety that antecedes the formation of heaven and earth’ (Poceski 2009: 65). Human beings experience serendipity as they live in union with dao: live a simple life that is in tune with the spontaneous flow of the natural world and avoid unnecessary and self-centred efforts (the idea of ‘non-action’). Apart from dao, Taoism also emphasizes virtues and moral efficacy (de), which is cultivated through acting in accordance with dao (Gentz 2013). Buddhism entered China during the time of the early Eastern Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) and went through periods of significant transformation. Many of the early translations of Buddhist canonical texts and Buddhist concepts relied on appropriating terminology and ideas from native Chinese thought to aid comprehension and acceptance. Today different schools of Chinese Buddhism are practised. Chinese Buddhism generally holds the belief that everything in the world is driven by the law of karma. Any event is always both a cause and an effect of another, forming an endless cycle. It also holds a belief in reincarnation. Human is only one form of existence that various forms of life may transform into in afterlife. Therefore, virtuous acts are

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encouraged in order to bring blessings in the current life and favourable rebirth. Such Buddhist concepts as karma and reincarnation have been incorporated by other religious traditions like Taoism and folk religions and become widely ingrained in Chinese beliefs. Chinese popular religion represents ‘a broad range of prevalent ideas, beliefs and practices that are not officially part of any of the orthodox traditions, primarily represented by the three teachings’ (Poceski 2009: 164). Its major feature involves worshipping and supplicating to three broad categories of supernatural beings, namely gods, ancestors and ghosts. Chinese popular religion assumes that living people and supernatural beings are all connected through bonds of mutual influence within the same cosmic order. This is consistent with the cosmic view of a fundamental unity in the universe. Chinese popular religion is highly syncretic, adapting various ideas and practices of the three teachings such as the belief in hell and karmic causality from Buddhism, the moral standard from Confucianism, and the adoption of various modes of worship and the incorporation of deities from Buddhism and Taoism. Among the three teachings, it is said that the line between popular religion and Taoism is especially blurred (Poceski 2009). Chinese religions are characterized by a high level of inter-religious interaction. Of course, the three teachings have not always been in harmony with each other throughout Chinese history. Most contemporary scholars would also resist the idea of considering the three teachings as a unified ‘Chinese religion’. Rather, the unity and diversity of Chinese religions largely depend on interpretation and reinterpretation of religious symbols (Weller 1987). Indeed, many religious concepts, terms and symbols in Chinese religions are often borrowed and appropriated from various traditions. The highly syncretic approach to religion also explains why the Chinese are comfortable with open-ended and hybrid religious identities. Not only do they feel no pressure to make an exclusive commitment to a single religion, but they also display a tendency to synthesize various religious beliefs (Pye 1994).

Popular music in Chinese religions The relationship between Chinese religions and popular music could be discussed in two main respects: the adoption of popular music forms for religious use by Chinese religions, and the incorporation of Chinese religious elements in popular music intended for mass consumption. The degree to which Chinese religions adopt popular music forms for religious use is related to their perception of the function of religious music. In general, Chinese religious music is seen to serve ritualistic functions as well as the cultivation of the mind and body. Music is used in rituals particularly for summoning gods and ghosts since the Chinese believe in the mystical power of religious music in connecting with the spiritual realm. Particular sets of music passed down from tradition are used in different rituals. These are usually performed by priests or monks with Chinese musical instruments. As such, it would be difficult to replace or fuse this music with popular genres. Besides, music is also used for cultivating the purity of the mind and healing the body in Chinese religions. Calming music is preferred to aid meditation and avoid draining of energy. For example, in line with the Taoist philosophy of non-action, Taoist music embraces an aesthetic of simplicity and tranquillity which favours simple motifs, slow pacing, steadiness, and minimum tonal and rhythmic contrast (Pu Hengqiang 2013). Based on such a minimalist aesthetic, popular music forms that seek to be catchy, intense and excessive are less likely to be

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adopted as meditative music. Yet this does not rule out the use of contemporary style soft music to accompany the chanting or singing of religious texts for meditation purposes. In general, the above perceived functions of religious music in Chinese religions to an extent limit the adoption of popular music forms for religious use.

Chinese religions in popular music The incorporation of Chinese religious elements in popular music intended for mass consumption is not uncommon. This chapter focuses on Chinese mainstream pop music. Initial academic study of Chinese popular music often focuses on Chinese rock, which is taken as a signifier of political resistance. However, this focus might not reflect so much of the actual popular musical tastes of the Chinese. This chapter chooses to discuss Mandarin pop (aka Mandopop) and Cantopop as representative of Chinese popular music, although they are less often explored in academic scholarship (Moskowitz 2010). While Shanghai was the birthplace of the Mandopop industry, the genre’s development in mainland China was stalled in the 1940s because of political turmoil. The production of Mandopop moved to Hong Kong during the Chinese civil war and then further spread to Taiwan as well. Mandopop from Taiwan developed in the 1960s, whereas in Hong Kong, another genre named Cantopop, sung in the Cantonese dialect which is spoken by the majority of HongKongese, also emerged in the 1970s. Taiwan and Hong Kong have since become the major production centres of Chinese popular music not only for their local audiences but also for the greater Chinese communities. Over the years, the music industry in mainland China has made repeated efforts to resist the so-called gangtai pop (which means Hong Kong and Taiwanese pop). Since the mid-2000s some of the singers and music from mainland China have gained a small foothold in the Mandopop market. When compared to Western pop, Mandopop and Cantopop are generally more melodic than beat-driven. They are usually likened to easylistening ballads in Western genres. Romantic love, especially the of melancholic kind, is the predominant theme, although some songs also contain philosophical, social or cultural messages. Song lyrics have always played a vital role in the experience of Chinese popular music. Fans of Chinese pop derive pleasure from the immense affective power of Chinese pop lyrics (Erni 2007). They often pay close attention to the meanings or messages conveyed through song lyrics and would speak of how their emotions are touched or stirred by the lyrics rather than the music of a song. Whether they find inspirations or resonance from the lyrics could well determine their song preferences. Song lyrics are also appreciated for their literary qualities and expression of cultural values (Chu 1998). Chinese popular lyrics at times draw on the poetic tradition of Chinese literature. Poetry from different dynasties, such as shi from the Tang dynasty and ci from the Song dynasty, are some of the major genres in Chinese literature. Well-written popular lyrics are considered a kind of literary achievement. Moreover, lyric-writing for Cantopop is an especially complex craft because the tonal specificity of the Cantonese dialect makes it more difficult to set words to tunes. The following discussion of religious elements in Chinese pop music is mainly based on the lyrical content of songs. As mentioned, romantic pop is the mainstream of Chinese pop. We may therefore roughly categorize Chinese pop into romantic pop and non-romantic pop, and examples will be provided from both categories as we examine the religious elements in Chinese pop. For romantic pop, the songs variously figure such themes as ‘the melancholic, the cheerful, the waiting, the regretful, 178

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the ravished, the requited, the unrequited, the self-absorbed, the jealous, the dependent, the bashful, the ambivalent’ (Erni 2007) and so on. Breakups and broken hearts form particularly frequent themes (Groenewegen 2011). For non-romantic pop, we may want to pay special attention to a kind of philosophical or inspirational content which has developed since the early period of Chinese pop (Chu 1998). Early Mandopop and Cantopop was closely connected with the development of Chinese film and television culture as many popular songs in the earlier years were ‘theme songs’ of Chinese films or television dramas. In order to reflect the narratives of the films or dramas, many of these songs articulate philosophical reflection on the pressing questions of human experience. Philosophical or inspirational pop later developed as a separate category from theme songs. But theme songs for films, television dramas and even computer games still remain an integral part of Chinese popular music. We shall look at examples across the romantic and non-romantic categories to illustrate the use of religious elements in pop songs. By ‘religious elements’, we shall refer to both the explicit religious elements, often driven by and easily traceable to a particular Chinese religious tradition, and implicit religious elements, which are based on more diffuse and unspecified Chinese religious assumptions. Let us not forget the diffused nature of Chinese religions. According to Fan (2011), certain concepts and terms in Chinese culture reflect some of the distinctive features of the Chinese religious traditions, even though they might not seem particularly religious at a glance. Such concepts in pop songs are considered implicitly religious, and their use is worth unpacking because it is indicative of how religious assumptions are diffused into ordinary thought and thus become part of the pop lyrical expressions in Chinese music.

Diffused religious ideas in popular music: Mingyun and Yuanfun In this section, we shall consider the implicit religious elements in Chinese pop by introducing two concepts that are distinctive of Chinese religious traditions: mingyun and yuanfun (Fan 2011). The term mingyun (M), or mingwen (C), loosely translated as ‘destiny’, is made up of two Chinese words: ming (M) and yun (M). In Chinese religious belief, and especially in popular religion, a person’s ming is predetermined based on the date and time of birth. Yun, sometimes translated as ‘luck’ when the word is used in isolation, denotes the different phases in a person’s life depending on a person’s interaction with the cosmic order. In other words, a person’s ming is destined and cannot be changed while yun is something that can be changed through coordinating one’s actions to achieve harmony with the cosmic order, especially in terms of time and space (Li 2010). Together they explain a person’s life trajectory or ‘destiny’. This concept is embedded in the general Chinese worldview and is often found in Chinese pop, and especially in early philosophical pop such as, for example, ‘From the Heart of a Loafer’ (C: longzi sumsing); (Sam Hui 1976) ‘Destiny’ (C: mingwen) (Jenny Tseng 1981); ‘It Will Be Throughout Lucky’ (C: chijung wui hangwen) (Leslie Cheung 1984). In the song ‘Destiny’ (1981), the full-term mingwen (C) is used both in the song title and throughout the song to explore how much control one can have over his or her destiny. In another song, ‘From the Heart of a Loafer’ (1976), the belief in ming is illustrated in its well-known chorus lines: ‘We’ll eventually gain the things already destined for us/ We need not strive too hard for those that are not’ (ming lui yau si jung sui yau/ming lui mo si mok kueng kou). The use of the single word ming is used to indicate the predestined part of one’s life, that certain haves and have-nots have been predetermined. On the other hand, another example ‘It 179

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Will Be Throughout Lucky’ (1984), perfectly illustrates wen (C) as it asserts that a person living an easy-going life under the guidance of ‘heaven’ will eventually lead him or her to favourable encounters (C: hangwen). The prevalence of the idea of ‘destiny’ should not be taken as a sign of fatalism or resignation in Chinese religious beliefs. As we can see, the combination of ming and yun explains a person’s life trajectory with both external determination and a certain level of flexibility (Fan 2011). It reflects an assumption of mutuality between external determination and personal agency, the relation between which individuals may interpret differently. Further use of the concept in pop songs throughout the years include the inspirational classic – ‘Red Sun’ (C: hong yat/M: hong re) (Hacken Lee 1992); ‘Dropped Flowers and Flowing Water’ (C: lok fa lau sui) (Eason Chan 2006); ‘Destiny’ (M: mingyun) (JiaJia 2013) and so on. Another concept to be considered is yuanfun (M), or yunfun (C), which is also made up of two Chinese words: yuan (M) and fun (M). In Chinese belief, any encounter between people, events and matters is based on whether they have yuan, a kind of destined affinity. People who do not have yuan with each other will never cross paths in life. We meet only those people and encounter only those events with which we have yuan. However, an encounter might not develop into a relationship, because that depends on the weight or level of the destined affinity, which is fun. People are meant to have a closer and more enduring relationship with those they are destined with through sharing a deeper level of yuanfun. Buddhist thoughts add to the idea that the rise and fall of yuan is also determined by karmic causality which involves people’s actions in their previous as well as current lives. This widely accepted idea of yuanfun penetrates into the love discourses of Chinese romantic pop as it informs Chinese beliefs about romantic matters. It is featured in numerous Chinese romantic pop songs to frame the different stages of a romantic relationship: the meeting and falling in love with each other are framed as the connection of yuanfun, while the discontinuance of a relationship is framed as the lack of or exhaustion of yuanfun. The concept seems especially apt for addressing breakups and lost love in melancholic romantic pop. The concept appears in numerous Chinese pop songs, some of which include ‘Yunfun’ (C: yunfun) (Leslie Cheng and Anita Mui 1984); ‘Yuanfun’ (M: yuanfun) (Delphine Tsai 1994), ‘I Know You Are Feeling Blue’ (M: wo zhidao ni hen nanguo) (Jolin Tsai 1999); ‘Dimples’ (M: xiao jiuwo) (JJ Lin 2008); ‘Shouldn’t Be’ (M: bu gai) (Jay Chou and A-Mei 2016) etc. The use of these common expressions with religious underpinnings reflects the diffused nature of Chinese religions. In some sense the religious connotations of these concepts might seem ambivalent, and the use of such concepts as mingyun and yuanfun in pop songs is not necessarily connected to bringing out any religious message. Yet these expressions in Chinese pop songs should not be dismissed as insignificant or ‘non-religious’ (just as Chinese societies used to be too hastily considered ‘non-religious’). Indeed, these concepts are rooted in ancient Chinese religious assumptions, and they merit attention exactly because they have become part of general Chinese cultural beliefs and thus become a part of the general worldview and meaning-making framework of the Chinese. Other examples like the concept of karmic causality and the reference to tian (literally meaning sky, the concept of ‘Heaven’ in Chinese) as the ultimate governing subject of the universe are also widely used in pop songs. These implicit religious elements reflect the ubiquity of Chinese religious ideas and thus fit comfortably into the discourses on both everyday and existential issues in Chinese pop. However, such practices may complicate the study of Chinese religions and popular music because the religious elements in pop songs can at times be rather concealed and ambiguous. 180

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Particular religious philosophies in popular music: Buddhist and Taoist teachings Not all the religious elements in Chinese pop are implicit. Religious philosophies and teachings from particular traditions such as Buddhism and Taoism also find expression in pop songs. Let us now turn to discuss the particular religious philosophies in popular music. In this section, the works of the noted lyricist Lam Chik (aka Lin Xi) will be used to exemplify the incorporation of religious messages in both romantic and non-romantic pop. Lam is one of the best-known lyricists in Chinese popular music. He writes extensively for both Mandopop and Cantopop. Since the late 1990s, the Buddhist follower Lam started to explore what he called the ‘Buddhist line’ (‘More than Words’, 2004) as an alternative theme in lyric-writing. Romantic pop is certainly a genre in which Lam Chik’s excels. How do Buddhist philosophies enter the love discourses of romantic pop as abstinence from desires including romantic ones is part of Buddhist teaching? Lam’s first experimentation of this kind started in 1998, when he wrote the lyrics for the Chinese pop diva Faye Wong for songs such as ‘Hundred Years of Loneliness’ (M: bainian guxi) (Faye Wong 1999) and ‘Blackberry Roses in Blossom’ (M: kai dao tumi) (Faye Wong 1999). At the time Lam himself had ended a romantic relationship while Wong was going through a crisis in her marriage. Driven by his own as well as Wong’s personal experiences, Lam said he was trying to explore the resolution of sufferings in the Buddhist texts. Both ‘Hundred Years of Loneliness’ and ‘Blackberry Roses in Blossom’ explore the themes of attachment and letting go. The former presents the transience of matters, including romantic relationships. It illustrates how things and people come and go in one’s life and how one is always only a ‘borrower’ rather than an owner of such relationships. In a hundred years’ time, neither the song character ‘I’ or the romantic target ‘you’ would remain. One should grasp this reality and let go of the past. The latter song stresses that all beings are essentially the same despite outward appearances or superficial differences, and thus there is no need to be too obsessed with, or hysterical about any particular person or matter. Blackberry roses are said to be the last kind to bloom in the flower season, thus also signalling the end of the summer and the end of things, especially romantic relationships. With reference to Buddhist teachings, this also signifies the time to let go and forget. ‘Hundred Years of Loneliness’ and ‘Blackberry Roses in Blossom’ crucially define a central motif of letting go in Lam’s lyrics. In Buddhist teaching, letting go frees a person from worldly burdens and sufferings. This theme is recurrent in several of Lam’s romantic pop songs, such as ‘Asura’ (M: Axiulou) (Faye Wong 2000), ‘Moon in the Water, Flower in the Mirror’ (C: suiyuet gengfa) (Miriam Yeung 2006) and ‘Greed, Aggression and Delusion’ (C: tam jun chi) (Joey Yung 2008), just to name a few. From time to time, specific Buddhist terms and concepts are used. For instance, the Buddhist figure Asura, which is the god of wrath, and the ‘three poisons’ (‘triviṣa’), namely, greed, aggression and delusion, which are said to be three states of mind that lead to all kinds of suffering, are used to illustrate the destructiveness of obsessive love. Grounded in a Buddhist approach, nowadays many of Lam’s romantic pop songs promote letting go as a response to pain, which departs from the kind of obsession and self-pity usually featured in other romantic pop discourses about the end of relationships. According to Lam (2008), his aim is to crystallize the issue of sufferings in order to comfort the heartbroken through his lyrics. He also likens the religious themes in his lyrics to ‘lamps’ awaiting to be switched on by the listeners so as to enlighten.

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Besides romantic pop, Lam certainly makes use of the Buddhist ideas and teachings in a range of philosophical pop songs, such as ‘The Saying Goes’ (C: seung yin dou) (Andy Lau 2004); ‘Lightning, Illusion, Shadow’ (C: din guong wan ying) (Miriam Yeung 2004); ‘Perceive the Sound of the World’ (C: gwun sai yum) (Andy Lau 2006) and so on. Andy Lau, one of the top Chinese male singers, who is also a professed Buddhist follower, performs a number of Lam’s Buddhist-based philosophical pop songs (and, under the influence of Lam, also writes Buddhistbased lyrics). To present philosophical content does not necessarily make the songs preachy and tedious. Lyricists often use different rhetoric and imagery and constantly experiment with new ways to approach philosophical content. Nowadays Lam often combines philosophical and romantic themes. This makes the religious messages in pop songs easier for listeners to digest. In addition to the mass-oriented pieces, Lam also creates certain experimental works, such as ‘Upside Down Dream’ (C: dindou mongseung) (Juno Mak 2009); ‘Non-attachment’ (C: mo nim) (Anthony Wong 2010); ‘Abandon Sensation’ (C: jut sik) (Anthony Wong 2011), in which the presentation of religious messages is more obscure, for avant-garde singers like Anthony Wong Yiu-ming and Juno Mak. While much has been said about Buddhist themes, it is also worth noting the incorporation of Taoist philosophies in pop songs. Lam Chik mentioned that he also got a lot of inspiration from the Daodejing apart from the Buddhist texts (Lam 2010). For example, Lam’s work ‘The Floating Life as Water’ (C: fousung yeuk sui) (Raymond Lam 2008) elaborates on what the Taoist advocate as ‘the virtues of water’. It makes perfect sense for the song to express this Taoist philosophy as it is the theme song for the television drama The Master of Tai Chi. In fact, Chinese religious philosophies often find expression in theme songs for the ever-prospering wuxia genre or costume dramas situated in different Chinese historical periods. According to Chapter 8 of Daodejing, water is regarded as the exemplar of the highest efficacy. Water is said to benefit all without contentiousness. It has great flexibility and capacity. It is delicate, seemingly weak, yet powerful in a ‘strength-through-weakness’ respect (Lu 2012). With these features, water metaphorically illustrates ideal ethical conduct in Taoist teachings. The song takes this water metaphor as its central theme. It includes some excerpts from the Daodejing text such as ‘There’s no greater goodness than water’ (sin mok sin yu sui) and ‘There’s no greater meekness than water’ (youyeuk mok yeuk yu sui) and further elaborates on them using modern-day language to aid comprehension. Other examples of Taoist philosophies in Chinese pop songs include ‘Poetic Sensibilities’ (C: si ching) (Ivana Wong 2006), which deals with the central Taoist philosophy of ‘non-action’, and ‘The Sun Rises as Usual’ (C: taiyeung jiuseung singhei) (Eason Chan 2009), which illustrates the Taoist proposition of the non-affectivity of nature (see Leung 2009). When it comes to using particular religious ideas and philosophies in Chinese pop songs, some ideas may not be so readily comprehensible to all people when compared to the types of general beliefs that have become widely diffused throughout Chinese culture. For example, the Taoist proposition of the non-affectivity of nature which Lam tried to illustrate in ‘The Sun Rises as Usual’ is quite an abstract idea. Similarly, the term and notion of ‘tumi’ that was explored in the previously discussed song ‘Blackberry Roses in Blossom’ might also be less familiar among a general public. So, at times lyricists need to provide further explanations to some of the religious concepts and thoughts that they draw on and explore in their lyrics through other channels such as seminars (see Lam 2008) and books (e.g. Fang 2008). In this way, some pop songs might serve to introduce listeners to new religious ideas and expand their ideological points of view. 182

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It is also worth pointing out how the incorporation of religious philosophies in Chinese pop songs reflects the inclusiveness and hybridity of Chinese religions. As already shown in the case of Lam Chik, he draws on sources from both Buddhist and Taoist religious traditions in his lyrics. What is more, sometimes elements from more than one religious tradition can be found in a song. For example, while the lyrics for Lam’s song ‘The Floating Life as Water’ deal with the Taoist metaphor for the virtues of water as its primary theme, the Buddhist metaphor of ‘bubble shadows’ (C: pao ying) and the Buddhist idea of ‘void’ (C: hong) are also used in the lyrics. On the contrary, another song ‘The Four Realms Are Void’ (C: sei dai gai hong) (Anthony Wong 2006), which primarily draws on the Buddhist phrase to illustrate the vanity of worldly pursuits, also makes reference to Daodejing in the lyrics. In fact, combining elements from more than one religious tradition in lyrics has been common since the early days of Chinese pop. Lam mentioned that it was the late lyricist, James Wong, who was also known for adapting religious themes from various Chinese religious traditions in his lyric-writing, who inspired him to read Daodejing. Because of the high level of inter-religious interaction in Chinese religions, the blending of religious elements from different religious traditions in the songs does not result in incompatibility or conflict. This is a characteristic feature of the use of religious elements in Chinese pop music. It does not have to be exclusively driven by a particular religious tradition. Rather, Chinese popular music is characterized by a relatively seamless blending of concepts and teachings from different Chinese religions.

In search of Chinese religious elements in pop music In this chapter, we have looked at some of the main characteristics of Chinese religions, including its diffused nature and a high level of syncretism. The incorporation of Chinese religious elements in popular music also reflects these characteristics. Generally, two forms of Chinese religious elements appear in Chinese popular music in both implicit and explicit ways. We find implicit religious elements which consist of ubiquitous religious assumptions that are embedded in general Chinese worldviews and cultural thought, as well as explicit religious elements which include more particular philosophies and teachings from particular religious traditions. We have seen that explicit religious themes in Chinese pop music need not draw exclusively on one particular religious tradition. Rather, cross-religious references are common. It is important to recognize these general features in order to gain a proper understanding of the relationship between Chinese religions and Chinese popular music. For a fuller understanding of the field, scholars will also need to develop a sensitivity for the nuance and details through which religious elements are expressed in Chinese pop. We have already discussed the diffused nature of Chinese religions and thus the implicit character of some of the religious elements in Chinese pop songs. But even in cases where songs include more explicit religious references, the messages and ideas explored might still be obscure and subtle. This depends, of course, on the lucidity of the religious message itself, as well as the subtlety of the lyrics. From the examples in this chapter, we can see that the use of religious elements in Chinese pop is often driven by the religious vision and impulse of the lyricist and/or singing artist. Lyricists of Chinese pop draw inspiration from a wide range of sources, one of which is religious sources. Overall, Chinese religions and popular music is a vast field to explore as it is marked by its own intricacies and ambivalences. This chapter could only serve as an introductory note. 183

Chapter 16

Paganism and Popular Music Donna Weston

Despite popular music being central to a wide range of cultural practices, very little academic literature examines its relationship to contemporary Paganism. And yet, as noted in Pop Pagans: Paganism and Popular Music, the first academic text to approach the topic, ‘Paganism expresses itself though popular music in myriad ways, often characteristically nuanced by the specific local socio-cultural circumstances in which popular music is produced and consumed’ (Weston and Bennett 2014: 11). While there is very little academic writing that brings together popular music and Paganism, popular journalism proves more fruitful. Guardian music journalist Nell Frizzell noted how ‘the folk revival of the 1960s brought paganism into the lyrics and on to the sleeves of everyone from Pentangle to the Incredible String Band’ leading to the phenomenon whereby ‘whether labelled as prog, psychedelia, new folk or new age, pagan-influenced music has twisted, adapted and bloomed into the pop harvest of today’ (2009). Jason Pitzl-Waters in his blog The Wild Hunt notes how ‘a confluence of factors, most prominently the Internet and the access it provided to music from across the world, helped spawn a new paradigm that took direct influence from the work of Dead Can Dance. This music, distinctly international in tenor, has, in my opinion, become the template of choice for many younger Pagans’ (Pitzl-Waters 2012). For Pagan blogger Jason Mankey, ‘“Pagan Music” has always been more about a sound or a feeling than explicitly Pagan lyrics.’ He describes Pagan music as music that ‘conjures up Pagan images and emotions inside of me, regardless of the religious leanings of the artists in question’ (Mankey 2013a). Clearly, there are many approaches to defining Pagan music, and because of the personal nature of music, some of these definitions will be subjective. While the aim of Pop Pagans was to explore the manifestation of Paganism in various musical cultures, this chapter takes a musicological approach, and seeks to present a more objective typology of Pagan music, identifying musical and paramusical similarities across the kinds of music Pagans consume and drawing some preliminary conclusions from those groupings.

What is Paganism? Although Paganism is often referred to as a religion, it does not fit the traditional definition of religion in that is has no one official doctrine. Common understandings of the term do however link the vast range of traditions contained under the Pagan umbrella. These include an emphasis on and ritual engagement with natural cycles such as seasons and astronomical events; (mostly) polytheism; honouring of ancestors; strong focus on and worship of the spiritual forces

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of nature, and as a result, often a concern with ecological issues; matriarchal focus; and a belief in the sacredness of all life-forms, human, plant and animal. Many Pagan traditions are reconstructionist and consciously aim to revive older traditions. Mankey supports this definition in identifying four primary traits associated with Paganism: nature religion, polytheism, the feminine principle and Western religious tradition, ‘an ambiguous but somewhat unified theory of Western Religious thought’ (‘Defining Pagan’, Raise the Horns). The latter is important to note, as while many indigenous traditions could be considered Pagan in nature, Paganism as a term is understood to be a Western tradition and therefore not appropriate to describe nonWestern cultures. These descriptions are reflected in Paganism’s online manifestations. The website Patheos is dedicated to matters of religion and spirituality: ‘Patheos brings together faith communities, academics, and the broader public into a single environment presenting blogs, articles, and columns in a completely inclusive environment of religious discussion’ (Patheos.com 2016). A wide range of expressions of Paganism is presented across the site’s various outlets. The Pagan ‘channel’ of the site (Patheos.com/Pagan 2016) describes a Pagan ‘movement’ which encompasses, as a non-exclusive representation, Wicca, Druidic traditions, ceremonial magick, Heathenism, Celtic Reconstructionism and unbroken indigenous traditions. With a strong focus on a Pagan community, the site aims to engage its readers in conversations ranging from ethics to the particularities of Pagan practices. The range of Pagan belief systems included in the ‘about’ section of the site is representative of the diversity of Pagan practices and belief systems. The site describes Paganism as representing ‘a wide variety of traditions that emphasize reverence for nature and a revival of ancient polytheistic and animistic religious practices’ (Patheos.com/Pagan 2016). Pomegranate (2016) is the only print and online, peer-reviewed journal of Pagan studies. Supporting the above definition of Paganism, ‘The editors seek both new interpretations and re-examinations of those traditions marked both by an emphasis on nature as a source of sacred value (e.g., Wicca, modern Goddess religions) as well as those emphasizing continuity with a polytheistic past (e.g., Ásatrú and other forms of “reconstructionist” Paganism).’ As a complex, ever-evolving tradition, a simple definition of Paganism is unlikely to ever be achieved, however as referred to in this chapter, encompasses all of the above descriptions, representative of the richness of its various expressions.

What is popular music? Equally problematic is a definition of the term ‘popular music’ which, as Shuker notes, ‘defies precise, straightforward definition’ (2005: 203). For example, musicologists may seek to define ‘popular music’ by examining the structural elements inside the music, while cultural studies and sociology scholars may define the term by its commerciality and mass appeal. Some scholars seek to define the term in relation to popularity. Middleton points to populist definitions, noting that the link between ‘popular’ and the ‘common people’ may lend derogatory connotations to the term, while in other cases, popular demand may be legitimizing (1990: 3). However, using popularity as a definition has its drawbacks; Gammond suggests that ‘the term “popular” is unsatisfactory as it suggests that what we would now deem serious or,

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to use another often mishandled word, “classical” music, is not popular and ignores the fact that much of what we would deal with under the heading of popular music is both serious and exclusive’ (1999: 459). The definition of ‘popular music’ can also be clouded by the substitution of terms, as ‘popular music’ can be used in place of ‘pop’ and ‘rock’, two terms which have their own complex definitions (Moore 2001: 3). Many popular music scholars, Gracyk (2008) suggests, avoid its definition and instead discuss the term in relation to genre and style (such as rock music, blues and hip hop). Shuker notes that the difficulties in defining popular music lead some writers to ‘slide over the definition, and instead take a “common-sense” understanding of the term for granted’ (2008: 203–4). It is this latter ‘common-sense’ understanding that is used most often in popular music literature which will be relied upon for the purpose of this chapter. It assumes readers will understand that popular music refers mostly to music made after the birth of rock and roll (circa 1955), that is, clearly not classical/art music or jazz, and the function of which is primarily entertainment (Covach 2015).

Methodology Despite the dearth of academic writing on Paganism and popular music, more informal internet outlets provide us with a wealth of information when the kinds of music discussed and recommended are examined. The task of arriving at a typology of Pagan popular music is fraught not only by the difficulties in defining such inherently problematic terms, but also in narrowing their related practices and output to something both representative, yet wieldy. For this reason, the framework of the internet was chosen as a means of providing a snapshot of ‘real world’ or offline practices. Dawson and Cowan note that ‘the internet is both a mirror and a shadow of the offline world. That is, there is very little in the real world that is not electronically reproduced online, and very little online that has no offline foundation or referent’ (2013: 6). The Patheos website claims that ‘64 percent of all Internet users utilize the Web for faith-related matters’ (Patheos.com 2016). Arguably the first comprehensive review of Paganism on the internet was produced by Douglas Cowan in the book Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet (2005). Just as Cowan notes that his book was not intended as ‘a compendium of modern Pagan presence online’ (2005: xi), neither does this chapter claim to capture the entirety of Paganism on the Web. As Cowan himself explains, ‘The fluid nature of the Internet and the speed at which web sites appear and disappear renders any such attempt futile at best’ (ibid.). However, by restricting this study to a representative range from the most prominent of websites related to Paganism and popular music, an indicative picture of Pagan musical taste begins to emerge from which individual artists, groups and styles can be broadly defined. These categories of website inform the structure of this chapter, and eventually, the typology of Pagan music which is its aim. These categories are as follows: 1. Websites, blogs and podcasts (playlists and recommendations) 2. Public perception, for example, in forums and reddit 3. Pagan festivals

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What follows is a musicological survey of the music represented on these various websites and outlets.

Websites, blogs and podcasts Searching playlists and recommendations on Pagan websites was an obvious starting point as here would be found the kinds of music Pagans recommended to fellow Pagans. These playlists were found on various Pagan sites and are represented here by the foremost of these, The Wild Hunt and Raise the Horns. The Wild Hunt (Wildhunt.org 2016) began as a blog in 2004, initiated by Jason Pitzl-Waters, and has evolved into a daily online journal with three regular writers and ten columnists. The site publishes blogs and articles related to all aspects of contemporary Paganism and its writers (often Pitzl-Waters himself) frequently discuss current music and music news in the Pagan sphere. Pitzl-Waters’ regular podcast, A Darker Shade of Pagan, until 2012 published yearly ‘Top 10’ playlists, which offer insight into acts that were notable in this particular media stream. The most prominent of these artists were determined by their YouTube presence. The songs are not necessarily the same as the ones suggested by Pitzl-Waters; however, they have the highest view count on YouTube, which is a strong indication of their popularity. Sixteen prominent artists were identified across the four years of playlists between 2008 and 2011 and were analysed according to musical style and link (if any) to Paganism. Descriptions of musical style were taken from official websites where possible. In total, seven acts featured some form of folk, from traditional folk to Pagan folk, indie folk, psych folk and folk rock. Terms such as ambient, ethereal, soundscape, electronic and various groupings of those terms occurred in nine descriptions. The word ‘Pagan’ appeared only twice and three acts described themselves as darkwave, and two as gothic. Overall, the playlists were dominated by artists defined in some way as folk, although this could range from traditional through to a fusion with other styles such as darkwave or metal. Links to Paganism were mostly implicit in paramusical elements such as lyrics, video and website imagery, especially through a focus on nature as was found in seven of the songs analysed. Seven of the videos contained imagery that could be described as highly stylized ritual. Only four of the songs had lyrics that were explicitly Pagan. In summary, the playlists were dominated by songs with a neofolk feel, accompanied by paramusical elements mostly linked to nature, or dominated by ritualistic gesture and dress. While there was nothing explicitly Pagan about the majority of the songs, these commonalities are implicitly linked to Paganism as will be discussed further on. A Darker Shade of Pagan is no longer in production, and was replaced by Numinosis (2015) a streaming service on Mixcloud also hosted by Pitzl-Waters but under the name of Jason Thomas Pitzl, described on the site as ‘Explorations in Light and Shadow: A journey through mythic music’. Podcasts every two to three months are most frequently tagged as darkwave, ethereal, gothic and indie rock. While not described as specifically Pagan, many of the artists featured have clear connections with Paganism. The 2013 Pagan Moods playlist was analysed in the same manner as The Wild Hunt playlists to determine commonalities however artists rather than specific songs were the focus. Ten artists were identified, three of which were described as folk or variant thereof; four artists were described as darkwave, and three as ambient, experimental,

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drone, and/or ethereal, with some crossover between styles. Paramusically, keywords were drawn from website descriptions. Words such as ancient and mythical characterized half of the descriptions, and as did terms such as ritualistic, shamanistic and primal. Only one website referred specifically to Paganism. As with The Wild Hunt playlists, variants of folk and dark, electronic and ambient sounds dominate the styles. Links to Paganism are likewise implicit, in this case more through reference to ancient and pre-Christian traditions rather than nature. The question of subjectivity must of course be raised here, as these playlists were generated by the same person. The playlists of another prominent Pagan blogger were therefore analysed for comparison. Jason Mankey produces a blog called Raise the Horns (2016), launched in 2012 on the Pagan channel of the Patheos website in which he blogs about various Pagan-related topics, including music. Mankey seems less focused on dedicated Pagan music, and more interested in music that expresses the connotations of Pagan beliefs. In his post, ‘Buy These Now: Pagan Music 1969–1975’ (2013a) Mankey highlights the 1960s and early 1970s as a period of a surge in interest in the occult and in Paganism, and argues that this was reflected in the music of the time. Folk also dominates the musical style of the artists Mankey puts forward as representative of Pagan music of that era. He suggests Mellow Candle (folk rock), for example, with specific reference to the ‘haunting melodies and soundscapes that make the album the perfect soundtrack to a chilly Samhain night’ (2013a). Mankey claims another folk artist, Gwydion Pendderwen, as the first producer of an album of Pagan songs, by a Pagan, for Pagans. His album Songs For the Old Religion (1975) includes tracks devoted to Goddess and God, as well as to specific sabbats. As another example of a more explicitly Pagan artist, Mankey points to Aleister Crowley devotee: Graham Bond. With titles such as Holy Magick (1970) and We Put Our Magick on You (1971), the Pagan connections are clear while the style is broadly cream-influenced blues-rock. Mankey has compiled a number of seasonally themed playlists in the blog, one of which is examined in depth here – the playlist for Samhain (2013b). Of the Samhain playlist Mankey explains: ‘What follows are songs that invoke the feeling of Samhain (and just plain old secular Halloween) within me. Not all of them are necessarily “Pagan” but they put me in a Pagan (and often Witchy) place.’ From the Samhain playlist, seven prominent contemporary1 artists (10 tracks) were identified. Loreena McKennitt was listed three times – she is a difficult artist to classify by genre as she has been described as world music, new age and Celtic. On her official artist page McKennitt describes her fascination with Celtic music and how it is the ‘vehicle’ that has directed her musical and personal path, and notes the connection between all musics and peoples (loreena.mckennitt.com 2016). For this reason, for the purposes of this chapter, her music will be classified as Celtic folk. Kate Rusby, also a folk artist with a Celtic feel, is listed twice. This means that out of seven artists, four are folk, with one each of Goth rock, Goth metal and new age instrumental. Paramusically, only two songs have explicit Pagan references – Lisa Thiel’s ‘Samhain Song’ (Circle of the Seasons: 2005), and Inkubus Sukubus’s Goddess invocation, ‘Wytches Chant’ (Beltaine 1998). Several trends are evident when the data from the three different playlists is collated.2 First, while the proportion of styles varied from one site to the others, the range of styles did not, with music falling predominantly into the folk (and folk-related such as folk metal), electronic/ ambient, and darkwave/Goth categories.

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Paganism and Popular Music 0 50 40 Folk Styles 44

30

Electronic, Ambient 25

20

Darkwave, Goth 31

10 0 Darker Shade

Numinosis

Raise the Horns

Average

Figure 16.1  Breakdown of playlist styles across three websites.

When viewed as an average across all three sites, it is evident that the music played is predominantly folk-styled (44 per cent), noting that this includes traditional folk, folk rock, folk metal, Pagan folk and neofolk. The second most represented category was darkwave and gothic (including Goth pop and Goth rock) at 31 per cent, with ambient, electronic and drone music taking up the remaining 25 per cent. Broken down further, the variations of folk become more clear:

Darkwave Electronic Folk Celtic Folk Folk Metal Pagan Folk Folk Rock Ambient Baroque Pop

Figure 16.2  Breakdown of styles classified as folk.

What is perhaps more interesting to note is what is missing from these playlists – for example, hip hop, country, pop and electronic dance music. This consistency is further evidence that while there may be stylistic variation amongst the styles represented, they broadly represent the tastes of their Pagan music presenters – and assumedly therefore their audiences. Clear trends also emerged regarding the links between the music and Pagan themes, with 47 per cent of paramusical

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elements such as lyrics and visual imagery being explicitly Pagan, for example, linked to Pagan practices, or reference to Pagan deities and festivals. Implicit Paganism was communicated in 39 per cent of songs, primarily through elements such as strong nature references, ancient and/ or primal imagery and highly ritualized gestures. Only 14 per cent of songs seemed to have no direct paramusical relationship to Paganism at all. Pagan Themes

plicit Implicit

Figure 16.3  Paramusical expression of Pagan themes.

This analysis implies that certain styles of music lend themselves to reception by a Pagan audience, and may not need direct reference to Pagan themes to communicate and/or support Pagan ideals. An analysis of posts in a number of key forums was conducted to determine whether this was supported by audience discussion.

Public perception Examining discussions of music on forums dedicated to Paganism is an effective way to identify Pagan musical tastes. Forums were selected based on the prominence of their music discussion threads. The Pagan Forum contains many discussions of Pagan beliefs and lifestyle, however, of particular relevance to this discussion is the subforum entitled ‘Pagan Music’ (2016), which contained references to significant Pagan artists. The Cauldron is another popular Pagan forum, specifically the subforum entitled ‘What are you listening to right now’ (2011) in the ‘Music, Television, and Film’ thread. Reddit is one the world’s largest online forums and was found to contain several subforums (subreddits) dedicated to Pagan, Heathen and Wiccan music, which were extremely useful in judging current trends and thoughts on Pagan music, especially popular music. Other forums included in the analysis were Pagan Space (Pagan Space 2009) and Cut out and Keep (Cut Out and Keep 2010). As an example, one relevant post in r/pagan reddit asked its Pagan community who they considered to be the ‘best of the best’ in Pagan music (Reddit Pagan 2015) revealing a broad range of styles from traditional and contemporary folk through to black metal. Another post 190

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(Reddit Pagan 2012), which asked for favourite contemporary ‘Pagan music’, produced a similar range of styles. The Wiccan reddit, r/wicca, likewise included some threads directly related to Pagan music, especially its lengthy ‘Pagan music recommendation thread’ (Reddit Wicca 2014). While the recommendations on this thread contained more songs linked to rituals, sabbats and specific Pagan traditions, most of the more commonly mentioned artists in other threads were also recommended here. While these forums are not intended to provide an exhaustive list of artists and music considered Pagan, they are however the most representative of similar internet forums. An analysis of most frequently mentioned artists was generated based on analysis of relevant threads and sub-forums, the results of which are displayed below. The term ‘Pagan folk’ was used to describe artists whose folk-styled music had explicit Pagan themes. Loreena McKennit (Celtic folk)

SJ Tucker (Pagan folk)

Inkubus Sukkubus (Darkwave)

Wendy Rule (Electronic goth)

Faun (Darkwave)

Eluveitie (Folk metal)

Lisa Thiel (Pagan folk)

Gaia Consort (Folk rock)

Dead Can Dance (Experimental,ambient)

Mama Gina (Pagan folk)

Gwydion Pendderwen (Folk)

Emerald Rose (Pagan folk)

Faith and the Muse (Darkwave)

Celia (Pagan folk)

Damh the Bard (Pagan folk)

Omnia (Pagan folk)

Kellianna (Celtic folk)

Wardruna (Folk)

Tyr (Viking metal)

Tuatha Dea (Folk rock)

Surprisingly, only four (in bold) of the frequently mentioned artists in the forums were represented in the Pitzl-Waters and Mankey playlists investigated. Two artists (in italics) were however referred to in both bloggers’ sites as important and influential. Reflecting the breakdown of styles on the previous playlists however, 75 per cent of the most frequently mentioned bands are folk-styled, ranging from traditional through to metal. Darkwave represented 25 per cent of artists, therefore similarly represented compared to the previous playlists. Compared to the playlist analysis, more artists referred to themselves as specifically Pagan on their websites, for example, Wendy Rule, Mama Gina and Omnia, none of who were represented on the blog playlists. While the forums analysed are more recent than the playlists (which span 2008–13), most of these artists were current at the time of the creation of the lists. Combined, the playlist and the forum discussion present a broad picture of Pagan musical taste from both presenter and audience points of view.

Pagan festivals Current music festivals present a relevant avenue to determine the most popular of current acts. Jason Mankey provides a list of prominent Pagan festivals in his blog (2015), with the disclaimer that he could not possibly cover the hundreds that occur across the United States (the audience to whom his blog is directed). He explains that ‘most outdoor festivals feature 191

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workshops, lectures, rituals, and panel discussions during the day followed by concerts, more rituals, and drumming at night’ so festivals are a good place to analyse the artists and styles that are most represented. The Witch’s Voice (2015) site likewise provides a list of some of the biggest Pagan festivals, again these being held in the United States. Based on these lists, three of the largest festivals, which also had a significant music component, were chosen for analysis: the Pagan Spirit Gathering in Tall Tree Lake, Illinois (Circle Sanctuary 2015); Caldera Fest in Lafayette, Georgia (Caldera Pagan Music Festival 2015) and Starwood Festival in Pomeroy, Ohio (The Starwood Festival 2015). Coordinated by Circle Sanctuary (who also produce a magazine available on their website), the Pagan Spirit Gathering claims to be one of the ‘oldest and largest Spirituality festivals.’ Its focus is expressly on Pagan spirituality, and as well as offering live music from self-identified Pagan artists, it provides Pagan rituals and workshops for its attendees. Caldera Fest is a Pagan festival featuring a very strong line-up of some of the most frequently referred to artists in Pagan music as identified in this study. Starwood Festival is a widely popular Pagan music festival that takes place over seven days. This festival treats music as an important component of its programme along with workshops and master classes; its music schedule is described as ‘a melting pot of live performances by world renowned and local artists.’ A list of headline acts was compiled for each festival for the 2014 season. Removing repeated acts, twenty-seven individual artists were identified, with eleven of these (40 per cent) appearing frequently in the forums. Wendy Rule and S. J. Tucker appear at two of the three festivals, as do Spiral Rhythm, Mama Gina, Brian Henke and Celia. Of these artists (including Rule) that make multiple appearances, all but Spiral Rhythm and Brian Henke appeared in the list of most discussed Pagan bands on forums. This indicates that the live Pagan music scene is discerning: not any act will do. These popular bands appear to lead the Pagan music community, as is supported by their prominence in the forums, and getting them as tickets on the big festival events is important.

Musical analysis Based on analysis of all of selected sites – blogs, playlists, forums and festivals – sixty-nine acts in total were identified. Many of these were only mentioned once, but several acts appeared across a range of sites. The most frequently referred to are grouped in the table below by musical style, this being determined both through listening to a range of songs from each artist, and noting how artists described themselves and were described by others.

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Artist

Style

Eluveite

Folk metal

Faun

Folk rock

Tuatha Dea

Folk rock

Faith and the Muse

Gothic rock/Darkwave

Inkubus Sukubus

Gothic rock/Darkwave

Brian Henke

Folk

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Artist

Style

Kate Rusby

Folk

Loreena McKennitt

Celtic folk

Celia Farran

Celtic Pagan folk

Emerald Rose

Celtic Pagan folk

Damh the Bard

Pagan folk

Gwydion Pendderwen

Pagan folk

Kellianna

Pagan folk

Lisa Thiel

Pagan folk

Mama Gina

Pagan folk

SJ Tucker

Pagan folk

Spiral Rhythm

Pagan folk

Wendy Rule

Pagan Goth electronic

According to the definition presented at the start of this chapter, all of the artists presented clearly belong under the category of popular music stylistically. All have similar counterparts in the mainstream popular music world, particularly in the independent and more subcultural scenes. However, while stylistically there are parallels between the popular and Pagan musical realms, there appears to be not enough interest, even in the best-known Pagan acts, to warrant their placement on medium to large record labels, which places them clearly in the category of independent artist. The exception to this is in the genre of heavy metal and European Viking folk styles, which generate hugely commercially successful music with similar themes. It was difficult to find Pagan-based record labels with successful acts. The fact is the leading acts are rarely represented by labels, and the few who are (the big metal bands like Eluveitie) sell to a specific style and audience. This audience is not one that follows them because they are Pagan, but rather because they are metal. Metal artists aside, many of the artists discussed frequent the same festivals and general live music scene; their fans seem aware of the whole scene rather than individual artists. Many, perhaps most, of this demographic are either practising Pagans, or are heavily influenced by Pagan imagery to the point that it significantly pervades their music. In other words, these acts are genuinely Pagan, not just affiliated with the scene by the fans. This is not true for all, of course, but the data collected suggests that it is true of most. But is there anything that musically defines them as Pagan, or as particularly appealing to a Pagan audience? Overall the most significant stylistic trend in all of these different media streams is towards folk music, ranging from solo artist to large group. These artists are rarely as young as those in more mainstream folk and folk-derivative music, perhaps since youth is arguably less of a selling point in this scene, but also perhaps because the more specific audience – Pagan – has a wider age demographic and can support an artist longer than ephemeral pop music normally would. The majority of these artists are not signed to record labels, or are represented by their own record labels, but in many cases, they have a comparable level of popularity – not necessarily to mainstream popular music – but to other underground musical styles often represented by record labels. 193

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Folk, like popular and Pagan, is a problematic term to define, as folk musician and writer Andy Letcher notes, ‘it is not easy to say with any great precision what does or does not count as folk music. … Because folk music is, by definition, so bound up with notions of tradition and authenticity, what it signifies has come to be every bit as important as what it sounds like and how it is played’ (2014: 91). Folk-styled music has a long history in Western culture, as a means of expressing the thoughts, feelings and culture of ‘the people’ and a concern with tradition; it also has connections to the Bardic tradition of a (musically) selfaccompanied storyteller. Folk music therefore has strong connections with the past which, while not exclusive to the Pagan community, would account at least in part for its appeal. In his post, Buy These Now: Pagan Music 1969-1975 (2013), Mankey refers to folk rock group Fairport Convention’s Leige and Lief (1969) as one example, arguing that the timeless nature of the music is what lends it a Pagan feel and appeal, eliciting a ‘feeling of nostalgia for the long lost English Countryside; where the Christian and Rustic Pagan exist blissfully side by side.’ This view supports the preponderance of folk-styled music in Pitzl-Waters playlists, and offers a plausible rationale. Folk music, at least in its more acoustic forms, is also organic in nature, in that musically the instrumentation tends to be acoustic, and therefore more natural, its role to support the story being told by the voice, rather than act as an independent musical element. Folk music is generally understood to have a pre-Christian heritage and strong links to rural pastoral lifestyles. ‘Ancient’ and ‘organic’ are therefore two words we could ascribe to folk, and which resonate with the definition of Paganism as described at the start of this chapter. The various stylistic variations of folk music represented were dominated by Pagan folk: this term describes music that is consciously Pagan in song titles and lyrics, often referring to specific Pagan festivals and deities, for example. In most cases this was also explicit in artist biographies, with many selfidentifying as Pagan in general or, for example, as witch specifically. The other prominent grouping was described broadly as darkwave and/or Goth, and is perhaps best represented by Inkubus Sukkubus. This style of music seems to be mostly affiliated with darkwave: 1980s influenced electronic pop with overt punk and gothic dress and art design. These acts are commonly influenced by seminal Australian group Dead Can Dance, a group which is often referred to as Pagan. Pitzl-Waters describes how ‘the Gothic and Darkwave subcultures absorbed and nurtured a wholly alternate idea of what “pagan” or “occult” music can be. … But these bands inhabit an important place in the history of music made by and for modern Pagans and occultists … a “shadow” music that lends balance to the sounds emanating from the Pagan mainstream’ (2014: 90). Despite this assertion, which comes from a place of expertise and experience, the darker and more synthetic sounds of most of the darkwave music presented in the analysis are less obviously connected to Paganism. However, while folk music is arguably connotative of the lighter, more nature-related aspects of Paganism, there is a darker side that is referred to in the title of Pitzl-Waters’ podcast. Because of its basis in seasonal cycles, from the light of summer through the dark of winter, much Pagan ritual and practice acknowledges not only the contrast, but that one cannot exist without the other – that nature is neither good nor evil, but all encompassing. This holistic dichotomy is evident in rituals honouring, for example, the Horned God, usually born at the winter solstice, and ruler of the Underworld and reflected in the solemnity of many Pagan rituals. Introspection and reflection are characteristic of the rituals and activities that mark the darker months, such as 194

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those for Samhain and the Winter solstice, and the more insistent and sombre tone of much of the darkwave music represented in this analysis are representative of that tone. Another trend in the analysis is situated in metal subgenres, particularly power metal. The most popular metal act in this survey irrespective of style was Swiss folk metal band Eluveite, but this band, as with many other metal bands, are only questionably Pagan; the imagery, nature-themed lyrics, and use of archaic instruments (hurdy-gurdies, bagpipes etc.) connote a sense of nature and tradition in the same way as folk music, but they do not seem to have the same reverence for Pagan mythos and ritual as many of the folk grouping do. Stylistically, however, the use of more traditional instruments in combination with contemporary ones is consistent across the whole folk grouping. Artists such as these are often referred to as Pagan metal in various metal forums, and there is much crossover between, for example, the use of terms such as Pagan, viking, folk and Celtic in describing heavy metal subgenres (see Weston 2008; Weinstein 2014).

Paramusical analysis While the more frequently mentioned artists were dominated by conscious Pagan expressions, is this necessary for a classification of Pagan music? This question arose in a number of blogs and forums, and is exemplified in a question posed in the subreddit entitled ‘Any Love for Pagan Pop?’ (Reddit Pagan Music 2015), in which the originator of this thread, treyokay, asks: ‘To me, someone like Florence-And-The-Machine is a modern pagan band that won’t claim it. That’s the type of space I want to occupy, but without the side-stepping. Is this pagan pop pagan enough? Is it wrong to claim the label pagan for something that isn’t centred on devotional music?’ (2014). One respondent, BranCerddorion, describes three kinds of Pagan music: ‘A: the musician/ band members are pagan B: the song material is pagan-themed C: pagans find their own pagan themes in an unintended song’ (2014), and notes that these categories can overlap. This analysis revealed that for the most frequently referred to artists and songs, ‘types’ A and B clearly dominated, however, in support of type C (and also indicative of the blurred boundaries between the three categories), Mankey justifies some of his choices for the Samhain playlist, saying ‘“Pagan Music” has always been more about a sound or a feeling than explicitly Pagan lyrics. Music becomes Pagan to me when it conjures up Pagan images and emotions inside of me, regardless of the religious leanings of the artists in question’ (Mankey 2013b). This was shown to be the case with both folk and darkwave music, both of which could evoke certain feels related to Pagan practices and worldviews. Undoubtedly, however, this was strongest when supported with conscious Pagan references in lyrics and song titles, such as to particular festivals or deities. However, songs with no such explicit referencing of Pagan themes were still embraced by the Pagan communities, and these were dominated by video, website and/or album cover imagery with references to nature, especially wilderness landscapes and forests; dress codes which evoked ancient times; and stylized ritual gesture, all of which have obvious connection to Paganism as defined at the start of this chapter.

Conclusion While it cannot be claimed that the music analysed in this chapter represents Paganism in its entirety, looking at the musical taste of the online Pagan community gives us insight into that of 195

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a significant cohort of the community. It was found that there was quite a remarkable consistency of style across the various sites, with close alignment of representation across all of the folkrelated styles, including metal, goth and darkwave. The only inconsistency was that electronic experimental music was better represented in the playlists analysed. While much of this was similar in mood to darkwave, the stylistic difference compared to the predominant musical styles on other outlets can only be attributed to personal taste, and perhaps one of the roles of podcasts and playlists, which is to introduce listeners to new music. Even so, paramusically, this electronic music evoked the same Pagan connotations as its darkwave and folk counterparts. What then is Pagan music? This analysis has shown that as well as consciously Pagan artists who promote themselves as such, Pagan music can also be music that evokes a mood which resonates with Pagan ideals, whether this be musically, paramusically, or both. It was seen that folk and darkwave especially express essential aspects of Pagan belief in musical terms, while paramusically drawing on nature, ancient and ritual imagery to support these ideals. Perhaps then what makes music Pagan is in both the ear and the eye of the beholder. Artists appearing in Jason Pitzl-Waters’ and Jason Mankey’s playlists

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Artist

Style

Pagan Themes

The Moon and the Nightspirit

Pagan folk

Explicit

Unto Ashes

Darkwave

Explicit

Anilah

Electronic

Explicit

Arborea

Folk

Implicit

Arcana

Darkwave

Implicit

Bat For Lashes

Baroque pop

Implicit

Black Mare

Darkwave

Implicit

Brendan Perry

Electronic

Implicit

Daemonia Nymphe

Folk

Explicit

Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer

Folk

Implicit

Dyonisis

Folk rock

Implicit

Eluveitie

Folk metal

Implicit

Esben and the Witch

Darkwave

Explicit

Faith and the Muse

Darkwave

Explicit

Faun

Darkwave

Explicit

Fever Ray

Electronic

Explicit

Forest Swords

Electronic

Explicit

Ibeyi

Electronic

None

Inkubus Sukkubus ‘Wytches Chant’

Darkwave

Explicit

Julianna Barwaick

Electronic

Implicit

Kate Rusby

Folk

None

Kate Rusby ‘Canaan’s Land’

Celtic folk

None

Lisa Thiel

Pagan folk

Explicit

Paganism and Popular Music

Artist

Style

Pagan Themes

Loreena McKennit ‘Dark Night of the Soul’

Celtic folk

Implicit

Loreena McKennitt ‘Dante’s Prayer’

Celtic folk

Implicit

Loreena McKennitt, ‘All Soul’s Night’

Celtic folk

Explicit

Mercury’s Antennae

Darkwave

None

Metal Mother

Folk metal

Explicit

Mirabilis

Darkwave

Implicit

Noblesse Oblige

Electronic

Explicit

Philip Wesley

Ambient

None

Sigur Rós

Darkwave

Explicit

SoRIAH with Ashkelon Sain

Electronic

Explicit

sToa

Darkwave

Implicit

The Moon and the Nightspirit

Folk

Explicit

Within Temptation

Folk metal

Implicit

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Chapter 17

Popular Music and the Occult Kennet Granholm

Music and the occult have interacted in the Western world for a long time, from Pythagoras’ notion of the music of the spheres to the satanic, neopagan and numerological in recent popular music. The focus in this chapter is on the latter. While the occult can be found in many, if not most, genres of popular music, it is arguably most prominent in heavy metal. Thus, this chapter will, to a large part, deal with that particular genre, although genres such as neofolk and hip hop will also be addressed.

The Devil’s music Besides having one of the few truly global musical scenes, metal is also the musical genre that is most frequently, prominently and explicitly associated with the occult. Even its precursors were routinely denounced as the Devil’s music. For example, blues artist Robert Johnson (1911–38) was rumoured to have made a deal with the Devil at a crossroads, and his untimely death is often attributed to that transaction (Spencer 1991: xiii). The association between metal and the occult does not exist only in the vivid imaginations of various moral crusaders; occult themes have frequently been explored by artists. Already Black Sabbath flirted with darker occult themes, apparent in the name of the band itself as well as in image and lyrics, and Led Zeppelin referred to occultist and magician Aleister Crowley in several of their songs due to guitarist Jimmy Page’s fascination with the infamous magician.1 This fascination with the occult, especially with its darker aspects, continued in later metal music. Ozzy Osbourne, the original lead singer of Black Sabbath, continued his exploration of the occult with the song ‘Mr. Crowley’ on his first solo album, Blizzard of Ozz (1980). Even Glam metal band Mötley Crüe had an album titled Shout at the Devil (1983). Allegedly the album was originally to be named Shout With the Devil, but this was changed after negative occult experiences of bass player and lyricist Nikki Sixx (Lee et al. 2002: 88). However, with the advent of various extreme metal genres in the early 1980s metal’s engagement with the occult became more accentuated.

Early extreme metal The extreme metal subgenres most associated with the occult are without a doubt death, doom and black metal. For example, death metal band Morbid Angel includes songs named ‘Immortal Rites’, ‘Visions from the Dark Side’ and ‘Bleed for the Devil’ on their first album Altars of Madness (1989). The occult was virtually the dominating theme in the slow and brooding

Popular Music and the Occult

genre known as ‘doom metal’, exemplified by bands such as Saint Vitus,2 Pentagram3 and Candlemass.4 In contrast to the morbid fascination with death in death metal and the mystical eeriness of doom metal, the ‘first wave of black metal’ – perhaps more aptly termed ‘proto-black metal’ – explicitly and aggressively engaged in the satanic. Venom’s debut album, Welcome to Hell (1981), includes songs such as ‘Sons of Satan’ and ‘In League with Satan’ and most songs include references to things such as Satan, demons and Hell. The band’s second album, Black Metal (1982), gave the name to the subgenre itself. Similarly, Swizz band Hellhammer included references to Satan on all its albums, including the first demo Satanic Rites (1983), as did seminal Swedish band Bathory from its first album Bathory (1984) to the late 1980s. The same is true for most of the other important ‘first wave’ bands such as Destruction, Sodom, Sarcófago, Tormentor, Death SS and Blasphemy. However, with the so-called second wave of black metal, developed in Norway in the late 1980s and early 1990s, metal’s engagement with the occult reached new dimensions.

Norwegian black metal, Satanism and Heathenism The ‘first wave of black metal’ may have been explicitly and overtly satanic, but the Norwegian ‘second wave’ was distinguished by its religious devotion to rebellious anti-Christianity, even expressed in such radical acts as church arsons. While often considered distinguishably satanic, early Norwegian black metal is more correctly defined as heathen.5 Albums by bands such as Darkthrone, Burzum, Emperor and Immortal do contain references to Satan, but often these are isolated instances. Instead, references to Old Norse myth, religion and culture are far more frequent. Burzum’s self-titled debut album from 1992 contains an ode to the Babylonian god Ea and a cry of sorrow for an imagined lost Pagan past in the song ‘A Lost Forgotten Soul’. This theme of sorrow for ‘lost tradition’ reoccurs ‘Det som en gang var (Was Einst War)’ (What Once Was) on the album Hvis lyset tar oss (1994). Darkthrone’s A Blaze in the Northern Sky (1992) contains several explicit references to Paganism as well as demonstrating a similar longing for a pre-Christian past as Burzum’s ‘Det som en gang var’. Emperor’s 1994 album In the Nightside Eclipse exhibits the same romantic longing, as well as the song ‘Cosmic Keys to my Creations and Times’ with the following very esoteric line of text: ‘They are the planetary keys to unlimited wisdom and power for the Emperor to obtain.’ Of the early bands Mayhem and Gorgoroth promoted overtly satanic outlooks, and even then the latter does so only from the 1996 album Antichrist onwards. Even then, Mayhem’s Live in Leipzig (1993) contains the song ‘Pagan Fears’ and Gorgoroth’s debut album Pentagram (1994) the song ‘(Under) The Pagan Megalith’. Old Germanic and Scandinavian mythology is a theme in many other forms of metal as well. Examples include the so-called Viking metal, exemplified by bands such as the Faroese Týr (first album, How Far to Asgard, in 2002), the Finnish Moonsorrow6 (first album, Suden Uni, in 2001), and German (and partly Norwegian) Leaves’ Eyes (first album, Lovelorn, in 2004); folk metal, which combines elements from folk music and Pagan mythology with metal, is represented by bands such as the British Skyclad (first album, The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth, in 1991), and the Finnish Amorphis (first album, The Karelian Ithmus, in 1992), Finntroll (first album, Midnattens Widunder, in 1999), and Korpiklaani (first album, Spirit of the Forest, in 2003).

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Metal and the occult milieu The early ‘second wave’ black metal scene was all but organized in its occult interests, in fact vehemently disparaging the ‘satanic establishment’ represented by, for example, The Church of Satan. However, later bands have forged much more intimate and positive relations to the milieu. Dragon Rouge is one of the magic orders that many later bands profess allegiance to. Examples include Mortuus, Head of the Demon (self-titled album in 2012), Saturnalia Temple and Ofermod. Saturnalia Temple,7 led by long-time active Dragon Rouge member Tommie Eriksson, is a prime example. Eriksson has even written an introductory book on the Dragon Rouge system of magic. The lyrics on the first album UR (2008) deal with initiation and are very similar to ritual magical texts familiar from a Dragon Rouge context, the second album Aion of Drakon (2011) clearly references the order in its title and the latest album, To the Other (2015), alludes to Dragon Rouge-centric occult notions in songs such as ‘ZazelSorath’ and ‘March of Gha’agsheblah’. Furthermore, in his speech when accepting an award for To the Other Eriksson expressed gratitude for ‘spiritual music’ being recognized (Manifestgalan 2016). As for live shows Eriksson’s aim is to ‘manifest magical energies in a direct connection with the audience, not to portray it through stage props’ (Eriksson 2016). Ofermod is another good example. Mika Hakola/Belfagor, the driving force of the band, is a member of Dragon Rouge and all lyrics on later albums relate to and interpret material familiar from the context of the order. The 2008 album Tiamtü contains several ‘Demon sigils drawn by frater B.A.B.A, sorore Ararita and sorore A.J for ritual purposes and qliphotic invocations’, and the songs are described as ceremonies ‘lead [sic] by frater B.A.B.A (Michayah Belfagor), Master of ceremony’. The lyrics to the 2012 album Thaumiel are written by Hakola and several other members of Dragon Rouge, with each song accompanied by a sigil created by the author of the lyrics in question. Hakola describes the album artwork as ‘the visual grimoire’ (aka magic book), and the album as a whole as ‘a grimoire which deals with Samael’ (Belfagor 2012). The title itself refers to the qliphotic sphere ‘Thaumiel’, the highest initiatory degree in the order (see Granholm 2012a). Hakola describes the band as ‘a spiritual musical style dedicated to the darkest of forces which ultimately involves the Luciferian illumination’ (Belfagor 2012). He goes on: This is not only about music but in the highest possible degree magic … each text is bound to some form of either individual ceremony or ceremonial experimentation by several adepts during a longer period. … The dark occult symbolism is what makes OFERMOD OFERMOD and not another mediocre so called ‘Black’ Metal band … OFERMOD IS magic, OFERMOD IS occultism, the music we deliver is a reflection of where I am situated initiatorily when I create it. (Belfagor 2012) Similarly, the songwriter for Head of the Demon – a long-time member of Dragon Rouge – says: Head of the Demon is a magical creative vessel, that foremost focuses on the creative aspect reached by magical practice. The aim is to from altered states, or the influences of invoked forces, create music that bridges the gap between this and the other world. Thus trying to create something not of this world. A way to channel the spiritual into the mundane. And hopefully creating a sensation of mysterium et tremendum. (Head of the Demon 2015)

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JK, active in Ofermod and Mortuus, and a member of Dragon Rouge, says that the order played an important role when he was working on the latest album of Mortuus Grape of the Vine (2014). Much of the material sprung directly from the magical work he was doing, and the record can be seen as a veritable magical journal, and as a way to both manifest and more deeply understand the Kliphotic forces he was working with. That is to say, the process of working on the album was a magical operation in itself. In fact, parts of the album – including invocations, with the participation of other order members – were recorded at the Dragon Rouge temple in Stockholm (JK 2015). The Misanthropic Lucifer Order (MLO) is another magic order with close ties to the extreme metal milieu in Sweden, in particular to the Swedish cult band Dissection. The band’s first two full-length albums, The Somberlain (1993) and Storm of the Light’s Bane (1995), were hugely influential but not distinctly occult in character. However, in 1995, Jon Nödveidt (1975– 2006), the singer-guitarist and driving force of the band, joined MLO.8 In the summer of 1997 Nödtveidt and another member of MLO murdered a homosexual man in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Dissection was put on hold until Nödveidt was released from prison in 2004. During his time in prison Nödtveidt engaged more deeply and seriously with the philosophy of MLO, and after his release he established his band as ‘the voice of MLO’. In an interview from prison in 2002, he assures that he is still composing music and says: ‘I handle my music and lyrics as powerful instruments for channelling and expressing the sinister and Chaotic energies of the anti-cosmic impulse’ (Kristiansen 2012a: 548). The original release of Storm of the Light’s Bane contains the text ‘We hail you by the metal of death!’, but in the 2006 ‘ultimate reissue’ this text has been changed to ‘We hail you by the anti-cosmic metal of death!’ Furthermore, the text ‘Dissection is the sonic propaganda unit of MLO’ has been added. The final album, Reinkaos (2006), is full of occult references and symbolism related to the chaos-gnostic teachings of MLO (see Darklyrics 2016). Nödveidt’s dedication to MLO philosophy was so total that even his death is tied to it. He released Reinkaos on Walpurgis Night 2006, announced the split-up of the band two weeks later, arranged a final elaborate concert with exclusive merchandise on Midsummer day, and at the concert he meticulously greeted all fans who wished to meet him (Johannesson and Jefferson Klingberg 2011: 191–223). A week later he gave his last interview, at the end of which he announced his plans to ‘travel to Transylvania’ – which in black metal culture is an euphemism for suicide due to Mayhem vocalist Per ‘Dead’ Ohlin wearing a T-shirt with the print ‘I [Love] Transylvania’ at the time of his suicide (1991) (Johannesson and Jefferson Klingberg 2011: 191–223). On 16 August 2006, Nödtveidt was found dead in his apartment with a gunshot wound to the head, surrounded by candles and an opened ‘Satanic Grimoire’ in front of him (Deathbringer 2006). The book was most likely Liber Azerate (Frater Nemidial 2002) – the key text of MLO (Gregorius 2006: 52), and Nödtveidt would seem to have committed ritual suicide, in line with MLO’s view of physical existence as something one should seek escape from. Sometime after Nödveidt’s suicide, MLO was reorganized as ‘The Temple of the Black Light’ and has since then strongly distanced itself from the extreme metal scene. Swedish band Watain is strongly influenced by Dissection. Lead singer Erik Danielsson even having played bass in the last incarnation of Dissection, and the third album of Watain, Sworn to the Dark (2007), is dedicated to Nödveidt. While the debut album Rabid Death’s Curse (2000) includes quite standard ‘third wave’ black metal symbolism with inverted crosses and goat heads

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in inverted pentagrams, the symbolism and content gradually becomes more diverse, ambiguous and classically occult, and we also get pictures of band members engaged in rituals. In an interview from 2007 Danielsson also says that MLO ‘are the only Satanic organization I fully support’ (Woods 2012). As for what the band means to him he says: To me, WATAIN is a symbol of my inhuman self, a proud monument of darkness in a world of illusive light. As such, it portrays the sides of my self that have victoriously broken the shackles of existence. … So yes, everything in my life can be found in relation to WATAIN. (Kristiansen 2012c) In discussing black metal as a genre, Danielsson says: ‘Inhuman energies is [sic] what makes black metal interesting, and even more so; divine’ (Kristiansen 2012c), clearly defining black metal as something that goes beyond musical expression. In addition to dealing with personal magical experiences, many of the bands discussed here also frame their live performances as ritual or religious activities. Danielsson says: Every WATAIN show, no matter if it is in front of 10 punks or 3000 insane Chileans, is holy to us and serves as a communion between us and the forces unto which we direct our praise. (Kristiansen 2012c: 668) Several of the bands mentioned here take the same approach to live shows. Ofermod has at times used ritual elements in shows, and Hakola says that magic is always present in the band as the songs in themselves ‘can in the highest degree be viewed as rituals’ (Belfagor 2012). While Mortuus does not use traditional rituals on stage, JK says that the band’s performances can nonetheless be described as sort of chaos-magical rituals due to the inherent inspiration and magical work put into the music (JK 2015). He notes, however, that the band is more of a personal magical tool than a public mouthpiece for any particular magical school of thought. And this is pretty much what all bands with ties to Dragon Rouge say. Not all bands with connections to the occult milieu take a ritualistic-religious approach. The Swedish Symphonic metal band Therion with its intimate ties to Dragon Rouge is a particularly interesting example (see Granholm 2012b). The driving force of the band, Christofer Johnsson, became a member of Dragon Rouge in 1991 – only a year after the order was founded – and remains a member to this day. The founder of the order, Thomas Karlsson, wrote lyrics for the 1995 album Lepaca Kliffoth, and from 1996’s Theli onwards, he has been more or less solely responsible for the lyrics. However, in contrast to bands in the ritual black metal scene, lyrical subject material that directly corresponds to the order’s philosophy is quite rare. In fact, Christofer Johnsson vehemently denies that the band in any way represents Dragon Rouge, or even advocates magical practice, although he makes no secret of his involvement with the order. While several songs on earlier albums do include invocations that are identical or very similar to ones used in Dragon Rouge, such direct references are rare on later albums. Particularly interesting are three consecutive concept albums: Secret of the Runes (2001) – centred on the nine worlds of Old Norse mythology, Gothic Kabbalah (2007) – focused on the seventeenthcentury Swedish runosophist and mystic Johannes Bureus (1568–1652), and Sitra Ahra (2010) – dealing with the ‘dark side’ of the Kabbalah, the Kliffoth, which forms the basis of the Dragon Rouge initiatory system. While all three subjects are frequently discussed in Dragon Rouge, the

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albums are more representative of Karlsson’s personal interests. Secret of the Runes was released in close proximity to the publication of Karlsson’s first book Uthark: Secret of the Runes (2002), and while the themes of the book and the album do not correspond one hundred per cent, they nevertheless share the common denominator of rune magic. Likewise, Gothic Kabbalah deals with subjects of personal interest to Karlsson, with him having written both a book (2006) and a PhD thesis (2010) on Bureus. Rather than presenting a Dragon Rouge-centric interpretation, the album is a more or less a straight retelling of Bureus’ ideas.

Occult rock One of the direct forefathers of heavy metal, psychedelic rock, regularly employed occult symbolism. Examples include US-based Coven, with their 1969 debut album Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls, and British Black Widow, whose 1970 album Sacrifice is infamous for the song ‘Come to the Sabbat’ and its haunting chant ‘Come, come, come to the Sabbat, come to the Sabbat – Satan’s there!’ The song also contains pleas to occult knowledge in the lines ‘Help me in my search for knowledge, I must learn the Secret Art.’ Similarly, the first song, ‘Black Sabbath’, on Coven’s debut album was claimed to be the first recording of a satanic black mass (Partridge 2015: 519). While slightly separate from the above scene, it would be a grave injustice not to mention Roky Erickson (1947–). Erickson was a pioneer of psychedelic rock in the mid-1960s, and his albums with the Aliens in the early 1980s (Roky Erickson and the Aliens 1980, 1981) – with songs such as ‘Don’t Shake me Lucifer’, ‘If You Have Ghosts’ (covered by the immensely popular Swedish occult rock band Ghost), ‘Stand for the Fire Demon’ and ‘I Think of Demons’ – have greatly influenced later occult rock bands. The mid-2000s witnessed a massive revival of the so-called occult rock, with sounds reminiscent of their 1970s counterparts and at least one foot standing firmly in the extreme metal scene. For example, the Dutch occult rock band, The Devil’s Blood, formed in 2006 and disbanded in 2013 (first album, The Time of No Time Evermore, in 2009), was very well received among black metal fans and even performed as a warm-up act for black metal act Watain, although the bands are musically very different. There was a kinship in the occult interests. Finnish Jess and the Ancient Ones is another example (self-titled debut album in 2012). Similar to The Devil’s Blood, the band has been accepted in the extreme metal scene and frequently plays at metal venues, even though its musical style is more closely related to 1970s surf rock, occult rock and folk rock than to any form of extreme metal. Jess and Tuomas Karhunen, the Ancient Ones’ former guitarist and songwriter, describes the band, as well as his black/death metal bands Forgotten Horror (2011; 2015) and Deathchain, as deeply immersed in the occult and magic, including lyrics dealing with occult themes, with occult symbolism being prominent in album artwork, and live shows sometimes described as rituals. Other examples include Christofer Johnsson’s new band Luciferian Light Orchestra (selftitled debut album in 2015), and the US bands Sabbath Assembly (2010; 2012) and Jex Thoth (2008; 2013). Luciferian Light Orchestra’s occult lyrics are, as with Therion, written by Thomas Karlsson, Sabbath Assembly uses material from the 1960s/1970s unique Satanist group The Process (The Process Church of Final Judgment) as its lyrics and Jex Thoth incorporates occult symbolism in its lyrics and visuals and includes elements of ritual in its stage shows.

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Many musicians and fans actively involved in the black metal scene have welcomed occult rock bands such as the above with open arms. For example, Ofermod’s Mika Hakola even feels that some ‘non-black metal’ bands qualify as ‘true black metal’ due to their occult dimensions. He says: ‘I am also very fond of bands such as Saturnalia Temple, JATAO [Jess and the Ancient Ones], Ghost, Therion and so on, but for me these bands are Black/Death as the lyrics determine the genre’ (Belfagor 2012). Hakola is also very critical of ‘mundane’ black metal, and distinguishes it from ‘orthodox’ black metal that has an occult core.

The ritual black metal scene Occult elements were quite clearly present in the early Norwegian black metal scene, but it was not until the mid-2000s that a semi-independent scene explicitly focused on esotericism and the occult would emerge. This ‘ritual black metal’ represents a development within an existing musical scene, resulting in the emergence of a new ‘sub-scene’ which, while connected to the larger extreme metal scene, has its own identity and institutions, as well as more pronounced and focused connections to and engagements with the occult milieu represented by esoteric orders. Representatives of this scene not only claim a serious religious-philosophical attitude, but frame their artistic activities as religious-occult practice. In interviews, the occult aspects are also commonly foregrounded (See Mühlmann 2012; Malmén 2012). There is considerable musical diversity in the scene, ranging from extreme black metal such as Watain and Ofermod to occult rock, more experimental metal such as Urfaust (see Geist ist Teufel 2003 and Apparitions 2015) and Dark Buddha Rising (see Dakhmandal 2013, Inversum 2015), and even some dark ambient projects such as Lapis Niger (2008). From my observations and discussions with scene members, confirmed by Tuomas Karhunen (Karhunen 2013), the extreme metal scene has moved towards a stronger occult and magical inclination in recent years. According to Karhunen, this might be due to a number of artists becoming more deeply involved with occultism and the practice of magic, which in turn leads to other artists becoming interested as well. Karhunen explains that this is a growing magical current evoking a collective energy which leads to new musical expressions (Karhunen 2013). The scene also attracts people of very different interests, some of whom are more into the music and some of whom are more into the occult. In terms of scenic institutions, we find a number of independent record labels that are deeply involved in the occult. Ajna Offensive in the United States, for example, has released records by many bands with an occult inclination, including Saturnalia Temple, Mortuus and Ofermod (Ajna 2016b). The label also has a book publishing wing, Ajnabound, which publishes books dealing with occult subject matter (Ajna 2016a). There are also several venues and events that cater exclusively to occult interests. One of the first was Nidrosian Black Mass, originally organized in Trondheim, Norway, in 2007. Sommer Sonnwend in Austria and Occult Sabbath in Germany are other examples. Two Swedish examples are Arosian Black Mass in Västerås (100 km West of Stockholm) and Forlorn Fest in Umeå (in Northern Sweden). Both festivals were exclusively for bands engaged in the occult, and distanced themselves from ‘ordinary’ black metal festivals. The organizers of Forlorn Fest write: Forlorn Fest is an annual Deathworshiping Black Metal festival … aim[ing] to be a showcase for occult music, art, and other creative outlets … only bands who truly embrace

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Death and everything that comes with the spirit of Black Metal are wellcome [sic] through the gates. This festival is not a place for fun and joy, it is the opposite of festivals such as Sweden Rock, House of Metal, Wacken [open] Air or Sonisphere. Instead of aiming to get as many visitors as possible, we aim to get the most dedicated audience who will add to the overall feeling of the festival. (Forlorn Fest 2012a) The organizers further state that their mission is ‘to give the wanderers of the Left Hand Path, a truly one of a kind experience of what the essence of Black Metal is all about’ (Forlorn Fest 2012b). The organizers of Arosian Black Mass present their festival in a similar manner: Arosian Black Mass is not a ‘Black Metal festival’ but is centered on esotericism in art, music and dark spiritual practice. The whole event will have its focus upon an esoteric process within which all participating artists will play key roles. The visitors shall expect a complete arcane impression through visions, audio and atmosphere. It is meant to be an extraordinary experience that they will never forget! (Arosian Black Mass 2012)

Beyond metal: Industrial, post-industrial and neofolk music There are naturally also musical genres and scenes that have no relation to metal whatsoever while nonetheless engaging deeply with the occult. The so-called industrial music scene, and its descendants, is one of those. Genesis P-Orridge (born Neil Andrew Megson, 1950–) is one of the more important figures when it comes to popular music and the occult. Starting out in the music and performance collective COUM Transmissions from 1969 to 1976, P-Orridge went on to found the band Throbbing Gristle in 1976 (first full-length album in 1977). The band is often considered the first industrial band, a genre identifier originally used in the mid-1970s for bands signed to P-Orridge-owned record label Industrial Records. P-Orridge’s goal with the label ‘Industrial’ was to ‘update it [music] to at least the Victorian times’ (Re/Search 1983: 10) as music had up to this point been ‘based on the blues and slavery’ (Re/Search 1983: 9). Throbbing Gristle, like industrial music in general, was highly experimental, with the common use of synthesizers, tape recorded noise and traditional rock band instruments distorted and warped to unrecognizability. Concerts also tended to lean heavily towards performance art (Evans 2007: 99). Genesis P-Orridge was himself involved in the budding Chaos Magick movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1981 he and a number of other like-minded musicians/artists founded one of the most influential Chaos Magickal communities: Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY) (Evans 2007: 99, 358). Musicians Douglas Pearce, Tony Wakeford and David Tibet – all later involved in ‘post-industrial’ and neofolk bands Death in June, Sol Invictus, and Current 93 (1984a,b), respectively – were involved in the project.9 According to a statement of intent on the webpage of the network/community, TOPY ‘exists to promote a system of functional, demystified magick, utilising both pagan and modern techniques’ (AIN 2016c). In 2008 TOPY was transformed into the Autonomous Individuals Network (AIN), which combines the TOPY statement of intent with ‘a focus on the manipulation of media as a magickal tool in the New Aeon’ (AIN 2016b), and prefers ‘leaving things of our ‘YOUTH’ in the past’ (AIN 2016a). 205

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From the early 1980s onwards industrial music as represented by Throbbing Gristle influenced and was fused with other musical styles, resulting in what can be termed ‘post-industrial styles’. Examples include electronic body music, which combines industrial with electronic dance music and is exemplified by bands such as the Belgian Front 242; dark ambient, which makes less extreme use of non-musical material; and industrial rock, making use of more traditional rock instruments and exemplified by bands such as Swans, and the heavier industrial metal exemplified by bands such as Ministry and Nine Inch Nails. The development most infused with the occult is probably neofolk. Provocative themes such as totalitarian aesthetics that were common in industrial music continued to be so in neofolk, but while the use of totalitarian imagery was rarely an expression of actual political interest in fascism there certainly are neofolk artists who entertain such notions. To a large degree, however, it is an expression of the same adversariallegitimizing discourse that is an integral part of rock discourse, particularly strongly expressed in, for example, the black metal scene. Neofolk downplays the role of noise and electronics and instead focuses on traditional European instruments, acoustic instruments and themes drawn from old European myth and culture – though electronic ingredients such as synthesizers and samples are often included as well. Artists in the neofolk scene are strongly devoted to the themes of romanticism and old Germanic and Scandinavian mythology and culture, and are often aligned with the development of Traditionalism termed Radical Traditionalism. For example, Sol Invictus released a mini EP named Against the Modern World (1987), alluding to key Traditionalist manifestos such as René Guénon’s The Crisis of the Modern World (La crise du monde modern, 1927) and Julius Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World (Rivolta contro il mondo modern, 1934) (on Traditionalism, see Sedgwick 2004). More recent albums in the scene include Rûna (1996) by Ian Read’s Fire+Ice, and Runaljod – Gap var Ginnunga (2009) by Wardruna – a neofolk band with ex-members of the black metal band Gorgoroth. Michael Moynihan (1969–) and his band Blood Axis10 is of relevance to mention in the present context. The influence of Germanic Paganism is apparent, for example, in the title of the album Blót: Sacrifice in Sweden (1998) and the song ‘Herjafather’ (meaning approximately ‘father of heroes’) which refers to the Old Norse god Odin. Besides producing music with Blood Axis, Moynihan has run the record company Storm Records since 1995 and the publishing company Dominion Press since the early 2000s. Since 2002 he has also edited the journal Tyr: Myth – Culture – Tradition, in which the term Radical Traditionalism was coined. Radical Traditionalists claim to ‘reject the modern, materialist reign of “quantity over quality”, the absence of any meaningful spiritual values, environmental devastation, the mechanization and overspecialization of urban life and the imperialism of corporate monoculture, with its vulgar “values” of progress and efficiency’ in favour of ‘the small, homogenous tribal societies that flourished before Christianity’ (Tyr 2009). Moynihan has a long history in the occult milieu, having joined the Church of Satan in 1989 (Paradise 1996) and currently being a Rune Master within the Rune-Gild.11 He has often been accused of being a fascist and/or racist (Gardell 2003: 301),12 and he does use material by the likes of Karl Maria Wiligut, Friedrich Nietsche and Charles Manson (Gardell 2003: 299), as well as the crutch cross (krückenkreuz, ☩) – a symbol also used by the Austrian fascist organization Vaterländische Front (Fatherland’s/Patriotic Front) in the 1930s. However, as noted earlier, the use of such symbolism and material for purely aesthetic reasons is common in the post-industrial scene, and Swedish scholar Mattias 206

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Gardell characterizes Moynihan as an elitist but ‘hardly anti-Semitic or a White Supremacist and definitely not a radical right-wing “leader” of anything’ (Gardell 2003: 301). Moynihan himself is quoted as saying, ‘I certainly don’t identify with any vague racial category like being “white” and have never projected such a notion’ (Gardell 2003: 302). Ian Read’s Fire+Ice is another important example. Read has a long background in the postindustrial scene, having worked with Current 93, Death in June, and Sol Invictus from the mid1980s (Fire+Ice 2009). Read also has a background in Chaos Magick, having been the leader of the very influential group Illuminates of Thanateros in the early 1990s, and published the journal Chaos International since 1986 (Evans 2007: 358). Like Moynihan, Read is a member of the Rune-Gild, and he currently functions as Drighten – organizational head – of the Gild in the UK and Europe (Fire+Ice 2009). Read’s Master-Work in the Rune-Gild was the previously mentioned Fire+Ice album Rûna (1996), and the album naturally exhibits numerous Germanic Pagan notions. The nine songs on the album are titled ‘Rûna’, ‘Hamr’, ‘Reyn til Rûna!’, ‘Weirdstaves’, ‘The Galdor’, ‘… of Midgarð’, ‘Egil’, ‘Holy Mead’, and ‘Seiðkona’ – all relating to heathenism. Read has also contributed to the third issue of the journal Tyr.

Hip hop and the occult connection Perhaps surprisingly, hip hop is another form of popular music that has rather strong ties to occult discourse. In this case, however, we are not dealing with inspiration from heathenism or classic Western esotericism but rather occultism with a Muslim pedigree. In particular, we are looking at the influence of the Nation of Gods and Earths – also known as the Five Percenters.13 The beginnings of the Nation of Gods and Earths can be traced to New York City in 1963, when Clarence 13X (Clarence Edward Smith 1928–69) left the Nation of Islam, declared himself ‘Allah’ (a standard practice in the Nation of Islam, where the leader was regularly identified as Allah), and began teaching the Nation’s ‘Supreme Wisdom’ lessons – a series of transcribed dialogues between NOI’s W. D. Fard and Muhammed Elijah – to black youth in Harlem (Gardell 1996: 224–5; Knight 2011: 5–9). The teachings soon spread among black youth in New York and beyond, with the movement becoming very influential in the emerging hip-hop scene in the 1970s and 1980s (Knight 2009: xi–xiii). The 120 Supreme Wisdom lessons are interpreted through the ‘Supreme Alphabet’ and the ‘Supreme Mathematics’. The former assigns a specific meaning to each letter of the Roman alphabet, and the latter to the numbers 0–9. In addition to being utilized in interpreting the Supreme Wisdom lessons, the Supreme Alphabet and Mathematics are also used to interpret other texts and messages, and to create coded messages for other Five Percenters. The latter is found with many hip-hop artists with links to the Nation of Gods and Earths, allowing them to include spiritual messages without alienating other fans (Knight 2011: 2–3). The Supreme Alphabet and Mathematics are essentially a numerological system that can be used to unlock the secrets of the universe.14 In addition, the vocabulary used in the Nation of Gods and Earths is ‘scientified’ in the same way as much occultism in the latter part of the twentieth century. The words ‘mathematics’ and ‘science’ are used in reference to many aspects of the doctrines. The occult ethos is also evident in the NGE’s first formal mission statement, ‘What We Teach, What We Will Achieve’, which was frequently included in the magazine WORD from the mid-1980s and still can be found on many NGE websites. In the section ‘What We Teach’ the 207

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third point states, ‘That the science of Supreme Mathematics is the key to understanding man’s relationship to the universe.’ Likewise, the seventh point states, ‘That the blackman is god and his proper name is ALLAH. Arm, Leg, Leg, Arm, Head’ (Knight 2009: 193–4). In essence then, man is a god, while at the same time submitting him-/herself to the god ‘Allah’. The ‘What We Will Achieve’ statements include even more elaborated esoteric discourse (Knight 2009: 194). According to Knight the ‘Supreme Mathematics’ was a feature already in the early rap that preceded hip-hop proper, essentially becoming the language that hip hop drew on (Knight 2009: 177–8). He goes on to state that ‘for the generation that would produce hip hop’s “Golden Age”-artists like Rakim and Big Daddy Kane … the Five Percenters were an established orthodoxy, their traditions a vital part of the surrounding cultural scene’ (Knight 2009: 178). Core elements of Five Percenter doctrine are present among many hip-hop artists who are adherents of the teachings. Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA (Robert Fitzgerald Diggs 1969–) includes the whole of ‘What We Teach’ as ‘Nine Basic Tenets of the Nation of Gods and Earths’ in the 2004 Wu-Tang Manual (RZA 2004: 44; Knight 2009: 194). The reactions within the movement were mixed, with some being very critical of the ‘revelation of secrets’ and others happy for the spread of the teachings to a more mainstream audience (Knight 2009: 205). Similarly, Brand Nubian’s Lord Jamar (Lorenzo Dechalus 1968–) bases his song ‘The Greatest Story Never Told’ (The 5% Album 2006) on the article ‘The Bomb: the Greatest Story Never Told’ that was published in four parts in the magazine WORD in 1987 (written by Beloved Allah). Knight calls it ‘hip hop’s most detailed treatment of the Father’ (Knight 2009: 195). The solo album the song is on, The 5% Album (2006), clearly references the Nation of Gods and Earths. The album also contains songs such as ‘Supreme Mathematics’ (in two different mixes), ‘Young Godz’, ‘The Cipher’, and ‘Study Ya Lessons’, pretty much making the album a religious record that could be compared to Dissection’s Reinkaos. Other popular artists that have demonstrated relations to Five Percenter teachings are Nas (Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones), Busta Rhymes (Trevor Tahiem Smith, Jr, 1972–), and Queen Latifah (Dana Elaine Owens 1970–) (Gardell 1996: 295). The Nation of Gods and Earths is so ingrained into hip-hop culture that even artists that have no relation to them, such as Eminem (Marshall Bruce Mathers III 1972–), have referenced elements of doctrine and prominent figures in the movement, often in a disparaging way. In addition, the first online Five Percenter publication, the British Black 7 (2003), interviews both prominent Five Percenters and hip-hop artists (Knight 2009: 198).

Conclusion The world of popular music and the occult is much more vast and diverse than any one chapter, whatever the length of it may be, can give justice to. There is much, much more to the occult in popular music, most of it completely undiscovered scholarly territory. For example, mainstream pop music and its idols themselves present a fascinating field. Just think of all the YouTube videos ‘exposing’ the alleged occult conspiracies in videos by Lady Gaga and others (see BFB 2013). While giving any conclusions to such a cursory overview is difficult, an attempt must at least be made. The majority of the chapter has dealt with various styles of heavy metal music, partly because that is the genre where the occult is most explicitly prominent, and partly because that is the area most familiar to me. The occult was a part of heavy metal since the inception of the genre, and the relation became more intimate and elaborated as time progressed. Explicitly 208

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religio-occult dimensions became foundational for a subgenre with the rise of Norwegian black metal in the early 1990s, and a semi-independent ‘ritual black metal’ scene evolved in the 2000s. This scene, distinguished the occult forming the very core of it, is remarkable in the musical variance it entertains. Everything from extreme black metal to dark ambient coexists harmoniously at the same festivals, as long as that all-important occult core is present. The occult is also prominent in early industrial, post-industrial and neofolk music. The latter in particular, with its romantic longing for a pre-Christian past, has attracted a number of prominent black metal artists in recent years. Gorgoroth’s Gahl and his new band Wardruna is a good example. Finally, and in a completely different way, the occult features rather prominently in the history of hip hop. However, we are here not dealing with inspiration drawn from classic European esotericism, or pre-Christian myth and culture, but instead from the numerological explorations by the Nation of Islam-derived Nation of Gods and Earths.

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Chapter 18

Caribbean Religions and Popular Music David Moskowitz

The intersection of popular music styles and various Caribbean religious traditions dates back to the colonial era. From the fifteenth through to the twentieth centuries, the modern Caribbean population and demographic picture developed. From Cuba in the east to the windward islands of Barbados and Saint Lucia, the contemporary Caribbean is rife with location-specific religions. Each of these religions is unique based on the individual island on which it developed. Three of the most prevalent Caribbean-based religions with influence on indigenous popular music styles are Vodou (Voodoo – American/Louisiana spelling), Santeria and Rastafari. A unique case study can be made of the syncretic religion Vodou. This regional religion developed not just in Haiti, but also in Cuba and in the Dominican Republic. Each country exercises a unique practice of the religion. What each has in common is the mixing of European, Caribbean and African elements. During the colonial era, Catholicism was brought to the Caribbean where it mixed with elements of Central and West African tribal religions. The results were ‘new’ religious designations which were location-specific and unique.

Haiti The Haitian Vodou religion developed with its own types of traditional religious music, often involving dances, songs, percussive patterns, specific instruments and performance practices. Based on its African roots, it is no surprise that hand drumming forms an integral part of this neoAfrican religion’s music. Within Vodou, there are several different drum types which deliver a host of complex rhythms as part of the worship. The rhythmic patterns, thus created, are cyclical and always feature a slow pulse serving as a basic framework on which additional rhythmic lines are added. The Vodou religion continues to be the most practised worship type in Haiti and, as a result, has long had influence on Haitian popular music. The Haitian rara, a seasonal ritual of the lowerclass urban neighbourhoods, is performed to celebrate the period from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. Its evolution involved the development of rara bands which roam the street during this time span (often accompanied by a Vodou priest or priestess to bless the musicians). These bands perform spiritual music which is heard by all and seeps into the myriad popular music styles. Additionally, ‘Rara also has secular features, including an exuberant and sensual celebratory ethos, plus usually topical bawdy, critical, and allusive musical texts. However, the ritual fulfils an important sacred duty and is connected to issues of life, death, and rebirth’ (Averill 1998: 886).

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An example of Haitian popular music which is directly connected to Vodou emerged in 1987 with the rise of mizik rasin style. The style is also known as simple rasin, or racin ‘roots music’ and is a progressive style of Haitian popular music. This style of popular music developed around the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier. While oppressing the Haitian underclass, Duvalier appropriated various Vodou drumming rhythms in an effort to use the religion as a means of control. The Haitian musical response was the development of mizik rasin which regained control of the Vodou-based rhythms through a combination of stylistic elements. Mizik rasin became a mixture of elements of the Vodou religion combining traditional lyrics, instruments and rhythms with influences from rock and roll. The result was a new and uniquely Haitian form of popular music, which was born out of the recovery of a long-standing religious tradition and the necessity to reassert the desires of the underclass. Several groups rose to prominence in this style in the 1980s and 1990s, including Boukman Eksperyans and Boukan Ginen. Boukman Eksperyans, whose name is derived from a famous Vodou priest, combines African influence, Vodou-based rhythms and a Big Band instrumental arrangement. Their debut album Vodou Adjae was nominated for a Grammy Award. The group RAM also explored mizik rasin and even released a recording of the traditional Vodou folk song ‘Fey’. Many other bands with roots in the Haitian Vodou religion have formed since 1990, and their presence is felt throughout the arena of world and popular music styles.

Dominican Republic Although the Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, Dominican Vudou is much different from that practised in Haiti. The Dominican version, sometimes called Dominican Vudu or Las 21 Divisiones, is characterized by being less strict than its Haitian counterpart. There is no fixed doctrine and a generally less rigid structure, though the ceremonies all still hinge on singing and music-making. Within the Dominican Vodou context, particular emphasis is placed on playing palo drums and, during ceremonies, spirit possession is said to take place. The dance that accompanies this palo drumming can be traced back to the African Congo origins. The ceremonies themselves are raucous events involving drinking, social dancing and ‘uninhibited fraternization between men and women’ (Manuel 1995: 98). Within Dominican Vodou, the typical palo music which normally accompanies the ceremonies is more recently augmented with bachata, merengue and other more modern musical styles. Additionally, Dominican Voduo ceremonies employ Congolese drums called atabales along with the guiro or scraper. Although the merengue and the bachata are internationally known Dominican musical styles, the palo music and the salves are more popular styles that maintain a connection to the countries’ religious roots. The salves are call-and-response songs accompanied by guiro, atabales and other African instruments. These songs are highly ceremonial and linked to palo music through shared rhythms and contexts. The religious linkage associated with the salves is inherent in the name, which is derived from Salve Regina. A salve performance features call-and-response singing, multiple tambourines playing layered rhythms, and melodic drum lines. Although overshadowed by the international popularity of the merengue and bachata, the salves are described as the ‘true’ Dominican national music style.

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Salves are the songs of choice for the Dominican village Villa Mella. This underclass suburb of the country’s capital city is home to the salve group run by Enerolisa Nuñez. Nuñez’s group crossed over into popular culture and music when she appeared on an album by merengue star Kinito Méndez titled A Palo Limpio. With this, the palo and salves styles entered the realm of popular music and the presence of Nuñez and her group on both iTunes and YouTube substantiate their transition into popular culture.

Cuba Much like Haiti, Cuba also has its own syncretic religion which mixes elements of Christianity with traditional African religions. ‘The Yoruba-derived religion in Cuba is called santería. Santeria is a syncretic religion in the sense that traditional Yoruba elements have fused with Roman Catholic ones to form a new, coherent set of beliefs and practices’ (Manuel 1995: 21). The Yoruba people were originally brought to Cuba as slaves and spread out across the island. Their heritage and traditions are more present in Western Cuba than on the eastern half of the island. Unlike many slave states, Cuban slave masters allowed ‘slaves to use their traditions of drumming and dance to worship as they had in Africa’ (Rodríguez 1998: 823). As a result, santería developed through the combination of the West African influence and the intersection of Christianity. In fact, the name santería is a deliberate allusion to the Christian saints. In an effort to evoke their gods or orishas, specific rhythmic patterns are performed which follow a specific and pre-established order. The instruments which are employed in these santería ceremonies include the two-headed batá drums. These hourglass-shaped drums are always used in sets of three. From lowest to highest, the batá drums are the iyá, the itótele and the okonkolo. To these lap-held drums are added the traditional Yoruba iyesa, which are four cylinder-shaped, double-headed drums. To supplement the sound of the drums, the shekere (shaker) is added. The Yoruba people were not the only Africans brought to Cuba. Additional slaves were brought from the Congo basin and the area between the Niger and the Cross rivers and with them additional African influences effected Cuban music, religion and culture during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As this African influence mixed with Christianity, santería developed and evolved a specific set of traditions and beliefs. Of central importance is the bembé celebration, which essentially boils down to ‘a sort of dance party connected to the Afro-Cuban religion santería’ (Manuel 1995: 19). This danced and sung celebration involves the use of large conga drums, cowbells and tambourine. The other main ceremony is the toque de santo, which is much more sombre and serious but still involves music. The music is still created on three hourglass-shaped batá drums. Santería remains a widespread religion among the Cuban lower class. It has become part of the Afro-Cuban national identity, especially in the black and mulatto populations. In fact, santería has spread to Latino communities in the United States – specifically in New York and Miami. More modern manifestations of the elements of santería are now found throughout the world. ‘Batá drumming which has historically been isolated in Cuban religious communities, has spread internationally as a musical style. Some intratraditional synthesis of sacred dance traditions have also appeared. Batarumba is an innovative form of rumba that has evolved or reemerged in the tourist setting’ (Diouf 2010: 30).

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Santería and its associated drumming has moved into the popular music world through the music style called timba. Since the early 1990s, the term timba has been used to describe popular dance music in Cuba which has different characteristics than salsa and which is inexorably linked to Cuban culture – specifically in Havana. Timba is a synthesis of elements of batá drumming, sacred songs of santería and rumba. These elements are combined with popular music genres such as rock and roll and funk and the resultant style is uniquely Cuban. Although not as famous as rumba or salsa, timba is a confluence of music, culture, society and its unique means of combining African, Cuban and modern styles make it extremely popular in Cuba to this day. The timba style is marked by the use of various percussion instruments, including timbales and drum set. To this is added keyboards/synthesizer, bass and a horn line. This instrumentation is primed for moments of improvisation and the timba style allows for this spontaneous composition. The word timba, with its African-derived combination of the letters ‘m’ and ‘b’, first surfaced as a name for a musical genre in Cuba in 1988. Since then, the style has become more prevalent. This expansion of timba was largely due to Cuba opening its borders to new countries after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. With the removal of the Soviet Union as its main trade partner, the Cuban economy experienced a crisis of grand scope. The only means of staving off the impending collapse was to invite tourism from China and long-alienated countries in South America. In the early 1990s, timba was the music that greeted the post-Soviet world as it visited Cuba. Timba has taken over Havana, and it was to this city that new tourists now flooded. Though timba was attractive and easily danced to, many of the new songs spoke to the uneasy issues confronting the country. As a reassertion of patriotism, several of the timba songs from the early 1990s reaffirmed a uniquely Cuban identity. Dating back to the beginning of the 1990s, the first significant timba band was Next Generation (NG) La Banda. Many even credit NG La Banda as the creators of the timba style. In fact, the group’s leader, flutist José Louis Cortés, is generally credited with naming the style. It is now considered the most important popular dance and music genre in Cuba for the past two decades. Musically, the timba style of NG La Banda mixes parts for conga player, the combining of the timbale and drum kit, and an active bass line as a means of connecting the music to the cultural history of the country. Because timba was the music coming from the barrios, it was immediately accepted by everyone in Havana, except the highest class. Timba became the music of the people (and by extension, the sound of Cuba), and throughout the 1990s, many more bands joined the style. Examples of these other timba bands are La Charanga Habanera, Charanga Forever, Paulo FG and Pupy y Los que Son Son.

Jamaica Although Jamaica was a colony of the United Kingdom until 6 August 1962, the country has a long and richly diverse history of traditional and religious music of a wide variety. The Jamaican colonial context was complicated by a series of interesting events. The island was originally ‘discovered’ by Christopher Columbus on his second expedition to the new world. At that time, the Arawak Indians populated the island. However, this indigenous population did not outlast the period of Spanish colonization. The Spanish had enslaved the Arawak and the resultant overwork

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and lack of disease resistance soon created the situation that the Spanish began importing slaves from Africa. This scenario changed drastically when the British took Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655. A by-product of this takeover was that the Spanish released all of their African slaves before fleeing the island. These free Africans fled to the mountains, in the interior of the island, and developed into their own society known as Maroons. The British continued the importation of African slaves to work the sugar cane fields until the early nineteenth century. Slave labour was then replaced by indentured servitude, with workers imported from China and Central Africa. The musical result of this cultural mixture in the Caribbean sun was the development of the use of a wide variety of instruments. Traditional Jamaican music employed a wide variety of maracas, shakers, the rumba box, grater and the triangle. Of note, body percussion was also used with snapping and foot stamping also serving as percussion instruments. In addition to traditional non-pitched percussion, many styles of membrane-headed drums developed. The Maroons ‘regard their drums, the prenting and the goombeh, as having a great historic significance for the part they played with the abeng (a cow horn) in passing messages and helping to liberate their people from the British oppression in 1839’ (Lewin 1998: 897). Another African-derived drumming practice manifest in the Kumina cult brought to Jamaica by the Kikongo people from central Africa. Once in Jamaica, these cultists used a membranophone called the kbandu which was played with two sticks (catta). Another important Jamaican cultural unit are the practitioners of the Kumina cult descended from the Central African-born slaves freed during the indentured servitude period, Kumina adherents sing songs on African texts, dance and play music based on complex rhythmic patterns. These rhythmic patterns are executed on the kbandu and cyas drums. Within this tradition, the dancers, responsorial singers and drummers interact and much of what is executed involves an element of improvisation. Another significant Jamaican religious sect is called Revival. It is the main African-Christian cult, ‘embracing Revival Pukkumina (also Pukko), and Zion (also Zion Way). Blending Christian and West African concepts, Revival includes singing, dancing, instrumental and percussive accompaniment’ (Lewin 1998: 903). Revival incorporates hymn-like songs, chanting and calland-response singing. Its musical background emphasizes syncopated rhythms against a steady pulse. This rhythmic syncopation can be felt in several of the subsequent Jamaican popular styles. The most internationally well-known Caribbean-based syncretic religion is Jamaican Rastafarianism. This movement, which was founded in Jamaica, syncretized elements of the King James Version of the Bible, Marcus Garvey’s Pan-African doctrine and the notion that a messianic saviour emerged from Ethiopia – Haile Selassie I (in Amharic meaning ‘power of the Trinity’, aka ‘Ras Tafari’, aka ‘Jah’, b. 1892– d. 1975). The religion itself began in the poor, west Kingston ghetto in the 1930s. Its development was influenced by the teachings of Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), who urged black people to look to Africa as their motherland (i.e. Pan-Africanism). By the 1970s, the sociocultural influences of Rastafarianism began to be felt among the middle and upper classes, as the tenets (peace, love) and lifestyle (self-expression, self-reliance, dignity) demonstrated by its practitioners attracted a new generation of nationalistic youth. (Lewin 1998: 904) 214

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Although reggae music is not inherently the music of Rastafarianism, many famous reggae musicians adhere to the doctrines of this syncretic religion – most visibly, the first third-world superstar Robert Nesta ‘Bob’ Marley. The role of Marcus Garvey in the evolution of the Rastafarian religion cannot be overstated. In the 1920s, Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in which he propagated his notions of Pan-Africanism, which was essentially that all black people of the world were in fact displaced Africans. Additionally, Garvey himself said that a new king would arise from Africa and deliver internationally oppressed black people from tyranny (i.e. out of Babylon, deriving images from the Old Testament). This king, Garvey identified as Ethiopian Emperor Prince Haile Selassie I. ‘When Garvey’s prophesy and Selassie’s lineage and nobility were combined, the Rastafarian movement began’ (Moskowitz 2006: 250). In addition to very specific rituals/traditions associated with Rastafarianism (such as the wearing of dreadlocks, Ital diet, sacramental smoking of marijuana), the religion deified Selassie who became known within the religion as Jah (God). Like other Jamaican-based sects, the devotees of this religion also use membrane-headed drums. The religion adapted the African buru drumming tradition to the Jamaican context. As a result, the African buru-like drums used in the worship of Rastafari are similar to their African counterparts. There are three membranophones, which are from lowest to highest in pitch: the bass, the fundeh (or funde) and the repeater (or peta). All are played with the fingers, instead of any type of drumstick. In the celebration of Rastafari, ceremony also includes singing and dancing (though not by the drummers). This type of musical worship is called nyabinghi drumming and had a deep impact on Jamaican culture, both within and outside of the religion. With all of these varied traditional, cultural and religious influences, Jamaica has a long and varied tradition of related popular music. Mento, ska, rock steady and reggae music styles are the most well known of the popular Jamaican styles. Each of these island-based styles developed in the twentieth century and each exhibits some stylistic connection to traditional Jamaican musical heritage. Also in each case, the popular music styles are associated with elements of long-standing Jamaican rituals and ceremonies. Mento, one of Jamaican’s indigenous musical styles, rose to popularity in the 1940s – though its roots can be traced into the late nineteenth century. The style mixed a host of Jamaican religious/ traditional elements with popular music cues. Mento contains aspects of several Jamaican sacred styles, the European quadrille, slave-era work songs and even elements of American jazz. Like early styles of American jazz, after mento stopped being the prevalent Jamaican popular style, it continued to be made and recorded in the background. It emerged with an associated style of singing, dancing and music. In terms of general musical elements, mento melodies can be realized on ‘a clarinet, a fife, a harmonica, a piccolo, a saxophone, a trumpet, or an electronic keyboard; harmonies by banjo and guitar (which may also be played melodically), with a rumba box or a string bass for the bass; and rhythms by drums, maracas, a grater, concussion sticks, and a variety of improvised instruments’ (Lewin 1998: 906). Stylistically, mento tends to be in major keys with symmetrical phrase lengths in quadruple time with an accent on the fourth beat. Additionally, mento was the first Jamaican popular music style to emphasize rhythms played off of the beat (between beat two and three and between beat four and one of the next measure). This stylistic element came forward from mento to ska to reggae. The lyrics of mento song, in the 1950s, often contained social commentary, but ‘more 215

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often were reworkings of older digging songs’ (Manuel 1995: 155). Although mento was an interesting amalgam of dispirit sources, it essentially developed into a generic Jamaican folk music with roots in several of the island’s religious traditions. Mento transitioned from traditional to popular music in the 1940s as it began to be recorded by Jamaica’s fledgling recording industry. In fact, it was the first type of music recorded in Jamaica. Early appearances came from producers such as Stanley Motta, who first recorded mento in 1951 and is credited with recording some of the earliest examples in the style on his Motta’s Recording Studio label. At issue, was that Jamaica did not have its own record pressing plant, so these recordings were sent to the United Kingdom for pressing. Another major early Jamaican record producer was Ken Khouri who first issued mento sides in 1954 on his Federal Records label. The style combines secular and sacred elements. It differs from other popular styles in that it emerged from the rural interior of the island, instead of the urban environs of Kingston. Like all of the popular Jamaican styles, mento is meant to be danced to, as well as sung. Unlike its religious predecessors, the lyrics of mento songs are delivered in English and run the gamut from rural themes of food preparation to more cosmopolitan images of relationship issues and even bawdy subject matter. Significant early mento artists were Lord Fly (who first appeared on Motta’s label), Count Lasher, Lord Flea, Baba Motta, Lord Composer, Lord La Rue, Lord Messam, Lord Tanamo, Lord Power and Laurel Aitken. Lord Fly, born Rupert Linly Lyon, was a saxophone player and band leader who (along with his band) is credited as the earliest to record mento with singles such as ‘Medley of Jamaican Mento-Calypsos’ backed with ‘Whai, Whai, Whai’ on a 45. The A-side of this single perpetuated the myth that Jamaican mento and the calypso style from Trinidad and Tobago were musically related. The music of Laurel Aitken’s creates a good hinge point from the mento to the ska style. Aitken and his band played in both styles. While Lord Fly got the mento style on record, Aitken brought mento greater exposure and helped to usher in the ska era, as mento was progressively becoming less popular. His mento records are significant and brought the style to a wider audience. His ska sides from the late 1950s included the songs ‘Nebuchnezer’, ‘Sweet Chariot’ (a mento version of ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’) and ‘Baba Kill Me Goat’. Aitken’s 1958 single, ‘Boogie in My Bones’, with B-side ‘Little Sheila’ was a truly significant Jamaican release. This single was the first Jamaican popular song released on Chris Blackwell’s legendary Island Records label, which went onto gain international repute as the label that signed Bob Marley and the Wailers. Additionally, it was the first Jamaican pop song to be released in the United Kingdom – thus beginning a long-standing musical union between these two countries that continues to this time. Stylistically, these songs reflect a direct influence of American rhythm and blues in the manner of Louis Jordan’s jump bands. This injection of the jump band style accelerated the movement away from mento and towards then next Jamaican popular style: ska. On the heels of the mento explosion, Jamaican popular music with traditional roots evolved into the ska style. Ska music was the prevalent popular style on the island beginning in the early 1960s. Recording artists like Aitken took the traditional Jamaican sound and updated with the influence of American rhythm and blues. The ska sound was the product of that hybridization. Ska emerged at the same time as Jamaica gained its independence and, as a result, it became the music of Jamaican identity and nationalist pride. 216

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Although a mixture of influences, ska maintains roots in the traditional music of the island. It was influenced by mento, American rhythm and blues, jazz, Louis Jordan jump bands style, calypso and other styles. The basic ska band includes a singer, guitarist, bass player and drummer, to which was added a horn line – typically including saxophone, trumpet and trombone. Stylistically, ska is faster in tempo than mento and is appropriate for dancing. However, it maintained the characteristic traditional offbeat accents found in the majority of Jamaican popular music. Ska maintained its popular music dominance in Jamaica for approximately five years, 1961– 66, when it was gradually replaced by the slower rock steady style. As was the case with mento, the ska style did not disappear when it lost popularity it continued to be used and has subsequently enjoyed several very intense revivals. Ska’s first revival came with the late 1970s and early 1980s two-tone movement in the United Kingdom. This was followed up in the late 1980s and early 1990s with a ska revival in the United States, often called third wave. Important ska musicians include Roland Alphonso, Desmond Dekker, Alton Ellis, the Ethiopians, Byron Lee, Tommy McCook, Jackie Mittoo, Derrick Morgan and Rico Rodriquez. However, the band the Skatalites is generally regarded as the foremost group who worked in the original ska style. The Skatalites were a group of instrumentalists who formed at the Alpha Boys Catholic School in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1964. The band’s playing defined the ska sound and, through over 300 releases, had an enormous impact. The Skatalites were essentially Clement Dodd’s (the owner of the Jamaican recording studio called Studio One) studio musicians from June of 1964 to the end of 1965. The group was led by Tommy McCook who recruited Roland Alphonso, Lloyd Brevett, Lloyd Knibb, Lester Sterling, Jerry Haynes, Johnny Moore, Jackie Opel, Doreen Schaffer and Jackie Mittoo. For fourteen months, this unit worked for all of the major Jamaican record producers and provided backing for all of the major ska singers, much like the Funk Brothers backed the major singers on Berry Gordy’s Motown label through the 1960s. Ska’s upbeat and danceable sound was rooted in a host of influences. According to McCook one influence with significant impact came from his frequent visits to a Rastafarian enclave which was the home of master drummer Count Ossie, born Oswald Williams. Ossie was steeped in the burru and nyabinghi drumming traditions. So popular was Ossie that he even formed his own drumming group called the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, which included the traditional bass, fundeh and repeater drums often augmented by a horn line. McCook was immersed in this blending of religious and traditional music and even played his saxophone with Ossie’s drummers at times. The result was that McCook’s work with the Skatalites was heavily influenced by African traditions mixed with Jamaican syncretism. McCook was not alone in this absorption of influences. Skatalite members Drummond, Rodriquez and Alphonso all came under Ossie’s musical influence. Thus, these key members of the Skatalites brought to bear these key influences as they were pioneering the ska style. Even with ska’s importance on the island, it was still a fairly short-lived style – as attested to by the short run of the Skatalites band itself. They broke up less than two years after forming. The result was that that McCook went on to form a new band called the Supersonics. Of note, with the Supersonics, McCook moved past the ska style and helped to usher in the next Jamaican popular music style, rock steady. As the ska style enjoyed several periods of revival, so have the Skatalites who have reformed several times through the subsequent years. 217

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Rock steady supplanted ska as the main Jamaican popular music style in the latter half of the 1960s. The rock steady style is closely related to its predecessor. Many of the same musicians played in both the ska and rock steady style, including Tommy McCook of the Skatalites. Musically, rock steady is similar to ska, but it progresses with a beat speed much slower than ska and uses fewer total instruments in the band. Stylistically, the guitar plays off the second and fourth beat of a four-beat measure while the bass emphasizes the first and third beats. Regarding general instrumentation, the biggest difference between ska and rock steady is that the keyboard player of the rock steady band largely replaces the horn line of the ska band. Additionally, the bass and drums rose to greater musical prominence within the texture of the band. While ska was an instrument-heavy style of music, rock steady focuses more on the delivery of tight vocal harmonies more akin to the American Motown and Soul sounds. In addition to the Supersonics, significant rock steady bands include the Ethiopians, the Gladiators, the Heptones, the Melodians and the Paragons. Most significantly, Bob Marley and the Wailers got their musical start and chart their musical roots to the ska and rock steady styles. As was the case with mento and ska, the rock steady style did not remain the most popular style of Jamaican popular music for long. The rock steady era ended around 1970 at which time it was replaced by the reggae style. Even with the emergence of reggae, rock steady continued to be a style that Jamaican bands played in and referenced as influential. Reggae is the most well-known, internationally popular Jamaican popular music style with roots in religious and traditional music. A common misconception is that reggae music is the music of the Rastafarian religion. This is confusion created by proximity. Many famous reggae artists are devotees of the Rastafari, but the religion has its own music traditions. The reggae style does have musical influence from Rastarianism. When reggae emerged in the end of the 1960s, it adapted elements of ska and rock steady and mixed them with aspects of American rhythm and blues and African drumming. Traditional reggae often employs the horns of ska, the slowed down beat speed of rock steady, the shuffle rhythm of New Orleans-based rhythm and blues, and African burru drumming rhythms filled with syncopation. Musically, in reggae the guitar typically plays off the second and fourth beats as has been characteristic for several earlier Jamaican popular music styles while the bass emphasizes the first and third beats. The most significant difference between reggae and all previous Jamaican music styles is the use of the one drop rhythm pioneered by the rhythm section of the Wailers. Aston ‘Family Man’ (bass) and Carlton ‘Carly’ (drums) Barrett were Bob Marley’s longstanding rhythm section and the musical backbone of the Wailers. These brothers developed the one drop rhythm in which the drums only emphasize the third beat in a four-beat measure of musical time. This emphasis was achieved by the drummer only using the kick drum, the bass drum, on the third beat while the bass part vacates that beat so the one drop can be heard. This rhythmic plan became the fabric of reggae music and is found throughout reggae music of the 1970s – not just in the music of Wailers band. This rhythm was so linked to the band that they wrote a song called ‘One Drop’ which was released on the 1979 Bob Marley and the Wailers album called Survival. While reggae music may not be the ‘official’ music of the Rastafarian religion, it was deeply impacted by all facets of the religion. The Rastafarian sect had infiltrated the west Kingston ghetto, by the early 1970s, and became inexorably linked to the Jamaican underclass. This relationship between Rastafarian ideals and the disenfranchised Jamaican poor led to the connection between 218

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Rastafari and reggae. Many of the reggae musicians who emerged around 1970 came from the Jamaican underclass and were from the west Kingston ghetto, called Trench Town. This resulted in Rastafarian doctrine being present in reggae music from its beginnings. Biblical imagery and millenarian prophecy are found throughout the reggae music of the 1970s, whether the singer/ band were actually Rastafarians or not. The Rastafarian manifestations in Bob Marley and the Wailers are manifold and pervade all aspects of the band, its music and the lifestyle the band members engaged in throughout the 1970s. Of note, Marley (and his wife Rita, who became one of the band’s backing singers) was a Rastafarian throughout his adult life. Additionally, the original Wailers core of Bob, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer (born Neville Livingston) all prescribed to the doctrines of Rastafarianism throughout the heyday of the band. By the end of the 1960s, the members of the Wailers began growing their hair out into dreadlocks and had stopped shaving their faces, all part of Rasta doctrine. With this, the Wailers became the first outwardly Rastafarian reggae band in Jamaica. Furthermore, the band began practising the aesthetic of the Rasta diet called Ital. They each spent time reading the Bible and took to smoking marijuana as a Rastafarian sacrament. Beyond appearance, diet and lifestyle, the lyrics of the Wailers music became increasingly filled with the tenets of Rastafarian doctrine. Song increasingly contained Bible quotes, mentions of pivotal figures like Marcus Garvey, and discussions of the importance of Jah/Haile Selassie. As the music of the Wailer increasingly embraced Rastafarianism, the style of the music itself changed. During the early 1970s, the Wailers were recording with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry at his Black Ark Studio and his studio band the Upsetters, from which the Wailers took the Barrett brothers. These sessions gradually turned away from love songs and towards songs about Rastafarian themes. One such early example was the song ‘Brain Washing’ about black society being contaminated by the Babylon of whites. Bob Marley and the Wailers sent the message of Jamaican Rastafarianism to the world on their 1972 album Catch A Fire, released on Chris Blackwell’s Island Records. The album was a watershed for the band, reggae music and Rastafarianism – in addition, the album was the first reggae LP (long playing record), instead of being a series of singles released on 45. Released on 13 April 1973, Catch A Fire introduced the Western world to all things Jamaican in one broad stroke. For his part, Chris Blackwell had additional rock-style guitar and keyboard parts overdubbed on the album as it was being mixed. This alteration allowed for the Wailers Rastafarian-infused reggae music to cross over to a wide, largely white, rock-centric audience. The album contained several Rastafarian-influenced songs, but none more so than ‘Concrete Jungle’. ‘Concrete Jungle’ is an interesting amalgam of traditional Jamaican music mixed with Rastafarian elements all delivered through the framework of 1970s English rock and roll. The song basically conformed to the elements of Rastafarian drumming. The drum set and the rhythm guitar act in support of the bass drum. The drumming accents the second and fourth beats of the four-beat measure and the guitar plays eighth-note off-beats. The guitar’s role changes at the time of the solo at which time it functions more like the Rastafarian repeater drum. The bass line acts as the Rastafarian fundeh with activity that complements the rhythms of the drum and the guitar. Outside of the guitar solo, the vocal line delivered by Marley occupies the role of the Rastafarian repeater as it is the most rhythmically active part. ‘Concrete Jungle’ is just one example among many. On the Wailers’ second major album release, Burnin’, Rastafarian references are found throughout. ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ discusses 219

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overthrowing Babylonian/white oppression, ‘Rasta Man Chant’ directly imitates Rastafarian religious music, and ‘One Foundation’ focuses on the importance of Haile Selassie/Jah as the key figure to black salvation. In 1974, the Wailers released the album Natty Dread, whose title is a reference to the group’s religious affiliation. Of particular note on this album is the song ‘So Jah Say’, which is filled with Rastafarian doctrine and Bible quotations. Although a significant portion of the music of Bob Marley and the Wailers is based on Rastafarian tenets/practices/doctrine, the religion reached a crisis point during Marley’s life. On 27 August 1975, Haile Selassie/Ras Tafari (who claimed to be a descendant in the lineage of King Solomon) died under mysterious circumstances. The reaction to this announcement within the Jamaican Rastafarian community was sheer disbelief. Bob Marley and the Wailers reacted through music with the release of the 1976 single ‘Jah Live’. The sentiment of the song is a simple explanation to the devout that god simply cannot die. With this, the first third-world superstar to rise out of the west Kingston ghetto dismissed any doubt of his religious belief. Although Bob Marley and the Wailers make a solid case study for the presence of Rastafarian elements in reggae music, they are certainly not the only band about which fit this mould. A series of popular Jamaican bands have espoused Rastafarian doctrine, including Third World, Chalice, Culture, Dillinger, Inner Circle and many others. Further, these connections are not limited to reggae music. Contemporary Jamaican popular music, called dancehall, contains many similar connections to Rastafarianism depending on the musician or group. One such artist named Capleton, born Clifton George Bailey III, references the Rastafarian ideals and touch stones in much of his music. For example, Capleton’s song ‘Jah Jah City’ contains lyrics about Marcus Garvey, universal love and the destruction of evil. The lyrics are delivered in a dancehall style, but the musical backdrop is a sparse and stripped down one drop, reggae beat. A more straight ahead dancehall song is his ‘Music is the Mission’. Even in a more contemporary beat feel, the Rastafarian messages of respecting Jah and reading the Bible come across in the lyrics. Whether in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba or Jamaica, the connection between religion and popular music is pervasive in the Caribbean. Reuse of religiously oriented instruments or the approximation of the textures of various religious styles maintains this connection. The overt Rastafarian references in Jamaican reggae music creates the most overarching connection between popular music and religious roots with the music of Bob Marley and the Wailers produced in the 1970s serving as an exemplary case study.

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Part Three

Genres

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Chapter 19

Heavy Metal Marcus Moberg

Ever since its emergence and initial development during the late 1960s and early 1970s, heavy metal has been characterized by its, often highly conspicuous, fascination with the apocalyptic visions of the Bible, the world of mythology and legend (primarily as found in Norse, Celtic and Germanic traditions), different strands of Occultism, Western Esotericism, Paganism and Satanism. As a genre, heavy metal has proven exceptionally durable and given rise to a truly global popular music culture that continuously attracts new and ardent followers all over the world (e.g. Wallach, Berger and Greene 2011). In large part because of its long-standing fondness for ‘darker’, and often subversive, religious themes, the history of heavy metal has been ridden with controversy (e.g. Hjelm, Kahn-Harris and LeVine 2013). The genre has been the subject of numerous moral panics and Satanism-scares in social contexts as varied as North America and Western Europe, former socialist Eastern Europe and, more recently, countries such as Indonesia, Iran and Egypt. It would therefore be no exaggeration to say that heavy metal’s association with religion – whether emerging from within the genre itself, from the criticism of its detractors, or both – has developed into a defining characteristic of the genre as a whole. Religion and popular culture have always constituted ‘overlapping categories’ (Mahan 2007: 48), but even a cursory glance at the wider Western popular cultural environment of the past three to four decades reveals an increasing preoccupation with topics related to religion, religious themes and imagery (e.g. Partridge 2004). In particular, various beliefs and notions pertaining to the impending demise of humankind and the end of the world – which are beliefs and notions that have largely, although loosely, remained explored within a Judeo-Christian eschatological and apocalyptic framework – have long constituted a salient feature of Western popular culture. Indeed, a few Western post-1960s popular music cultures have even become strongly characterized by their consistent interest in this type of subject matter. Among these, heavy metal and its various subgenres stand out particularly well. Heavy metal’s engagement with religious themes has not, however, remained confined to Judeo-Christian apocalypticism. Nor has it remained confined to instrumental treatments of such themes for merely rhetorical or aesthetic purposes. Instead, a significant number of heavy metal bands have also used their music as a vehicle for the expression and articulation of more complex, and often religionrelated, ideologies and worldviews as diverge as Satanist and Anti-Christian (Cordero 2010), Occult (Granholm 2013), Pagan (Weinstein 2014), National-Socialist (Olson 2013), Evangelical Christian (Moberg 2015) and Ultra-Orthodox Judaist (Kahn-Harris 2010). This chapter provides a general account of the place of religion in heavy metal music and culture. The chapter is divided into two main parts. The first part briefly traces the historical

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development of heavy metal and provides an overview of the types of religious themes that have most commonly been explored within its various main subgenres. Considering the myriad ways in which heavy metal bands have engaged with or articulated various types of religious themes throughout the years, this chapter does not aim to be comprehensive in this regard. Rather, it provides more of a bird’s eye view of heavy metal’s relationship to religion in general. For the purposes of advancing our understanding of this relationship, the second part of the chapter offers a critical discussion of earlier scholarly work in the area of metal and religion. The conclusion, finally, offers some suggestions for directions for future research.

Heavy metal music: Historical development and engagement with religion and religious themes The origins of heavy metal can be traced back to the blues-based and psychedelic hard rock of the late 1960s and early 1970s as represented by well-known contemporary ‘proto-heavy metal’ bands such as Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The precise origins of heavy metal remain a contested issue. Most commentators nevertheless regard British band Black Sabbath as the first band to fully develop and articulate the musical, verbal and aesthetic traits that would later become the hallmark of heavy metal. From their very first selftitled album from 1970 and subsequent releases such as Paranoid (1970) and Master of Reality (1971), Black Sabbath not only steered their music in a decidedly more aggressive direction compared to most previous blues-based hard rock bands; they also set the standard for the type of lyrical subject matter and general aesthetic that would subsequently develop into a distinctive feature of heavy metal on the whole, such as the battle between good and evil, the figure of Satan, war, religion and the Occult. Although it is difficult to understate the impact of Black Sabbath during heavy metal’s formative years, the genre continued to ‘crystallize’ (Weinstein 1991: 14) in the late 1970s and early 1980s through the further efforts of bands such as Judas Priest and Rainbow along with several socalled ‘New Wave of British Heavy Metal’ bands such as Iron Maiden, Saxon and Diamond Head. During this time, the boundaries of the genre became increasingly clear and fixed as there now emerged a ‘core of music that could be called, indisputably, heavy metal’ (Weinstein 1991: 22). Heavy metal continued to develop and diversify throughout the 1980s, initially becoming divided up into the two contrasting main subgenres of glam metal and thrash metal. While glam metal, as represented by enormously commercially successful bands such as Mötley Crüe, Poison and Def Leppard, principally constituted a turn towards ‘softer’ sounds and a much greater emphasis on pop sensibility, the largely underground thrash metal movement, strongly inspired as it was by the emergence of punk in the late 1970s, instead developed in the opposite direction as bands such as Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer created a decidedly more fierce form of metal ‘characterized by speed, aggression and an austere seriousness’ (Kahn-Harris 2007: 3). Among these, Slayer adopted a particularly critical and adversarial stance towards religion in general through releases such as Haunting the Chapel (1984), Hell Awaits (1985) and God Hates Us All (2001). Thrash metal also paved the way for the subsequent development of so-called extreme metal styles such as death metal and black metal from the mid-1980s onwards, both of which also brought with them a much more sustained engagement with various types of Esoteric,

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Occult, Pagan, Satanist and subversive anti-Christian themes (Kahn-Harris 2007: 3–5). A large amount of closely related additional subgenres and styles have developed following heavy metal’s continued diversification during past decades, including doom metal, sludge metal, drone metal, grindcore, alternative metal and industrial metal, to name just a few. In spite of its high degree of diversification, the general verbal and aesthetic dimension of heavy metal has nevertheless largely remained informed by a particular discourse. Although heavy metal lyrics and aesthetics have never been dominated by any one specific theme, as Deena Weinstein has observed in relation to the ‘traditional’ heavy metal of the 1970s and 1980s, one can nevertheless discern a ‘significant core of thematic complexes’ (Weinstein 2000: 35). According to Weinstein, metal’s narrative dimension can be divided into two main categories – the ‘Dionysian’ and the ‘chaotic’ – which are, in some respects, both complementary and contradictory. While the Dionysian category primarily includes themes such as ecstasy, sex, intoxication, youthful vitality, male potency and power, the category of the ‘chaotic’, by contrast, includes themes such as chaos, war, violence, struggle, alienation, madness, evil and death. While heavy metal bands have often dealt with both of these thematic complexes, on the whole, the genre has nevertheless become particularly associated with the types of themes that fall within the category of the ‘chaotic’. It is also within this thematic category that one finds frequent references and allusions to religious themes, such as the figure of Satan and the apocalyptic visions of the Bible in particular. As Weinstein observes, not only has the Bible always provided heavy metal bands with a host of narratives and themes to draw upon, but it has also provided them with a depository of religious symbols and a rich religious terminology (2000: 38–9). When heavy metal bands have drawn on themes inspired by biblical eschatology and apocalypticism they have typically employed such themes in combination with other key ‘chaotic’ themes such as war, chaos and madness. An early example of this is found in Black Sabbath’s song ‘War Pigs’ (Paranoid,1970) which, although it is intended to be anti-Vietnam War song, recounts the biblical Day of Judgement and God’s punishment of the wicked. Another early example would be Iron Maiden’s controversial song ‘The Number Of The Beast’ (The Number of the Beast, 1982), which tells the story of a man not being able to tell reality from his nightmares about the ‘end times’ and the rise of the Antichrist as recounted in the Book of Revelation. Biblical apocalypticism continued to function as an important source of inspiration for many pioneering thrash metal bands, although arguably mostly as a rhetorical device (cf. Weinstein 2000: 39). This can be observed in album titles such as Hellhammer’s Apocalyptic Raids (1984), Slayer’s Soundtrack to the Apocalypse (2003, CD box set), and Megadeth’s Countdown to Extinction (1992), as well as in the lyrics to songs such as Metallica’s ‘The Four Horsemen’ (Kill ‘Em All, 1983) and ‘Fight Fire With Fire’ (Ride The Lightning, 1984), Slayer’s ‘The Antichrist’ (Show No Mercy, 1983) and Megadeth’s ‘Ashes In Your Mouth’ (Countdown to Extinction, 1992), all of which are directly inspired by narratives found in Revelation, but also clearly utilize these narratives in order to convey a general sense of chaos and impending doom rather than to endorse these narratives as prophecies of actual events to come. This preoccupation with images of chaos and doom is also more widely reflective of thrash metal’s generally strong emphasis on metal’s ‘chaotic’ dimension, and especially the destruction of the world as a consequence of (often nuclear) war and environmental disaster (cf. Weinstein 2000: 50–2). As Weinstein

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observes, in this context biblical themes provide ‘resonance, a cultural frame of reference, for the imagery of chaos itself’ (2000: 39). When it comes to heavy metal bands’ frequent allusions to the figure of Satan, this can be understood in terms of an inversion of central 1960s countercultural themes and ‘an act of metaphysical rebellion against the pieties and platitudes of normal society’ (Weinstein 1991: 39). Thrash metal’s emphasis on war and chaos is also vividly reflected in its general aesthetic and characteristic portrayals of dystopian futures and often violent depictions of the end of the world. Examples of album cover artwork directly inspired by biblical apocalyptic imagery and motifs include Celtic Frost’s To Mega Therion (1985) – a painting by H. R. Giger depicting a Satan or ‘Great Beast’ figure using a crucified Christ as a slingshot aimed at the viewer. To take another example that even more obviously draws on Christian eschatological imagery, the cover art for Slayer’s Hell Awaits (1985) depicts human bodies being torn to pieces by demons in hell. While biblical themes and narratives continue to be used for rhetorical purposes and shock-effect in thrash and other extreme metal subgenres, it is important to note that the type of apocalypse presented is far from always a purely supernatural one but just as often man-made in the form of nuclear annihilation or ecological catastrophe. Heavy metal’s engagement with chaotic and subversive religious themes deepened through the development of extreme metal subgenres such as death metal and black metal in the mid1980s and early 1990s, both of which were characterized by ‘a self-conscious attempt to explore the radical potential of metal’ (Kahn-Harris 2007: 30). As Keith Kahn-Harris phrases it, ‘Extreme metal discourse represents a departure from heavy metal discourse in that the fantasies it explores are less obviously “fantastic”. Heavy metal discourses are generally lurid, theatrical, baroque, and often satirical. Extreme metal discourses are detailed, repetitive and apparently serious’ (Kahn-Harris 2007: 43). Death metal, as pioneered by bands such as Death, Possessed and Morbid Angel, pushed the sonic dimensions of metal to its outermost extremes through raging tempos, extensive use of extremely fast ‘blast-beat’ drumming, highly technical guitar riffing, unconventional songstructures and guttural or growled vocals. Death metal also introduced a much more sustained engagement with Satanist, anti-Christian and Occult themes in combination with typically graphic descriptions of torture, murder and rotting, mutilated corpses (Kahn-Harris 2007: 35). Some groups, such as Deicide, Acheron and Akercocke, have become particularly known for their almost exclusive focus on Satanic and anti-Christian themes. Inspired by the earlier work of more theatrically ‘Satanic’ bands such as Venom, Bathory and Mercyful Fate, the early 1990s witnessed the development of so-called second-wave black metal by Norwegian bands such as Mayhem, Emperor and Darkthrone. As exemplified in formative releases such as Darkthrone’s Under a Funeral Moon (1993), Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (1994) and Emperor’s In the Nightside Eclipse (1994), secondwave black metal favoured a raw and unsophisticated sound that was principally created through heavily distorted bright guitars, deliberately low production values and high-pitched, screaming or shrieking vocals (Kahn-Harris 2007: 34–7; Bennett 2001: 42–56). More so than any other style of heavy metal before it, second-wave black metal became particularly focused on Satanism and anti-Christian sentiment, although this was often combined with elements of various strands of Norse Paganism (e.g. Odinism and Ásatrú) (Granholm 2011). It needs to be

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noted, though, that different black metal bands explored such themes in varying depth and in varyingly sophisticated ways. The perhaps most extraordinary series of events in the entire history of heavy metal occurred in the early 1990s as a few Norwegian black metal musicians and scene members perpetrated a large number of both attempted and successful church arsons in Norway, as well as some instances of violent assault and even murder (e.g. Moynihan and Söderlind 2003). These events received extensive international media coverage and greatly contributed to the creation of a public image of black metal as a Satanic, subversive and potentially dangerous form of music. While Satanism and various strands of Norse Paganism have remained central sources of inspiration for many black metal bands, the religious ‘repertoire’ of the subgenre has nevertheless expanded considerably since the early 1990s and also come to include various types of Occult and esoteric teachings and ideas. This has led to the gradual emergence of a distinct transnational ‘ritual black metal’ scene comprising bands who expressly view their music as a channel for the expression of Occult and esoteric teachings and ceremonial magical practice. The early 1990s also saw the development of so-called Pagan metal by bands such as Skyclad, Amorphis and Enslaved. Pagan metal does not, however, designate a subgenre of heavy metal in the musical sense, although Pagan metal bands frequently make use of various types of folk instruments such as fiddles and flutes. Rather, the label is primarily used to denote bands with a particular focus on various types of Pagan themes, such as Germanic, Norse or Celtic mythology (Weinstein 2014). On a quite different note, the mid-1980s also witnessed the development of the so-called Christian metal, the expressed aim of which was to rearticulate central heavy metal themes and aesthetics through an evangelical Christian frame. The evangelistic efforts of pioneering Christian metal bands such as Stryper, Messiah Prophet and Bloodgood in the mid-1980s were to a large extent underpinned by the evangelical strategy of cultural infiltration, that is, the idea that popular culture could, and indeed should, be actively engaged in its own vernacular in order to transform it in a more ‘Christian’ direction from within. As many early Christian metal bands strove to distinguish themselves as ‘metal missionaries’ through demonizing their ‘secular’ (i.e. not explicitly Christian) counterparts, the phenomenon quickly became the subject of an ongoing controversy about musical authenticity that has continued to this day (Moberg 2015). Although Christian metal has remained a marginal phenomenon within the world of heavy metal on the whole, it has continued to develop and diversify on a transnational scale since the mid-1980s and has also given rise to few distinct subgenres of its own such as, perhaps most notably, Christian black metal or so-called unblack (Moberg 2015). Throughout the years, heavy metal bands’ engagements with religion have covered a wide spectrum of different themes and ranged from the obviously theatrical, to the apparently serious, to the palpably serious. Scholarly opinion on the matter remains somewhat divided, ranging from accounts that interpret heavy metal’s engagement with religion as essentially theatrical and therefore almost superficial by default to accounts that instead tend to take metal culture’s internal discourses at face value and therefore exaggerate its association with Satanism in particular (Moberg 2012; Partridge 2005: 235). For this reason, a critical discussion of previous scholarly accounts of heavy metal’s relationship with religion is warranted, and it is to this issue that we now turn to in the second part of the chapter.

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Heavy metal music studies and religion Only a decade ago, scholarly explorations of heavy metal music and culture were still scarce. As Andy Brown (2003) argued over a decade ago, earlier scholarly disregard of heavy metal music and culture is perhaps best explained by heavy metal culture’s general disinterest in matters related to cultural politics. As a consequence of this, scholars interested in exploring popular music ‘subcultures’ as sites of ‘counter hegemonic resistance’ in the late 1970s and early 1980s instead turned their investigating eye to more obviously politically oriented popular music cultures such as punk (Kahn-Harris 2007: 17). In the past decade, however, heavy metal music studies have developed into a distinct and independent field of research (e.g. Brown et al. 2016). But heavy metal’s long-standing and often conspicuous association with various types of religious themes still remains an under-researched area that has only been explored in a handful of studies. In their pioneering work, both Weinstein (1991/2000) and Robert Walser (1993) offer general accounts of the religious themes that most commonly appeared in the ‘traditional’ heavy metal of the 1970s and 1980s in particular. Jeffrey Arnett (1996) also provides a brief discussion of religion in relation to his discussion of youth alienation in the heavy metal culture of the 1980s and early 1990s in the United States. Basing his arguments on the actual expressed views among a sample of US metalheads in the 1990s, Arnett (1996: 121–219) concluded that, when viewed in the context of an increasingly individualized general North American religious landscape in which religious socialization had long been progressively weakening, young American metalheads appeared to be even more dismissive of organized religion that their peers. However, since these studies all focus on the more widely popular and commercially successful heavy metal of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, the later development of extreme metal styles from the mid-1980s onwards, which also brought with them a far more sustained engagement with Satanic, Occult and Pagan themes and ideas, largely fall beyond their grasp. The black metal culture of the early 1990s has been explored in a Swedish context by Thomas Bossius (2003), who offers an interpretation of its characteristic engagement with Satanist, antiChristian and Norse Pagan themes as essentially constituting a form of youth rebellion against the confines and demands of post-industrial society. The historical development and global diffusion of extreme metal styles has been most thoroughly explored by Kahn-Harris (2007) in his extensive study of the global extreme metal scene. Although Kahn-Harris’ study does not deal with the topic of religion specifically, issues related to the exploration of subversive religious themes, such as Satanism and anti-Christian sentiment, are nonetheless discussed in some detail in relation to his wider exploration of the ‘discursive transgression’ that constitutes a central feature of extreme metal culture on the whole. As Kahn-Harris persuasively argues, in contrast to most ‘traditional’ heavy metal, the extreme metal scene is marked by its own consciously extreme discourse that is characterized by an ‘active suppression of reflexivity’ or ‘reflexive-anti-reflexivity’ (2007: 145). This reflexive–anti-reflexive disposition functions as a means through which extreme metal discourse, so to speak, can ‘consciously ignore’ the possible negative effects that might result from the insensitive expression or even apparent promotion of anti-religious, racist or anti-Semitic sentiment. In Kahn-Harris’ take on the issue, extreme metal’s often deliberately provocative use of Satanist, anti-Christian and other subversive religious ideas need to be understood in relation to the extreme metal scene as a particular discursive environment.

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Heavy metal bands’ interest in religious themes has also recently been explored in a few anthology chapters and scholarly articles. Helen Farley (2009) has concentrated on heavy metal’s early developed interest in the Occult, tracing it back to Southern US blues, its tales of musicians’ ‘Faustian pacts’ with the Devil and its subsequent influence on central figures within the British ‘blues boom’ of the 1960s. Jonathan Cordero (2010) has explored the ‘anti-Christian’ themes within what he calls the ‘anti-Christian’ black metal and ‘impious death metal’ scene. According to Cordero, far from being characterized by a superficial interest in such themes, this scene is instead marked by an austere seriousness that serves ‘normalize an anti-Christian perspective’ (2010: 6) within this scene as a whole. The issue of Satanism has also been explored with specific reference to the Norwegian black metal scene of the early and mid-1990s by Gry Mørk. As she observes, the ‘Satanism’ found in black metal culture often intersects with a range of other types of religious ideas, pointing ‘to a general attraction towards Occultism, dark and evil urges, forces and powers within the universe, as well as other hidden and repressed parts of man, culture and history’ (2009: 179). Similar points have also been made by Kennet Granholm (2011), who has argued that the early 1990s Norwegian black metal scene, in spite of being widely regarded as having been particularly preoccupied with Satanism (or its own version of it in form of an inversion of Christianity), is instead more appropriately described as having been ‘heathen’ as it was much more strongly characterized by its engagement with Norse Paganism and Occult ideas. Heavy metal’s close relationship to religion has also led some scholars to speculate and reflect on the possible religious ‘dimensions’ or functions of heavy metal music culture in itself. In this approach, metal culture is taken to provide its most devoted followers with a particular worldview and way of interpreting their place in society, a cultural identity, collective rituals and a sense of community and belonging – all typical traits of functionalist approaches to religion. When approached from a functionalist perspective, religion is basically understood in terms of a ‘sociocultural system which binds people into a particular set of social identifications, values, and beliefs’ (Lynch 2007: 129). Ideas and practices that are ‘religious’ are deemed ‘special’ (Taves 2010) and seen to be oriented towards the ‘sacred’ and therefore set apart from the ordinary or the ‘profane’. In this view, a shared understanding of the ‘sacred’ serves to bind people together within a single moral universe and thereby to underpin and strengthen social cohesion (Chidester 2005: 16). The respective virtues and weaknesses of functionalist approaches continue to be the subject of much debate (Moberg 2012). In very general form, functionalist arguments about the ‘religious’ dimensions of metal are present already in the seminal work of Weinstein (1991). Discussing the intense and overwhelming ‘sensory overload’ (1991: 214) spectacle of the heavy metal concert, Weinstein argues that ‘from a sociological perspective, the ideal heavy metal concert bears a striking resemblance to the celebrations, festivals, and ceremonies that characterize religions around the world’ (1991: 231– 2). She bases this view on the classical thoughts on the social function of religion offered by Émile Durkheim and Mircea Eliade – both influential early developers of functionalist perspectives on religion. As she argues, the ‘traditional’ heavy metal concert setting in which ‘audience and artist encounter one another directly in a ritual-experience, is itself the peak experience, the summum bonum, the fullest realization of the subculture’ (1991: 194). Elaborating further on this idea, Weinstein then comes close to explicitly equating the heavy metal concert with a religious event when she writes that ‘ideal metal concerts can be described as hierophanies [a term developed by Eliade] in which something sacred is revealed. They are experienced as sacred in contrast to 229

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the profane, everyday world’ (1991: 232). It is important to note that these observations are made through drawing parallels between the heavy metal concert experience and that which is deemed to be particularly characteristic of religion according to a functionalist view (cf. McLoud 2003: 199). Notably, the ‘religious’ dimensions of metal are represented as surfacing most clearly when metal fans gather in large numbers to appreciate their music collectively. Another example of functionalist arguments being driven much further can be found in Robin Sylvan’s Traces of the Spirit: The Religious Dimensions of Popular Music (2002) which, as the title suggests, sets out to explore the ‘religious’ dimensions of popular music as such in light of a few distinct popular music cultures, including heavy metal. Similar to Weinstein, Sylvan writes of metal concerts as ‘the key ritual form which brings metalheads together as a community’ (Sylvan 2002: 163). Moreover, he goes on to argue, ‘It is not only the music, however, but an entire meaning system and way of looking at the world, a surrogate of religiosity if you will, that explains the enduring power of heavy metal’ (2002: 163). This assertion stems from his more basic claim that popular music cultures provide their followers with essentially ‘religious’ functions at an unconscious level: ‘Many people in these subcultures (and in general) do not think of these phenomena as religious/…/rather, the music is often seen as a form of entertainment with aesthetic, social, and economic dimensions. The musical subculture functions as a religion in these people’s lives, but they do not consciously recognize it as such’ (2002: 4). In line with this view, Sylvan then ends up arguing that ‘the specifically spiritual and religious implications of the musical experience in heavy metal are often not so explicitly recognized and consciously articulated by metalheads’ (2002: 164). This, however, does not hinder him from continuing to argue that there, in spite of this, nevertheless ‘is strong evidence from their testimonials that metalheads do have such experiences, and that these experiences are also very powerful and lifechanging’ (2002: 164). Sylvan does indeed include a few excerpts from interviews with metalheads who invoke the term ‘religion’ when they describe the musical experience of heavy metal and the sense of community they experience during concerts (2003: 166–8). At the same time, however, he openly acknowledges that it is uncommon for metalheads to invoke the term ‘religion’ in this regard. What metalheads actually mean when they do use the term ‘religion’ as well as how this relates to their attitudes towards the category of ‘religion’ more broadly are both questions that are left unexplained (cf. McCloud 2003: 191–2). Sylvan’s work thus presents us with an apt example of how an insufficiently self-critical employment of a highly functionalist approach to religion itself may end up producing ‘evidence’ of metal fans experiencing their music in essentially ‘religious’ ways.1 As a starting point to any assessment of functionalist arguments of this kind, it is first of all worth noting that no form of music, ‘popular’ or otherwise, is adequately understood as being either ‘religious’ or ‘secular’ in and of itself. Rather, as Walser (1993: 27) has pointed out, the texts produced within music genres ‘are developed, sustained, and reformed by people, who bring a variety of histories and interests to their encounters with generic texts’. From this viewpoint, then, music in itself has no intrinsic meaning. Rather, its particular meanings are informed by the particular discourses that surround it (cf. Walser 1993: 29). To ask whether metal could, or indeed should, be understood as a form of cultural expression with religious ‘dimensions’, or as a cultural expression that might carry ‘religious’ meanings, thus essentially boils down to an empirical question about how the music and its culture is experienced and represented among its own audiences and followers (Moberg 2012). 230

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Concluding remarks This chapter has aimed to provide a bird’s eye view of the long-standing and increasingly multifaceted relationship between heavy metal and religion. Far from showing any signs of abating, heavy metal’s interest in religion has in many cases only intensified as is, for example, illustrated by the more recent development of a distinct and transnationally dispersed ritual black metal scene. When viewed in the context of the present-day popular cultural environment more broadly, the genre continues to function as a central vehicle for the circulation and dissemination of particular, often more ‘darker’, sets of religious ideas centring on various kinds of Satanism, Paganism and the Occult (cf. Partridge 2005). While there certainly are plenty of heavy metal bands who have engaged and continue to engage with such themes in obviously instrumental ways for the purposes of increasing the entertainment appeal and shock value of their music, there are also plenty of others who have engaged with such themes in a much more serious fashion and come to view their music as an integral component of their personal religious interests and associated practices. For this reason alone, it is important that future studies on the relationship between heavy metal and religion remain firmly grounded in the expressed views of musicians and audiences themselves. If firmly grounded in the expressed views of audiences and followers themselves, functionalist perspectives might certainly also provide a fruitful basis for future analyses of the relationship between heavy metal and religion. However, our critical discussion of such approaches above clearly point to the many problems and ambiguities that easily arise if academics make generalizing arguments about the lived meanings of popular music culture audiences regarding such a sensitive and complex issue as religion on the basis of theoretical presumptions which grant them the authority effectively to ignore or arbitrarily interpret the expressed views of these very audiences themselves.

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Pop and Rock Clive Marsh

For the first time since its emergence as a distinct subgenre of modern, Western popular music in the late 1960s and 1970s, ‘progrock’ secured its own official Top 30 chart in the UK in September 2015. Though deemed by former Yes keyboard player Rick Wakeman as ‘45 years too late’, this occurrence epitomizes both the relationship and tension between the two genres of music considered in this chapter (Masters 2015). ‘Pop’ can be viewed as both an all-inclusive term covering all genres of music deemed ‘not classical’, at the same time as being a specific reference to popular music in its most lightweight, ephemeral, fun-loving form. ‘Rock’, by contrast, in all its own variety (e.g. heavy, soft, country and progressive) can be seen as a deliberate contrast to pop in its narrower form, being more expansive, serious, more capable of depth and meaningfulness, aspiring to produce moments of transcendence, even while being downright enjoyable too. For the two forms to be brought together in the form of a progrock ‘Top 30’, then, may suggest a welcome commercial recognition for one of rock’s particular forms, at the same time as compromising some of rock’s emphases. Commercial success is admittedly necessary for any public form of popular music. But for rock to have been recognized by a chart may indicate a loss of authenticity, aesthetic merit or even moral purpose. This would, of course, be misleading. Album charts existed throughout the second half of the twentieth century (e.g. in the UK since 1956) and hence rock music has always played the same commercial game as other forms of music. Even if other (aesthetic, political, moral, affective) intentions may have existed behind and beyond the music, rock has had to work to be popular too. However, for rock bands not to produce singles – for a Top 50 Singles Chart – or not to be very successful with single releases has often been a sign of authenticity (real fans buy albums; albums need to be listened to and understood as works of art as a whole). So the tension between pop and rock is real, and hence the two forms of music, despite substantial overlap, should be treated differently. This will, in turn, affect how their relationship to religion is understood. Motti Regev has recently attempted to argue for ‘pop-rock’ as a form of worldwide ‘aesthetic cosmopolitanism’ (Regev 2013), given how much interplay there is between local forms of popular music and the ease with which musical borrowing occurs. Despite this claim, which presents an important insight into how global popular music works, for the purposes of this chapter, pop and rock can remain distinct (Frith 2001; Keightley 2001) and be considered separately. In this chapter I suggest four things. First, the main relevance of pop and rock to religion in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century in the West has relatively little to do with lyrics. Second, the ways in which pop and rock are significant for religion are as much to do with

Pop and Rock

musical use as musical content. Third, though musical use is, of course, a result of the impact of sound upon the listener, it is the ubiquity (of pop) and the combination of emotional intensity and pervasive function of (rock) music (on individuals and groups) which makes such music both akin to religion, a challenger to it and a potential substitute for it. Fourth, while it is tempting to assume a linear argument of secularization, according to which popular culture (and thus pop and rock as part of that) replaces religion, the reality is more complex. The ongoing function they both play socially, morally and politically interweaves pop and rock music with religiosity in sometimes surprising ways.

Pop Pop music is, to distil key elements from Simon Frith’s summary of its main hallmarks, accessible, produced commercially for profit, seeks mass appeal, could be called ‘family music’, is a craft rather than an art, and above all is designed so that regardless of who writes, composes or performs it, we can make it ‘our song’ too (Frith 2001: 94–6). Add to that summary music’s ubiquity – so much so that we are frustrated, even annoyed with ourselves, when we actually like music we hear by chance in public places such as supermarkets and restaurants (Kassabian 1999: 117) – and it is clear that pop music is intended to be a form of music in which we swim in everyday life, tapping into sometimes consciously, sometimes not, and with which we are invited (even lured) to find an emotional connection. Pop music is thus one about which we do not have to think too much, but which surrounds us and which we are happy to make use of when we wish, and sometimes irritated by when we might rather be quiet. It is, though, our companion or stimulus for many of life’s habits and rituals (e.g. dating and mating), a prompt for specific activity (e.g. celebration, marking specific occasions, dancing, social drinking, partying), a means of release from stress or routine, and can be a forger of identity through creating groups of followers (fans). What, though, if anything, does pop have to do with religion? Negatively speaking, and the backcloth against which so much religious response to pop in the West has played out in the late twentieth century, pop is a distraction from more serious things. It may well fill the time (e.g. when travelling and doing domestic chores), provide a hum of background noise and ease the strains of daily life. As such, though, it may, in its frivolousness, deflect attention, from thought, reflection, contemplation, meditation, prayer, consideration of other people and of the concerns of the wider world. Yet relatively few religious people – even the most ardent or conservative of Christians – would be so negative about pop. If there is to be opposition, then it is most likely to be targeted at such specifics as obscene lyrics, associations with particular harmful subcultures and practices, much of which would now be directed elsewhere (at other forms of popular music, e.g. hip hop, rap) than pop, even if all forms of popular music from the 1950s onwards were at first, and in some circles still are, treated with deep suspicion. Some of the criticism does have a point. The over- (or premature) sexualization of children through social practices associated with all forms of popular music (including pop) – the pressure, especially on young girls, to dress provocatively, for instance – can be seen as an example of a context in which pop is performed and received with troubling effects. We are never dealing just with ‘the music itself’. But such examples relate mostly to uses to which music is put and contexts in which listening occurs rather than inherently problematic elements in pop music as such. 233

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Examples of controversial music can always be given. Birkin and Gainsbourg’s ‘Je T’aime … Moi Non Plus’ caused a stir on its release as a single in 1969, and was the first banned number one single in the UK – though, with hindsight, it could only be considered harmful when not received among adult listeners as a celebration of erotic love. More positive responses to pop, even among the devoutly religious, are able to accept that pop plays a welcome role with respect to enjoyment and pleasure. There are fun and nonsense songs (‘The Birdie Song’ (The Original Birdie Song Album on CD, 2014), ‘Agadoo’ (Party Party, 1993), ‘Shaddap You Face’ (Shaddap You Face, 1981) and dance songs galore (‘You’re the One that I Want’ (Grease, 1978), ‘Tusk’ (Tusk, 1979), ‘Gangnam Style’ (Psy 6 (Six Rules), Part 1, 2012). Pop is not the primary place for story songs, narratives, moral tales or spiritual uplift, even if the affective dimension of listening, especially when allied to memory (‘I first heard that song when …’, ‘I used to listen to it when …’) or place (this reminds me of …’), can move people and prove deeply meaningful. Though sometimes fleeting in duration, emotional responses to pop can be intense (Frith 1987: 138–9). When linked with memory, time and place, emotions linger and can be recalled. Furthermore, as many commentators on pop have recognized, as is the case with most popular music, pop’s success works via the ‘affective and emotional alliances’ forged between listeners and performers (Frith 1987: 139). The emotional links made, then, when people make pop songs ‘their own’ are both significant and contribute to their understanding of who they are. Memories assist the creation of life narratives. Life stories are part of the shaping of personal identity. Pop songs are, of course, often to do with love, with relationships made and lost, with romance and with sex. Even if enjoyed by listeners of all ages, however, it is true that the enjoyment and use of pop is especially related to the experience of the young. Since the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll (say, for argument’s sake, with Bill Haley and the Comets’ ‘Rock Around the Clock’ (Rock Around The Clock – The Very Best of Bill Haley & His Comets 2015) in 1955) and the growth of teen culture and relative prosperity of youth across the West soon after, the role of pop in accompanying and shaping youth experience has been especially pronounced. In this regard the shifts in youth activity as a result of the ubiquity of pop music from 1960 onwards cannot but be related to changing patterns in religious practice. The relationship is not, of course, necessarily causal. If religious adherence, to Christianity especially, can be shown to be in general decline across the West since the early 1960s (Brown 2009) – only recently being shown to be reversed (in religious communities other than Christianity) – then the most that can be claimed is that younger people (and, as time went on, people of all ages) showed themselves on the whole less interested in organized religion at the same time as pop (and other forms of popular music) became readily available. It did mean, though, that the social practices which accompanied the maturation process changed markedly. The Beatles replaced (or at least accompanied) baptisms, confirmations and bar-mitzvahs. Discos and dancing were more enticing than devotions. It should not, however, be overlooked that many religious people remained committed to both: pop and piety (Wright 2008). While a straightforward reading of such developments were that religion (Christianity in particular) was losing its grip, especially on the young, this did not mean that a language for forming relationships could be dispensed with, or that necessary ‘escape’ practices were not needed (from home life, parental control) and into a new space where a different kind of meaning-making could occur. It was well into the 1970s and 1980s before the religious youth groups (in synagogue or church) faded somewhat in 234

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their strength and scale. In the meantime, they merged the two worlds – religion and pop – very effectively for many decades. Important to note is that at a crucial life stage, and as the range of resources for working out how to cope with life was diversifying, pop songs were more attractive than hymns and chants. Lyrics could seem more urgent and immediate than scriptures. Pop and its related practices (dances and parties, record-borrowing, then tape-recording, then file-sharing) would often prove a more persuasive and enjoyable way of operating than being affiliated to a religious group. Each set of practices would, though, be deeply formative. If it is wholly understandable that parental concern would result from the persistent drift away from the life-shaping potential of a religious community, it would be equally obvious that the tide of pop’s popularity and impact would be hard to stem. Alongside the exuberant joy of Martha and the Vandellas’ ‘Dancing in the Street’ (1964), Abba’s ‘Waterloo’ (Waterloo, 1974), Blur’s ‘Song 2’ (Blur: 1997) or Pharrell Williams’ ‘Happy’ (Despicable Me 2 Soundtrack, 2013), there would always also be more semiotically complex or directly challenging pop such as Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’ (Like a Prayer, 1989) or Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ (Born This Way, 2011), alongside sometimes darker, if equally contagious and compelling, pop such as Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’ (Talking Book, 1972), Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’ (Thriller, 1982), Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ (I Remember Yesterday, 1977) or Abba’s mysterious, even melancholic, ‘The Day Before You Came’ (The Singles: The First Ten Years, 1982). As an example of the complexity and ambiguity of pop, it is worth recalling that ‘God is Love’, in part a meditation on fatherhood, featured as the B-side of Marvin Gaye’s 1971 single ‘What’s Going On’ as well as on the same album (What’s Going On, 1971). For religious communities who used music (Christianity and Judaism especially), it would be some time after the rise of pop before adjustments would be made (to copy or not to copy? to plunder the pool of ‘secular’ music for religious purposes or not?). Contemporary Christian music (CCM) would be one way in which worship would in time be affected by the rise of pop, and in a way which would mean, in some cases, commercial (Christian) pop music answering back to the rising secular tide. From the appearance of folk masses or Jesus music in the 1960s through to the soft rock of Christian country music, CCM would have its own life but also have some impact on mainstream pop, especially in the United States, even while other musicians (U2 being a prime example) would resolutely refuse to be classed as ‘Christian’ artists (Joseph 2003). From an early-twenty-first-century perspective, then, things are both clearer and more muddied: clearer in so far as pop music now includes explicitly religious music, and does not have to see itself as a separate phenomenon, even if there are specifically Christian charts; ‘muddied’ in so far as what counts as religious may be less obvious, and it may seem less important than it once was even to try and identify the religious from the secular. Joan Osborne’s version of ‘One of Us’ (Relish, 1995) sneaks into the mainstream chart, and the ‘religious’ song is not then confined to Christmas schmaltz. Pop, though, be it Christian, Jewish or not, may still be deemed too lightweight to be anything but ephemeral. If lyrics matter little, and sound and emotion is all, and this may not satisfy much beyond the moment, despite the intensity of the moment, perhaps pop never expects to do any more, even if it can help ‘mark time’ and provide a language for the romantic or sexual experiences of the young. But it is at this point that rock distinguishes itself from pop and makes higher claims. 235

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Rock As Keir Keightley rightly states: ‘Taking popular music seriously, as something “more” than mere entertainment or distraction, has been a crucial feature of rock culture since its emergence’ (Keightley 2001: 110). Whenever rock music can be said to have begun, its self-appointed role and its function for its fans, as well as being a source of pleasure (even ecstasy) is as a means through which meanings and purpose in life are found or constructed. It is therefore not surprising that although both pop and rock have their own explicit and implicit ways of interweaving with religions and religious, or religion-like, practice, rock stakes a particular claim. It does this in at least four ways. First, rock creates both a narrative world and a lavish soundscape for listeners to inhabit. The halcyon days of progrock may now seem to have been over-elaborated. With hindsight some of the lengthy tracks are hard work to listen to – Yes’s ‘Close to the Edge’ (Close to the Edge, 1972, influenced by Hermann Hesse’s Hinduism- and Buddhisminspired Siddhartha), comes to mind. We are here at some remove from easy-listening pop. That many of rock’s roots are in classical music, and the classical training which band members received (especially keyboard players such as Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Rick Wakeman of Yes and Tony Banks of Genesis) is evident throughout rock’s complexity and expansiveness. The demanding nature of such work requires listeners to pay attention and be committed. The ‘work’ which listeners undertake is both affective and cognitive. The latter may be filtered through complex, ambiguous, elusive lyrics, though as with pop, rock may not primarily be enjoyed and prove memorable because of lyrics, despite the literary background or the evocative and creative imagery employed in the construction of the songs. The soundscapes created remain primary. Neither the creative, playful lyrics nor the soundscapes derive from or lead to a single worldview, philosophy or spirituality, of course. The ‘Wonderous Stories’ created (to cite a Yes track from Going for the One (1977)) are, like a liturgy, to be inhabited. In the process they shape the listener (especially the listener who sings along). A generation of listeners learned lyrics not necessarily because they understood them, but because the learning of them, the process of being absorbed by them and the singing along, were a way of participating. Wondering what Genesis’ Selling England by the Pound (1973) might be ‘about’ created localized fan communities in pre-internet days, whether or not listeners would have the means actually to attend a concert. The wrestling with words and meanings which went on among the devoted has merely been made public and expanded by the internet activity. If not wholly apparent at the time, a shift was underway from the learning of scripture and the singing of hymns in both public (i.e. private) and state schools to engaging with a new set of spiritual resources. With hindsight, a significant musical rebellion was needed through the soundscapes and lyrical playfulness of progressive rock before it could be discovered by a number of generations still feeling oppressed by some rather limited, conservative, austere forms of post–Second World War Christianity in the West that, and how, religion actually works with music and liturgy too. Human beings need structure, ritual, resources for handling daily life and particular crises. From the 1960s through to the 1980s, secularization had progressed much too far for it to be easy to be positive about religion, and about how religion works. Christianity would never be the same again after the rather intense phase of the secularization process after 1960. But neither Christianity nor other religious traditions disappeared, as some of the sociological secularization

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theorists predicted. Spiritualities and religiosity would need to take new forms after the century’s turn and many different forms of music, rock included, would be part of spirituality’s return, even if not in any uniform or coherent way. The second way in which rock ‘works’ connects with this observation: lavish soundscapes take people out of themselves (Frith 1987: 144; Marsh and Roberts 2015: 295). From the 1960s onwards public concerns about how rock music experiences dovetailed with drug use were prominent. Aside from the rebelliousness of such behaviour, drug use was, however, in many ways extending what the music itself was composed to enable: experiences of exhilaration, escape, flights of fancy and fantasy, even transcendence. It would be hasty and inappropriate to claim that such experiences may easily be labelled ‘religious’. More investigation of the potential meanings of ‘transcendence’ would be required (Frith 1987: 144 and Lynch 2005: 181). There may be nothing metaphysical about an imaginative, music-inspired, inner journey. But the pleasure and exhilaration of rock music – whether experienced alone in response to a recorded track, in the company of others, or at a gig – should not be downplayed. The significance of the communal dimension of listening constitutes the third aspect of the way in which rock music works. As Cavicchi’s deservedly influential study of Bruce Springsteen fans showed, gathering and celebrating is as important as the music itself. No matter that Bruce might not have been at his best on a particular night (he’s only human), nor that the quality of the songs might not be able to match the recorded versions; being with others matters hugely. It is the participation in the event, more than the frequency with which fans listen to recorded music outside of these occasions, that matters (Cavicchi 1999: 89, 113). The live event is a key part of the following. Anthemic rock also fits in here. Large-scale sing-alongs may not simply be group karaoke. The bonding which occurs among large groups of people bellowing out the music of an artist or group to whom they are emotionally attached (akin to the sociologist Émile Durkheim’s recognition of the ‘collective effervescence’ which can occur in groups who think and believe alike) is community-singing at a deep level. Anthems are now written purposely by rock and indie bands alike, or some of their existing songs have become anthemic (Oasis, Elbow, Coldplay), because of their capacity to create corporate (embodied and communal) emotional uplift when sung. Perhaps rock anthems are the new hymn-singing. I would certainly argue that their actual function for participants is metaphysically deeper than sociological and psychological accounts might suggest. If anthems bring the congregation (or at least the choir) together, and the fans are devoted followers, then it is also important to respect the role of following. The intensity of rock fandom raises the question of whether participation in richly textured musical and lyrical soundscapes, in the company of others, leading to deep emotional experiences, might also affect how people behave and vote. It does, of course, though there are marked differences in the different phases of popular music in the West in which rock is caught up, and the differences are not just between individual artists. The sociopolitical contexts for 1970s progrock, musical performance in the wake of Rock Against Racism, or post-Live Aid, and contemporary challenges caused by continuing imbalances in world trade, climate change and terrorism offer very different settings in which music is played, heard and bought. If progrock may have been considered an alternative to religion, a form of rebellion against the strictures of oppressive forms of Western Christianity in particular, then one irony is that it was offering a direct rival in a similar form. It was, in other words, as escapist as the world-avoiding 237

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forms of Christianity about which more politically activist Christians themselves complained. ‘Turning on, tuning in, and dropping out’ (to use Timothy Leary’s words from 1966) may have seemed rebellious and been countercultural at the time, but it was political in a dangerously apolitical way. In religious terms, rock created separated communities of followers through its lyrical soundscapes and did not necessarily produce politically informed or active citizens. It was in part a resistance to being moulded as citizens in conformist ways which fuelled aspirations to develop an alternative lifestyle and outlook on life. Rock could not, though, remain unaffected by punk’s challenge to what suddenly seemed opulent music deriving largely from the well-educated middle and upper classes. By the time of Live Aid (1985) and then, twenty years later, Live 8, popular music as a whole had to be, and be seen to be, more politically committed and astute. Progrock had faded somewhat by the 1980s. Rock bands might not wish to be overtly political, though it became more and more apparent that they may be pressed (not least by Bob Geldof) into declaring their commitment to specific causes. U2 are an easy target for the prominence of their frontman, Bono, on the world political stage. But they are fully aware of their political clout in a way that would have seemed odd to progrock pioneers of two decades before. Keightley and others are right to note authenticity as a key theme running through rock’s music history (Keightley 2001: 111, 121, 131–5, Grossberg, cited in Longhurst and Bogdanović 2014: 244). Indeed, ‘by conspicuously embracing authenticity, rock aligns itself with longstanding and important currents in Western thought’ (Keightley 2001: 131). Partridge’s extended exploration of popular music’s links with Romanticism is relevant here (Partridge 2013: 115–94). These insights cohere with the seriousness about music which rock devotees embody and express, and which marks off rock from pop. ‘Ethical judgments’ are indeed likely to be being made too, ‘musical beauty and pleasure’ being ‘evaluated in relation to ideas about the workings of the capitalist system’ (Keightley 2001: 111). That is, though, clearly a post-2000 view and would have been less possible in the late 1970s.

Pop, rock and religion And what, now, of pop, rock and religion? It remains problematic for any artist or band to selfdefine as a ‘Christian band’ or a ‘Jewish singer’ within mainstream popular culture. U2 resisted the Christian label in the 1970s. Despite the overt Christian spirituality of October (1981), they were a rock band, simple as that. Those who are happy to accept a religious label limit their appeal and reach and run the risk of marginalizing themselves from the mainstream, accepting a narrowly defined niche in a crowded musical market. For some religious fans of popular music this might be deemed a good thing. Worldly contamination is then less likely. The irony here is that such a stance contributes to the privatization of religious convictions in a way which runs counter to the likely faith commitments of those opposed to pop and rock secularity. U2 are more missiologically effective and politically influential precisely because they are not considered a Christian band. Despite the evidence understandably adduced (associations with many forms of bad behaviour and riotous living, sometimes hostile lyrics) rock is not, though, inevitably in itself irreligious. Religion of all kinds continues to interweave with popular music, pop and rock included, through the life experiences of both producers and consumers. Rock musicians are 238

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still human beings who have to make a living, make decisions about their value systems and participate in public life. And religious interests and commitments do surface explicitly on many occasions in some surprising ways. Arcade Fire contains a religious studies graduate (Win Butler graduated from McGill University in Montreal in 2004). The Killers have a Mormon lead singer (Brandon Flowers), even while John Lydon, Katy Perry, Tori Amos and the Followill brothers (three members of Kings of Leon) wrestle with their religious pasts. Michael Eavis, founder of the Glastonbury Festival in the UK, continues to play the organ at his local Methodist church each week. In the same way as religious dimensions of pop and rock are not to be sought chiefly in lyrics, however, so also are they not to be sought primarily in the life experience or performances of musicians themselves. Their struggles and commitments are not irrelevant by any means. But even if listeners cannot make of music what they want, they can certainly put music to uses which its producers and performers may never have intended. In our recent study of what popular music actually does to and for listeners, Vaughan S. Roberts and I ended up concluding that four main themes constantly emerge: transcendence, embodiment, connectedness and ritual (Marsh and Roberts 2013: 146–55). Nearly twenty years earlier Simon Frith had concluded that popular music is to do with three things: the creation of identity, the management of feelings and the organization of time, all of which are possible because popular music can be owned (Frith 1987: 140–4). Neither we nor Frith were talking about pop or rock in particular. We would all, I think, contend that our conclusions relate to popular music in all its forms. But with respect to pop and rock, in the light of the specific points made in this chapter, then more particular conclusions about pop’s and rock’s relation to religion can be drawn. Frith’s ‘organization of time’ (Frith 1987: 142–4) and our attention to ritual are both ways of saying that human beings need structured, meaning-making practices, and music helps provide these. It is far from coincidental that pop songs are heavily used in weddings and funerals. At a time of Christian decline in the West, it is not that the practice of using music to mark significant times has gone. It is simply a question of what music to use and why, and what understandings of love, life and death might be projected or implied by what is heard or sung. ‘My Way’, made popular by Frank Sinatra (My Way: The Best of Frank Sinatra, 2002), might seem a very logical funeral choice if it was ‘his favourite song’, though may also indicate that the life of a rather selfish individualist is being celebrated. In other words, public rituals of marking time need careful handling, including in the way that music is used. Our attention to embodiment and Frith’s to feelings both stress the physicality of responding to music. Not for nothing does popular music link with dance and sex. But despite the bad press and the chequered history of pop’s and rock’s relationship with the physical body, at its best pop and rock celebrate enjoyment of the body, the exhilaration to be experienced in and through it (at least nudging towards some sense of transcendence) and the management of the emotions. How, though, a person can both ‘let go’ while remaining in control is a central question of how to enjoy music which is sometimes designed to test the limits. Boundary-stretching remains a key ambiguity of all popular music. Finally, connectedness and identity remind us that pop and rock help us find out and explore (and perhaps even construct) the selves that we become. We do this alongside others – other fans of music that we like and music we do not like. It is not altogether clear when the 239

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modern understanding of the individual began (Renaissance? Reformation? Enlightenment? Romanticism? 1960s?). Western individualism, and the near idolizing of individual autonomy, has, though, rightly needed to receive many challenges. In the midst of the supposed hedonistic enjoyment of popular music and the recognized freedom to like whatever one likes (and to be an authentic individual fan of whichever rock musician one chooses), pop and rock remind us too that all human beings need groups in order to become individuals. Fan tribalism can be dangerous. It is also, in some form, inevitable. In this, fan communities are not functionally (i.e. psychologically and sociologically) different from religious groups. Nor are the ways in which popular music works more generally vastly different from religion, functionally speaking (McCleod 2003). The next challenge, for un/believers and scholars alike, is to start probing the question as to what – in our post-secular times – pop and rock might be doing that is more akin to religion in more than merely functional terms. They may, pace McCleod, be serving a more significant purpose than has been fully acknowledged, and one that needs active fostering, for important moral, social and political ends. If this is so, then religions may need to relate more than it has often supposed to the so-called secular popular music in order to do its own work.

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Chapter 21

Punk and Hardcore Ibrahim Abraham and Francis Stewart

In an essay on the ethics and aesthetics of punk, Mark Sinker (1999: 120) invites us to ‘imagine the ensuing centuries of Judeo-Christian moral debate had Moses returned from the mountain carrying not two stone tablets inscribed with five commandments on each, but with the first Siouxsie and the Banshees LP’. The humour lies in juxtaposing the sacred and profane, but the absurdist imagery also underlies the significance and seriousness of punk, a self-consciously oppositional genre of popular music and culture thriving forty years after its emergence in the United Kingdom and the United States. Embracing discordant 1960s garage rock, what came to be labelled ‘punk’ emerged in a consciously controversial form in the mid-1970s in London, centred on bands such as the Sex Pistols, and in a more playful form in New York, centred on bands such as the Ramones. An amateur rawness marked the music in both scenes, with ‘short, frenetic bursts of discordant sound’ (Bovey 2006: 451) that stood apart from the style and sophistication of the radio-friendly pop and the sumptuous stadium rock that dominated the charts at the time. If non-aficionados of the genre recall any fragment of punk, it will most likely be the iconic safety pin jewellery or the opening lines from the Sex Pistol’s (1977) ‘Anarchy in the UK’ (Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, 1977) ‘I am an Antichrist/I am an anarchist’. As this chapter will demonstrate, however, punk’s relationship with religion has been rather more complicated than its most famous lyric might suggest. In its second decade, punk split in two directions; a ‘plebeian’ strain emphasized amateur production values and lyrical aggression, and a ‘post’-punk form evinced stronger musicianship and introspective lyrics (Borthwick and Moy 2004). The most prominent example of 1980s ‘plebeian’ punk was ‘hardcore’, which thrived in underground, predominantly male music scenes, in the cities, suburbs and small towns of the United States in particular (O’Hara 1999; Haenfler 2006). Much like certain strains of conservative religion, Toynbee (2000: 168) characterizes hardcore as searching for the most stringent truths of the punk genre, deliberately distancing itself from more accessible interpretations. Whereas 1980s hardcore eschewed melody and complexity, in the 1990s hardcore fragmented into numerous subgenres; ‘post-hardcore’ adopted aesthetic elements from indie rock and ‘metalcore’ adopted many elements of extreme metal, including the importance of musicianship. In part because of its stricter adherence to the notion of punk as a consciously oppositional cultural form, and in part because of its presence in suburban and small town America, hardcore has been the punk subgenre most engaged with religion. Punk’s relationship with religion has also been mediated by the Straight Edge movement (Wood 2006; Abraham and Stewart 2014; Stewart 2016). Rejecting alcohol, drugs and casual sex, Straight Edge emerged in the

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1980s hardcore scene as a secular humanist ideology of individual self-control. Ian MacKay, the movement’s founder from the band Minor Threat (1981), proclaimed its principles on the track ‘Out of Step’: ‘Don’t smoke/Don’t drink/Don’t fuck.’ (Complete Discography, 1981). Like other creedal movements, Straight Edge has reformed and syncretized; ‘casual’ sex is interpreted differently, and many adherents have added vegetarianism or veganism to Straight Edge practice (Haenfler 2006: 51–5). MacKay noted that ‘for people with a tendency to veer towards fundamentalism, Straight Edge is a perfect vehicle’ (Blush 2001: 28), and a small number of adherents used violence in an attempt to impose Straight Edge values across the punk scene that expanded throughout the 1980s. The establishment of this vast, amateur punk scene resulted in the commercial revival of the genre in the early 1990s. As we will discuss in detail below, the commercial success of secular pop punk bands such as Green Day and the Offspring was soon shared by Christian pop punk bands which established large and often religiously diverse followings. Ideological changes also occurred in punk and hardcore in the 1990s, which are still felt well into the twenty-first century. Contemporary punk had to come to terms with its permanent partial presence in the commercial mainstream, as well as the inexhaustible plurality of contemporary punk forms (Thompson 2004; Diehl 2006). As such, Pentecostal punk and punk pornography coexist today, alongside nostalgia for earlier and seemingly purer political and musical expressions. The literature on punk we will draw upon in this chapter can be broadly divided into two categories (Leblanc 1999: 33–4): cultural studies of punk in particular times and places, usually 1970s London or New York (e.g. Savage 2002; Heylin 2005), and essays on the deeper meaning of punk (e.g. Hebdige 1979; Marcus 1989). Thompson (2004: 2) notes the strong ‘idealist’ current in most of the latter category of literature, in contrast to studies of specific punk scenes which reveal more banal and contested everyday realities. Seeking to emphasize the diverse and contested nature of punk, we endorse Garnett’s (1999: 22) claim that punk is the most inclusive metagenre in popular culture, incorporating ‘mutually exclusive tendencies [and] styles’. While certain aesthetic consistencies and even ideological norms can be located throughout punk’s history, the musicians and fans who constitute punk have never held uniform political, spiritual or ethical outlooks. This chapter will therefore be informed by theoretical approaches to punk that recognize its diversity. In particular, we follow Stacy Thompson’s (2004: 4–79) analysis of punk as an emergent cultural form constituted by an interrelated set of ‘desires’. Importantly, these desires are not substantive or absolute; there is no single way the desires must be realized for the end product to be certifiably ‘punk’. We can distil Thompson’s desires down to three. The first is resistance to commercialization, which is not necessarily repudiation of commerce, but rather the desire to maintain control and autonomy over creative self-expression, maintaining a ‘DIY’ – ‘do it yourself’ – approach to culture even within consumer capitalism. Secondly, the constant critique of the norms of popular music and the consequent desire to explore and embody alternative subjectivities. Finally, the desire for communities – abidingly, but not absolutely, homosocial spaces – wherein this autonomous self-expression and exploration of alternative ideas and identities can take place. Examining these desires in practice in exploring religious articulations of punk illustrates the point that, as Gottlieb and Wald (1994: 253) assert, in analysing punk’s indigenous form of thirdwave feminism, Riot Grrrl, punk offers a ‘template’ for sociocultural critique and rebellion. That 242

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a radical feminist movement emerged within punk, both in spite and because of its traditional male dominance (Leblanc 1999), demonstrates the flexibility of punk to accommodate diversity, and to engage in self-reflection and correction. It should therefore not be surprising that Abraham (2008: 4) can cite Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Muslim claims in the punk press that each tradition strongly resonates with the values of punk, from likening the lifestyle of Jesus to a touring hardcore band, to the core doctrines of Buddhism reflecting punk’s realization that life is suffering. At the same time, punk’s commitment to DIY cultural production and the exploration of alternative subjectivities has provided a template to create individualized forms of holistic spirituality (Abraham and Stewart 2014; Stewart 2012, 2016). Despite its origins in the great metropoles of the North Atlantic, punk is a global concern and has been for some time. Although we are aware, for example, of the growth of Pentecostal punk across Latin America, our concern in this chapter is with Anglophone punk music and culture. While also acknowledging that punk is produced within specifically religious spaces, our focus will be on iterations of religion within geographically defined punk scenes that are ‘secular’ in so far as they are not regulated according to religious beliefs. The chapter is also consciously biased towards the United States. From punk-friendly ashrams in New York City, to Billboard chartbusting evangelical hardcore bands in the Midwest, and Buddhist punk study circles in California, America has been home to the most prominent interactions between punk and religion. This chapter will not dredge through forty years of global punk history to list every Buddhist bass player, every vengeful lyric about Catholic schools, or every punk cover of a Christmas carol. Rather, the chapter will describe and analyse the articulation of five major world religions within Anglophone punk music and culture – Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism – and what we will refer to as punk’s ‘DIY spirituality’.

Christianity Measured purely by record sales, Christian punk dwarfs all other religious contributions to the genre. We think it probable that a single successful Christian band, such as pop punk exponents MxPx or the metalcore band August Burns Red, will have sold more albums than the combined sales of every band ever associated with the second most prominent religious subgenre of punk, Krishnacore. Punk provides an amenable youthful template for evangelicalism’s encouragement of exuberantly embodied religious celebration, and the sharing of one’s beliefs with one’s peers through often church-supported creative self-expression. Unsurprisingly, Christian punk’s origins lie in Californian pop culture-friendly Pentecostalism in the early 1980s. As protagonists in the Pentecostal fraction of the hippie counterculture called the Jesus Movement, churches such as the Calvary Chapel combined acceptance of alternative music and youth subcultures with apocalyptic evangelical theology (Thompson 2000: 41–85; Stowe 2011). The earliest Christian punk bands, indexed by Powell (2002), made little impact beyond these churches, but beginning with the ‘Spirit-Filled Hardcore’ movement of the 1990s, encapsulated by the 1994 compilation Helpless Amongst Friends, Christian punk straddled the contemporary Christian music scene and secular punk scenes. Spirit-Filled Hardcore musicians typically grew up in both secular hardcore scenes and evangelical churches. In contrast to earlier Christian punk bands, therefore, Spirit-Filled Hardcore artists did not assume their audience shared their beliefs. The bands’ approach to 243

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proselyting was more subtle, focused on building friendships and sharing personal experiences, rather than explicating evangelical doctrine from the stage. The normative experience of growing up in evangelical – often Pentecostal – churches was equally important in shaping Spirit-Filled Hardcore, as well as in shaping Christian punk in the twenty-first century which generally adheres to the norms established by the Spirit-Filled Hardcore bands. Thus, without discounting the contributions from various individuals associated with mainline Christian traditions, it is instructive that self-identified Christian punk bands are almost exclusively evangelical in origin and outlook. As Thomas Wagner explains in Chapter 8 of this volume, contemporary evangelical worship music often replicates the norms of secular pop and rock music and can demand a similarly high level of musicianship. Joel, a guitarist from the Australian Christian metalcore band The City HE Loves, noted the mentorship and experience of live performance available in evangelical churches for musically inclined youth who ‘have had instruments shoved into their hands since they’ve been able to walk’. These musicians can transition from performing in churches on Sunday morning to bars and nightclubs on Saturday night (Abraham 2014: 88–9). In addition to the technical abilities of individual musicians and the performance and rehearsal space provided by many (but not all) evangelical churches, the popularity of Christian punk across numerous subgenres, including ska, pop punk and metalcore, is inseparable from the success of Tooth & Nail Records. Founded in Seattle by Brandon Ebel in 1993 as a Christian analogue of secular independent record labels (Thompson 2000: 175–6), Tooth & Nail became a focal point for Christian punk fans and musicians, launching a hardcore and heavy metalfocused subsidiary called Solid State in 1997. EMI’s Christian subdivision purchased a fifty per cent share of Tooth & Nail in 2000, providing the label’s artists with easier access to the secular market. By this point, several Tooth & Nail artists had already been propelled to secular punk success, with the familiar tensions between artists and label developing along the way. Pop punk albums such as MxPx’s (1998) gold-certified Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo epitomize the subgenre; the album reflects familiar 1990s punk themes, individual angst and alienation rather than sociopolitical polemics (Azerrad 2007), with subtle spiritual content affirming the evangelical outlook of like-minded listeners without alienating irreligious audiences. Christian punk’s commercial success peaked in the 2000s, with a number of commercially successfully and critically praised artists in punk’s post-hardcore and metalcore subgenres, notably Underoath whose gold-certified 2006 album Define the Great Line debuted at number 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart. With a focus on personal angst and suffering – and overcoming this through spiritual and sometimes supernatural means – evangelical artists also found a comfortable niche within the ‘emo’ (emotional hardcore) subgenre. A frenzy of successful Christian ska punk bands came and went around the turn of the millennium, but Christian pop punk remained popular, with the album Five Score and Seven Years Ago by Relient K (2007) debuting at number 6 on the Billboard 200 album chart, for example. With the exception of a small number of successful secular punk bands signed to major labels, such as Green Day and – of course – the Sex Pistols, such commercial success is extremely rare for punk bands. As has been the case for punk tout court, commercial success provokes crises of authenticity for Christian punk artists. With evangelical punk bands identifying strongly with the idea of punk scenes as spaces for communicating unpopular beliefs, commercial success is often accompanied by suspicion from evangelical fans that a band is diluting its message. Suspicion increases if success is associated with signing to a secular label, as some popular Christian punk bands have 244

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done. This controversy over the spiritual sincerity of commercially successful Christian punk bands is a particular religious articulation of the core punk desire to resist commodification and embody alternative subjectivities, unique to Christian punk as punk’s only commercially successful religious subgenre. Christian punk has also been subject to claims of inauthenticity from anti-religious punks, in particular from a loose movement within punk called ‘God Free Youth’ which has existed since at least the mid-1990s when members occasionally harassed Spirit-Filled Hardcore bands. According to those who have been targeted by the movement, God Free Youth view themselves as defending their scene from religious subversion. Disruptive activities seek to provoke a violent reaction from Christians, but combative secularism wanes when conflict fails to eventuate (Abraham 2014: 92–3). The broader concern is that punk scenes are being infiltrated by conservative churches seeking to undermine punk’s autonomy (Abraham 2015: 96). This intensifies the general onus on individual punks to demonstrate their sincerity, and disprove suspicions of unreflexive adherence to dogma (Lewin and Williams 2009). Discussing his teenage years with the Spirit-Filled Hardcore band Strongarm, Jason Berggren explained that Christianity became acceptable when secular punks recognized Christian peers as ‘simply people of faith; they’re not trying to work for the man’ (Abraham 2014: 90).

Hinduism Like Christian punk, Hinduism’s presence in punk solidified in the early 1990s in North America’s secular hardcore scenes. The form of Hinduism that found adherents within the punk subculture was quite particular, though; not the Hinduism of North America’s immigrant communities, but the youth-oriented missionary Hinduism of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the movement metonymically known as the ‘Hare Krishnas’ after their public chanting. Like the Pentecostalism which birthed Christian punk, Krishna Consciousness was one discourse circulating within the hippie counterculture (Glock and Bellah 1976). To a small number of young Americans, a life of religious asceticism in an urban ashram proved an attractive alternative to conventional life in capitalist modernity. These ashrams had a role in the development of what came to be known as ‘Krishnacore’ punk in the 1990s, with affiliated musicians often spending periods of time living in one, sometimes struggling with the highly regimented monastic life (Lahickey 1997: 25–36, 129–35; Peterson 2009: 109–53). The earliest prominent punk band to embrace Krishna Consciousness was the New York hardcore band the Cro-Mags whose 1986 album The Age of Quarrel subtly references Hindu eschatology. Two hardcore fan histories have documented Krishnacore (Lahickey 1997; Peterson 2009), with a focus on the 1990s when, partly inspired by the Cro-Mags, several relatively highprofile hardcore bands promoted Krishna Consciousness as a transition beyond secular Straight Edge. These bands included Shelter and 108, whose albums Mantra (1995) and Holyname (1993) are illustrative of Krishnacore aesthetics; the lyrics articulate the bands’ religious beliefs, but the music does not differ from their secular punk peers, save for brief samples of chanting before some tracks. In keeping with the genre norms of hardcore, the lyrics of Krishnacore bands are usually indecipherable without reference to the lyric sheets. The same is true of much Christian punk, which in both cases allows for audiences to share the experiences of listening to the music without necessitating shared religious beliefs (Abraham 2014: 90). 245

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Much of the appeal of Krishna Consciousness in punk scenes came through its presentation as a ‘higher’ lifestyle and belief system than Straight Edge which observes many of the same prohibitions from within its secular humanist teleology. Krishnacore thus reforms Wood’s (2006: 36) assessment of the purely secular motives of Straight Edge, disavowing vices that ‘impose barriers to self-control and clear thinking’. Indeed, Wood (2006: 134–6) observes a distinct ‘confrontation’ between subcultural identities among Krishnacore devotees also adhering to a Straight Edge lifestyle. One should not overestimate the importance of the therapeutic aspects of Krishna Consciousness for its punk devotees, therefore. Dines’s (2014) argues that the music of Krishnacore bands such as Shelter and 108 is consciously and appreciably a form of Hindu devotional practice, even if listeners unacquainted with bhakti-yoga might not recognize it as departing from the aggressive norms of hardcore punk, and lyrics are incomprehensible without reference to Hindu doctrine. As is also the case with Christianity, Krishna Consciousness has not always met with acceptance within the global punk subculture. In his oft-cited polemic The Philosophy of Punk, O’Hara (1999: 148–9) has Krishnacore in mind when he argues that punks axiomatically reject ‘organized religion (especially cults) as being oppressive, escapist, anti-individualistic and just plain dumb’. Nevertheless, as Peterson’s (2009) fan history illustrates, some punks felt a great deal of freedom in engaging with spirituality through Krishnacore, which made punk a more diverse and fluid space because of its presence. Krishnacore is thus a clear example of the punk desire to explore and embody alternative subjectivities, and to this end some members of the Krishncore subculture have travelled to India to further their religious knowledge. That some punks found a physical as well as spiritual home in urban ashrams, as part of self-sustaining communities, is also evidence of punk’s constitutive desires.

Judaism Whereas Krishnacore and Christian punk bands have usually viewed their activities as at least partly missionary endeavours, Jewish punk has instead sought to reflect and upon aspects of Jewish culture and history in a recognizably punk manner. This offers a somewhat different illustration of punk as a template for creative self-expression. Beeber (2006) and Stratton (2005) document Jewish contributions to punk, but largely exclude questions of religious belief and practice since, although Jews have played prominent roles in punk, Judaism has been rarely sighted. The ambiguities of Jewish identity and religious affiliation are revealed in Beeber’s (2006: 135–8) attempts to interview the punk musician Richard Hell for his history of Jewish punk, and Hell’s insistent refusal. Hell explains that while he is Jewish ‘to an anti-Semite’, he does not identify as such himself; his father was a secular Jew, his mother a Southern Methodist, and Hell was raised a Communist, in Kentucky, with no knowledge of Jewish religion or culture. Beeber has his own understandings of Jewish identity, however, such that for him, Hell is ‘all the more Jewish’ because of his ignorance of Judaism. For Beeber, secular humanism is the true Jewish religion. Within the global punk subculture, some Israeli bands with English lyrics, most notably Useless ID, have been well received by audiences in North America and elsewhere, offering occasional musings on Jewish identity mixed in with more standard punk fare of teen angst. With the possible exception of the Californian band Jewdriver, who satirize the Neo-Nazi band 246

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Screwdriver, the most openly Jewish Anglophone punk band was the Australian band Yidcore, active in the mid-2000s. As the band’s name indicates, the band fuse punk music with Jewish culture and religion, yet the religious sentiments expressed in Yidcore’s music are presented in a playful and deeply ironic way. Examples are their cover of ‘Sabbath Prayer’ from their punk version of Fiddler on the Roof (2005a), or the ‘Punk Rock Hannukkah Song’, a cover of an Adam Sandler song, which depicts prominent Jewish punks celebrating the holiday (2005b). Yidcore’s non-Jewish listeners are therefore presented with a rather familiar depiction of Jewish identity, which Beeber (2006) would approve of, articulated more through shared humour – often centred on Jewish celebrities – than through shared religious belief or rituals. Even religious rituals are parodied in an affectionate way by Yidcore, whose live performances included the use of a shofar to blow hummus at the audience.

Islam Like Jewish punks, Anglophone Muslim punks have focused on integrating their own religious and cultural themes within punk’s rebellious template, rather than proselytizing. The key iteration of punk and Islam in the Anglophone world has been the ‘Taqwacore’ phenomenon which emerged in North America at the mid-2000s, centred on the writer Michael Muhammad Knight, a working-class American convert to Islam. In 2003 Knight self-published a novel called The Taqwacores, later released by the independent publisher Autonomedia (Knight 2005). The title refers to an imaginary punk subgenre, combining ‘hardcore’ with the Islamic concept of ‘taqwa’, consciousness of God. The novel takes place in a house in Buffalo shared by young Muslims, including a Salafi hardcore aficionado and a burqa-wearing Riot Grrrl, which serves as a hub for a thriving, nationwide underground Muslim punk scene with great religious and musical diversity. The Taqwacores spawned a sequel, Osama Van Halen (Knight 2009), as well as a 2009 documentary and 2010 film adaptation, serving as a point of reference for North American Muslim punk bands emerging at this time. Taqwacore was not the first meeting of punk and Islam, however. In his exhaustive study of iterations of ‘Punk Islam’, Fiscella (2012) cites numerous, isolated examples of individual musicians or cultural figures in Muslim majority countries engaging with punk over the decades, as well as various punk bands in Europe engaging with Islamicate culture. Included in his article are explicitly anti-religious punk musicians whose ancestry lies in Muslim majority countries, suggesting similar ambiguities in Muslim identity as in Jewish identity, as well as several devout Muslim bands who aim to proselytize and consolidate conservative Islamic belief in a manner proximate to some evangelical Christian bands. Ironic references to Islamic radicalism have also been features of punk’s engagement with Islam, illustrating the core punk desire to explore and embody oppositional subjectivities. Fiscella (2012: 257) cites the early example of the pseudoStalinist Italian band CCCP Fideli Alla Linea (1984), whose track ‘Punk Islam’ invoked the folk Devil of the time, Muammar Gaddafi. We can add to this the non-Muslim Australian band Jihad Against America, whose sense of humour on tracks such as ‘Terrorism is the New Black’ (Jihad Against America, 2003) understandably attracted controversy (Abraham 2008: 4). A similar irony is behind the short-lived Vegan Jihad project of Sean Muttaqi, née Penn. Penn was the creative force behind the hardcore band Vegan Reich (1999), the standard-bearers for the ‘Hardline’ sub-subculture of Straight Edge punks who justified the violent imposition of the movement’s 247

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thou-shalt-nots; when Penn became Muttaqi, he replaced symbolic secular authoritarianism with symbolic religious struggle. Bands associated with Taqwacore, such as The Kominas from suburban Boston or the Canadian five-piece all-female band the Secret Trial Five, offer good examples of punk functioning as a template for sociocultural rebellion. These bands have been able to use punk music to advance political and cultural critiques, and to enact and embody alternative identities, through fusing Islamicate culture with punk history. The Kominas’s 2008 album Wild Nights in Guantanamo Bay encapsulates Taqwacore’s key concerns, with songs such as ‘Sharia Law in the USA’ parodying punk history, contemporary Islamophobia and racism, and ‘Rumi was a Homo’ denouncing conservative Muslim attitudes on sexuality. As the first widely recognizably Muslim iteration of punk, emerging in the context of conflict with Islamic radicalism, artists associated with Taqwacore attracted a disproportionate amount of media attention given their underground, unsigned status (Fiscella 2012: 272). Whether they embrace the label or not, Taqwacore-associated bands have also suffered from the suspicion that they are mimicking a punk identity they merely read about in a novel. That punk reproduces itself through repetition of certain aesthetic tropes is a given, but as Lewin and Williams (2009) argue, claiming and debating individual authenticity is a persistent punk preoccupation, and Taqwacore was unexpected and inexplicable to enough irreligious punks as to come under subcultural scrutiny. The presence of Muslim punks in the North American scene post-9/11 therefore complicated the normative approach to religion’s public presence in punk, which had hitherto been largely restricted to evangelicalism and Krishna Consciousness. Neither warranted much deference, in part because the missionary desires of many Christian and Krishnacore bands meant they actually welcomed debates about the legitimacy of their beliefs. In the case of Islam, underground zines and scenes found themselves unsure about where to draw the line between legitimate criticism of religion, and the illegitimate defamation of marginalized minorities and a demonized civilization. What was clear to the defenders of punk’s anti-commercial purity, though, was that the appearance of Taqwacore artists in the mainstream media, from the BBC to MTV, was deeply problematic. In an interview with MTV, members of The Kominas criticize both the media, for their indifference to the band’s music and desire to depict them as Muslim models of cultural assimilation, as well as the ‘white male indie “punk” scenes’ they feel have ostracized them precisely because of their depiction in the mainstream media (Abber 2015). Emerging at the crossroads of political activism, parody and theological critique, Taqwacore offers an innovative articulation of religion in punk which justifies the fascination of the mainstream media, however unwelcome it has been to the punks themselves.

Buddhism The final expression of religion in punk we will examine is Buddhism, which emerged in Anglophone punk in a manner similar to Islam’s presence as Taqwacore and Hinduism’s presence as Krishnacore. And yet it is difficult to locate specifically Buddhist contributions to punk music in the Anglophone context we are concerned with, illustrating the point that punk is ‘more than noise’ (O’Hara 1999). Without discounting the presence of Buddhist individuals within the world’s various punk scenes, the most identifiable articulation of Buddhism in Anglophone punk is the ‘Dharma Punx’ movement. Like Taqwacore, Dharma Punx is associated with a charismatic 248

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writer, Noah Levine, the son of American Buddhist author Stephen Levine. Like Krishnacore, the Dharma Punx movement reflects the ‘Westernization’ of an initially ‘Eastern’ religion with a strong emphasis on individual therapeutic practice; punk and Buddhism were intertwined elements in Levine’s (2003: 247) seemingly successful ‘search for happiness’. Unlike both Taqwacore and Krishnacore, however, no bands identify with Dharma Punx, with the rather confusing exception of a defunct Australian electro-rock band of unknown spiritual orientation called ‘Dharma Punx’. Rather than centring on punk music, the Dharma Punx – also known as ‘Rebel Dharma’ in the United Kingdom – centre on more conventional religious practices; study circles, meditation groups and spiritual retreats, focused on Levine’s (2003, 2007) published teachings, and attracting participants from punk scenes (Stewart 2015). In his first book, Levine (2003) narrates his experiences as a young punk who comes to embrace Buddhism through seeking treatment for his substance addiction, and rejects the nihilism he finds rampant in punk without abandoning its aesthetics and creativity.1 In her study of Dharma Punx’s protagonists, Stewart (2015: 77) notes their ‘remarkably similar’ life journeys. Like Levine, Dharma Punx and Rebel Dharma participants were involved in local punk scenes, developed drug or alcohol dependencies and mental health issues, combined recovery programmes with religious activities and discovered Dharma Punx teachings as an amenable synthesis of Buddhism and punk. Dharma Punx embodies the key punk desires we have focused on in obvious ways, despite eschewing music as the key medium of communication and experience. The dominant logic of consumer capitalism is repudiated, and punk’s vision of autonomous creativity and rebel subjectivity is invoked as a bridge towards the spiritual transformation of self and society. These punk desires are also evident in the critiques of Dharma Punx practice expressed by some of its participants to Stewart (2015: 82–4). The high cost of attending retreats is criticized, with one participant linking the price of the retreats to Levine’s privileged economic status as the son of a successful author. Other participants criticize the predominance of white, middle-class university students in the meetings, at the expense of those they view as society’s outsiders to whom punk properly belongs.

DIY spirituality The articulations of these five religions we have described, and opposition to their presence, do not exhaust punk’s relationship with religion. Not every religious expression in punk fits within identifiable boundaries. Stewart (2012, 2016; Abraham and Stewart 2014) notes a diversity of discordant spiritual subjectivities circulating within punk scenes; examples and extensions of punk’s autonomous creativity, they are best identified as practices of DIY spirituality. These DIY spiritualities share with the Dharma Punx teachings an emphasis on spirituality in late capitalism as a technology of self-care and self-management. Unlike Dharma Punx’s Buddhism, most adherents of these DIY spiritualities remain at least rhetorically in the realm of the secular by locating typically religious concepts such as salvation within the scene itself. One Straight Edge punk cites inspirational lyrics and assistance from members of Manchester’s punk scene with so transforming his physical and mental condition that he could declare that Straight Edge punk ‘saved my life, it’s my salvation, it’s my religion’ (Abraham and Stewart 2014: 94–5). ‘Salvation’ in this context, and in punk’s DIY spirituality generally, is conceived of as self-empowerment, 249

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similar to the key subjective spiritual value Heelas and Woodhead (2005: 95) cite, ‘turn[ing] away from being told what or how to be yourself to having the freedom to be yourself’. The extent to which punk’s DIY spiritualities differ from the ‘bottom-up’ individualized spiritualities broadly evident in the contemporary West is therefore not certain. They share the rejection of external authority and doctrinal consistency, as well as the rhetoric of experiential selfauthorization and the relocation of the transcendent to the therapeutic, all so familiar in holistic spiritual practices. What is clear, though, is that punk’s constitutive desires provide a framework that encourages individual accountability for the beliefs one chooses to live by. Whether that belief is conservative evangelicalism, secular humanism or DIY spiritual eclecticism, self-reflection and sincerity is a shared moral practice in contemporary punk (Lewin and Williams 2009).

Conclusion This chapter has described and analysed articulations of five major religions of the world emerging within secular punk scenes in the Anglophone world, as well as punk’s DIY spiritualities. We have also sought to demonstrate the ways in which these religious iterations of punk embody the three key desires of punk we distil from Thompson’s (2004) analysis. The desire to resist commercialization and concomitant commitment to ‘DIY’ cultural autonomy emerges in the suspicion some evangelical punk fans direct towards the commercial success of supposedly likeminded bands, as well as the eclectic holistic spiritual practices circulating within punk scenes. The critique of the norms of popular music and concomitant commitment to exploring alternative subjectivities emerges in ironic invocations of Islamic radicalism as well as in the Dharma Punx punk-Buddhist fusion that seeks to repudiate and transform capitalist modernity. The desire for community, typically male-dominated in punk, is evidenced in Dharma Punx spiritual retreats and reading groups, and the relocation of Krishnacore band members to urban ashrams. Finally, the chapter argued that the various iterations of religious punk demonstrate punk’s ability to function as a template for cultural critique and rebellion, also illustrating the flexibility of the subculture to embrace new articulations. Jewish punk bands and bands associated with the Taqwacore movement have been able to bring their own religious and cultural discourse and practice to enliven punk scenes, and Muslim punks in particular have used punk as a vehicle to criticize conservative attitudes inside and outside their own religious communities.

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Reggae Christopher Partridge

African, African-Caribbean and Judaeo-Christian religious traditions have been central to the development of Jamaican culture generally and reggae in particular (see Chevannes 1998a,b). Likewise, rhythms developed in African-Caribbean religious contexts, such as Kumina rituals (which mixed African drumming styles with Afro-Christian hymn-singing), have had a significant musicological and ideological influence on reggae (see, Bilby and Leib 1986; Partridge 2010; Ryman 1984; Veal 2007). Fundamentally related to these developments has been Rastafari – the principal religious tradition within which reggae has its roots. Indeed, it is difficult to understand the emergence of reggae without some grasp of Rastafari. Rastafari emerged as a direct response to British and Christian hegemony within Jamaican colonial society. This was typically done through a re-appropriation of African heritage. Having said that, Rastafari has been creatively eclectic in its use of a range of religious and cultural ideas. From a belief in the esoteric significance of a Rastafarian’s dreadlocks to apocalyptic rhetoric, and from the sacramental smoking of marijuana/ganja to the ritual use of music (Nyabinghi), it draws on a range of ideas within Western and African cultures. As Robert Hill has argued, ‘Popular belief in the power of the occult played a formative role in the early stages of Rastafari consciousness’ (Hill 1983: 38). It’s also important to note that while some Rastas are highly critical of traditional forms of Western Christianity, many do draw on key Judeo-Christian ideas and the Bible. In particular, central to the discourse of much reggae is a biblically oriented, politico-theological, sacredprofane dualism: Zion and Babylon, the righteous and the wicked, the oppressor and the oppressed and so on. Of course, this isn’t true of all reggae, in that some subgenres such as dancehall or particularly lover’s rock – the latter evolving in Britain as a fusion of reggae and soul – focus more closely on romance. Much ‘roots reggae’, however, is informed by religious and political concerns emerging out of reflection on Jamaica’s colonial past (see Toynbee 2007). Hence, reggae often constitutes a postcolonial challenge to European and North American cultural hegemonies. For example, the millenarian imagination of Rastafari reinterprets Africa and African culture in terms of ‘Zion’ and understands the oppressive bureaucracies and cultures of the West in terms of ‘Babylon’ – the days of which are numbered: ‘Hear the words of the Rasta Man say/Babylon your throne gone down, gone down/Babylon your throne gone down’ (Bob Marley, ‘Rasta Man Chant’, Burnin’ 1973).

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The roots of reggae: Afro-Christianity, Rastafari and Millenarianism By 1838, the majority of slaves in Jamaica had become at least nominally Christian, which was largely due to the proselytizing efforts of black Baptist preachers, such as George Liele. Not only were they, for obvious reasons, more well received than their white colonial counterparts, but, whereas Liele travelled to Jamaica in 1783 following the American Revolution, white missionaries ‘began serious missionary work on the colony only in the 1820s, almost forty years after the first wave of slave converts had been made by black missionaries’ (Burton 1997: 97). In fact, white Christianity only began to inform African-Jamaican religion following emancipation in 1838. The word ‘inform’ is important here. Christianity did not simply replace the indigenous religions of West Africa that had travelled with the slaves, but it informed a new syncretistic trajectory. Hence, following the fifty or so years of black proselytism, there emerged a confluence of West African indigenous religion and Christian traditions – what some have referred to as ‘Afro-Christianity’ (Burton 1997: 97; Edmonds 2003: 32; Partridge 2010: 8–11). As I. M. Lewis has argued, almost everything that can be said of a West African indigenous religion ‘applies with equal force to the analogous Christianized slave cults of the Caribbean and South America’ (Lewis 2003: 93). Indeed, ‘even when Africans converted to Christianity, the elements of Christianity to which they showed the greatest affinity were those that reinforced their Afrocentric worldview, informed their struggle for liberation, and promised them eventual freedom from and redress of the evil perpetrated against them by the colonial system’ (Edmonds 2003: 33). Consequently, slave religion typically focused on the eschatological horizon, on the day of deliverance, on that day when their suffering would cease, when they would be released from their chains, when the oppressor would be overthrown and when they would return to the Promised Land. These themes are still conspicuous within reggae. This longing for justice, peace, liberation and repatriation to Africa stimulated a particular form of Zionism. Biblical discourses about Zion were systematically de-traditionalized, being reinterpreted around a utopian vision of Africa. As Patrick Taylor puts it, ‘A past African Golden Age becomes a future millennial Zion’ (1991: 102–3). Again, this is clearly evident in the majority of reggae songs about Africa. For example, in the song ‘Africa’ by The Mighty Diamonds (Right Time 1976), the continent is implicitly linked to the eschatological ‘new Jerusalem’. With references to Africa being a place of ‘no more crying’, ‘victimization’ and ‘starvation’, the song reflects the vision described in Revelation 21: ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth … God … will wipe every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, or crying, or pain any more, for the former things have passed away’ (listen also to Alpha Blondy and the Wailers, Jerusalem 1986). The emergence of the nineteenth-century back-to-Africa movement (Black Zionism) in the United States and the Caribbean followed a pattern that can be observed within other histories of the oppressed. Bearing in mind the colonial context, which came to be viewed through the lens of the Hebrew Bible, it is unsurprising that Africans identified themselves with the Israelites as an exiled people living in a hostile land. Consequently, reinterpreting the story of the Israelites’ journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, as described in the Book of Exodus, not only did Afro-Christians and then Rastafarians think of Africa in terms of Zion and Jamaica in terms of Babylon, but they understood the Atlantic Ocean as symbolic of the River Jordan that needed to be crossed. Again, these biblical themes of redemption and returning to the Promised Land

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are evident in numerous reggae songs, such as ‘Crossing the River Jordan’ by Count Ossie and the Rasta Family (Man From Higher Heights 1983), ‘How Fe Cross the River Jordan’ by Peter Yellow (Hot 1982), ‘Jordan River’ by Burning Spear (Marcus Garvey 1975), ‘Promised Land’ by Dennis Brown (The Promised Land 2002), ‘Moving on to the Promised Land’ by Barry Brown (Cool Pon Your Corner 1979) and, of course ‘Exodus’ by Bob Marley (Exodus 1976). Of particular historical significance for Rastafarian Zionism is the thinking of the Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey concerning an African redeemer. For example, he interpreted Ps. 68.31 as follows: ‘We go from the white man to the yellow man, and see the same unenviable characteristics in the Japanese. Therefore, we must believe that the Psalmist had great hopes of the race of ours when he prophesied “Princes shall come out of Egypt and Ethiopia shall stretch forth his [sic] hands to God”’ (Garvey 1986: 61). Indeed, while there is little evidence for the claim, many Jamaicans also believe him to have prophesied the following: ‘Look to Africa for the crowning of a Black King; he shall be the Redeemer’ (Barrett 1997: 81) or ‘Look to Africa when a black king shall be crowned for the day of deliverance is near’ (Clarke 1994: 36). Who would this messianic redeemer be? The answer, for Garvey and for many Jamaican Garveyites, came in 1930 with the enthronement of the Ras Tafari Makonnen as Haile Selassie I on 2 November 1930. Several days after the coronation, on 8 November 1930, Garvey published an article in his Jamaican newspaper The Blackman, which referred back to his earlier comments: The Psalmist prophesied that Princes would come out of Egypt and Ethiopia would stretch forth her hands unto God. We have no doubt that the time has now come. Ethiopia is now really stretching forth her hands. This great kingdom of the East has been hidden for many centuries, but gradually she is rising to take a leading place in the world and it is for us of the Negro race to assist in every way to hold up the hand of the Emperor Ras Tafari. (quoted in Lewis 1998: 145–6) Declaring himself to be in the line of King Solomon and taking the royal name Haile Selassie I, as well as ‘King of Kings’ and ‘Lion of the Tribe of Judah’ – which are important biblical references – it is not surprising that when he was crowned in St George’s Cathedral in Addis Ababa before the representatives from many nations, those who had been inspired by Garvey’s ideas saw more than the accession of another Ethiopian ruler. In Haile Selassie I/Ras Tafari many saw the Messiah, the fulfilment of biblical prophecy, even God incarnate. Also significant for the construction of the myth of Ras Tafari was a series of influential articles by L. F. C. Mantle published in Plain Talk between July and November 1935, entitled ‘In Defense of Abyssinia and its History’ (see Post 1978: 168–72). Part of Mantle’s argument rested on an interpretation of the Italian occupation of Ethiopia (1936–41) in terms of biblical prophecy, along with an articulation of the divinity of Haile Selassie. For example, on 2 November 1935, he stated the following: I beg to inform you hypocrites [i.e. clergy] that what you have taught us about Jesus is fulfilling in the land of Ethiopia right now: with the said same Romans or so-called Italian or Fascist. These are the said people who crucified Jesus 2000 years ago, and, as we read after 2000 years, Satan’s kingdom or organization shall fall; and righteousness shall prevail in all the earth, as the waters cover the sea … we are now in the time that the 2000 years have expired. (quoted in Hill 1983: 27)

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This type of millenarian speculation, which focused on the christological significance of Selassie, the corruption of the church, and the imminent destruction of Babylon, evil and Satan, was enormously influential – not least for the development of Rastafari. For, it was into this climate of millenarian speculation that one of the principal architects of Rastafarian religio-political thought began preaching. Having lived in North America for some years, Leonard Percival Howell returned to Jamaica in November 1932. He quickly became the ‘catalytic agent in igniting the radical millenarian consciousness that based itself on the doctrine of divine kingship of Ethiopia’s Ras Tafari’ (Hill 1983: 28). This, in turn, led to the emergence of Rastafari. Following Howell, many Rastas came to understand themselves as divinely inspired interpreters of the Book of Revelation ‘because their God, Messiah and King, Selassie, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, was the only one found worthy in heaven and on earth to open the book and break the seven seals of the apocalypse’ (Murrell and Williams 1998: 340). In other words, they identify the figure in Rev. 5.5 with Selassie: ‘The Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David… .’ As the Rastafarian writer John Moodie puts it, ‘Haile Selassie I, being of the line of Judah, root of David and on the throne of David, crowned King of kings, Lord of lords, conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God, Light of the World, King of Zion, fulfils many prophecies of the scriptures’ (Murrell and Williams 1998: 341). Again, this is explicitly articulated in many reggae songs: ‘I love King Selassie/I love King Selassie I … He is so divine/He is called as a Lamb’ (Black Uhuru, ‘I Love King Selassie’, Black Sounds of Freedom 1981). Similarly, much reggae album cover artwork articulates these ideas. A good example is Lee Perry’s Rastafari Liveth Itinually (1996), the cover of which is typically millenarian, depicting Selassie in royal garb travelling in a chariot pulled by a lion (which symbolizes Selassie’s royal status as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah). The background is one of dark clouds and volcanic fire and the songs on the album include ‘Ethiopian Land’ and ‘Judgment Day’. In short, the overall message of the record concerns the significance of Selassie as the divine deliverer who will, in the last days, come to judge the living and the dead (see Acts 10. 41-43; 2 Tim. 4.1; 1 Pet. 4.5). As Chris Morrow argues in his overview of reggae album cover art, ‘Haile Selassie is shown on album covers mainly as a powerful deity or … king. On illustrated sleeves like African Museum All Star and Rockers Almighty Dub, he assumes supernatural powers, showering the earth with lightning and using his dreadlocks to destroy the structures of Babylon’ (Morrow 1999: 24).

Reggae and biblical Millenarianism So embedded in reggae are the biblical notions of Zion and Babylon that they are often retained in music produced by non-Rastafarian musicians. Indeed, it is interesting that by the late 1970s and early 1980s, Rastafarian millenarian terminology, especially ‘Babylon’, became significant in punk and post-punk culture as part of a discourse of resistance to right-wing politics. For example, when, in 1979, the British band The Ruts achieved chart success with ‘Babylon’s Burning’ (The Crack 1979), some may have been bemused by the reference. However, for those who were familiar with reggae culture, the reference was obvious: Babylon was the principally white political establishment, which oppressed the unemployed poor of the inner cities, and which would be subjected to, as many Rastas believed, an apocalyptic conflagration. Within two years, as if to confirm the stark message of ‘Babylon’s Burning’, The Ruts released their second Rasta-influenced single, ‘Jah War’, to coincide with London’s Southall race riots of July 254

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1981: ‘The air was thick with the smell of oppression,’ they sang. Hence, as Ernest Cashmore commented, the riots of 1980 and 1981 in several UK cities ‘gave some indication of the growing currency of Babylon as a way of interpreting the world’ (1983: vi). Originating in the Bible, developed within Afro-Christianity, reworked within Jamaican Rastafarianism, popularized through reggae, ‘Babylon’ had now become a central motif within British youth culture. More broadly, while there is more than a little truth to Dick Hebdige’s thesis (1979) that British punk culture itself was a yearning for a ‘white ethnicity’ similar to Rastafarianism, the point here is that the millenarian discourse of Rastafari became an important contribution to much countercultural thought, whether black or white. Indeed, the use of the term ‘Babylon’ to refer primarily to the police quickly became the dominant subcultural understanding in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s – as indicated by, for example, the police sirens which introduce ‘Babylon’s Burning’ and the policemen standing on each side of Linton Kwesi Johnson on the cover of Dread Beat An’ Blood (1978). Whether black or white (but especially black), poverty, police brutality and racism shaped the lives of those who sojourned in Babylon. As indicated above, references to the destruction of Babylon are often explicitly informed by the biblical Book of Revelation: Jah Shaka, Revelation Songs (1983); Mike Brooks, Book of Revelation (2001); Revelation, Book of Revelation (1979); Max Romeo, Revelation Time (1978). As Caroline Cooper has noted with reference to Bob Marley’s work, the central ideological concern in his lyrics is ‘radical social change. The existing social order, metaphorically expressed in Rastafarian iconography as Babylon, the whore, the fallen woman of St John’s Revelation, must be chanted down’ (Cooper 1987: 4). In a way not dissimilar to Martin Luther’s understanding of ‘the Babylonian captivity of the Church’, we have seen that Rastas think of themselves, their religion and their culture in terms of captivity within an unrighteous system. Again, this is expressed in numerous album titles, such as U Roy’s Dread in a Babylon (1975), Martha Velez’s Escape from Babylon (1976), Merger’s Exiles in Babylon (1977) and Max Romeo’s War in a Babylon (1976). Hence, the fall of Babylon is the central eschatological motif signifying the termination of evil. Most Rastas will know by heart passages such as Rev. 14.8: ‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries.’ Again, with particular reference to Revelation, there are songs warning of the coming judgement and the consequences of living an ‘unrighteous life’ in Babylon: Trinity’s ‘Judgment Day’ (Ranking Trevor and Trinity, Three Piece Chicken and Chips 1978); Knowledge’s ‘Judgment’ (Straight Outta Trenchtown 2002); Don Carlos’s ‘Judgment Day’ (Plantation 1984); Greyhound’s ‘Judgment Rock’ (Black and White 1971); Earl Zero’s ‘None Shall Escape the Judgment’ (Visions of Love 1979). Typical of the rhetoric of such songs is Bob Marley’s ‘Ride Natty Ride’ (Survival 1979), which speaks of the judgement of Jah and the unquenchable fires reserved for the wicked and those deceived by Babylon. Like much Christian pre-millenarian discourse, reggae, especially during the 1970s and 1980s, focused on biblical signs of the end and on the prospect of war, paying particular attention to the threat of nuclear holocaust and Armageddon (usually spelled ‘Armagideon’ within reggae culture). Although bearing in mind the Cold War context, this wasn’t unusual within the popular music of the period. What is distinctive in reggae is the explicit association of the superpowers with Babylon and of nuclear war with judgement, all of which are understood in biblical terms. A good example is the reference to the four horsemen of the apocalypse on Willie Williams’ Armagideon Time (1982) – which was covered by The Clash for the B-side of ‘London Calling’ 255

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(1979). Again, Bunny Wailer’s ‘Armagideon’ (Black Heart Man 1976) links ‘wars and rumours of war’ (see Mt 24.6) and nuclear apocalypse to ‘the gates of doom and hell’, to spiritual battles between light and darkness, to human unrighteousness and to Satan. It then continues with rhetoric concerning redemption and post-apocalyptic life when ‘night is passed and day is come’. Similarly, many album covers of the period depicted the uncertainties of the Cold War in apocalyptic terms. For example, the cover of Ranking Ann’s Something Fishy Going On (1984) has, amid a scene of nuclear Armageddon, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in a nuclear submarine (thereby identifying the key figures at the heart of Babylon). Other typical examples are Peter Tosh’s No Nuclear War (1987), Mikey Dread’s World War III (1980), the Mighty Maytones’ Madness (1976), Michael Prophet’s Righteous are the Conqueror (1980), Mutabaruka’s Outcry (1984), Scientist’s World at War (1981), Ranking Joe’s Armageddon (1982) and Steel Pulse’s Earth Crisis (1984). To take the last of these, the title song from the album is typical in that it references violence, corruption, environmental catastrophe and the possibility of nuclear holocaust in Babylon’s ‘last days’, repeating, in the chorus, references to ‘doctrines of the fallen angels’ and the ‘eternal flames of hell’. Fundamentally related to this discourse is the belief that there are dark forces working against the ‘people of Jah’, systems that psychologically and culturally propagate values and beliefs antithetical to the righteous life. That is to say, spiritual and political demonologies become conflated. Political organizations, social structures, multinational companies and world systems are understood to be inherently evil – concrete manifestations of Babylon and demonic activity. For example, a reggae musician and member of the Twelve Tribes of Israel sect once expressed to me that he would not use credit cards and that he was very reluctant to use the internet, principally because of a broad conspiracy theory he subscribed to relating to the Antichrist. With reference to Hal Lindsey’s influential fundamentalist Christian text Late Great Planet Earth (1971) and quoting Rev. 13. 16-18, he told me that he wanted to distance himself from electronic media in order to avoid becoming embroiled in the activities of the Antichrist – ‘the beast’. Likewise, in an interview close to the end of his life, Bob Marley responded to a question about what books he reads as follows: ‘I’ll tell ya one kind book that I love, the first book is the Bible. Next book that I ever read that I love is Late Great Planet Earth. ’Cause all dem prophesy is true’ (quoted in Marley and Davis 1983: 91).

Chanting down Babylon Perhaps unsurprisingly, some Rastas understand reggae to be a form of direct action against Babylon, in that it is believed to be a manifestation of divine presence, with the power to create and destroy. That is, Rastas can literally ‘chant down Babylon’. As Ziggy Marley has put it: Babylon causes the system. … It’s a devil system … who cause so much problems on the face of the earth. … And by “chanting down” I mean by putting positive messages out there. That is the way we’ll fight a negative with a positive. … [The] thing is: action is under the words. It is how you live your life that is the important thing … So, as now you or me live a life according to the laws of life, which is the Father’s law. (Spencer 1998: 266) In other words, righteous Rastas –they who live according to the divine laws – are equipped with a particular authority which enables them to engage in a sacred mission to combat negative 256

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energy. When performed within this framework, reggae assumes its eschatological role. More specifically, as Cooper comments in her analysis of Bob Marley’s lyrics, his chant against Babylon is both medium and message. For Babylon, the oppressive State, the formal social and political institutions of Anglo/American imperialism, is bolstered by the authority of the written word, articulated in English. “Head-decay-shun”, the punning, dread inversion of the English word “education”, is antithetical to the cultural practices of Rastafarians, whose chant against Babylon has biblical resonances of the fall of Jericho. (Cooper 1987: 5) Explicit in this respect are Burning Spear’s ‘Door Peep’ (Man in the Hills 1976), Yabby U’s ‘Chant Down Babylon Kingdom’ (Chant Down Babylon Kingdom 1977), and especially Marley’s ‘Chant Down Babylon’ (Confrontation 1983), which claims that reggae music and ‘the voice of the Rastaman’ are central to chanting down Babylon. Through such speech-acts, Rastas contribute to the destruction of Babylon, which will ultimately be effected by Jah Ras Tafari, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, as foretold in Revelation. Again, understood in these terms, reggae becomes a powerful religio-political tool. Part of this power is the ability to convert the minds of those corrupted by Babylon, the ability to subvert ‘head-decay-shun’ (i.e. profane ‘education’). While Jamaicans have seen an end to geographical colonialism, there is still a colonization of the mind and of culture. Hence, there is a need for education and for a cultivation of a hermeneutic of suspicion about everything that has been learned in Babylon. As reggae musician Peter Tosh put it, ‘Babylon is where they tell you that everything that is wrong is right, and everything that is right is wrong’ (Steffens 1998: 255). Again, Horace Andy’s ‘In the Light’ (In the Light 1977) insists that, whereas his colonial education blinded him to the truth and enslaved him within an unrighteous system, Rastafari has led to his enlightenment and emancipation. Now, standing ‘in the light’, he is able to interpret the Bible and the history from an African perspective: ‘When I was a little child/I didn’t know my culture. … I didn’t know my foreparents were from Africa/All the things they used to teach I/Was about England Canada and America’ (‘In the Light’). Indeed, many reggae musicians do not simply understand the music in terms of education, but rather develop an explicitly sacralized perspective. As Tony Rebel comments: I see myself as an instrument of the Most High and definitely it’s not for me alone to chant down Babylon. I’m a link in a chain. … We know that the music is very influential. The word is power. They chant around Jericho wall and it fell down. So, therefore, we can use music to chant down Babylon walls also. That is not a literal wall. Is like emancipating the people from those kind of mentality that is negative. (Spencer 1998: 267) It should be noted that, historically, this notion of chanting down Babylon emerged following violent episodes with the police between the 1940s and 1960s, particularly as a result of militant Rasta activity associated with Howell’s commune on Pinnacle Hill. Since those confrontations, which resulted in Rasta elders appealing for understanding and tolerance, the destruction of Babylon came to be interpreted less in terms of a violent overthrow and more in terms of conversion to a new way of thinking. To some extent, this reflected a return to a more AfroChristian understanding – as did the change in emphasis from revolution in the here and now to divine intervention in the future. A central feature of this overall shift was the strategic primacy assumed by the arts. 257

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Dub esotericism Another element of Jamaican culture conspicuous within reggae is Myalism, a form of West African religion which was developed within slave communities. ‘Myal’ and ‘Obeah’ are techniques which enabled a person to communicate with the spirit world. Generally speaking, Obeah is used to curse individuals and to manipulate events malevolently and Myalism is understood to be the remedy, in that it enables one to remove hexes and provide immunity to spiritual attack. This is important because, again, it needs to be understood in terms of a culture of resistance to colonial hegemony. It was believed, for example, that slavery, understood as an evil with origins in white sorcery, could be countered by Myalistic techniques. The rationale seems to have been rooted in the conviction that white slavers were able to wield their colonial power as a result of some form of Obeah, and that this could be removed by the practice of Myalism. As noted above, even when Africans converted to Christianity, they resisted the wholesale adoption of colonial religion, carrying with them into their new faith indigenous African beliefs and forms of worship: spirits of the dead, possession, dancing, drumming, prophesying, glossolalia and trance. As Malcolm Calley has argued, ‘Possibly the most important role of slavery in the West Indies was to hinder the diffusion of a detailed knowledge of Christianity to the slaves, thus stimulating them to invent their own interpretations and their own sects’ (quoted in Cashmore 1983: 16). Again, this is significant, for, quite apart from the Myalistic counter offensive, Afro-Christian religion was perceived to be a manifestation of resistance, in that it represented a continuity with a traditional African cosmology that defined social realities in ways quite different from those that their white masters were seeking to impose upon them. The slave preacher Samuel Sharpe, for example, was not unusual in being both a Baptist preacher and also a ‘daddy’ (i.e. leader or priest) within West African slave religion. Hence, to some extent, Babylon was challenged by the slave community, in that it didn’t simply accept colonial Christianity but produced a West African form, similar to Santeria or Voudou on other Caribbean islands. The influence of Myalism is evident within reggae, particularly dub reggae, which is a more ambient, ethereal form of the genre that makes use of innovative production techniques, including reverb and echo (see Partridge 2010; Veal 2007). As such, it is typically described in broadly esoteric terms: If reggae is Africa in the New World, then dub must be Africa on the moon; it’s the psychedelic music I expected to hear in the ‘60s and didn’t. The bass and drums conjure up a dark, vast space, a musical portrait of outer space, with sounds suspended like glowing planets or with fragments of instruments careening by, leaving trails like comets and meteors. (Ehrlich 1982: 106) It is unsurprising then that it is here that we find references to Myalism. They are, for example, conspicuous in the work of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, one of reggae’s most important producers. His most creative work was done at the now famous Black Ark Studio, where he ‘reckoned he would lay down the Ten Commandments of reggae’ (Sleeper 1997: 140). The Black Ark was itself an occult space, in that, while the focus was clearly on Rastafari, it contained numerous esoteric signifiers, from pictures of Selassie to astrological symbols. As such, it is hardly surprising that the Black Ark is now viewed through the mists of mythology as the inner sanctum of dub reggae. The name was, apparently, ‘conceived as an antidote to the Caucasian myth of Noah’s Ark;

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symbolically likened by Perry to the Ark of the Covenant, it was meant to be a sanctuary for black Rastafarians’ (Katz 2000: 182). More significantly, the fact that he was rumoured to be involved in Obeah and frequently spoke of dub in terms of a magical art which exposed and infiltrated the spiritual world, contributed significantly to the mythology of the Black Ark and the esoteric interpretation of dub. Kodwo Eshun’s reflections are not untypical: ‘The Black Ark switches on a technology-magic discontinuum. Operating the mixing desk demands that you explore its network of altering spaces. Perry crosses into its ghost dimension, walks through the temporal maze of aural architecture.’ Perry encouraged such interpretations with statements such as ‘So me join the ghost squad longtime and them notice me as the Ghost Captain. I am the Ghost Captain’ (Eshun 1998: 65). While he has denied the many rumours of his involvement in Obeah – which, in contemporary Jamaica, would be similar to expressing an interest in ‘black magic’ – he has spoken of his music in terms of ‘a magical process’. Likewise, it is of some significance that one of the principal producers of dub, Hopeton Brown, took the name ‘Scientist’, which, in Obeah, is a designation for a spiritual healer. Again, the soundtrack to the reggae film Countryman (1982) has an Obeah narrative and includes Wally Badarou’s, ‘Obeah Man Dub’. As noted above, ‘popular belief in the power of the occult played a formative role in the early stages of Rastafari consciousness’ (Hill 1983: 38), and this is simply articulated to great effect in dub, the disorienting soundscapes of which are evocative of the spiritual forces imagined and experienced within African indigenous culture. In other words, dub functions as a conspicuous musicological parallel to the spiritual world of Obeah. This understanding of dub has shaped its reception and is now evident throughout the genre. The following is simply a random list of titles: Winston Riley, Meditation Dub (1976); Alpha and Omega, The Sacred Art of Dub (1998); The Disciples and The Rootsman, Rebirth (1997); The Hazardous Dub Company, ‘Mystical Dub’ and ‘Spiritual Dub’ (Dangerous Dubs Vol. 2 1993); Jah Shaka, ‘Immortal Dub’ and ‘Mystic Dub’ (Dub Symphony 1990; see Partridge, 2015). Of course, much dub reggae, when it is not purely instrumental, simply articulates the core religious and political themes of roots reggae as discussed above.

Concluding comments Reggae provides a multi-layered introduction to Jamaican history, religion and culture. While some of the music cannot, of course, be considered particularly ‘religious’, much of it does draw on and articulate new interpretations of the history of Jamaican resistance and black consciousness. Typically, this is informed by a dualism which emerged within the postcolonial cosmology of Rastafari: ‘Babylon’, the symbol of slavery and oppression, is understood in various geographical, political, religious, cultural, sociological and psychological senses; ‘Zion’, the symbol of hope, refers both to Africa/Ethiopia and to a liberated, healthy existence wherever one may live.

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Chapter 23

Folk Music Vaughan S. Roberts

The word ‘folk’ embraces a wide range of meaning. As Mark Slobin, Professor of Music at Wesleyan University, observes in his introduction to folk music: ‘Sometimes it just means “people” in general, while other early citations suggest subordination to God or the higher classes of society. But it can also go down home, as “the people of one’s family,” or even connote the individual, as opposed to the group’ (2011: 53). A common theme across all these uses of ‘folk’ is identity – religious, social, familial and personal. This complexity increases when that term is placed alongside ‘music’. Sociologist of religion, Robert Bellah (1927–2013) argued that music and religion are fundamental to human evolution, and in the case of music it can cover a similar breadth of meaning as folk. Thus, he wrote: ‘Whether we think of music as representing feelings, or as representing order (and disorder) in the soul, society, and the cosmos, music has a characteristic that is common to all forms of socialization: it participates in that which it represents’ (Bellah 2011: 27). Bellah proceeds to describe how religion and music are central to the processes of establishing all forms of identity through narrative acts and storytelling. Against this multifaceted background, we can readily see why folk music has always been (and remains) difficult to define (Lloyd 1967; Woods 1979; Slobin 2011; Partridge 2014). Two figures who observed at first hand the revival of folk music in the British Isles during the 1950s and 1960s make this point. A. L. (Bert) Lloyd (1908–82) was a folk singer,1 collector of folk songs, writer and broadcaster, and in his 1967 volume on Folk Song in England he noted how: ‘Folklore definitions vary from country to country, epoch to epoch, scholar to scholar’ (p. 16). Whilst Fred Woods (1932–95), the founder-editor of Folk Review magazine and author of Folk Revival: The Rediscovery of a National Music (1979), commented, as a result of the changes brought by the folk revival itself: ‘Clearly, there is a fair amount of rethinking to be done in terms of definition, or the line between a “traditional” traditionalist and a revivalist are going to blur into uselessness. Already the accepted categories are largely meaningless in the case of some singers working within the Revival’ (Woods 1979: 24–5). The question of what is folk music and how we can locate it has become even more complex since both those remarks were made. In reflecting on how folk music is hard to pin down, Slobin acknowledges that ‘while folk music is clearly “there,” it springs from an act of imagination or academic analysis’ (2011: 3). These processes of imagination and analysis have a history in both popular culture and the academy which involve concepts such as national music, peasant song, ethnic music, roots, world music as well as an understanding of their cultural, religious, social and musical contexts. Thus, Partridge argues that a helpful understanding of folk music should be

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informed by: ‘a recognition of its hybridity as a subgenre of popular music, a musically distinct subgenre that tends to articulate ideas and evoke feelings inspired by Romantic, quasi-mythical concepts of “the people” and “the land”’ (2014: 21). Folk music forms its various identities through the songs and music played by artists and entertainers, and through the stories that are recounted about its creation, evolution and continued development. Picking up on those opening insights from Slobin, Bellah and Partridge, this chapter will explore three elements of that story in relation to key aspects of identity within folk music: national identity, musical identity and personal identity. Each of those identities will have ‘religious’ components to them, although that too is a difficult term to pin down. Lyden (2015: 8–10) has provided a helpful review of recent discussion in this field and resists giving his own definition, whilst noting that ‘the term is one that is under constant negotiation’ (2015: 10). In exploring religion and folk music through national, musical and personal identity I shall make particular use of two concepts. First, the idea popularized by Charles Taylor of the ‘social imaginary’ which he defines as the way that people ‘imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations which are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images which underlie those expectations’ (Taylor 2007: 171). Second, an understanding of the affective space in which all kinds of music is listened to (including folk music). Several approaches have been developed towards this concept (Callaway 2013; Marsh and Roberts 2012; O’Neill 2013; Partridge 2014), and in this chapter I shall focus on the use of acoustic axes that Clive Marsh and I have explored in analysing how people describe their experience of listening to popular music (Marsh and Roberts 2015b).

Folk music and national identity Although music of the people has existed throughout the human story it could be argued that the concept of ‘folk music’ is a relatively recent part of the social imaginary. A number of authors locate its origin in the Romantic theology and philosophy of Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744– 1803) who encouraged classical composers to draw upon Volkslieder (folk songs) in their work (Lloyd 1967: 11; Ross 2009: 84; Slobin 2011: 53). Herder was a supporter of the ideals behind the French Revolution and any search for the songs of the people was bound to have political and nationalist implications. In addition, Herder had a significant impact on the literary world particularly through Goethe, whilst his musical quest has also been seen as part of the artistic search for the ‘real’ in the work of painters such as Van Gogh (1853–90), Monet (1840–1926), Cézanne (1839–1906) and others (Ross 2009: 84). The musical challenge articulated by Herder was met by such classical composers as Liszt (1811–86), Dvořák (1841–1904), Bartók (1881–1945), Kodály (1882–1967) and more. However, this was not solely a matter of musical style and composition since those in power have always had a strong interest in music of all types. Civic authorities have always sought some control over folk music which only increased with the growth of nation states. Mark Slobin observes that for the different forms of folk music ‘whether for monarchist, socialist or democratic agendas, bureaucrats have taken charge of what is supported, allowed and sent abroad’ (2011: 59), and

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these attempts to exert control of national musical expressions are not necessarily benign. As Howard Goodall explains: The flaw in describing it as ‘nationalist’ is that, while it was sometimes identified with political movements seeking self-determination, as in the case of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies or Sibelius’s Finlandia, in other cases it was merely an excuse for inserting ethnic idioms and sounds into salon or concert hall with no national or political motivation whatsoever. … Likewise, the magpie-like composers of the nineteenth century sometimes even made use of such material from regions that were not their own, or, as members of the imperial ruling class, found inspiration in the music of subjugated tribes and communities within their empire’s domain – in which cases the term ‘nationalist’ is, surely, highly inappropriate. (Goodall 2013: 177) We shall come back to folk music and the politics of national identity in a moment but perhaps the most significant British manifestation of this quest for ethnic songs and music was Cecil Sharp (1859–1924), noted for his collections of folk traditions from the West Country and Northern England, as well as the United States. Although his work was foundational, inspired others and continues to be valued, it was also informed by a particular understanding of folk culture. For example, Sharp believed that folk songs were created by the common people and must be anonymous or it was not a folk song. Sharp was part of a widespread and ongoing movement in England which included Anglican clergy such as Sabine Baring-Gould (1834–1924) and Charles Marson (1859–1914); and internationally by, for example, Percy Grainger (1882–1961), John Lomax (1867–1948) and his son Alan (1915–2002). However, as Partridge contends, the approach of many early collectors was based on ‘largely idealized notions of a bucolic past’ and a false dichotomy between that romanticized rural antiquity and a profane industrial modernity. In fact, there was ‘no pure folk culture that could be distinguished from popular culture’ (Partridge 2014: 21). Folk music and popular music are branches from the same tree, which already points ahead to our discussion of folk and musical identity in the next section. The matter of folk music and national identity remains a live issue. A good example can be found in Woody Guthrie’s ‘This land is your land’ written in 1940 as a response to Irving Berlin’s ‘God bless America’ and covered by many artists since – perhaps most significantly by Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen at the inauguration of Barak Obama in 2009.2 The melody is similar to that of a Baptist hymn recorded by the Carter Family as ‘When the World’s on Fire’.3 Springsteen originally released a version on his Live/1975–85 album. Interestingly his biographer says of this rendering that ‘Springsteen’s interpretation of what the song was about was smack dab in the middle between Woody Guthrie, who wrote as a Marxist disillusioned with the America of fable and Irving Berlin, who wrote as a man who had seen his every dream fulfilled’ (Marsh 2004: 278). Whether we agree with Dave Marsh’s assessment or not, it is clear that ‘This land is your land’ continues to be a key folk marker in both the national identity and civil religion of the United States and, strikingly, other nations.4 Of course, this is not confined to Western expressions of folk music; for example, North and Hargreaves draw attention to the wide range of folk, popular, classical and religious musical traditions that exist in India and how (at least in theory) that nation is at the crossroads as far as ‘the resolution of these diverse and sometimes conflicting influences is concerned’ (North and Hargreaves 2008: 342).5 At this point

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we are touching on the roles that music, ritual and tribalism play not only in folk music but across all musical expressions. If we follow Bellah’s modification of Durkheim’s definition of the sacred as ‘a realm of nonordinary reality’ (Bellah 2011: 1), then we can appreciate the strong links between religion and music across human society. In his analysis of the role that sociability and place has within musical culture David Hesmondhalgh argues that music is linked to sociality and community more than any other form of communication (Hesmondhalgh 2013: 84). This is expressed in singing, dancing and playing together. He notes some research which records ‘a number of remarkable accounts of strong emotional experiences of musical performing, from classical, folk, jazz and popular musicians, many of them positive, including feelings of “blissful intoxication” and deep communication with other performers and the audience’ (Hesmondhalgh 2013: 113). In other words, folk music is part of that wide musical stream that creates social experiences which can be seen as sacred or transcendent in religious and non-religious terms. Thus, we can see in this overview that in folk music we are encountering expressions of national identity, which themselves have important religious components. We are also touching upon social order and the political debates and conflicts which arise between nations, cities, tribes, families and other groupings. And we are encountering a form of non-ordinary reality which is related to notions of the sacred and the emotional or affective space in which religious experience is perceived and practised. In the next section we explore another strand to the identity of folk music, where this musical expression stands within the wider world of music culture.

Folk music and musical identity Don and Emily Saliers have explored music and spiritual practice from their perspective as theologian (Don) and folk musician (Emily). Speaking of musical identity they comment: ‘At some basic level, musical taste is tribal. By this we mean that most people experience special bonding with others who prefer the same songs and music’ (2005: 98 – authors’ italics). We have seen how folk music impacts upon national identity; we now turn to how musical identity is a force in itself and how this has implications for the relationship between religion and folk music. In his discussion of why someone prefers a particular pianist’s rendition of Beethoven’s piano sonatas over another’s, Philip Ball concludes that deviance from the precise score influences listeners’ personal preferences. However, he believes that ‘Western classical music has grown abnormal in its relative rigidity, for many musical traditions, whether “folk” or “classical,” offer a great deal more scope for injecting spontaneous invention into a performance, for which the “composition” is little more than a skeletal framework’ (Ball 2010: 304). Ball notes how both Bartók and Grainger observed repeated irregularities in the folk music they were collecting and that these deviations provided artistic expression. But this tension between a true reproduction of a score and improvisation for emotional effect is not only symptomatic of a ‘sacred’ tension within all music but points to some fundamental dialectical relations identified within folk music itself. Each era brings its own ideological perspectives to folk music, for example, A. L. Lloyd was critical of what he saw as the moralizing editing of songs by Victorian collectors. Writing after the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and in the midst of the musical disruption of punk rock,

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Woods contends: ‘Folk music has always been a sort of “underground” music’ (1979: 94) which has resisted the efforts to corral it whether by gentry, collectors or the music industry. Thus Woods finds Benjamin Britten (1913–76) guilty of cheapening folk music far more than electric bands by turning it into ‘a twee middle-class entertainment’ (Woods 1979: 102). This brings us to an important ‘religious’ boundary in folk music itself – between that which is pure and that which is tainted, between that which is ‘sacred’ and that which is seen as ‘profane’. A good example of this can be found in Partridge’s discussion of the reaction to Bob Dylan’s use of electric guitar on albums and in live shows. He argues that when Dylan was denounced as ‘Judas’ at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1966: ‘There was a sense that something sacred had been profaned … for those who felt betrayed, it signified more than a difference in taste. Like Judas’s kissing of Jesus in Gethsemane, Dylan’s picking up of an electric guitar was a deeply profound event, a profane moment’ (Partridge 2014: 124). Writing at around the same time as this significant development in folk but without discussing Dylan’s move from acoustic to electric, A. L. Lloyd argues that the vital dialectic for folk music is ‘the perpetual struggle for synthesis between the collective and the individual, between tradition and innovation, between what is received from the community and what is supplied out of personal fantasy, in short, the blending of continuity and variation’ (Lloyd 1967: 17). A similar dialectical pattern in folk music has been identified by Partridge, which he sees as a set of binaries between Paganism and monotheism, modernity and pre-modernity, rural and urban, nature and technology (2014: 133). He argues that quasi-mythical discourse around folk culture reflects (at least in part) a search for sacred authenticity: ‘There is an emotional continuity with the imagined values of an idealized past when our ancestors, those “noble savages,” used to live in a harmonious, symbolic relationship with the land’ (ibid). Lloyd and Partridge’s dialectical approaches share common ground with the definition of the social imaginary for popular music outlined by the acoustic axes in Marsh and Roberts 2015b. In our work we analysed how people self-described their experience of listening to a wide variety of popular music. The most frequent terms used to describe the moods created by music included: uplift/relax; inspiration/memory; energy/calm; happiness/sadness, which formed a series of axes. We can extend this model out to embrace some of the common terms that are used to describe the social imaginary of folk music. Thus, one way of setting out folk music’s affective space would be as in Figure 23.1. Some of these key signifiers clearly have overt religious components (monotheism/Paganism). Others have religious aspects not far below the surface, such as the notions of modernity/premodern. Whilst others (as we have already seen) transfer concepts from the vocabulary of religion to a broader, contemporary discourse. To this end we can see the apparently tribal musical debates about performance and improvisation, social conformity and social disruption, acoustic guitar and electric guitar as manifestations of the axes of sacred and profane, pure and corrupt, authentic and false which shape the social imaginary of folk music and, I would argue, in one form or another shapes the musical identities of all types of music. Robert Bellah concludes his account of the evolution of religion by quoting the social and political philosopher Thomas McCarthy and his appeal for ‘dialogue across differences’ (2011: 606). We can see this being explored and modelled with differing degrees of success as folk music explores its own identity within the variety of folk communities and across the wider scope of musical culture. Furthermore, within

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Figure 23.1  Folk Music: Axes of sacred and profane.

this dialogue across difference there are many experiences and vocabulary that are religious and religion-like which continue to play a central role in defining collective musical identities. In the final section we turn to folk music and how that relates to an individual’s personal identity before moving to some concluding remarks.

Folk music and personal identity Daniel Levitin tells the story of attending the annual meeting of Kindermusik teachers one summer and hearing fifty young children between the ages of four and twelve presenting a traditional German folk song, with children of different nationalities singing lines in their native languages of Cantonese, Japanese, Romanian, !Xotha, Portuguese, Arabic and ending with the refrain sung in English (Levitin 2010: 39–40). This is a wonderful image of folk music bringing together representatives of future generations whilst also affirming their own personal identities through the use of their particular languages. However, the wider context in which this act of folk singing was taking place raises some significant questions about how and in what circumstances folk music shapes our personal identities in the twenty-first century. As we noted earlier, folk music has played a significant role in the development of national identity. Nationhood remains an important factor in twenty-first century globalized culture but other influences shape individual and communal lives as much as, nationality, if not more so. Consumerism in the Western culture and the ‘wall-to-wall commodification of everything’ (Gregory 2012: 237) has impacted lives across the world – those living directly under capitalism and those who service it in one form or another. An outcome from this social change is what

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Taylor calls the ‘contemporary ethic of authenticity’ (Taylor 2007: 476) which he links to the same eighteenth-century Romantic movement identified in the first section as shaping the emergence of ‘folk music’ as a recognized social form. Authenticity has emerged as a significant factor not just within the social imaginary of folk music (as we saw in the second section) but across a much wider cultural spectrum – including economics and sovereignty, culture and fashion, religion and the public sphere. The emergence of what might loosely be called the ‘music industry’ is one manifestation of those social and intellectual forces, from which folk music is not immune. Once again, we noted earlier Cecil Sharp’s definition of folk songs as anonymous creations by the common people which has been lost during the second half of the twentieth century. From say, Woody Guthrie to Gillian Welch in the United States, Euan McColl to Kate Rusby in the United Kingdom, Ladysmith Black Mambazo to Tinariwen in Africa and many other examples across folk, roots and world music; the names of artists, writers and composers are well known. We can see how this development links in with the sacred and profane dialectic already identified within the world of folk music in the previous section. But furthermore, as Hesmondhalgh observes: ‘Despairing of the corruption of creativity by commerce, movements from the folk revival to the hippies to punk to rave, sought to reinvent art by returning it to the people … holding that the best thing for humanity was for people simply to decide what they liked’ (Hesmondhalgh 2013: 132). To put it another way, the commercialization and commodification of folk music means that people are free to access those brands that they like, which until the rise of the internet, placed great power in music consumer and music company alike. The commercial and social changes brought by the internet cannot be underplayed. What was a relatively slow process of discovering traditional music and innovative new music, which often required geographic relocation – such as when Paul Simon came to the UK in the early 1960s to work with British folk singers6 or (more controversially) to South Africa in the 1980s to work with local township musicians7 – has now become both a faster yet more sedentary process facilitated by a myriad of sharing websites. In Slobin’s discussion of the internet and YouTube, he notes: What used to take hours or months to track down now takes a few seconds. Unreliable as the sources may be, unstable in terms of production values, and impermanently housed as they are, the endless samples of the world’s folk music available online through this and many other sites have blurred the line between commercial and collector mentalities, retail, and research in ways that will only multiply in the future. (Slobin 2011: 78–9) He is surely right to conclude that no one knows what the long-term implications of these developments are for the future of folk music but, given there is no turning back and that we are where we are, is there something that we can conclude from these changes? Indeed, are there implications for how we see the relationship between folk music and religion, within the context of personal identity? If we return to Don and Emily Saliers’ work on music and spiritual practice, they comment theologically and sociologically on the nature of human busy-ness that is found and reflected on the internet: ‘The sense that the human heart is restless also appears in a thousand ways in popular song and is echoed in folk music, tribal song, and western classical music traditions.

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Human beings are restless for many things – for love, security, a good harvest, a reason for being, home – and music has found countless ways to express this restlessness’ (Saliers and Saliers 2005: 171). As this observation suggests, an individual’s quest for meaning, understanding and identity can be made manifest in numerous different forms. In the research that Clive Marsh and I undertook into how people were using all kinds of popular music (Marsh and Roberts 2015a,b), we note how Charles Taylor cites poetry as an art form where the relocation of the social imaginary from religion and spirituality might occur (Taylor 2007: 408–9). We argue that in contemporary Western society, all forms of music (like poetry) help to articulate the restlessness and fragmentation that writers such as Slobin, and Saliers and Saliers have identified. Music shapes a coherent world, locating the basis for social imaginaries in ‘inner, individual experience, in personalized meaning’ (ibid.). We concluded that ‘in this respect, music creates a social imaginary which functions as religions have in the past (and still do for many) and it is therefore not unreasonable to speak of the “spirituality of music,” constituted by [these] axes’ (Marsh and Roberts 2015b: 303). Folk music contributes to these axes which help shape the affective space for many in our contemporary world. I noted earlier Hesmondhalgh’s observation about how performers have recorded a sense of blissful intoxication when in front of an audience, but audiences too and those listening to music at home, in cars, at the movies, out shopping and in the myriad number of other places where music is played can have a sense of that same intoxication. Thus I have argued that we should see folk music as part of the broader canvass of popular music, both in terms of its impact upon personal identity and an individual’s affective space. However, it also has its own distinctive acoustic axes as set out in Figure 23.1 which define the affective space of folk music for the personal identities of artists and listeners alike. Not only do these axes share common ground with religion and religious behaviour, but religion can also have an overt role in defining folk music’s social imaginary. These are fundamental in creating an identity that is apart from the worlds of Beyoncé, Metallica, Eminem, One Direction and other streams of popular music.

Conclusion In this chapter I have outlined some of the challenges in providing definitions for ‘folk’ and ‘music’ and therefore ‘folk music’. In addition, we have to accept that distinguishing this genre alongside close cousins such as ‘national music’, ‘roots’ or ‘world music’ is difficult. Nevertheless, we have proceeded on the basis that this phenomenon certainly exists and it shapes national, musical and personal identities. In terms of national identities, folk music can become immersed in the complex political and religious dynamics which accompany nationhood. This is a significant part of the history of folk music as well as a feature of its ongoing story. With respect to its musical identity I have suggested a number of acoustic axes (Figure 23.1) which shape the social imaginary of folk music and the affective space of fans. These can include facets of religion that are both explicit and implicit. Finally, with regard to personal identity I have argued that folk music maps onto a broader and inclusive set of acoustic axes (Figure 23.2) and is part of the process of musical commodification which shapes our individual worlds of personal meaning and experience of non-ordinary reality (the sacred).

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Figure 23.2  Acoustic axes as a musical-spiritual social imaginary.

Mark Hulsether has observed the importance of a wide range of music in creating a sense of transcendence. He notes how for many in American culture this has involved folk-rock guitar music and this can be extended to wider Western musical culture as well. He argues that we cannot attribute this solely to traces of African sensibility in the rock portion of folkrock – although this is probably a significant factor to consider – because people have also had experiences in a similar vein listening to Handel’s Messiah and traditional hymns. If our goal is to identify music with spiritual depth and potential to move a community, we can find popular forms that fall on either side of a distinction between African blues-based music and ‘Western’ music heard in religious contexts. (Hulsether 2015: 129–30 – author’s italics) It is my contention that although folk music is played and enjoyed both inside and outside religious contexts, there will be spiritual depths to those strands which explicitly acknowledge a religious component and those that do not. This is part of the dialogue across the differences and across the acoustic axes which happens in folk music and across all forms of musical expression.

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Chapter 24

Country Music and Religion Leigh H. Edwards

Country music’s engagement with religion reflects a larger cultural context of Southern white working-class culture. Even though country music has always had a broader audience demographic, it is still symbolically associated with a Southern white working-class audience and milieu (Huber 2008; Wolfe 2004). Linking the two because of the regional folk culture roots, historian Bill Malone observes that audiences still consume their fantasy of a Southern rural white working class through the music (Malone 2002: ix). Country stars ranging from Johnny Cash to Dolly Parton have engaged in the common practice of addressing religious themes in their songs and writing a spiritual autobiography. The testimonial accounts of finding religion contribute to what Jimmie N. Rogers has called the ‘sincerity contract’ between country musicians and their fans, implicitly a promise not to abandon their ‘downhome’ folk culture roots and their affiliation with a working-class audience (Rogers and Smith 1993: 276). Country music’s religious themes contribute to the ‘authenticity’ claims that the genre often makes. The genre insists on a link to a so-called rawer music symbolically associated with pure, premodern, agricultural folk culture roots as opposed to a more manufactured sound seen as being connected to the market, mass culture and all the alienating features of modernity, from industrialization to urbanization. This distinction is of course subjective and the folk culture versus mass culture boundary has always been blurry and is impossible to maintain. Thematically, country musicians often use religious themes to critique a class bias, and they frequently insist on an anti-authoritarian, non-denominational, personalized version of Christianity. They even engage in some ambivalent critiques of religion when it departs from that model. I will detail those dynamics below in a case study on Johnny Cash.

History and authenticity claims Like jazz and the blues, country music developed out of earlier Southern folk cultures and defined itself through emergent media forms as it began gaining circulation on radio and through record sales in the 1920s. ‘Hillbilly music’ was drawn from the folk music of the Appalachian mountains and the rural South, a mix of music carried over by Irish and European immigrants and vernacular music brought by African slaves – a syncretism of Old and New World, of African and European-derived influences. Since one ‘founding moment’ of commercial country music occurred when Ralph Peer recorded hillbilly acts like Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family in Bristol, Virginia in 1927 for distribution on the Victor recording label to be marketed to poor Southern whites, that marketing strategy reflects the longer-running mythological association

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between the genre and a Southern white working class. Peer brought to a mass audience folk or ‘hillbilly’ music (a term sometimes seen as derogatory), what would by the 1940s be less controversially dubbed ‘country’ music. The country genre makes insistent claims for authenticity, demanding of its performers some proof of credibility, which is sometimes earned through claims of religious faith. Sometimes that believability is garnered through affiliation with rural life, demonstrable hard-luck life experiences or dedication to the Nashville music community. The genre’s rhetorical tension between purity versus the market is particularly cogent because the genre’s roots are in folk culture, but it has always been commercial from the start of mass circulation in the 1920s (and even in earlier nineteenth-century contexts) (Malone 1993: 68). As the genre combines elements of folk culture and mass culture, country music is of course not unique in linking the two, but it does have its own distinctive variation on that mixture, as it developed from vernacular culture passed from person to person and evolved into mass culture produced and mediated via mass communication technology. It expresses nostalgia for its folk culture roots even as it traffics in mass communication technology and comprises commodities and the products of the mass culture industry. Highly commercialized singers produce massmarketed country songs, but nevertheless wear cowboy hats as props to establish ‘authenticity’ and sing about their nostalgia for a ‘simpler’ agrarian way of life down on the farm. The genre scripts that purity narrative onto idealizations of a rural, pastoral, agricultural way of life. Yet it stages that nostalgic fantasy via mass media, the very form that helps perpetuate the conditions of modernity that the country genre expresses alienation from in its search for the folk and the pure. Similarly, George Lipsitz notes how post-World War II commercialized leisure as expressed through mass culture tends to meditate on the very loss it is furthering (1990: 22). Critics Barbara Ching and Joli Jensen have urged the need to analyse the problematic processes whereby people try to script premodern nostalgia onto this popular culture form, what Jensen calls ‘purity by proxy’, whereby ‘other people and forms manifest and maintain virtue for us’ in the genre’s ‘downhome versus uptown’ tension or in fantasies of a supposedly ‘simpler’ time (Jensen 1998: 15). They argue for the importance of reading complexity rather than simplicity in the genre. The purity versus the market rhetoric is only true in perception, not historical reality. Benjamin Filene (2000) has demonstrated how folklorists and music industry executives created a ‘folk’ distinction that was subjective and reflected their cultural values at the time. Thus, the distinctions between the categories of folk culture and mass culture are arbitrary. Likewise, efforts to track audiences have concluded that that they are diverse and make varied uses of the music. However, there remains a large working-class component to audiences spread out nationally, with a high percentage in urban areas (Buckley 1978). One 1970s study found that core country music listeners are largely ‘urban living, white adults with rural roots who are established in home, family, and job, and yet who are content with none of these’ (Lewis 1993: 209). Nevertheless, when listeners consume their fantasy of a Southern white rural working class, it is through this projected nostalgia for their folk culture as representing somehow a premodern or ‘simpler’ time before modernity (modernity defined as the conditions of social life after the rise of capitalism and industrialization). Religious themes in the genre have been central to that imagined ‘simpler’ time.

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Religious history and themes Historians have detailed the long-running influence of Protestant evangelical religion in the Bible Belt South. As members of a rural Southern working class carried on Protestant religious practices, their religion offered solace in the face of economic hardship or social marginalization but also a ritualized, shared cultural convention that spoke to nostalgia for ‘home’ and ‘tradition’. Extensively delineating how country music’s engagement with religion evolved over the twentieth century, Malone highlights the evangelical Protestant background of many performers and how that religious tradition’s language and symbolism still proffer a common cultural vocabulary for working- and middle-class Southern cultures. He argues that the region’s music is the cultural site at which this influence is most strongly displayed and expressed (whether gospel, the blues or country music), and that even when the popular music takes a song out of an explicitly religious context (or removes the religious content by turning a gospel song into a secularized country song, for example), it crystallizes a broader shared cultural context (Malone 2002). Other critics, in their assessment of the role of religion in country music, have emphasized the degree to which the genre’s focus on individualism and a distrust of religious intermediaries in favour of a personal relationship to God reflects larger long-running value systems in Southern culture. Jimmie N. Rogers and Stephen A. Smith (1993) assert that while country music and Southern Protestant religion are symbiotic and grow out of the same historical and cultural influences, country music often expresses an ambivalent critique of religion when it departs from those Southern cultural values. While some critics have seen country music as a vehicle for religious fundamentalism and others see it as a mode of ‘secular theology’ taking place through popular music forms, I too would argue more for its function as a space for ambivalence in the genre (Lund 1972; Coughlin 1989; Spencer 1994). Rogers and Smith also see country music as expressing a lack of faith in institutions more generally (religious, political and social) from the point of view of a marginalized Southern white working class that may uphold the principles of institutions but often criticizes the ‘middle men’ or agents of those institutions as being out for their own gain (1993: 276). Regarding the appeal of low-church Protestant denominations in the South, including small splinter churches, Donald G. Matthews writes: ‘Anyone who wished to be liberated from worldly standards which demeaned him or her would obviously be susceptible to a movement which honored the individual member’ (1977: 240). Similarly, John Eighmy notes of the region: ‘The primary presuppositions and concerns of popular religion are individualistic, centering on the salvation of each soul. … Whether the issue is social responsibility, the nature of the church, basic theology, or the meaning of salvation, Southern Protestants think dominantly in individualistic terms’ (1987: 201). Rogers and Smith show that many country songs critique religion from the point of view of that individualism (the sentiment of: ‘you have to walk that lonesome valley by yourself’) (Rogers and Smith 1993: 278). For example, Tom T. Hall (the son of a Baptist minister) has a song entitled ‘Me and Jesus’ (1972) (We All Got Together And … 1972), which insists that the speaker and Jesus ‘got our own thing going’ and do not need ‘anybody to tell us what it’s all about’ (Rogers and Smith 1993: 278). Some scholars have emphasized the country music’s gospel roots but sometimes read a contrast in the ideological content of country versus gospel. Don Cusic has argued that gospel music tends to emphasize a better life in heaven as opposed to calls for social change here on earth (Cusic 1990: ii; Oliver 1984). Tex Sample reads in country music an escapist protest response

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to the contradictions of Southern white working-class experience, although he asserts that the genre provides a venue for Protestant churches to adjust to this audience (Sample 1996). David Fillingham, meanwhile, reads in country music more of a social critique than gospel offers; he traces theological content in a range of country music themes (even those not explicitly religious) to argue that country music often focuses on humanism or fatalism, rather than on gospel’s heavenly dreams (Fillingham 2003: 41–2). Because of country’s gospel roots, many country singers include gospel and religiously themed songs in their repertoire. Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann note that many country music standards grew out of the music played at camp meetings, as Southern religious revivals, beginning with the first ‘old-time Southern camp meeting’ in 1801 (when twenty thousand people spent six days in Cane Ridge, Kentucky for a collation of preaching and singing), generated hundreds of songs that have endured (1993: 198). Malone cites the Carter Family as setting a pattern of a sacred-secular mix in country music in the 1920s. He argues that country music in that decade hearkened back to evangelical Protestantism and nineteenthcentury values and beliefs in its moral didacticism and invective against materialism or church corruption (in tropes reminiscent of revival meetings). By the 1930s, country music focused on the pastoral retreat of heaven as a way of coping with the Great Depression (as in the Carter Family’s version of J. D. Vaughn’s ‘There’s No Depression in Heaven’) (The Carter Family, ‘No Depression in Heaven’ 1936). Regarding this period of development, Malone notes the importance of shape-note singing schools and the publication of paperback songbooks by composers such as Albert E. Brumley, who wrote ‘He Set Me Free’, the inspiration for Hank Williams’s ‘I Saw the Light’ (Hank Williams, ‘I Saw the Light’ 1948) and ‘I’ll Fly Away’ (although, as with folk music, authorship was often ignored and the songs treated as public domain) (Malone 2002: 89–116). Bufwack and Oermann cite an explosion in gospel music in the decade from 1945 to 1955 sparked by a post-war religious movement, specifically a growth in charismatic Christianity in response to Cold War nuclear age fears as well as apprehension about looser social mores (in opposition to country’s ‘good time’ honky-tonk music at the time) (1993: 203). Noting midcentury developments in country music more generally, Malone asserts that while the Cold War 1950s witnessed a thematic emphasis on millennialism or the Second Coming as a response to fears about society becoming too secular, by the late 1950s and 1960s, country music established an enduring pattern of imagining a friendlier version of God, with less fire and brimstone and more secularization of religious themes (even as gospel backing sounds remained important to country music, as in Elvis’s use of gospel quartets like the Stamps Quartet). Malone notes that country television variety shows from this period would include a gospel segment (such as Willie Nelson singing ‘the gospel song of the day’ on Ernest Tubb’s television show, or Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs highlighting their ‘hymn time’ segment on their show) (2002: 89). Johnny Cash likewise included a closing gospel segment on his variety show, and he devoted his final episode of the series entirely to gospel; as a guest on later television variety shows, such as Barbara Mandrell’s in the early 1980s, he would frequently join in the closing group gospel sing at episode’s end. Malone asserts that many country performers routinely testify about being saved, often by describing how while they strayed for some period of time, they ultimately returned to the Christian faith they learned in their youth. He notes that the public expression of faith by country 272

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singers often had a commercial imperative as well, since it frequently translated into higher record sales (2002: 110). Beginning with Roy Rogers, performers published autobiographies in which they professed their faith and conversion, and insisted that their performance was a form of religious ministry.

Case study: Johnny Cash, religion and masculinity Johnny Cash has such an intense, long-running engagement with religion and such a wealth of songs that have gospel influences or religious themes that he offers a particularly cogent case study. He fits common country music models in his focus on individualism and a personal relationship to religious faith. However, he takes that model further because he makes structural social critiques that move beyond the individual too. Johnny Cash’s persona and themes of being a ‘walking contradiction’ run strongly throughout his texts addressing religion (Edwards 2009: 158). Depictions of Cash emphasize his saintsinner dichotomy. He was the devout Christian who took Bible classes, evangelized on the Billy Graham crusades, and made his own self-financed film of Jesus’s life. Yet Cash often bucked organized religion and encoded serious intellectual interrogations of Christianity in his texts. He is the godly man who nonetheless sees himself in law-breakers, calls himself a serious sinner, and is in constant communication with the ungodly side of himself. The binaries of saint and sinner, sacred and profane structure Cash’s lyrics, identity construction and marketing. His religious evocations always play alongside his self-identification as a sinner. This dynamic is evident in his music and visual imagery in performance, in media accounts of him, and in his biographical and autobiographical narratives. As scholars have shown, the saint-sinner binary is common in country music, and it speaks to the piety-hedonism dualism in Southern white working-class life. As Malone has demonstrated, the Saturday night/Sunday morning tension in artists ranging from Hank Williams to Ira Louvin forms a key part of their appeal (2002: 89–90). Cash follows such traditions, but he also proffers his own idiosyncratic, multi-layered version of this common tension. Unlike Williams, who sang ‘I Saw the Light’ (Hank Williams, ‘I Saw the Light’: 1948) but famously worried to Minnie Pearl that ‘there is no light’ (Malone 2002: 105; Williams 1981; Flippo 1981), Cash does not waver in his expression of religious faith. However, it is a faith of opposing tensions in which the sacred and the profane sometimes emerge as mirror images of each other. While it might seem that this obvious binary in his work and image would be answered by redemption narratives, Cash’s oeuvre, taken as a whole, does not offer such a firm resolution. His work does place emphasis on the idea of a fallen man who is nevertheless worthy of salvation and is redeemed. However, the ‘sinner’ side of the dichotomy is never solved, demoted or contained – it endures and retains great currency. In his long-running examination of Christianity, Cash explores serious intellectual questions about its historical and material bases, and he interrogates the role of narrative and song in metaphorically expressing religious ideas. As his texts attempt to address religious complexity, they do so as part of an affirmation of religious faith – however, their emphasis is not on an easy or seamless resolution but rather on opposing forces kept in constant tension. This dynamic is evident in his song lyrics, in his autobiographical and biographical narratives, and in other religious texts he made, such as his film about Jesus’s life, The Gospel Road (1973), and his novel of St Paul’s life, The Man in White (1986). 273

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In Cash’s lyrical output, he includes songs fitting a general trend of a friendly vision of God or Jesus ‘He’ll Be a Friend’ (Hymns by Johnny Cash 1959), ‘The Greatest Cowboy of Them All’ (A Believer Sings the Truth 1979) and ‘Good Morning Friend’ (Ragged Old Flag, 1974). But he also sustains a more residual dynamic in songs with fire and brimstone messages and the idea of a Judgement Day. This thematic is evident in songs ranging from ‘When He Comes’ (A Believer Sings the Truth 1979) (in which the speaker promises to be ready for when Jesus will come to resurrect believers) to the strikingly apocalyptic ‘The Man Comes Around’ on American IV: The Man Comes Around (2003). This song, and the marketing of it on this American Recordings album, epitomizes some of Cash’s key religious themes. In his liner notes for American IV and for Unearthed (2003), which includes a different version of the song, Cash remarks that it is ‘based, loosely, on the book of Revelation, with a couple of lines, or a chorus, from other Biblical sources’. He explains that he originally wrote it as a poem in which he ponders interpretations of the Book of Revelation: ‘I would go from one interpretation to another on this very complicated interpretation – or to me it’s very complicated – until I finally found some lyrics that worked.’ Here, we see Cash’s investment in using poetry and music to interpret religious belief systems, and his explicit model of drawing attention to multiple possible interpretations of Bible passages, his own included. He goes on to describe problems of meaning and interpretation: ‘“Revelation” by its mere interpretation says that something “is revealed.” I wish it were. The more I dug into the book the more I came to realize why it’s such a puzzle, even to many theologians. Eventually I shuffled my papers, so to speak, drew out four or five pages, and wrote my lyrics’ (Unearthed). As he concentrates on multiple meanings and interpretive undecidability, Cash observes that his process of questioning and parsing generated forty or fifty more verses that he did not use. The song has a driving beat but the lyrics are bleak, offering an ominous fire and brimstone sermon concerning Judgement Day. Cash’s singing voice shows signs of age, noticeably cracking at times, in comparison with his earlier albums. He is accompanied by acoustic guitars and both piano and organ (both contributing occasional chords that crescendo in volume). In the version on American IV, the arrangement amplifies the religious tone. Cash recites the opening and closing verses like a preacher, and musical effects make it sound like a sermon played on an old, crackling phonograph record. These verses describe the speaker beholding death riding in on a pale horse as ‘Hell followed with him’. Among these foreboding images of the Apocalypse, Cash’s lyrics describe how ‘everybody won’t be treated all the same’, all should remain as they are in order to be judged, and some will be saved, some damned ‘when the man comes around’. Cash admonishes: ‘Listen to the words long-written down’ (‘When the Man Comes Around’, American IV, 2002). He refers back to scripture but has already taken his own liberties with it as he turns it into folk poetry. In a gospel album that reflects Cash’s musical and cultural roots, My Mother’s Hymn Book, he culls songs from the hymnbook his mother carried all her life, Heavenly Highway Hymns. This album speaks to the profound mixture of cultural traditions in his music. He sings Brumley’s ‘I’ll Fly Away’, as well as his ‘If We Never Meet Again This Side of Heaven’. Cash includes gospel songs sung at his brother Jack’s funeral in 1944, noting that his family repeatedly sang those songs the rest of their lives. They include the standards ‘When the Roll is Called Up Yonder’, ‘In the Sweet By and By’, ‘I Am Bound for the Promised Land’, ‘Shall We Gather at the River’, ‘Peace in the Valley’, ‘I’ll Fly Away’ and ‘How Beautiful Heaven Must Be’ (Cash 1975: 48, My 274

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Mother’s Hymn Book 2004). Cash calls the album a mix of ‘old church songs, country gospel songs, and black gospel songs’, drawn from music he heard on the radio growing up, ranging from The Louvin Brothers to The Carter Family to his favourite performer, Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Unearthed). Regarding his investment in black gospel music, Cash had expressed a desire to make a future album of black gospel songs and he did record some here, such ‘I Shall Not Be Moved’ (what Cash in his liner notes calls a rural white church version of a rural black church song) (My Mother’s Hymn Book 2004), a version of ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’. He includes ‘Just As I Am’ (the hymn that was playing when Cash responded to an altar call at age twelve in his Baptist church) (My Mother’s Hymn Book 2004), here inspired by Mahalia Jackson’s rendition (and Jackson was also a guest on his variety show) (Unearthed). Elsewhere, his repertoire included songs from pioneering black gospel composer Thomas A. Dorsey, such as ‘Peace in the Valley’ (Ring of Fire 1963). In the corpus of Cash’s lyrics taken as a whole, a significant portion of his writing centres on religion. Many songs laud Jesus and his deeds for the ‘common man’ ‘It Was Jesus’ (Hymns by Johnny Cash 1959), ‘Nazarene’ (The Holy Land 1969), ‘Praise the Lord’ (Gospel Road, 1973), ‘He Turned the Water into Wine’ (The Holy Land, 1969), some celebrate a born again Christianity (‘I’m a Newborn Man’, I Believe 1984), while several focus on specific historical sites as material grounding or ‘proof’ for the religious belief they advocate (‘Land of Israel’, The Holy Land, 1969, ‘Come to the Wailing Wall’, The Holy Land, 1969, much of the Gospel Road soundtrack). However, others focus on travails in the speaker’s faith and raise religious problems. A number of his songs resist resolution of the saint-sinner dichotomy into redemption in the sense that they retain some uncertainty about salvation or a concern about constant temptation. Cash’s songs affirm a Christian faith and propose to follow it, but many also recur to the enticements of the Devil. On one level, the Devil, the speaker’s ‘old friend’, defines the human condition of a Christian life fraught with traps, and he even tries to undermine great preachers (‘Billy & Rex & Oral & Bob’) (Junkie and the Juicehead [Minus Me], 1974). On another level, the lyrical focus on temptation presents some degree of questioning within that religious framework. Cash’s songs address religious complexity, ultimately reaffirming religious faith, but he emphasizes opposing forces kept in struggle. In some songs, the speaker expresses uncertainty by saying that ‘if’ the miracles described in the Bible are true, then he hopes that he will be saved too (‘I See Men Walking As Trees’, Gospel Road 1973). In ‘My Children Walk in Truth’ (Believe in Him 1986), the speaker prays to ‘know more joy’ in his ‘salvation’. Re-assured that his children have faith, he projects more confidence because ‘a frightened child won’t hold a trembling hand’, performing religious faith to inspire certainty in others. In ‘Welcome Back Jesus’ (Any Old Wind that Blows 1973), the speaker worries that he might be overlooked on Judgement Day because ‘temptations come and I sure get tired’; while he tries to ‘stay upon the right track’, he might not be saved. Cash addresses questions about Christine doctrine in ‘The Preacher Said, “Jesus Said”’ (Man in Black 1971), where the speaker empathizes with listeners who ‘wonder how you are to know whose word is true’. He concludes that the longevity of the message makes it convincing, because preachers have been saying the same thing for centuries, ‘from St. Paul to Billy Graham’. Aside from lionizing two of his religious idols, Cash also allows for religious doubt and questioning. Similarly, in ‘Redemption’ (American Recordings 1994), Cash writes that Jesus’s blood on the cross brought freedom, with the ‘tree of life’ growing from it. The speaker clings to that tree even 275

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though the Devil tempts him – his ‘old friend Lucifer’, a familiar visitor who still has the power to lure him. Though the speaker claims to be ‘redeemed by the blood’ of Jesus, the lyrics still express worry and uncertainty. While this constant battle between God and Satan reflects Southern Baptist teachings, Cash’s treatment of these issues also reflects his own thematic stresses. Cash also expresses doubt about his own role, in explicit autobiographical references. While he asks for God’s help in using him and his music as a vessel (‘Lead Me Father’, Hymns by Johnny Cash 1959), he also insists elsewhere that he is not trying to be a role model, he is simply expressing his beliefs – while they are efficacious for him, that does not mean they will be for his listeners (‘You’ll Get Yours, I’ll Get Mine’, I Believe 1984). Thus, Cash advocates personal witnessing yet also disavows it as an influence on others. Cash’s religious songs focus on class and gender in ways that underscore his continual address to Southern white working-class masculinity. Poor men are made wealthy by their religious faith (‘I Call Him’, Hymns by Johnny Cash 1959). Both Jesus and other biblical figures are the same ‘common folk’ as the working-class group Cash addresses, as in his version of ‘Jesus Was a Carpenter’ (Hello, I’m Johnny Cash 1970), ‘The Gifts They Gave’ and ‘We Are the Shepherds’ (The Christmas Spirit 1963). Other Cash songs urge listeners to work for social justice on earth (specifically for aid for the impoverished and the imprisoned) based on their religious beliefs, not to defer these issues to heaven (‘No Earthly Good’, The Rambler 1977, ‘All of God’s Children Ain’t Free’, Orange Blossom Special 1965). Cash’s empathy with the fallen often takes the form of a critique of class bias. Many songs argue that even for people who think they are saved, they still must help others in need instead of shunning them. His lyrics urge that his listeners not look down on vagrants or hobos, or their religious faith would be hypocritical (‘No Earthly Good’, The Rambler 1977). Because his lyrics often frame convicts as working-class men who were trying to provide for their family in the face of an economic structure that thwarts their ability to do so, Cash’s songs focus on religious support and the promise of salvation for prisoners. In a related dynamic, several of Cash’s songs imagine Jesus as a masculine role model (‘He’ll Be a Friend’, Hymns by Johnny Cash 1959], ‘The Greatest Cowboy of Them All’, A Believer Sings the Truth 1979). In ‘I’m Gonna Try to Be That Way’ (I Believe 1984), the speaker pledges to try and be like Jesus and ‘do the kind of things a man oughta do’. Discussing his religious faith in an interview, Cash once insisted: ‘Being a Christian isn’t for sissies. It takes a real man to live for God – a lot more man than to live for the devil, you know? If you really want to live right these days, you gotta be tough’ (Conn 1973: 21). Cash’s version of Protestant Christianity is thus strongly inflected by his formulation of Southern white working-class masculinity. In his classic study, W. J. Cash identifies one of the central tensions in Southern working-class life as the battle between piety and hedonism in the ‘divided’ Southerner, or the ‘man in the center’, who struggles between his Saturday night carousing and his Sunday morning holiness (1941: 44–7). Correspondingly, Lewis points out that thematic contradictions for masculinity in country music involve freedom and independence versus the cultural pressure for men to marry and support a family instead of chasing ‘honky-tonk angels’ (1993: 217). Cash’s first autobiography, Man in Black (1975), invokes the conventions of spiritual autobiography to frame his life as a struggle between drugs and God and offers a triumphal pedagogical message. He bears witness to the steps he took to revelation, redemption and spiritual salvation as he testifies to readers and models a story of Christian faith. He writes that ‘if only one 276

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person can be saved from the death of drugs, if only one person turns to God through the story which I tell, it will all have been worthwhile’ (Cash 1975: 13). There, Cash discusses his organized religion upbringing in both Baptist and Pentecostal church, highlighting music as religious expression as well as a sense of shared cultural context from marginalized Southern rural groups (Cash 1975: 25–7). Bufwack and Oermann attest that the boom in the Pentecostal movement of 1940s and 1950s, located in groups like Churches of God and Assemblies of God, represented a protest against modernity, technology, industrialization and urbanization; seeing those developments as the roots of moral decay, Pentecostalism instead insisted on austere values (forbidding dancing, drinking and smoking) (1993: 21). Yet the services themselves focused on music as a key to charismatic rituals (testimonies and emotional displays, speaking in tongues and snake handling). Bufwack and Oermann note that anthropologists categorize this movement as ‘the vision of the disinherited’, because the faithful members came from ‘the poor, the unschooled, the rural, the left-behind’ (1993: 21). The Southern Baptist tradition, meanwhile, has had a broader impact on Southern culture due to its ideas of ‘congregational freedom’ (in which each local church has the right to live out the gospel according to the needs of the local community) and ‘soul freedom’ (or the idea that individuals have the right to read and interpret scripture for themselves because their individual relationship with God through Jesus is primary) (Weller 1965: 121). Jack Weller observes that ‘the Baptist form of government, which set up the local church as the only authority and allowed no interference from regional or national bodies, was most compatible with the leveling philosophy’ of southern Appalachia (1965: 121). Likewise, Cash’s insistence on the personal resonates with the broader country music dynamic in which audiences prefer personal messages regarding religion. Showing the familiar tension between folk culture and mass culture, Southern audiences distrusted the mass media distribution of religious messages on television but trusted radio because in rural areas it was framed as a ‘local’ source much like a local minister (Rogers and Smith 1993: 274). Like many other country stars, Cash emphasizes a personal relationship to this body of religious belief just as he underscores a sense of suffering and questioning alongside faith. His work epitomizes how country music voices the contradictions of religion in Southern white working-class culture and some of its tensions in American culture more generally.

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Chapter 25

Electronic Dance Music: Trance and Techno-Shamanism Graham St John

This chapter addresses an assemblage of spiritual technologies implicit to ‘electronic dance music’ (EDM) movements, with a specific focus on psytrance, in which the author has extensive field experience. It explores technologies of the senses – spiritechnics – that are harnessed to optimize liminal conditions within EDM cultures, an exploration that assists understanding of ‘trance’ as it is identified within these cultures. In the optimal dance event-centred cultures of EDM (e.g. raves, clubs and festivals), with the assistance of an assemblage of sensory technologies, DJs, sound engineers, visual artists, event enablers and dance floor inhabitants themselves typically collaborate to affect the dissolution of normative modes of consciousness. The phrase ‘technoshaman’ is often deployed by commentators in efforts to draw favourable comparison with universal shamanic ritual practice. But while EDM producers can and do act as intentional agents of transformation – with, for example, postliminal therapeutic – outcomes, assemblages appear more commonly committed to the cause of liminality itself. As discussed in this chapter, EDM productions are often devised not so much to orchestrate the transformation-of-being and status that is the common objective of rites of passage and shamanism, but a superliminal state of being in transit – an experimental field of experience optimized by technicians and eventhabitués with the aid of an assemblage of sensory technologies.

EDM and religion From disco, through house, techno and acid-house raves, to clubbing and festival developments, in the last four decades EDM has grown increasingly popular. The phenomenon has drawn the attentions of scholars who have identified religious and spiritual characteristics of transnational EDM cultures and their events (see Gauthier 2004a, 2005; St John 2004a, 2006; Beck and Lynch 2009). That EDM events contextualize collective alterations of consciousness, especially among adolescents, has drawn disparate responses. They have triggered moral panics, like that expressed by Christian fundamentalists,1 the zealous architects of the so-called RAVE Act (2003) in the United States,2 or the Zionist reaction to transnationalizing youth culture in Israel (see Meadan 2001). On the other hand, they have sparked prophecy (Spurgeon n.d.), emic evangelism (see Fritz 1999) and other declarations of self-awakening (Johner 2011). In diverse approaches, commentators identify scenes as contexts enabling an immediate, exceptional, even religious experience. Insights have been forged, for example, on liberation (St John 2004b), ritualization

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(Gauthier 2004b; Gerard 2004; Sylvan 2005), new age and alternative spirituality (Partridge 2006a; D’Andrea 2007) and millenarianism and revitalization (Olaveson 2004; St John 2004c) in these cultures. The perception that one feels ‘more alive’ at the rave, the club, festival, is common across scenes, with participants identifying this exceptional experience as the ‘vibe’. Researchers have paid considerable attention to the socio-aesthetics of the EDM ‘vibe’ (e.g. Fikentscher 2000: 80; Taylor 2001; Takahashi and Olaveson 2003: 81; Gerard 2004: 178–9; Olaveson 2004: 90; Rill 2006; St John 2008, 2009),3 and the techno-tribes forming to optimize these conditions (St John 2012a). As EDM researchers have typically turned from the heuristics of ‘subcultures’ to ‘neotribes’ (Maffesoli 1996), they have challenged the cultural Marxist approaches of the 1970s that have held subcultural expressions as ‘ineffectual’ and ‘tragic’ (Clarke et al. 1976), the postmodernist (e.g. Baudrillardian) approaches of the early 1990s holding rave to be an ‘implosion of meaning’ (Melechi 1993) and heuristics (e.g. Bourdieu) heavily weighted towards distinction over experience (Thornton 1996). Research has recognized raving and clubbing to embody significance for participants often connected to the interwoven causes of gender, sexuality and ethnicity performed within social dance contexts (e.g. Malbon 1999; Pini 2001; Buckland 2002; Madrid 2008), and more broadly as a response to conditions of risk, insecurities, alienation and identity crises confronted by Generation Y (Furlong and Cartmel 1997). In other research (see Lynch and Badger 2006), clubbing has been found to exemplify the turn to ‘spiritualities of life’, which Paul Heelas observes downstream from the ‘revolutionary’ turn to the subjective or ‘expressive life’ in the 1960s (Heelas 1996, 2008; Heelas and Woodhead 2005). While it is possible that the popularity of EDM, from clubbing to festivals, could be asseverated from this perspective, including for example, the growing trend in ‘transformational festivals’ (Johner 2015), the sociology of life ‘spiritualities’ fails to recognize, if not completely ignore, the significance of psychoactivating compounds, including MDMA (i.e. ‘ecstasy’), psychedelics (e.g. LSD) and the so-called entheogens (i.e. those substances, like psilocybincontaining mushrooms, mescaline and DMT that are claimed to ‘awaken the divine within’) in these spiritual endeavours.4 This lacuna exists in no small part because the pathos and deviance of use dominates sociologies of drugs use within EDM, as it does in other youth cultures where drugs use has been typically understood according to a prevailing attitude of moderation and control. And yet ethnographers have recognized the need for alternative approaches acknowledging the comparative significance of affect, pleasure and spirituality in dance drug cultures (see Hunt et al. 2007; Hunt et al. 2010; Ruane 2015). They have, for instance, paid attention to the way MDMA and ketamine figure in rave and club-oriented awakenings of self and connectedness among eventgoers in Hong Kong and San Francisco (Joe-Laidler and Hunt 2013; Joe-Laidler et al. 2014). Contending with the problem of representation and recognizing that the dance music event experience is somatic and affective in character, researchers have sought appropriately field-tailored ethnographic methods (Bøhling 2015) and autoethnography (St John 2013a) to transpose the experience. There is of course wide variation in substance use patterns and meanings across a diverse range of scenes. With psytrance as an exemplary model, it may be more fruitful to approach scenes as ‘gnosis’-bearing cultural frameworks, with entire assemblages of eventized sensory technologies optimized to reveal personal insights, enhance authenticity and augment self-realization (St John 2012a). 279

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The importance of repurposed technology and remixed media in EDM meaning-making activities has been illustrated with attention to the immersive media ecology in which participants sample religion to evoke non-ordinary experiences at events (St John 2015a). The repurposing of technology to intensely affective objectives is the artifice of the DJ. Entries abound on this popular figure as a religious specialist or ‘technoshaman’ (see Hutson 1999, 2000; Sylvan 2002, 2005; Takahashi 2004, 2005; and for ‘digital shaman’ see D’Andrea 2007: 211).5 This is a master motif also played, for instance, in a range of feature films and scene documentaries, like Groove (Harrison 2000), Liquid Crystal Vision (Rood and Klimmer 2002), Welcome to Wonderland (Short 2006) and God Is My DJ (Goeijers 2006). While the use of local cultural technics and prepared ethnopharmacologies might qualify all shamans as techno shamans, within the field of EDM, ‘technoshaman’ refers to an individual or assembly of artists (principally DJs) who are capable of affecting transpersonal states through the application of their technique. For instance, DJ Ray Castle has elaborated upon what he dubbed the dance cathexis of techno trance, which he argues occasions ‘a group cathartic psychodrama’ and offers ‘a potent temenos (sacred space) for reintegration of disconnected parts of the Self’ (Castle in ENRG 2001: 164). Identifying as a ‘psychedelic shaman’, Australia’s DJ Krusty has also developed events with a therapeutic and visionary intent (see Krusty 2008). And yet, as demonstrated in this chapter by way of attention to psytrance, while DJs may show dedication to achieving post-liminal outcomes, as technicians of transcendence, they are perhaps best known for their abilities to affect liminalization.

Psytrance Psytrance is a movement rooted in the live music scene of the 1970s which flourished in the former Portuguese colony of Goa, India, and was overtaken by a seasonal DJ-led electronic music scene in the 1980s. At that time, expatriate traveller-DJs transported and mixed techniques and music styles from home countries to cultivate an open-air trance-dance music culture, which by the mid-1990s became identified with the music genre marketed as Goa trance. Following aesthetic shifts associated with analogue, digital and virtual music technologies along with transitions in taste and demand, Goa trance developed as psychedelic trance or psytrance, itself splintering into numerous subgenres and related scenes by the early 2000s. As found in a comprehensive study of this movement (St John 2012a), psyculture is heir to an experiential complexity embodied in the abandonment and realization of the self, as expressed in transgressive and progressive developments found in a transnational network of dance parties, clubs and festivals (see also St John 2014a). The study identifies a spectrum of transitional states of ‘consciousness’ – dissolved, universal, evolved – permeating the movement illustrating the complexity of the phenomenon variously regarded as ‘trance’. As is notable in psytrance (among other EDM cultures), participants typically invest in playful labours of self-authentication, with such endeavours illustrating the radical edge of the ‘spiritual revolution’ where the ‘immediacy of personal experience’ is understood as ‘epistemologically crucial’. Following the Romantics, and as embodied notably in transpersonal psychology, the Human Potential Movement, and other developments carrying forward Western esoteric currents, in psyculture one’s inner self has become the privileged arbitrator of truth and mediator of the divine (Hanegraaff 1996; Heelas 1996: 21; Partridge 1999: 86). More widely, the dedication to authenticity, self-discovery and awakening is augmented by an assemblage of technics within 280

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EDM cultures that are heir to the decentralizing, democratizing and empowering characteristics of cut-up, sampling and re-assembling techniques enabled by digitalization and cyberspace. Tooling up users to capture available sound from cinema, TV, radio, computer games, along with live recordings, and re-programme, mutate and synthesize these sounds now devoted to new ends, samplers became the techno-alchemical devices par excellence. Whether sampling bass-lines, melodies or scripted dialogue and film scores, the pirating and re-editing of found sound is endemic to EDM, where sound sequences are selected and synthesized in production, and/or modulated in performance to fashion new works. Such labours include the work of the self in the process of individuation. With influences from Surrealism, Dada and the Beats, as well as Jamaican-derived dub-and-breakbeat science, electronic music cultures are indebted to the technics of the remix, where at-one-ment and connectedness rely upon cut-ups and disassembly, and thus the creation of new forms from destruction and breakdowns.

Liminalization in EDM As the formation of psychedelic trance demonstrated through its progenitor seasons in Goa in the 1980s, production and techniques of performance in EDM are integral to new forms of ritualized dance. The earliest Goa DJs were influenced by, and contributed to, the performative production of entrancing music through cutting up audio tape or mixing the gaps (the ‘breaks’) between the lyrics of dance songs. Extending instrumental sections enabled these artists to bend dance floors to their will, to raise moods, and prolong the moment (see St John 2012a: chapter 2). Exposed to this open-air interzone, importing their distinctive sounds and experience into the party, a loose milieu of seasonal travellers and DJs sought to replicate the experience, effectively producing a ritualized formula adapted by labels and subsequent event management organizations emerging in home countries led by these same producers and label managers (see Rom and Querner 2011). Such event-cultures codify, professionalize and commodify formative liminal experiences associated with trance states, processes of domestication observed for instance in rave culture where ecstatic abandonment grows formalized (see Gauthier 2004b), an historical outcome understood by way of Roger Bastide (1975), who observed the institutionalization of ‘savage religion’, and Victor Turner (1974) who theorized the normalizing of ‘spontaneous communitas’. And yet, such structural patterns are not one-dimensional. Recurring seasonally in forests, on mountaintops, lakesides, deserts and other natural sites, as well as in inner-city venues, psychedelic trance events became complex heterotopian topographies of amnesia and revelation, for escaping one’s self, and potentiating the discovery or affirmation of one’s relationship in the web of life. In the psytrance event, ‘trance’ becomes a variable signifier for self-dissolution and discovery mediated by the practice of dance, an intercorporeal practice through which one may become distanced from the maladies of modern life, and by which one may express commitment to symbiosis with the natural world (including one’s own body). In these variable and yet not disparate actions, ‘trance’ is a performance in which practitioners are responsive to the complex conditions and afflictions of modernity. In underground or conscious EDM events, producers have shown commitment towards creating intentional dance ritual, repurposing elements of dance/music events – European and otherwise – appropriating their semiotic cachet and functionality. Practitioners like those associated with London’s Return to the Source or open-air gatherings like British Columbia’s 281

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The Oracle, intentional ritual activators and technicians of transition formulating projects of the self, have gained reputations for their abilities to curate environments that facilitate the uncovering of hidden realms, orchestrate revitalization and effect transformation. For one practitioner of renown, DJ Goa Gil (St John 2011a), ritual practice is sampled and remixed from a generally unidentified primordial stock to which humanity is believed heir. Despite its conscious ritualization, in psytrance – as in disco, house, techno and other EDM movements – the symbolic content of dance music appears to be of smaller concern than the techniques of trance inducement. The technologies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are adopted to serve transiting individuals, to launch the individual into liminal states the accomplishment of which is a common measure of their efficacy. And so while in the mystic universalism of Goa Gil the trance ritual may serve soteriological goals, its chief value is its role as a liminal threshold, where liminality is adopted and optimized to its own ends. With this in mind, it is common to find in music productions and visionary art a litany of references to a phantasmagoria of alien abductions, lost civilizations, ancient spacemen and monstrous figures evoking potent threshold states under an ambiance of revelation and illumination. Psytrance music and its event culture then accumulates aesthetics and techniques which serve to optimize its liminal conditions, and where a superliminal storehouse of ‘popular occultural’ phenomena (Partridge 2006b), and gnosis-triggering symbolism (St John 2015a) enable users to be exposed to truths about their selves, their relationships and the world in which they live. Such is the value attributed to psytrance by a great many practitioners, including those who do not seek comparison with or appropriate from traditional forms of ritualization. That the journey is privileged over destination in this movement is amplified in music productions, a circumstance shared with other EDM developments. The renowned DJ Laurent, known as the ‘real father of trance’ (see Mothersole 2010) exemplified the way Goa DJs were able to keep a dance floor enthralled through cut-up techniques, track selection and reputation, facilitating an epic journey not unlike that associated with other principal clubs, scenes and milieus within EDM, notably house (Rietveld 2004). With tracks produced at an average of about eight minutes in length, with many pushing over ten, single works were produced as journeys in their own right. In the protean mid-1990s peak of Goatrance, music was composed using a mix of analogue and digital equipment, with computers typically possessing minute memory capacity. From composition to performance, sampling, mixing, phasing frequencies and re-syncopating rhythms are performance practices affecting – in conjunction with sound amplification, intelligent lighting and spatial design – removal from the mundane and transportation into the extraordinary. The separation of individuals from their minds, routines and responsibilities off the dance floor, outside the venue, and beyond the perimeter of the festival attracted the designation ‘trance’ in the proto-disco era, as DJ and studio techniques enabled transcendent experience comparable to other dance music styles, notably psychedelic rock. But with the use of mobile phones and later the internet, a new all-night ritual eventually translated to open-air locations in remote regions where electronic music effectively replaced psychedelic rock. As observed by Australian techno pioneer – and founder of label Psy-Harmonics – Ollie Olsen, electronic instruments would become indispensable to the trance experience: ‘Missing’, he claims, from ‘our culture for centuries, this experience has come back to us in such a bizarre way through the use of electronics. … The reason electronic music was invented in my mind was to attain all those 282

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sounds, frequencies and scales that you couldn’t get from traditional instruments, and that was the original thrust for people building synthesizers, and it is those undiscovered frequencies that are leading the charge back into trance music’ (in Yellow Peril n.d.).

Trance and the technoshaman Research on contemporary ‘trance’ music has helped uncover the conditions to which dancers are exposed. Computers and sound equipment provide DJs with the means of not only controlling perception but shaping how humans perceive. Rave scholar Melanie Takahashi recognized that participants are entering optimal environments for experiencing music and for obtaining altered states of consciousness. With computers enabling ‘melodies and rhythms so rapid and complex that they go beyond the human ability for performance, our perceptual systems are being exposed to completely new stimuli’ (Takahashi 2005: 254). While the rave assemblage enables altered states resembling that observed in ceremonial possession states (Rouget 1985), it is the DJ’s precision in technique, proficiency in track selection and ‘the learning on the part of the participants in recognizing and responding to the DJ’s cues’, that ensures these altered states. That is, technological advancements, production and performance techniques, along with the interactions between DJ and dancer, compensate for the lack of ‘coherent cultural signifiers’ and ‘sophisticated scripted process’ (Takahashi 2005: 252–3). This accelerated and optimized context for learned bodily responses and entrancement is what techno scholar Morgan Gerard (2004) identifies as learned responses to the DJ’s ‘techniques of liminality’. As already noted, EDM scholars have tended to favour comparison with traditional shamanic practice. Such echoes the contentions of practitioners themselves who promote the psychotherapeutic efficacy of trance dance, with intentional ritualizations providing the context for transfiguration through surrender, purification and channelling. Some artists are specific about the audio techniques involved in orchestrating trance, and there is a concerted effort among producers to effect brain physiology – alpha waves (critical in inducing trance states in humans between 8 and 12 cycles per second) – through musical tempo. In the estimation of Cole and Hannan (1997), ‘many traditional trance-inducing musics of the world contain rhythmic elements which mirror these rates. Performances typically start at the lower level and increase over a period of hours towards the higher level’. Paralleling traditional trance music styles, ‘in Goatrance there is a constant stream of 16th notes which when played at the suggested average of 144 bpm yields a flow of musical events at an average of 9.6 cps’. As exemplified by London’s Return to the Source events in the mid to late 1990s, practitioners will also appropriate from a variety of traditions whose techniques of entrancement are believed to hold efficacy. To understand the significance of these practices, and that of the DJ’s techniques, we might find instruction in the processes that historian of religion Charles H. Long (1987) recognized in popular music. The technological means of production and transmission – electronic sound reproduction, digital recording, mass production and mediation, and personal media technologies  – has inaugurated a powerful intensification of experience for music fans such that content dissipates under the force of visceral affect. This is one of the chief characteristics of popular music understood by Long. Owing to the intensity of transmission, ‘the content of what is transmitted tends to be ephemeral, thus the notion of religion as establishing powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods of motivation is shifted away from content and substance to 283

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modes of experience’ (in Sylvan 2002: 80, emphasis in original). Upgrading Geertz’s definition of religion, Long was connoting popular music in general, but these intensities are magnified within the cultures of EDM in which reproduction (mechanical, electronic and digital) is the engine-house of both composition and performance. The intensities in question are magnified further by a host of now conventional as well as novel psychoactive substances (St John 2011b). Altered and optimal conditions of liminal being induced by the entire assemblage of sensory technologies are further augmented by ‘nanomedia’. This includes vocal material – often short sound-bytes – sampled from the internet-enabled global media database (e.g. cinema and TV) programmed into tracks by producers, and performed for the interactive theatre of the dance floor. This material holds the effect of evoking, stimulating and even burlesquing the experience of being in transit. In psychedelic trance, for instance, one finds evidence of outer space travel motifs adapted from NASA’s Apollo Program radio dialogue and sci-fi cinema, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, to allegorize the inward journey of discovery and the encounter with one’s other-self storied via the poached figure of the alien (see St John 2013b). Like media shamans, DJ/producers build fantastic mashups remixing and synthesizing elements from a cornucopia of sources: ancient, alien, monstrous, outlaw, indigenous pop icons, all digested in the pursuit of transition from ordinary states of consciousness (St John 2012b,c). Re-mediated material from a variety of popular cultural sources often offers no pedagogy, no message as such. It is the liminal aesthetic that is the intention common to performative productions. Without signification, not marking status passage, nor approximating structured healing ritual, the desirable condition is the experience of transition, a state in which one may know transcendence without necessarily transiting to a destination or outcome (the theme is further developed in St John 2014b). This noetic state of transit without passage is a condition raising concern among defenders of morality and virtue for whom the ‘trance’ experience is unproductive, its culture received as categorically pathological, its young participants vulnerable to predatory influences and its producers and productions criminalized (St John 2011c). And it is a condition that also draws fire within scenes where a signification is proposed to be missing, where a function is considered lost, a direction unclear. Diverse interventions result. In the former, efforts are made to eliminate or regulate ‘trance’. In the latter, there are commitments towards authentic ‘trance’ practice, purposed to an end other than itself, harnessed to movement concerns responsive to crisis.

Conclusion For spirit technicians, including dancefloor participants themselves, music is designed and adopted to affect outcomes consistent with hybridized therapeutic strategies. For others, the EDM event is hitched to practices of cultural revitalization believed necessary to redress ecological and humanitarian crises. And yet, as discussed in this chapter, and as exemplified by psytrance, for many enthusiasts ‘trance’ is characterized by form and technique over content, where the music and event productions possess a decidedly functional logic without clear telos. This competes with a standard view in which DJ/producers are for instance characterized (or self-characterized) as ‘shamanic’. This proclivity towards self-liminalization resonates with the observations of Reynolds (1998: 9), who suggested that, with techno music, it is ‘not about what music means but how it works’. Another way of explaining this is that how it works IS what it means. This is the 284

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technologic of EDM where transcendence of self in the context of others is the purpose, meaning and intention of events to which participants return repeatedly, sometimes weekly, other times seasonally. Within the parameters and perimeters of global EDM cultures, participants make transition from states of rational consciousness associated with their livelihoods and identities outside the event and off the dance floor. Utilizing an assemblage of sensory technologies, these cultures have optimized this state of transition in iterated cultural productions I have called superliminal. Research in this field has much room to evolve since there remain few critical examinations of ways events and event-cultures reproduce values, power relationships and divisions that event producers and participants regularly claim they are transiting from. While liberation from routine conditions of self-hood potentiates newfound conditions of subjectivity, are their limits and contradictions to this othering? What are the structural, hierarchical and commercial arrangements facilitating states of transcendence enjoyed by EDM participants? What power relationships are integral to the reproduction of events and their espoused spiritual outcomes? Further investigation of transcendent (or trance) states in EDM, the spiritechnics designed to augment them, and the political economy of event productions, will be pivotal to our future understanding of this phenomenon.

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Blues and Jazz David Cheetham

Introduction In the twenty-first century, the fusion or mixing of styles across all aspects of our culture has become a familiar experience. In music, globalization has caused many different musical forms, styles of performance, cultural idiosyncrasies and combinations to gain an increasing prominence in popular media and public events. So, looking at blues and jazz forms – and considering their relationship and impact in the religious sphere – one must acknowledge that this contemporary experience makes the discussion of their interaction more complex. Additionally, one might draw attention to the phenomenon of musical hybridity and its impact on the popular imagination. Think, for example, of Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek’s influential partnership with The Hilliard Ensemble with his album Officium (1994), a beautiful and haunting fusion of Gregorian choral singing with an improvised ethereal free-form sax providing a shaft of light that seems to connect the twenty-first and the tenth centuries. Today’s twenty-first-century religious individual has multiple musical options – fusions or otherwise – to help connect with and express their faith. Nevertheless, the history of the relationship between blues, jazz and religion – particularly in the context of Christian churches of various denominations – has often courted controversy about the appropriateness of their presence in the context of liturgy and worship. Historically, this might apply more to the blues (sometimes labelled as the ‘Devil’s music’) than to jazz, but both forms (blues and jazz) present challenges to ‘formal’ religious settings. For example, Bill Hall, in a piece entitled ‘Jazz – Lewd or Ludens?’, relates his own struggles to perform jazz in the north-east of England (Hall 2000). He speaks about opposition from traditionalists who felt that the reverence of the services would be violated. However, the events went ahead and were transformative for many present (195–205). The improvisatory moments during the services served to greatly augment the religious impact. In one such service in 1966, Hall relates the way that Ron Aspery, a saxophonist, unexpectedly improvised a wailing shriek on his instrument after the account of Jesus’ crucifixion. The effect on the congregation was profound (198). Perhaps there is also something about the saxophone as an instrument that appears to vocalize like a prophetic human voice? As one example of this, Jason Bivins, an American scholar of jazz and religion, perceptively observes that the saxophonist Charles Gayle’s ‘yawps and fierce innovations in the altissimo register seem to match the intensity of his convictions’ (Bivins 2015: 4). As another example, Christopher Chase draws attention to a composition entitled ‘Imam’ by a Muslim jazz player, Abdullah Ibrahim, and asks, ‘Are prayers found in the saxophone?’ (Chase 2010: 160).

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I can relate to both Hall’s enthusiasm and the challenges that he faced in the context of church worship. It was the music scene that captured my imagination while at university. Musically speaking, my own personal liberation came when I was asked by a jazz guitarist at university if I would like to set up a jazz band. Up until that point, I was a classically trained pianist with some rather pretentious compositions to my name (I think a 2-hour long symphony at one point, thankfully now lost). However, I was also a keen improviser. Jazz was a whole new world for me. I liked the freedom, the cool … the smoke. However, there was also the enjoyment of improvisation as an individual player while simultaneously sharing a joint sense of creativity with the other players. Improvisation became a collective effort – requiring group frisson. Dave Brubeck said about jazz improvisation, it is ‘the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact’ (Brubeck quoted in Hall 2000: 206). Later, when I played in church worship bands, the use of jazz harmonies – and the traditional ‘12-bar blues’ form – were familiar vehicles of lively worship. Nevertheless, like any application of free-form music, there were occasional tensions and delicate negotiations to be had concerning how far the musical freedom of players should dominate a service. Arguably, these are challenges not just for the blues or jazz but also for any form of artistic endeavour within religious gatherings. The relationship between blues, jazz and religion is a complex one that eschews easy categorization or sweeping generalizations. Nevertheless, in what follows, we shall briefly highlight some of the historical background and the developments in the twentieth century – for example, the close original relationship between gospel music and blues as well as the question of African and European influences. While doing this, we shall allude to some key figures and events in both blues and jazz music. Finally, we will give some attention to the issues and debates that arise from a consideration of the relationship between blues, jazz and religion.

Background and contexts For Samuel Floyd, the origins of blues, gospel and jazz largely stem from an African root (see Floyd 1995). In particular, he draws attention to the phenomenon of ‘ring shout’. This is best characterized as a group religious ritualistic activity that was seen in the United States among West Indian-African slaves. The practice included people moving in a circle while clapping and engaging in dance. What is especially interesting, certainly in light of the role of jazz as an important form of identity for African-American Muslim musicians in the United States, is that some scholars have drawn a connection between ‘ring shout’ and Islam. This is something raised particularly by Silviane Diouf in her book Servants of Allah (2013). In this book she draws attention to the work of Lydia Parrish and Lorenzo Dow Turner (Diouf 2013: 68), who both see parallels between the ring shout and the Islamic practice of circumambulating the Kaaba during the Hajj. Thus, ‘just as the pilgrims do in Mecca, the shouters turn counterclockwise. As in Mecca, they do so around a sacred object …’ (69). However, Diouf herself lends to this connection only a conjectural status. Floyd claims that the ‘ring shout’ was the root of many musical styles, including the ‘insistent and characteristic rhythms of “sorrow songs” and blues; and all the musical genres derived from these and other early forms’ (Floyd 1995: 6). Furthermore, for him, the important aspects are not necessarily to be located in the ring shout’s connection to one particular faith, but in its fusion of sacred and secular in ‘the world of the slaves’ (6). In such a fusion he perceives 287

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‘African and African-derived tendencies to eschew distinctions between religion and everyday life’ (6, my emphasis) and this obviously becomes a significant observation when we consider the relationship between religion, blues and jazz, especially as we evaluate how such art forms are naturally (or not) suited to religious expression. Another important precursor of the blues was the ‘spiritual’. There are a number of commonalities between them, including a yearning zeal in expression and lament over the human condition. This being the case, the connection is probably close enough for the two forms to overlap and be identified with each other, and the ‘shouts’ or ‘hollers’ so characteristic of African-American singing were common to both. Similarly, still on the topic of origins, Don Cusic argues that the perhaps more positive genre of gospel music contains ‘the roots of blues, country, modern gospel and rock’n’roll’ (Cusic 2002: 49). This is not to imply a simple evolution or timeline from gospel to blues and jazz; rather, many of the singers and musicians inhabited these styles and forms concurrently. Indeed, Allan Moore argues that – given the tendency among some early singers to merge blues with gospel music – if one attempts to formally divide the two one can still perceive that there was no obvious separation exhibited in many of the lives of these singers (Moore 2002: 1). Moreover, recalling Floyd’s comments about the connections between religion and everyday life in African idioms, there is also a merging between religion and the secular more generally. For example, Christopher Small suggests that there was a considerable amount of crossover: ‘There is a good deal of quite secular enjoyment of both spirituals and gospel music, so in blues … there is a strong element of what can only be called the religious’ (Small 1987: 191). This perhaps raises an important point about the way that boundaries between music and religion are blurred or challenged by the presence of highly expressive or creative forms of music like blues and jazz. This is a challenge for both secular performers, as they seek to identify deeply with the music, and for organized religious institutions, as they attempt to delineate the sacred from the profane. David Brown, the Anglican theologian, suggests that even if more conventional religious sensibilities were challenged ‘these newer forms did not abandon the religious quest. Instead, that quest moved elsewhere, outside the immediate context of worship’ (Brown 2007: 349). However, even if the early singers themselves managed to hold together these musical forms in their own lives the distinction between them was clearly seen as being of moral importance for many churches. If the blues has been labelled ‘Devil’s music’ it is because, as David Evans says, it is often ‘distinctly secular and worldly, unsentimental, sexually explicit, and ironic, with an undertone of deep dissatisfaction’ (Evans 2002: 22). Gary Burnett in his The Gospel According to the Blues (2014) explains that part of the reason for the ‘Devil’s music’ label was the mythos about ‘musicians going to the crossroads to sell their souls to the devil’, in addition to other associations with voodoo and liquor (Burnett 2014: 6). He further suggests that the legend of the crossroads arose in connection with the life and music of the Delta bluesman, Robert Johnson (112–14), particularly as the titles of Johnson’s songs included ‘Crossroad Blues’ and ‘Me and the Devil Blues’, to mention a few. Going further, in her feminist theology of music, Heidi Epstein colourfully describes the blues as ‘arguably the early twentieth century’s “painted whore”’ (Epstein 2004: 166). She links this to the experience of gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe (166–70). Tharpe was both a gospel and a blues singer and performed in both sacred and entertainment venues with equal vigour. For many in the black community, the fusion of both was acceptable and, in fact, ‘the blues’ celebration of the erotic served the cultural function of 288

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affirming life in the midst of death-dealing oppression’ (166). However, Tharpe – largely as a result of her blues partnership with another blues/gospel singer Marie Knight – was eventually condemned by the Baptist and Holiness churches for such dalliances with the blues and was unable to return to the fold (166).1 A similar fate awaited others too. For example, blues singer Steve Tracy relates a story of Sam Cooke, who was rejected by a gospel audience when he tried to participate on stage: ‘“Get that blues singer down. Get that no good so-and-so down. This is a Christian program”’ (Heilbut 1971: 121 cited in Evans 2002: 98).2 In his Blues and Evil (1993), Jon Spencer offers a penetrating study of the blues and seeks to address the typical caricatures of it as being morally suspect or lacking in spirituality. In fact, these alleged aspects may be interpreted as part of the blues’ vivification of suffering itself and the defiant response to it – a ‘polemical moment’ (xv). So, looking beyond its carnal exterior, Spencer urges us to examine its deeper spiritual offerings. In doing so, he draws our attention to the blues singer as ‘the human being as most honestly and ontologically realized’ (11). This being so, they embody the wrestling with suffering and evil and their performances serve as a kind of cathartic ‘ritual’ for the audience (39). In this, Spencer seems to be describing the blues as a type of active liberation theology or a form of protest against oppression and, possibly, as the fount of a specific ‘African-American ethics’ (xxvii). Setting aside the popular perceptions of the moral differences between gospel and blues music, there are also differences of style. Moore suggests that, at least ostensibly, one might discern a distinction between the communality of gospel music or spirituals and the individual guitar blues singer. Thus, whereas gospel is an invitation for group or congregational participation, the blues is often a lone voice of anguish. Additionally, we might say that both forms follow distinctive and recognizable patterns and emotions. Given this, Moore argues that originality of expression tends to be missing (Moore 2002: 5). Or rather, ‘I’m gonna sing the blues’ means that a performer is about to give a rendering of something that already has a historical pedigree or genealogy as a ‘text’ or emotional map being repeated in performances. This is arguably less true of jazz – which is characteristically centred on improvisation by groups and individual soloists – but it would be hasty to generalize too readily. Think of the jazz ‘standard’, for example. As we have already stated, there is a shared origin and close kinship between blues and jazz. Both genres influenced each other and the blues historian Elijah Wald remarks: ‘When early jazz musicians described the music of their youth, they frequently mentioned blues’ (Wald 2010: 81).3 There is no doubting the importance of blues in terms of creating specific, perhaps what might be called iconic or ‘classic’ moods, and also a highly adaptable and recognizable musical form (e.g. 12-bar) for jazz composers and improvisers. Nevertheless, Wald thinks that giving sole attention to the crossover and interrelationship between both musical cultures might obscure a more fundamental observation that both blues and jazz can be viewed as parts of the same culture or tradition. If this is the case, then what we see as ‘differences’ are really representations of different artists and forms for the sake of an audience, intended or otherwise. That is, one should not underestimate the influence of the music business and its impresarios when it comes to tailoring or promoting certain music and performers. He writes: ‘Given its shared history, it is arguably misleading to discuss blues and jazz as overlapping or interpollinating forms rather than as one tradition that has been marketed in different ways to different audiences’ (93). Although there are clear elements that trace back to African-derived sources, there are other voices that seek to emphasize European influences for jazz in particular. Thus, William Youngren 289

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asks us to consider a variety of folk or culturally distinctive forms of music, perhaps even street musicians or other entertainers, which are part of the sound tapestry that make up the early jazz band. For example, he suggests that Jewish klesmer music ‘sounds remarkably like jazz’ (Youngren 2000:17). Crucial to his view is that idea that jazz owes its tonality to recent European musical history and its wider influence. That is, its basic musical structure is grounded on the Western tonal system (23). He argues for three important sources such as brass band music – which features prominently in early jazz bands; then there are the highly idiosyncratic metres of Latin America that influence some of the rhythmical invention of jazz, and finally there is classical concert music which has influenced the melodic formation (23). Perhaps the symbolic point of stressing the richness of the origins of both jazz and blues is that the ownership of these musical forms is by no means monopolized by one culture, and many people are thus able to connect with such music and appropriate it into their contexts, religious or otherwise. There is also a diversity to be perceived in terms of class status. Even if blues and jazz shared an origin, they moved in different directions. Blues remained the iconic expression of loss, poverty (financial or emotional) and dissatisfaction while some jazz became an acceptable form of ‘high’ art.4 Again, Brown remarks that by the 1930s jazz ‘was already considered highbrow, primarily instrumental and capable of crossover between the races, whereas blues remained mainly vocal, lowbrow and overwhelmingly black. An element of rebellion, however, remained as part of the attraction of jazz’ (Brown 2007: 358). One of the most significant figures in twentieth-century music (of a variety of forms), whose career witnessed a vast number of changes and developments in American music during the twentieth century, was Duke Ellington. Ellington incorporated a number of styles into his work including gospel, bebop and swing. He presents a quandary for those who wish to neatly categorize him. He wrote short popular works, concert hall pieces, suites and music for a variety of occasions, art forms and media. We mention him here because he was also one of the pioneers when it came to the use of jazz idioms in sacred liturgical music, especially his commissioned work for Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Concert of Sacred Music (1965). Following this, Ellington composed two further similar works, the Second Sacred Concert (1968) at New York Cathedral, St John the Divine, and Third Sacred Concert (1973), first performed at Westminster Abbey in London. These works continue to be performed. For Ellington, they were not the artefacts of mere musical professionalism but represented his personal expression of faith through art. Furthermore, these works forced people to reconsider both what was considered appropriate in worship and what constituted the identity of jazz itself. As a result, there was no shortage of controversy with some unsure about the use of jazz in liturgy, despite the presence of scriptural references. Ellington defended his music by claiming that ‘everything is a part of God’s world, and that the old, arbitrary separation no longer makes sense’ (Cohen 2010: 468, cited in Bivins 2015: 158). Most importantly, he was blurring the secular/sacred distinction and this was something that made the works both visionary and innovative. His high-profile contributions in these sacred concerts only served to widen the perceived acceptability of jazz as an expression of piety and praise in public settings. Even if Ellington’s sacred music was performed within churches, it was not explicitly liturgical or ritualistic (although this author recalls the use of some of Ellington’s music during an experimental Eucharist service held at Ripon College, Cuddesdon near Oxford). Work of a more explicitly liturgical character was attempted by another important figure: Mary Lou Williams, 290

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the Catholic jazz pianist and composer. Following her conversion to Catholicism in 1956 (and baptism in 1957), she took a much greater interest – with some encouragement from the church – in producing sacred works. Perhaps most significantly, she had a more concrete drive to see how her work, personal wealth and activity could help others, especially musicians. Her sacred works include the Black Christ of the Andes (1963), a Mass (1967) for Pittsburgh Cathedral, and a number of shorter liturgical pieces. Regarding the use of jazz or blues in churches, the new progressive liturgical movements that had been ushered in by Vatican 2 – which included figures who actively encouraged Williams – did not necessarily silence more conservative voices and restraints. Thus, one declaration in 1967 concerning ‘rites’ was unambiguously negative: ‘Masses with novel and improvised rites, vestments, and texts, sometimes with music of altogether profane and worldly character, unworthy of a sacred service. These travesties of worship … tend inevitably to desacralize the liturgy’ (Documents on the Liturgy: 1966: 127). These attitudes might have become less prevalent today with the tide of change in favour of liturgical innovation and inculturation, but they nonetheless present obstacles for jazz and blues musicians in these more hierarchical ecclesial settings. Predating this was the perhaps an even more haunting work of Ed Summerlin whose Liturgical Jazz (1960) was written for his dying infant daughter Mary Jo, especially the ‘Requiem for Mary Jo’ that is at its heart. Similarly, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (1964) is widely acknowledged as one of the finest examples of jazz used to express faith, and it is also regarded as one of the greatest jazz albums of all time. Some suggest that it represents Coltrane’s personal offering to God (Brown 2007: 359) stemming from his troubled life. Although associated with Christianity, Coltrane wrote on the first page of his manuscript ‘all paths lead to God’. The music moulds together Western and non-Western, African and Arabian influences. There is also a said repetition of ‘a love supreme’ towards the end of the first track ‘Acknowledgement’ which sounds mantra-like. Perhaps underlining Coltrane’s universal intentions, it is of no small significance that the Muslim jazz pianist McCoy Tyner plays on the recording. Given this, it would not be hard to see the potential for such music to draw together different faith traditions, or inspire musicians to see the potential of their music to speak of something universal. Indeed, the improvisation of players together – sharing the intimacy of their joint creativity – could suggest profound forms of engagement that transcend, or at least suspend, cultural and religious differences. Jazz musicians are drawn from many faith traditions and none.5 Moreover, given the strong presence of African influences – especially in the United States – it is impossible to ignore the connection between jazz and Islam. We have already hinted at this earlier when we speculated about the possible origins of the ‘ring shout’; however, there is probably a much greater significance in the freedom that jazz lends to the search for a distinctive expressive identity. Moreover, for Muslim players, Islam was something that was brought to jazz with a specific agenda to underline cultural identity. Christopher Chase claims that Islam emboldened black musicians determined to establish a counter-identity to the prevailing white American Christian culture (Chase 2010). He writes that ‘jazz musicians appropriated Islam in different ways to generate their own nascent discourses’ (157). Chase surveys a number of Muslim performers and composers, including Abdullah Ibrahim, Yusef Lateef and Art Blakey. Each of these musicians inhabited their Muslim identity in different ways. For Ibrahim, who emerged from Apartheid South Africa, jazz was a vehicle for deep universal communication or solidarity that acted as 291

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a kind of ‘anti-Apartheid musical ummah of resistance’ (180). Lateef’s choice of instrument sometimes evoked Islamic elements, such as his use of the shannai, an Indian instrument that has a very reedy shrill sound which seems to resemble the Muslim call to prayer (172). The famous jazz drummer Art Blakey toured with his group, the ‘Jazz Messengers’; the term ‘messenger’ ‘is pregnant with meaning in a Muslim context … serving as a channel from God for new dispensations, paradigms …’ (166).

Discussion What is it that attracts religious people to blues and jazz today, and why do such musical forms remain an integral part of the contemporary music scene? We have seen some of the ways in which we might address these questions. There is what might be called the immediacy of the style that lends itself readily to the human expression of religious feelings, yearnings and joys. Looking at the blues and its specific connection with gospel music, Dave Headlam outlines a variety of reasons for this contemporary ‘appropriation’. Using nomenclature borrowed from Roland Barthes, he draws attention to the ‘grain’ – ‘texture in the sound and the associated expression’ (Headlam 2002: 161). The texture and feel of the blues is ideal for giving voice to the earthy, the everyday and the ‘real’. As we saw Gary Burnett argue, the blues can be used as a vehicle for the full expression of human religious experience, good and evil. This is the emotional expressiveness of the genre, the deep communication of the highs and lows of life, the longing and the searching evident in the lyrics and harmonic movement. These are universal themes and the potency with which they are delivered by blues and gospel are worth emulating. Furthermore, looking beyond the immediate context of religious practice and worship, there is also the power of the blues as a metaphor or cultural symbol – not necessarily a musical engagement with the blues at all, but the recognition of its ability to represent such themes in the cultural imagination. The acceptability and use of blues and jazz in the context of religion is complex. In the context of Christian churches, we have seen that the popular prejudice of blues and jazz as illicit forms of music has provoked strong reactions against it in some quarters. Moreover, formal ecclesial practices might find it difficult to accommodate these freer or more visceral expressions. Thus, the difficulties regarding the perceived acceptability of jazz and blues in Christian worship reflects visible and existing differences in liturgical practices that characterize the differences between episcopal, congregational, reformed, charismatic, black, ethnic or free churches and so on. Historically, and most likely stemming from the rise of the charismatic movement in the second half in the twentieth century, much church music (in most denominations) has fully adopted more ‘contemporary idioms’ and the influences of jazz and blues are to be clearly heard in these contexts. Nevertheless, explicit use of jazz improvisation in church liturgy (unless part of church café culture) is still regarded as a novelty within the practice of worship itself. Setting aside the Christian context, we also noted the phenomenon of jazz as a tool for creating an identity structure for African-American Muslims. Here the attraction of jazz was its ability to act as a vehicle for countercultural expression and alternative genealogies. Not only has jazz and Islam found a certain kinship, but other prominent musicians have found jazz to be a vehicle for other spiritual expressions. For example, Herbie Hancock sees in jazz the possibility to express 292

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his Buddhist tradition – using the rhythms and collective creativity of jazz as a kind of ‘chant’ which draws people together. Again, Bivins makes a bold statement when he suggests that the religiosity of jazz is understood as a register of its transcendence of constraints. Even as the music is surely conditioned, many musicians have held the belief that through the open work of improvisation one can cut through the layers of artifice to encounter some kind of musical enlightenment or becoming. (Bivins 2015: 5) If we take this claim seriously, it not only raises questions about the way that jazz can vivify religious feeling, it may even provoke the possibility of music like jazz as a form of spirituality in its own right. This is certainly a possibility pursued with earnest by Neil Leonard in his Jazz: Myth and Religion (1987), and the spirituality of numerous blues and jazz musicians testifies to the reality of this. However, there is a question about how far we ought to press this. Improvisation (though, not limited to jazz by any means) is a free act of creativity, but whether or not we can use words like ‘transcendence’ or ‘enlightenment’ to describe it is not clear. In some ways, the wonder of improvisation is that it captures a unique unrepeatable ecstatic moment that is fulfilling for both the performers and their audience. In addition, one might recall Jon Spencer’s defence of the blues as a kind of ‘authentic’ theology. For him, authenticity was to be found in the whole person – in the human anguish, eros and sin that are part of the rituality of the blues and its ability to be a means for liberation. The insight here might be that both blues and jazz should retain their earthiness. That is, their engagement with the human, their freedom and their spontaneous creative ecstasies might be a truer vocation and contribution to religious expression than more transcendent goals. Bivins also suggests that ‘what compels about jazz is precisely its historically identifiable resistance (through improvisation, through its religiosities) to closure as part of its pursuit of the sacred’ (22). This is a significant observation, but does it also suggest that jazz is more generous to religiosities that are liberal and open than doctrinally rooted ones? Not necessarily, because to be a good improviser one also has to know the theme well. Thus, Bruce Benson draws hermeneutical lessons from jazz improvisation to propose a method that stresses not just the improvisatory freedom in hermeneutics but also respect for structure or the cantus firmus (Benson 2011: 303–5). That is, improvisation is most certainly not an indication that structure has been abandoned. Nevertheless, Benson, following Derrida, suggests that there is a ‘doubling commentary’. In jazz this refers to the aspiration both to ‘get it right’ in terms of the theme’s presentation, but also the need for the open space of developing ideas and novel spontaneity. Only by permitting both these elements do we head in the direction of ‘true hermeneutical justice’ (Benson 2006: 206). This kind of discussion is illuminating because jazz – whether we attend to it or not as listeners or players – appears in many recent discussions of theological method.6 That is, with the current shift of focus towards ‘drama’ or performance of theology and hermeneutics the jazz improvisatory narrative itself has been used as a metaphor by many theologians who are seeking new directions for theological innovation.

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Chapter 27

Psychedelic Music Christopher Partridge

Psychedelic music is inspired by psychedelic experience. That is to say, what initially identified it as a genre of music was its focus on both the articulation of the psychedelic experience and the construction of ‘affective spaces’ conducive to the psychedelic experience. Spacemen 3 described psychedelic music most succinctly when they released an early set of demos from 1986 under the title Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To (1990). Indeed, while the genre is most often identified with the hippie counterculture of the 1960s, the fact that an influential psychedelic band such as Spacemen 3 was formed in 1982 and disbanded in 1991 presents a problem for those wanting to restrict it to ‘a relatively short historical period … between 1966 and 1969’ (Borthwick and Moy 2004: 42). While the genesis of the psychedelic sound can be traced back to this seminal period, it has evolved to include a broad range of popular music styles and genres, from the rock music of the 1960s (e.g. Cream, The Electric Prunes, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd, Quintessence, Thirteenth Floor Elevators) and early psychedelic folk (e.g. Donovan, The Incredible String Band, Dr Strangely Strange, Comus), to a broad range of subgenres, including Kosmische music/‘krautrock’ (e.g. Amon Düül II, Ash Ra Tempel, Can, Guru Guru, Popl Vuh, Tangerine Dream), psychedelic funk and soul (e.g. Sly and the Family Stone, Funkadelic, Parliament, Bootsy Collins), space rock and hippie psychedelia (e.g. Hawkwind, Gong, Here & Now, Ozric Tentacles), post-punk psychedelia (e.g. Echo and the Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes, Spacemen 3, Spiritualized), the Paisley Underground scene (Green on Red, Opal, The Rain Parade), the Palm Desert scene and subsequent stoner rock (e.g. Kyuss, Sleep, Yawning Man, Ufomammut, Acid King), contemporary experimental rock and psychedelic drone (e.g. Bardo Pond, Gnod, Goat, Lumerians, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Temples, Electric Moon, Wooden Shjips), psych folk/acid folk and freak folk (e.g. Current 93, Akron/Family, Devendra Banhart, Espers, Grizzly Bear, Six Organs of Admittance, White Magic), psychedelic trance/psytrance and psychill (e.g. Astralasia, Astral Projection, Hallucinogen, Prana, Shpongle), and psychedelic afrobeat (Orchestre Poly Rythmo De Cotonou, Orchestra Baobab, Alèmayèhu Eshètè, Victor Uwaifo). Having said that, while it is wise to avoid the nostalgic conservatism that would limit psychedelic music to the late 1960s, it is true to say that the defining period of psychedelia, which includes many of the key countercultural political and religious themes that have shaped its discourse, was 1965 to 1968. (A classic introduction to the music of the period was the influential 1972 album, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968, compiled by Jac Holzman, the founder of Elektra Records, and Lenny Kaye, who would become the lead guitarist of the Patti Smith Group.) The iconic cultural moment of the

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period was, for many, the ‘Summer of Love’ in 1967. Certainly, by the time 1968 arrived, the foundations for the future of psychedelic music had been laid. Some of the most influential albums of the period had been recorded, many in 1967, such as Red Krayola’s The Parable of Arable Land, The Incredible String Band’s 5000 Spirits or the Layers of an Onion, Love’s Forever Changes, Cream’s Disraeli Gears, Jefferson Airplane’s, Surrealistic Pillow, The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love, The Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed, Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Traffic’s Mr. Fantasy, The Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico, and, of course, the Beatles’ innovative concept album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Evident on all these albums and central to the emergent psychedelic culture was a penchant for experimentation and eclecticism that drew heavily on a range of Western genres and styles, but also on non-Western traditions. Musically and culturally, appropriations particularly from India became a central feature of psychedelic music and have, to a large extent, continued to shape its evolution up to the present day. As David Reck comments, ‘The sounds of Hindusthani instrumental music … became associated in the collective mind of the counterculture, European and American … with the spaced-out alternative consciousness state induced by drugs, ranging from marijuana to LSD, peyote and other hallucinogens. North Indian classical music, with its expanded time-sense, perceived repetitiveness and hypnotic harmonics of the tambura drone … became a code for “trippiness”’ (Reck 2008: 63; see also Bellman 1998: 298–301). Moreover, as dub producers in Jamaica would do in the early 1970s, so many artists during the late-1960s experimented with new recording technologies as a way of creating soundscapes that would go some way to articulating and evoking experiences of transcendence.

The emergence of psychedelic culture Early psychedelic music, which emerged within the neo-Romantic, hippie cultures of folk rock and blues in the United States (principally California) and also in Britain (principally London), was closely entwined with spirituality. Not only was it drawing from cultures in which music and religion were fundamentally related, but the psychedelic experience was itself typically interpreted as an experience of transcendence. As the Berkeley physicist and New Age thinker Fritjof Capra describes in his influential book, The Tao of Physics, taking ‘power plants’ in the 1960s revealed to him ‘how the mind can flow freely; how spiritual insights come on their own, without any effort, emerging from the depth of consciousness.’ Such induced experiences enabled him ‘to realize that a consistent view of the world is beginning to emerge from modern physics which is harmonious with ancient Eastern wisdom’ (1976: 12). It is this type of Easternized experience that was central to psychedelic culture (see Cox 1977: 32–51). While, of course, the relationship between drugs and spirituality has a long history, the term ‘psychedelic’ was coined only in 1957 by the British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond (1917–2004). Osmond initially became interested in LSD-25 (lysergic acid diethylamide) after reading Albert Hofmann’s description of the psychological and behavioural effects of the drug following his discovery of it in 1943. Impressed by this early research, he began using hallucinogens to treat alcoholics. In 1953, he introduced mescaline to Aldous Huxley (see Bedford 1974: 143–5).

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The impact was profound and quickly led to his attempt to communicate the significance of the experience in what became one of the seminal texts of psychedelia, The Doors of Perception (1954) – a book that inspired a group of Los Angeles musicians to name their band ‘The Doors.’ The term itself emerged as a result of Huxley and Osmond seeking a word which did not carry the pathological baggage that the available pharmaceutical terms did, but rather indicated the mystical and visionary potential of psychoactive substances. Huxley sifted through his Greek lexicon and eventually came up with the term ‘phanerothyme’, which simply means ‘to make the soul visible’. In a letter to Osmond he introduced the new term in the following rhyme: ‘To make this trivial world sublime/Take half a gram of phanerothyme.’ Osmond’s response gave them the term they were looking for: ‘To fathom Hell or soar angelic/Just take a pinch of psychedelic.’ Taken from the Greek psyche (‘mind’) and delein (to manifest), psychedelic literally means ‘mind-manifesting’. As Peter Haining comments, ‘Neither the scientist nor the writer could have known that not only had they invented the label for the generation that would experiment with the psychedelics … in what became known as “tripping,” but that in those few lines they had effectively launched the literature of psychedelia’ (1998: 9). The key point to note, however, is that the term emerged out of a conviction that psychoactive substances have spiritual significance. This has, in one way or another, remained a central concern within psychedelic culture. During the 1950s and early 1960s, several other key figures such as Gerald Heard and R. D. Laing, along with the Beat authors Herbert Huncke, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Lucien Carr and Jack Kerouac, continued the journey within (see Coupe 2007; Melechi 1997; Roberts 2008; Stevens 1993) and significantly influenced youth culture in the 1960s. That said, there are, of course, a number of reasons why it was able to take root in the 1960s, one of the principal being what Charles Taylor has identified as ‘the massive subjective turn of modern culture’ (1991: 26). In other words, the rise of post-war youth culture was both stimulated and supported by a turn away from deference to traditional sources of authority and from a life oriented around external or objective roles, duties and obligations, and a turn towards a life focused on the experiencing self. This ‘expressive revolution’ (Parsons 1978: 320) focused on states of consciousness, emotions, bodily experiences, and feelings: ‘the inner subjectivities of each individual have become a, if not the unique source of significance, meaning and authority’ (Heelas and Woodhead 2004: 3–4; see also Berger 1967: 167). Again, Ronald Inglehardt (1988) has shown that the affluence of post-industrial societies created a situation in which materialist values that focus on the securing of life’s basic necessities are transformed into post-materialist values, which emphasize self-expression and personal experience. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the leitmotiv of the 1960s, within which psychedelic music emerged, was the drive towards greater individual freedom and the cultivation of the consciousness: Many of us became fascinated with the inner world and immersed ourselves in emotionality and spirituality. For some, psychology became the rage; for others, Eastern religions … for yet others, drugs and sex filled the bill. All those trends became popular in the Sixties because they focussed on the inner world, the inner self that was home to spirit and feeling, the world of mystery and fantasy, the world of symbol, myth, and perhaps, even magic. (Idema 1996: 118) Music’s ability directly to manipulate emotion made it particularly significant for this generation and, more particularly, peculiarly receptive to the experience of drugs. These interests coalesced 296

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in the counterculture, which began to take shape around 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area, quickly spreading eastward, to New York, arriving in London and Amsterdam around 1966. The principal cultural agent of the spread psychedelia was popular music.

Psychedelic spirituality and popular music in the 1960s Psychedelics ‘help me to understand’, claimed the countercultural thinker Alan Watts, ‘the strange and seemingly unholy conviction that “I” am God. In Western culture this sensation is seen as the very signature of insanity. But in India it is simply a matter of course that the deepest centre of man, atman, is the deepest centre of the university, Brahman. Why not?’ (1962: 63). Such ideas quickly found their way into popular music culture. A few years later, Paul McCartney echoed Watts: God is in everything. God is in the space between us. God is in that table in front of you. God is everything and everywhere and everyone. It just happens that I realised all this through acid, but it could have been through anything. It really doesn’t matter how I made it. … The final result is all that counts. (quoted in Leary 1970: 93) Popular music became the prism through which Easternized psychedelic spirituality was refracted. Donovan, for example, recalling his first LSD experience in London, demonstrates the easy confluence of Indian spirituality and drugs during this period. Suddenly a brilliant beam of light flashed into the room. … Colours began to vibrate intensely. A Ravi Shankar record, newly arrived in London, was on the turntable and I closed my eyes. The vibrant colours were inside me also, in circular, pulsing patterns, flowers of light and energy. The inner mandalas vibrated and changed through incandescent hues of living light. … I stared at the carpet and became transfixed with the interlaced patterns moving to the slower raga which Ravi now played. As this slow raga continued, Ravi gently caressed the ‘sympathetic’ drone strings and my breathing became deeper and slower. His musical mantra moved the flowering mandalas. I became centred. Exquisite sounds from another world and glowing patterns led me into a realisation of great meaning. I became Awareness. Descriptions of the Divine Vision which I had read of in Buddhist books were now my own. (Leitch 2005: 135–6) Of particular cultural importance, however, was the Beatles’ relationship with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and their eight-month public espousal of Transcendental Meditation, which ‘turned an interest shared by only a few in the West in 1965 into a subject of discussion right across Western society’ (MacDonald 2003: 87). Unsurprisingly, as indicated above, the progress of psychedelic culture was reflected in the lyrical themes, in that romance was displaced by much more complex articulations of transcendence, Indian spirituality, peace, countercultural politics, surrealism and neo-Romantic idealism. Increasingly, musicians wanted to reflect on the journey within: ‘Getting it straight in Notting Hill Gate/We all sit around and meditate/But only you can know the reason why/Why we fly in the sky so high’ (Quintessence, ‘Notting Hill Gate’, In Blissful Company, 1969); ‘If you can just get your mind together/Then come on across to me/ We’ll hold hands and then we’ll watch the sun rise from the bottom of the sea (Jimi Hendrix Experience, ‘Are you experienced?’ Are You Experienced, 1967); ‘One pill makes you larger/ 297

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And one pill makes you small/And the ones that mother gives you/Don’t do anything at all’ (Jefferson Airplane, ‘White Rabbit’, Surrealistic Pillow, 1967). Interestingly, this last song, written by Grace Slick, which draws on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, makes an explicit distinction between the use of prescription antidepressants (as addressed by The Rolling Stones in the 1966 song ‘Mother’s Little Helper’), which were becoming increasingly common in mainstream society, and the psychedelic drugs that ‘feed your head’, rejecting the former in favour of the latter. Consequently, late-1960s psychedelic music significantly contributed to the rise of a ‘spirituality of seeking’ and to the demise of a ‘spirituality of dwelling’ (Wuthnow 1998: 54). Musicians not only authorized vaguely formed doubts about mainstream religion and society within the minds of many young people but also liberated the subjective life, introducing new spiritual trajectories. Indeed, not only were many introduced to their experience of Eastern spirituality through psychedelic music but many, like George Harrison, went on to abandon drugs in favour of what they considered to be a more authentic religious life. As Harvey Cox discovered when he researched ‘the tide of Eastern spirituality in the 1970s’, many young people considered it to be ‘the successor of the psychedelic upsurge of the 1960s’. What intrigued him in particular ‘was the frequent assertion by people who had taken psychedelic drugs that their drug experience sharply undercut the credibility of any form of “Western” faith-vision and made some sort of “Eastern” religious world view the credible one’ (1977: 32). Again, this turn East is explicitly reflected in the psychedelic music of the period. As Sheila Whiteley observes, ‘Raga motifs … tambouras, dilruba, tabla and sitar resonate both with the beads, bells and joss sticks of the underground and with the India of the Bhagavad Gita’ (Whiteley 1992: 50–1). Just as visually the Om (Aum) symbol (ॐ) became ubiquitous in the late 1960s, so mantras, such as the Hare Krishna ‘Maha Mantra,’ were frequently used (Quintessence, ‘Maha Mantra’, Quintessence, 1970; George Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’, All Things Must Pass, 1970). It was, however, the sitar that functioned as the most recognizable signifier of Easternized psychedelia. Having introduced it in ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird has Flown)’ in 1965 (the Beatles, Rubber Soul), Harrison’s ‘Love to You’ (Revolver, 1966) became ‘the first song in the Euro-American pop music canon … scored predominantly for Asian musical instruments’ (Reck 2008: 63). Indeed, Harrison’s ‘Within You, Without You’ (Sgt. Pepper’s, 1967) is an almost entirely Indian composition. Again, it is difficult to overestimate the Beatles’ impact on psychedelic music. While a little extravagant in his claims for their significance, nevertheless, Ian MacDonald is not too far wide of the mark when he argues that ‘the popular (and generally sincere) fascination with oriental wisdom, which ensued in the late sixties and thereafter’, owed ‘almost everything to The Beatles in their role as the cultural antennae of the mainstream. It was their absorption in Indian religion which started the spiritual revival of the late sixties’ (2003: 87). But, again, this enthusiasm needs to be tempered with the fact that it was the already Easternized psychedelic culture of Watts and the Beat Generation that led them there. As Harrison commented, ‘Up until LSD … I never realised that there was anything beyond this normal waking consciousness’ (quoted in Bromell 2000: 72). An Indian musician that contributed significantly to the Easternization of psychedelic music in the 1960s – although he was disapproving of drug use (Lavezzoli 2006: 6, 166) – was the sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, who, by the mid-1960s, had established himself as the principal representative of Indian music in the West. That said, again, it needs to be remembered that 298

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Indian music was already having an impact prior to the influence of Shankar and the release of ‘Norwegian Wood.’ For example, Ray Davies of The Kinks had introduced pseudo-Indian drones into ‘See My Friend’ (1965). Released on 14 April 1965, the song was ‘inspired by the chanting of local fishermen in Bombay, where The Kinks had stopped on their way home from Australia’ (Lavezzoli 2006: 154). Six days later, The Yardbirds’ released ‘Heart Full of Soul’ (1965), the first popular music song actually to include a sitar, played by an unnamed Indian musician – whose instrument Jimmy Page subsequently purchased. At the same time in the United States, The Byrds had begun to experiment with the sitar sound. Indeed, according to David Crosby, it was he who introduced Harrison and Lennon to Shankar’s music. On 24 August 1965, at a house on Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles, they, along with Roger McGuinn, spent the day taking LSD, playing music and discussing Indian classical composition. It was this session that led to the sitar on ‘Norwegian Wood.’ By the following year, when the single was released, the Indian sound had become almost ubiquitous. As Steve Marriot of the Small Faces put it in 1966, ‘We’ll be able to get plastic sitars in our cornflakes soon’ (quoted in Farrell 1997: 168). Since that period of psychedelic music, musicians have used an Indian timbre to signify spirituality. As Susan Fast comments of fans’ responses to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir’ (Physical Graffiti, 1975), there was ‘a general association between the East and spirituality, including mysticism’ (2001: 91). And, of course, the 1960s established psychoactive substances as central to both the engagement with music and transcendent experience (however that experience was understood). In particular, the relationship between music, drugs and the East, which was manifested in psychedelic culture, became a close and enduring one. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Timothy Leary, the leading psychedelic thinker of the period, and the man hailed by Ginsberg as ‘a hero of American consciousness … faced with the task of a messiah’ (1997), saw musicians as central to the psychedelic revolution. He even lauded the Beatles as the ‘prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God with a mysterious power to create a new species – a young race of laughing free men. … They are the wisest, holiest, most effective avatars the human race has ever produced’ (quoted in Lee and Shlain 1992: 179). While perhaps a rather generous interpretation of their religious and cultural significance, it is certainly the case that psychedelic music proved to be a powerful spiritual technology. As one Grateful Dead fan commented, the music ‘seemed to open up some kind of interior space that was very refreshing and satisfying to have access to. … The Grateful Dead symbolized some sort of nexus of expanded experiences of consciousness.’ Consequently, he concluded, ‘it more closely approaches the sacred than anything else I’ve ever experienced’ (quoted in, Sylvan 2002: 94–5; see also Dodd and Spalding 2000).

Paganism, occultism and psychedelic folk The rhizomes of 1960s psychedelia have continued to spread throughout popular music. Although for some, such as Spacemen 3, psychedelia is little more than a commitment to the mind-altering effects of drugs, distortion and dissonance, the quest for the transcendence of the everyday is prominent. While the Easternized psychedelia of the 1960s had begun to retreat by the early 1970s, it was gradually replaced by an eclectic bias towards fantasy, myth and the occult. Whether we think of Hawkwind going ‘in search of space’ and their musings on ‘the edge of time,’ or Funkadelic’s flamboyant efforts to move beyond the unenlightened, self-destructive 299

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‘maggot brain’ of mainstream society, or Gong’s wonderfully whimsical pot head pixies, flying teapots and radio gnomes, or, later, Current 93’s ‘puppet theology’ and visions of Noddy crucified in the sky above London, or psytrance’s return to the East and the politics of ecstasy, psychedelic music has consistently encouraged the transcendence of the everyday and a resistance to the status quo. As such, psychedelic music remained fundamentally occultural and countercultural (Partridge 2015: 509–11). By the close of the 1960s, following the Summer of Love, the focus of psychedelic discourse was shifting away from Eastern spirituality to Western occultism. Although the occult has always been part of psychedelic culture, by 1967 it was becoming more conspicuous. Psychedelic albums such as Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967) by the Rolling Stones signalled the move away from core themes of Sgt. Pepper’s (released six months earlier) and, by 1970, Gong’s eccentric Magick Brother was welcoming listeners to the Aquarian Age, while a number of explicitly occult albums such as Sacrifice by Black Widow and Holy Magick by Graham Bond were introducing the counterculture to esoteric rituals (see Partridge 2014, 2015). While the occult, of course, became a central theme within heavy metal, Black Sabbath’s debut album being particularly influential, psychedelic esotericism was perhaps most enthusiastically explored within the folk scene. Since the mid-1960s there has been a gradual increase of interest in Pagan faith and practice within folk music. This interest emerged quite naturally out of a fascination with traditional folk culture and a quest for authenticity. Bands that were influenced by psychedelic culture, such as Comus and The Incredible String Band, began drawing on folkloric myth and magic: ‘The cycles of nature are those with which humanity should commune, even to the point of human sacrifice as a means of ensuring fertility. Encompassing every type of activity and emotion in a celebration of rural life, the song-cycle is also about work as a means of engaging with the land’ (Hegarty and Halliwell 2011: 56). Musically, 1960s psychedelic folk, like psychedelic rock, pushed at the boundaries of the genre. As Hegarty and Halliwell say of Comus, ‘the band twisted traditional instrumentation into an ecstatic, mounting discordance where a lost, sexual and often deadly nature could be summoned. The pastoral is about an unleashing of energy that taps into a host of Pagan gods and stories’ (2011: 56; cf. Leech 2013). Even some artists who were musically more traditional began embracing Pagan themes. For example, in the mid1960s, the folk duo Dave and Toni Arthur began exploring Wicca, following a meeting with Britain’s occult celebrity Alex Sanders. We’d talk about magic, as we’d got into witchcraft and studying it, to find out how witchcraft was reflected in the traditional song – if magical ballads were anything to do with what was perceived then as Wicca, the witch covens that were going round in England, and whether they were actually related or whether it was a separate thing. And so we started going to meetings of witches and going through their ritual books and things, and we were invited as guests to all sorts of coven meetings, and then we were stuck in ‘Tam Lin’ and all these magical ballads and somehow trying to relate them to what was going on in the occult world and find out what the connections were. (quoted in Young 2010: 440) As the guitarist Richard Thompson put it, ‘You find a lot of magic in traditional music. … A lot of songs about Faery Queens and people cavorting with the elemental beasties’ (quoted in Heylin, 1989: 7). This made traditional music peculiarly attractive to those within psychedelic culture seeking to establish continuities with premodern Paganism. 300

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Such discourses, while largely restricted to a vibrant and burgeoning occult underground, surfaced spectacularly into the mainstream in Robin Hardy’s 1973 film The Wicker Man. Through its gentle evocation of sacred awe, the film communicated a sense of the emotional power of Pagan discourse at the time. In a society within which Christian hegemony was still largely dominant, it depicted a level of commitment to natural forces that was both fascinating and frightening, both attractive and repelling. The viewer is drawn, not just into the narrative arc, but also into a Romantic Pagan space. Certainly, as a reflection of the changes taking place in sixties and early seventies religion and society, the film is particularly interesting. As in the affective spaces evoked by much early psychedelic folk, it is imagined that there is a place, Summerisle, where there survives a pre-Christian religion, in tune with nature, unfettered by the mean morality of conservative Christianity, but savage at its core. Central to the occultural impact of the film is the soundtrack composed by Paul Giovanni and played by his band, Magnet, which was formed specifically for the purpose. Throughout the film, folk music is explicitly identified with the survival of pre-Christian indigenous religion. Indeed, it is used to create a boundary between the Christianity of the staunchly Presbyterian policeman, Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward), and the Pagan space inhabited by the islanders and overseen by Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee). The use of music and dance evokes the vibrancy of nature religion and the occult over against the dry formalism of mainland Calvinist theology (representing mainstream Christian morality). Indeed, within the psychedelic and neofolk music scenes, the film has continued to have an impact, largely because of its cementing of the relationship between traditional music and imagined premodern occult discourse. For example, ‘The Unbroken Circle’ website, which discusses contemporary ‘Wyrd Folk’, insists that the film is ‘the point where … the perceived realization of folk music as important in the social and magical context was made. It does not matter whether this realization was factual or just a perception, what matters is the transformation it created in the minds of many’ (quoted in Pitzl-Waters 2012). The Romantic confluence of psychedelic folk and the occult at the heart of The Wicker Man is particularly evident in the music of David Tibet. While drawing on the traditions of folk music, he also draws heavily on modern Western esotericism. For example, the name of his band, Current 93, is taken directly from the work of Aleister Crowley. Using the system of isopsephy, which, like gematria, allocates numerical value to letters, Crowley identified the number 93 as a distillation of the central ideas of his Thelemic occultism: ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’ and ‘Love is the law, love under will.’ The numerical value of ‘thelema’/‘will’ is 9 and that of ‘agape’/‘love’ is 3. Crowley, says Tibet, ‘was someone I grew up with. He was incredibly important to me’. As with psychedelic music generally, that of Current 93 pushes at the boundaries. As a way of articulating mystical and occult ideas, of evoking often dark affective spaces, Tibet incorporates chanting, bells, gongs, prayers, weeping, screaming, and even, on ‘Ach Golgotha (Maldoror Is Dead)’ (Nature Unveiled, 1984), a haunting loop of Crowley chanting ‘Om’. ‘To me,’ says Tibet, ‘it’s like a long song that builds up in power. … It’s not a Black Mass, but it is literally a diabolical record in some ways.’ Crowley, once said, ‘I fought all night with God and the Devil. Finally God won, but I’m not sure which God it was.’ The album Nature Unveiled, he suggests, ‘has that tension’ (quoted in Moliné 2006: 32; see also Keenan 1997: 34–7). The influence of British psychedelic folk, from The Incredible String Band to Current 93 has, in recent years, extended to the contemporary ‘new weird America’ scene in the United States. 301

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Indeed, The Incredible String Band’s The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter (1968) is ‘one of the scenes founding documents’ (Keenan 2003: 37). The rhizomes of the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s can now be experienced at gatherings such as the Brattleboro Free Folk Festival, which provides a space for ‘lone visionaries, hermetic isolationists, young marginalized artists, hippy revolutionaries, country punks, ex-cons, project kids, avant experimentalists, luddite refuseniks, psychedelic rockers and assorted misfits’ (Keenan 2003: 34). There is a clear sense that the New Weird America is creating, as the musician Ben Chasney puts it, alternative affective spaces within which one might ‘summon up ancient forces that once only took shape in drawings in hermetic books’ (quoted in Keenan 2003: 40). In going back to traditional folk instruments, there is an attempt to unearth an authenticity that connects the sound with the beyond. It’s ‘not that music that uses electricity cannot be transcendental. It’s just a matter of studying the forms of sounds that are closer to human existence in order to understand the correspondence with higher forms, with the heavens’ (quoted in Keenan 2003: 40). Finally, emerging within environmental protest culture in Britain during the 1990s alongside a vibrant eco-Pagan spirituality was tribadelica, ‘a kind of upbeat psychedelic folk that mixed medieval-style tunes and drones with the rhythms of techno to produce a self-consciously acoustic “organic trance”’ (Letcher 2013: 105). Indeed, there was a sense in which bands such as Spacegoats thought of themselves as wandering minstrels, spreading a message of love for nature and stimulating resistance to the exploitation of the Earth (e.g. Spacegoats, ‘Nature’s Calling Your Name,’ Tribadelica 1999). The focus, as in earlier psychedelic folk, was the Romantic revival of a Pagan culture at one with Mother Earth. The music, therefore, sought to encourage an enchanted, premodern understanding of the natural world. As well as their own compositions, earlier songs such as Donovan’s ‘The Hurdy Gurdy Man’ (1968) reflected their roots in psychedelic folk Romanticism.

Psychedelic dance and ambient music Related both to eco-Pagan protest music and to the Easternized psychedelia of the 1960s – as well as to spacerock and Kosmische music – rave music emerged in the late-1980s. At the beginning of the decade, bands such as Hawkwind, Gong, and Here & Now were joined by younger bands with new ideas, such as Ozric Tentacles. Like their musical antecedents, these bands were magpie musicians, drawing on rock, jazz, blues, dub reggae, funk and techno, as well as betraying the influence of indigenous cultures. By the mid-1980s, some were becoming interested in dance music, particularly acid house, a subgenre of house music, which was developed in Chicago and quickly made its way to the UK. Indeed, 1988 soon became known as ‘the second Summer of Love’. Drugs and music combined to form spaces of love and transcendence. They also led to new forms of psychedelic creativity. For example, in 1988, two members of Ozric Tentacles, Merv Pepler and Joie Hinton, formed Wooden Baby, which quickly evolved into Eat Static, a proto-psytrance project. Pepler and Hinton were not, of course, the originators of psychedelic trance, but they do illustrate well how the various rhizomes of psychedelia found their way from free festival rock and folk music, through post-punk, dub reggae (e.g. African Head Charge), acid house and techno to rave culture. By the beginning of the 1990s there were numerous artists creating electronic psychedelic dance and dub music, while also articulating alternative spiritualities and countercultural protest politics: Banco de Gaia, Psykick Warriors ov 302

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Gaia, Children of the Bong, Tribal Drift, Loop Guru, Transglobal Underground and so on. That is to say, as with earlier psychedelic music, there was a persistent engagement with spiritual and occultural ideas, including Indian spirituality, Paganism, occultism, mysticism, shamanism, the paranormal and fantasy. It wasn’t long before homage was being paid to 1960s psychedelia – although, by that time, the drug of choice had become ecstasy/E (MDMA). A good example of an ecstasy-inspired record from the period, as Stuart Metcalfe notes, is ‘the white-label 12 inch produced by the Liverpudlian group Mind, Body and Soul. Whilst the band’s name referred to a brand of LSD particularly popular in Liverpool in the late-1980s, the song, a version of Jefferson Airplane’s psychedelic anthem “White Rabbit,” sampled the acid guru Timothy Leary’s call to arms, “Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out,” prefacing it with a sampled voice saying simply “ecstasy”’ (Metcalfe 1997: 170). Indeed, the composition also included a recitation of Osmond’s rhyme sent to Huxley in 1957, which introduced the word ‘psychedelic’. Again, in 1990, the Manchester band Northside released ‘Shall We Take a Trip’, which was banned by the BBC because of it encouraged LSD use (available on their album, Chicken Rhythms, 1991). As, Sheila Whiteley observes, there was ‘a strong sense of shared identity between the sixties hippy philosophy and that of nineties alternative culture’ (1997: 139). These similarities are conspicuous in ‘the music, the influence of the drug experience, an awareness of the destruction and ruination of the Earth and the poisoning of the seas’. Many ravers shared ‘the hippy philosophy of alternative family groupings and the freedom to opt out of mainstream society, whilst free festivals and raves provide the space both to trip out and experience a range of house and ambient bands’. She continues: Publications, such as the Freak Emporium provide guidance to a range of psychedelic music, magazines and books, whilst Bush Telegraph provides features on cannabis and the dream mechanism, homeopathy and growing hemp in the UK. Collective experience, music and drugs appear, once again, to provide the means whereby young people can explore the politics of consciousness, to set up an alternative lifestyle. (1997: 139) Informing this new politics of consciousness was an eclectic mix of explicitly spiritual trajectories (see St John 2004). As Mary Anna Wright comments, the E experience often involved ‘intense insights into the depth of the human psyche that touched on a spiritual revelation or metanoia’ (1998: 228). Similarly, while Simon Reynolds drew attention to the simple desire to go ‘mental at the weekend’, he also noted that many thought of ‘the music-drugs-technology nexus’ as ‘fused with spirituality…’ (1998: 406). This is particularly evident in psytrance. Emerging in the mid1990s and directly continuous with hippie culture, it has its roots in the ‘full moon parties’ at Anjuna beach, Goa, the Christian state in India to which many hippies travelled in the 1960s and 1970s. During the early 1970s, as Anthony D’Andrea says, a community of hippies ‘colonized the northern Goa beach areas of Anjuna and Vagator. Paradoxically, although fleeing from the West, they benefitted from the Goans’ Christian-Westernized legacy of relative tolerance for leisure practices and individualism.’ As such, this small Christian state became ‘a signifier for a party-cum-drug paradise during winter seasons’ and eventually, in the late-1980s ‘the scene turned digital and tribal, with post-hippie, post-punk freaks developing a new style of electronic music in rituals of psychedelic intensity’ (D’Andrea 2004: 242). It is worth noting that that several ‘hippies’ from the 1960s carried their occultural baggage and their commitment to the creation of sonic environments conducive to the journey within 303

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through into psytrance. Perhaps the most famous such musician is the Australian flautist Raja Ram (Ron Rothfield), who had played in the British psychedelic hippie band Quintessence. In 1994, with Graham Wood and Ian St. Paul, he founded the leading trance label, TIP Records and then, in 1998, TIP World. (TIP was the acronym of his early, influential trance outfit, The Infinity Project.) He has since been involved in a number of important projects, such as Shpongle, with Simon Posford. Likewise, Steve Hillage, formerly a member of Gong, who had already produced an experimental ambient album, Rainbow Dome Musick, for the 1979 Mind Body Spirit Festival in London, formed, with his partner Miquette Giraudy (who had also played with Gong), the influential techno/trance outfit System 7. ‘We oppose frontiers and rigid divisions, both within the music scene and in the world at large,’ says Hillage. ‘We feel part of a musical movement of dance-based rhythms and psychedelic ambience that embraces the whole planet’ (2015). The Easternized dimensions of psychedelic dance music are, unsurprisingly, particularly evident in Goa trance. By the 1990s, as Jane Bussmann observed at the time, Goa had become the principal destination for ‘the mystical raver’ (1998: 108). The DJ James Munro describes the scene and the affective spaces evoked: The Goa party … starts about 1 a.m. and the majority of people have taken acid and they’re treating it as a journey. You’re surrendering to a drug and to a musical stimulation. … In the context of Indian mythology, we are dancing the dance of Shiva. This is the symbolic dance of creation, destruction and rebirth. Shiva’s dance is the synthesis of all life experience and an image of all-pervading energy. He continues: ‘It opened me up to religion, seeing how you can be happy without materialism. The ambitions I had when I was earning shitloads of money just went.’ Indeed, he states that his music is ‘not just inspired by Goa, but by the whole Indian spirituality. The peak of my last trip was the Kumbh Mela, a congregation of Holy Men on the banks of the Ganges. It was almost like stepping off the planet, into another existence – meeting yogis and sadhus, naked apart from ash and holy fires’ (quoted in Champion 1995: 40–2, 45, 49). As electronic dance music cultures evolved, becoming increasingly cosmopolitan and plural, so the occultural pool of ideas has expanded to include a rich mix of Pagan, indigenous, occult and paranormal ideas. As Reynolds notes of the early British rave music, ‘instigated by anarcho-mystic outfits like Spiral Tribe and by neo-hippy travellers on the “free festival” circuit … the techno-pagan spirit’ evolved. Spiral Tribe, the most influential of the early sound systems, ‘preached a creed they called Terra-Technic, arguing that ravers’ non-stop ritual dancing reconnected mankind with the primordial energy of the Earth’ (1997: 159). Again, Pagan, shamanic and indigenous themes were articulated in the ‘doofs’ of Australian psychedelic culture. For example, Des Tramacchi found that ‘Neo-pagan spiritualities have … exerted an influence on doof ideologies, Chaos Magick and symbolism being particularly prominent’ (2000: 203).

Concluding comments Psychedelic music has become a global phenomenon, occulturally progressive and culturally plural, yet, nevertheless, still maintaining strong continuities with the principal contours of the 1960s counterculture in its exploration of new ways to both turn on and turn within. The late Nicholas Saunders – a veteran campaigner for holistic well-being, a founder of Neal’s Yard 304

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in Covent Garden, London, and the author, in 1970, of the groundbreaking guide, Alternative London – argued that rave music contains the ‘important elements of mystical experience’ and is ‘very much part of contemporary spirituality’ (1995: 120–3). This is largely because it is psychedelic. That is to say, it is difficult to detach altered states from interpretations of transcendence and, for many, spirituality. Of course, this is typically rejected within mainstream religious discourses, which suspect (arguably arbitrarily) certain forms of induced transcendence. For example, the theologian David Brown, commenting on Primal Scream’s ‘Higher Than the Sun’ (Screamadelica 1991), makes the following point: ‘the “religious” lyrics and accompanying music were almost certainly intended to encourage a drug-induced state rather than anything to do with religion’ (2007: 304). The uncritical assumption is that the drug-induced state couldn’t possibly have anything to do with religion. This is, of course, non sequitur. While, in accordance with his general thesis, he doesn’t deny that ‘someone in ignorance of this fact might still find in the meditative music an opening towards God’, because of his own cultural bias, he doesn’t allow for the possibility that the drugs themselves might function as technologies of transcendence, thereby securing that opening to the divine. Whether they do or not is beside the point. Many believed that they do.

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Chapter 28

Rap and Hip Hop Joseph Winters

When I tell people that I teach and write about hip hop, I often get looks of surprise and/or curiosity. Most people are unaware of the fact that hip hop has been studied and examined in the academy since the early 1990s. Narratives of hip hop have been underway for a while and continue to be rewritten. In order to understand how hip hop has become a prominent postcivil rights mode of expression, for the marginalized, the powerful and those who have moved from the margins to positions of power and prestige, it is important to engage two related levels of discourse. The primary level of discourse focuses mainly on the songs, rituals, styles, commitments and contexts of hip-hop artists and communities. This way of approaching hip hop might emphasize changes and shifts in lyrical content from early groups like The Sugar Hill Gang to contemporary artists like Kendrick Lamar and Nicki Minaj. The second level, or metadiscourse, draws attention to how people inside and outside of the academy have talked about, imagined and critically examined the development of hip hop. While hip hop continues to be sneered at by some academics, in the last two decades an extensive body of literature on hiphop culture has emerged. Scholars working in black studies, women’s studies, literature, visual culture and religion have examined the complexities, tensions and possibilities within this genre. Therefore, any contemporary understanding of hip hop and rap will have to take seriously how these practices have been interpreted and critically engaged in various settings, including (but not limited to) the academy. In what follows, I privilege scholarly discourses about the history and complexity of hip hop and rap while pointing to the ‘primary’ sources – historical conditions, artists, songs and practices – that these discourses try to make sense of. While this chapter can in no way be exhaustive, I highlight three themes or focal points that have guided conversations about hip hop: the historical and social context of hip hop; the literary and poetic dimensions of hip hop and rap music; the cultural politics of hip hop. Throughout the chapter, I point to promising trajectories in hip-hop scholarship, particularly the recent interest in the relationship between hip hop and religion.

Beginnings and contexts There are many ways to frame and narrate the beginnings of hip hop, to illumine the historical and social conditions that brought rap, breakdancing, graffiti and a specific kind of deejaying into being in 1970s urban America. One way to think about hip hop’s emergence is in relationship to the civil rights movement and its ambivalent effects. As Nelson George argues, hip hop is ‘a product of schizophrenic post-civil rights movement America’ (George 1998: xiv). While the

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black freedom struggles of the 1960s led to important victories – such as the end of legalized segregation – people of colour continued to experience forms of de facto segregation that were just as pernicious as legally enforced forms (Neal 1999: 129). Even as a new black middle class took advantage of civil rights gains, most blacks and Latinos living in urban, working-class spaces like the Bronx, New York (the contested birthplace of hip hop) experienced widening economic disparity. As Tricia Rose delineates, many overlapping factors intensified these raceinflected class inequities: de-industrialization and the removal, or relocation, of decent paying manufacturing jobs; cuts in federal funding for social services and education; urban renewal programmes like the Cross-Bronx Expressway that required the destruction of existing houses and the dislocation of residents; the corporate takeover of affordable housing (Rose 1994: 27– 34). In addition to these policies and conditions, residents in the South Bronx faced ‘slumlords’ that would cut costs by refusing to provide tenants with heat and water and intentionally spark fires in order to collect insurance (Chang 2005: 13–15). For many people, the Bronx conjured images of ruined buildings, gang violence, poverty and hopelessness (Chang 2005: 17–18). The progress, and triumph, associated with the civil rights movement and newly acquired freedoms for blacks contains a turbulent underside. As Walter Benjamin tells us, progress always occurs as a storm for the tradition(s) of the oppressed (Benjamin 2003: 392). Yet as critical theorists like Benjamin and Adorno also remind us, this turbulence does not just exist as suffering and erasure; it is also the occasion for resistance, contestation and re-appropriation. To say that the post-industrial landscape in the 1970s was a site of ruin does not end the story. One must be attuned to how denizens in these spaces relate to, gather, reassemble and express the fragments of the social world. Similarly we must be wary of narratives that only accentuate pain and trauma while denying the importance of pleasure, joy, laughter and dance (and how music allows us to hear the fusion of pain and pleasure).1 Tricia Rose suggests something like this when she claims that hip hop was born at the crossroad of ‘lack and desire’ (Rose 1994: 21). She similarly offers a gripping account of how early hip-hop practitioners reimagined and re-expressed the broken qualities of post-industrial urban existence. She writes: Hip hop replicates and reimagines the experiences of urban life and symbolically appropriates urban space through sampling, attitude, dance, style, and sound effects. Talk of subways, crews and posses, urban noise, economic stagnation leap out of hip hop lyrics, sounds, and themes. Graffiti artists spraypainted murals and name ‘tags’ on trains, trucks, and playgrounds, claiming territories and inscribing otherwise contained identities on public property. Early breakdancers’ elaborate street corner dances involving head spins on concrete sidewalks made the streets theatrically friendly and served as makeshift youth centers. DJs who initiated spontaneous street parties by attaching customized, makeshift turntables and speakers to street light electrical sources made ‘open-air’ community centers where there were none. Hip hop gives voice to the tensions and contradictions in the public urban landscape and attempts to seize the shifting urban terrain, to make it work on behalf of the dispossessed. (Rose 1994: 22) In the above passage, Rose suggests that art, in general, does not simply reflect social conditions. It actively responds to these conditions; through symbol, sound and style, art reconfigures elements in the social world, enabling involved communities to relate to the social world in creative ways. More specifically, Rose contends that the various elements of early hip hop 307

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rearticulate the tensions and contradictions of urban life. The graffiti artist uses spray paint to figuratively ‘bomb’ a train – perhaps a reference to the fact that the social order engages in perpetual war against certain communities. By spray-painting the name of an individual or crew on public property, artists fulfil a desire to see themselves reflected in the external world; they also challenge ordinary notions of property and ownership. Breakdance crews like the Zulu Kings, founded by Afrika Bambaataa, and Roc Steady Crew would turn the violence associated with gang confrontations into a creative form of competition and showmanship. (One can also see this creative transformation from violence to competitive, kinetic dance in Los Angeles Krump dancing or clowning.2) DJ’s would use discarded records and turntables, in addition to the available electrical sources, to turn streets and blocks into theatres, parties and spaces for fellowship. Finally, rap tunes like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s ‘The Message’ (The Message 1982) would verbally express the torn conditions of post-industrial America: ‘It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under.’ While ‘The Message’ makes allusions to drug addiction, poverty, immobility, labour strikes, police surveillance and mental health, the beat, lyrical flow and overall sound express these conditions in a way that provokes pleasure and laughter as well as sorrow and melancholy. One can simultaneously dance and cry to it. The song both reflects and reconfigures the logistics of urban existence, class inequality and systemic racism. A story about hip hop that begins with the complexities of post-civil rights and post-industrial urban America can become short-sighted. While the kinds of hip-hop narratives that privilege black America or post-industrial American cities are valuable and illuminating, they also tend to exclude other significant influences and conditions. As Juan Flores points out, there is a troubling amnesia in most accounts of hip hop around the Puerto Rican and Latino influences and contributions to hip hop’s emergence (Flores 2004). Flores reminds us that many of the pioneers, including DJ Charlie Chase and b-boy Crazy Legs, were Puerto Rican and warns us of the tendency to associate hip hop exclusively with black culture and history. To think about this legacy of Puerto Rican and Latino culture prompts us to extend our sense of historical and social context – to include the mobile relationship between the United States and the broader Americas – Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico and so forth. How might a greater understanding of these broader histories and relationships, histories that include migration, war, shifting borders, imperial strategies and cultural interchange, reshape our understanding of hip hop? How do Puerto Ricans and blacks in the 1970s Bronx simultaneously share common (immediate) circumstances and possess different histories, traditions and linguistic practices? Knowing that Charlie Chase had to conceal his Latino sounding last name when he started deejaying in order to fit in (see Flores 2004: 72), what does this tell us about the different kinds of struggles faced by Puerto Ricans in comparison to their black counterparts? By widening the context of hip hop’s beginnings, one can also bring into focus the historical relationship between black America, Jamaica and Caribbean cultures. As many commentators have noted, emceeing and deejaying were very much influenced by Jamaican sound systems, reggae and dub music (Rose 1994: 52; Chang 2005: 21–40, 67–83). This influence is often attributed to Kool Herc’s migration from Jamaica to New York City and his emergence as a popular deejay at block parties and parks in the 1970s. As Chang suggests, any discussion of reggae and dub music must take into account the political situation in Jamaica that these genres contested: conservative governments that remained tethered to colonial models and strategies and a precarious economy dependent 308

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on ‘first world’ loans and investments (see Chang 2005: 30–4). By drawing attention to the connections between Jamaica and post-industrial America, the crossings and flows between the global North and the South, we get a more comprehensive, and complicated, sense of how hip hop has always been entangled with the broader movements and forces of late modernity. It is therefore important to acknowledge how hip-hop music both requires a sense of historical context while unsettling our very notion of context. In order to explain how hip hop departs from other genres like jazz, disco and rock, even as it draws from these musical genres, one has to identify the specific conditions that enabled hip hop to emerge and flourish. A multitude of factors and forces assembled, and coagulated, to occasion the formation of hip hop in places like New York City during the 1970s. The particular circumstances in post-industrial American cities necessarily reflect and point to globalizing trends and trajectories – neo-liberalism, the Cold War, the intensification of American empire, unprecedented movement of bodies across national borders, ongoing struggles by people of colour, developing nations, women, and LGBT communities, and technological developments that changed how popular culture is produced, circulated and consumed. Because any particular phenomenon always points beyond itself, we must keep in mind that hip hop travels; it inhabits, and creates, new situations and contexts. While it begins in black and Latino communities, it has never been confined to them. Therefore, we should not be too surprised when we see Hilary Clinton doing the Nae Nae dance recently on Ellen Degeneres’s show. We should not be suspicious when popular white rappers like Macklemore show respect to hip-hop pioneers. We should not be puzzled by the fact that Muslims in European countries look to hip hop and reggae to voice dissent and build community in the face of post 9/11 Islamophobia (See Aidi 2014). Hip hop is located somewhere between situatedness and flux, foundation and flow, roots and routes (Peterson 2014). As Rakim claims on his memorable track ‘In the Ghetto’ (Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em 1990): ‘It ain’t [just] where you’re from, it’s where you’re at.’

Aesthetics and poetics In addition to the distinctive social and historical conditions that birthed hip hop, scholars have been interested in the aesthetic and literary dimensions of rap music. While early critics dismissed rap as faddish and inartistic, many authors have successfully demonstrated the complicated, and brilliant, qualities in rap and emceeing. As Adam Bradley argues, rap artists are contemporary poets, who should be compared to classic bards like Shakespeare and Wordsworth (Bradley 2009). Emcees, as Bradley highlights, employ metaphor, simile, storytelling, and complex rhyme schemes to entice, and sometimes repel, audiences. And deejays and producers are bricoleurs, taking available sounds and fragments of songs to create something new and fresh. While there is much that can be said about the literary qualities of hip hop and rap music, I focus on four devices that demand critical scrutiny: sampling, call and response, wordplay and competitive signifying. If postmodernism is usually associated with pastiche and art of bricolage (using what is available, even if elements come from competing sources), then rap music is a quintessential postmodern expression (Potter 1995). Rap engages in the art of sampling; it seizes parts from other songs and genres, wrests segments from forgotten beats and takes lines from other people’s verses to produce a layered, aural text (Rose 1994: 21–61). The occasional breaks and scratches in a song often cut against the familiarity of a sampled beat and introduce a kind of dissonance 309

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into the listening experience. While pastiche can mean imitation, it is an imitation that produces a difference. The practice of sampling is therefore a site where repetition and difference happens. At times, one can easily hear the ‘original’ beat that has been sampled and remixed. For instance, the group Chic’s disco track ‘Good Times’ (Risqué 1979) is readily detectable in Sugarhill Gang’s 1979 classic, ‘Rapper’s Delight’ (Sugarhill Gang 1979). The original makes up the basic beat of the latter. Similarly, songs by the R&B and soul group Isley Brothers, such as ‘Between the Sheets’ (Between the Sheets 1983) and ‘Footsteps in the Dark’ (Go for Your Guns 1977), respectively make up the dominant beats and sounds in Notorious B.I.G.’s ‘Big Poppa’ (Ready to Die 1994) and Ice Cube’s ‘It was a Good Day’ (The Predator 1992). There are other moments, however, when the samples seem hidden or buried in the layers of a track. This is the case, for example, in Das EFX’s use of James Brown and Lyn Collins’ ‘Think’ (Think 1972) for their song ‘Mic Checka’ (Dead Serious 1992). What might be one of the most fascinating aspects of the sampling strategy is the ability to take a minor part of a song and use that as the major beat in the production of another track. Think for instance of Snoop Dogg’s ‘I Wanna Rock’ (Malice in Wonderland 2009). Not only does the song use the first line from Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock’s ‘It Takes Two’ (It Takes Two 1988) as the title and hook. Snoop’s song also takes a fleeting sound from the opening of ‘It Takes Two’ and turns this into the prominent beat for ‘I Wanna Rock’. Rap music works with the fragments and shards of the musical world and reassembles them to create new experiences that can be both pleasurable and agonizing. As suggested above, sampling involves the appropriation of lyrics as well as beats. Rap groups constantly cite and quote other artists’ claims and utterances; at times emcees even quote themselves. One hears this in MC Lyte’s ‘Cha Cha Cha’ as the hook – ‘Kick this one here for me and my DJ’ (Eyes on This 1989) – is taken from a song on her previous album. One of the more famous examples of this lyrical sampling is Jay-Z’s ‘Dead Presidents’ (Reasonable Doubt 1996), a song that includes a hook from Nas’s ‘The World is Yours’ (Illmatic 1994) – a track that is itself an allusion to a scene from the 1983 film Scarface. When Jay-Z and Nas had their ‘rap beef’ or competitive back and forth over a decade ago, Nas reminded his adversary that he benefits monetarily when his voice is sampled. Jay-Z responded by bragging that he turned a ‘hot line’ into a ‘hot song’. While Jay-Z was clearly boasting and attempting to outwit Nas, he was also underscoring a practice that is intrinsic to hip hop and rap music. Rap is constantly placing lyrics and beat segments into new contexts, changing the meaning and scope of the original sound. Even though rap artists constantly fantasize about being omnipotent and autonomous, sampling reminds us of how dependent hip-hop artworks are on other people and their creations. Piety, understood broadly as a kind of indebtedness to others, is ironically one of the midwives of originality. The art of sampling is connected to the practice of call and response. Call and response, in the context of hip hop, usually refers to the practice of involving a crowd or audience in a performance or demonstration. It names an interaction between an emcee, or deejay, and the listener; the audience is expected to be an active participant in the performance, to respond to the calls and exhortations of the artist. The artist is also expected to be responsive to the desires, moods and energies of the audience. When the deejay at a concert tells the crowd to scream, he or she acknowledges that the energy and intensity of the crowd is crucial to a successful show. The emcee that points the head of the microphone towards the crowd anticipates that the audience is collectively prepared to finish a line or complete a hook. And a deejay at a hip-hop club has 310

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to be responsive to the non-verbal cues of the crowd, the body language and movement (or lack thereof) of the patrons. While these examples demonstrate how call and response operates in a basic sense, authors like Imani Perry suggest that we think of call and response as a broader literary trope. Borrowing from the work of Henry Louis Gates and Sam Floyd, Perry reimagines call and response as the interactions and relationships between the present and past, between hip hop and previous forms of black music and culture. Call and response is another name for intertextuality. Perry writes: Rap music fits within the call-response trope in a number of critical ways. First, the intertextuality of black musical texts lies at the heart of rap on both an oral and musical level. Hip hop’s great dependence on the music of an earlier generation, the music artists often recall from their youth, combined with the reconfigurations of that music and its offering back to the general public, constitutes a kind of conversation with the black musical tradition. (Perry 2004: 34) As the practice of sampling demonstrates, rap artists are in constant ‘dialogue’ with the past, creatively using jazz, blues, rock, disco, funk, house music and so forth. Rap prompts us to remember, and keep alive, styles, sounds and groups that otherwise might be forgotten, relegated to the ‘waste bins of history’.3 Rap similarly introduces people to different genres of music. Many people encountered jazz through Digable Planets, A Tribe Called Quest, The Roots and Guru’s Jazzmatazz albums. Others got introduced to funk through producers like Erick Sermon and Dr Dre. Call and response is therefore a trope that alludes to the interactions between audience and artist while pointing to broader conceptions of tradition, remembrance and dialogue across time. In addition to sampling and call and response, wordplay and signifying are important aesthetic strategies within rap music. Wordplay alludes to the ways in which emcees combine, juxtapose and alter the meanings of words within certain constraints, such as the structure of a rhyme scheme and the rhythm of the track (see Bradley 2009: 85–117). By using metaphors, intricate rhyme schemes and puns, rappers work within the ‘prison house of language’ and show the flexibility of words and concepts. As Bradley describes, ‘Wordplay creates possibility out of limitation’ (2009: 91). In her apt song, ‘Wordplay’ (Kollage 1996), Bahamadia rhymes: ‘Break out analogies like pollen do allergies.’ Not only does Bahamadia connect two words, allergies and analogies, that we might not think of as rhyming in an ordinary sense but she also performs an analogy as she talks about how she does it. While wordplay is exemplified in analogy and unfamiliar rhyme schemes, it is also heard in puns, homophones, and homonyms (Bradley 2009: 110–11). Two Chains, for instance, raps on ‘R.I.P’. (It’s the World 2012), ‘Turn Up … Collard greens’, playing on the fact that ‘turnip (green)’ and ‘turn up (get excited)’ sound alike. When Kanye West raps on ‘Get Em High’ (The College Dropout 2004) that ‘he’s so Chi, we thought he was bashful’, the Chicago native is alluding to popular vernacular that refers to Chicago as Chi-town (pronounced Shy-town). And when Lil Wayne claims that ‘real G’s move in silence like lasagna’ (‘6 Foot Seven Foot’, The Carter IV 2011) he juxtaposes the silent G (real gangstas are supposedly covert and subtle) and the silent consonant in the word ‘lasagna’. While the content of some rap songs, which I talk about more below, are often the object of critique, hip-hop commentators ask us to pay as much attention to the playful qualities heard in rap songs, to the lyrical dexterity and ingenuity of emcees. 311

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Through the practice of signifying, rap artists play with words in the attempt to outwit adversaries, inflate their identities and entertain audiences. As Perry points out, rap is a recent expression of a long signifying tradition within black culture (Brer Rabbit tales, the trickster trope, Jamaican toasting practices, playing the dozens). Drawing from the work of Henry Louis Gates, particularly his classic text The Signifying Monkey (1988), Imani Perry uses the language of signifying to highlight how rappers use hyperbole and comedy, how they employ words playfully, as part of a competitive strategy (2004: 62). In the competitive atmosphere of hip hop, artists often inflate their importance and value by insulting and diminishing opponents. While rappers often make claims about ‘keeping it real’ and ask to be taken literally, most of the time they aggrandize their abilities and powers (Kelley 1997: 34–40). Jay-Z tells us on ‘You Don’t Know’ (The Blueprint 2001) that he can ‘sell fire in hell’ to get across his skills as a hustler. On Kanye West’s ‘Gorgeous’ (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 2010), Kanye boasts that he is a pimp on Mount Olympus, suggesting that his emcee prowess is quasi-divine and that he triumphs in the rap game. Among other things, this all too familiar identification with the pimp persona indicates a troubling power relationship with respect to women. In another context, the RZA and the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard rap about ‘Cuttin Heads’ (Return to the 36 Chambers 1995), meaning that they will figuratively dismember other emcees. Their mics are like swords; their lyrics are razor-sharp. Rap is competitive, excessive and ludic (Clay 2009). Occasionally two emcees, or crews, will engage in a widely publicized competition (MC Lyte vs Antoinette; KRS-One vs MC Shan; Meek Mill vs Drake). Most of the time, however, artists formulate lyrics against an imaginary opponent, and in the process they exaggerate their sense of power, autonomy and control. As part of this spectacle of competition, rappers often assume the names of superheroes and villains, fictional characters and personas. While all of this might be part of the play and masquerade of hip hop, it should not obscure the more serious, and tragic, dimensions of hip hop’s relationship to power and systems of violence. The signifying and imaginative dimensions of rap and hip hop often involve religious allusions and images. Many artists compare themselves to divine figures and powers as a way to underscore their value and influence in hip hop and the broader world. In other moments, artists integrate ‘the divine’ into their names and personas, perhaps riffing on, and contesting, traditions that prohibit humans from uttering the name of G/d. Jay-Z, for instance, calls himself J-Hova, the god emcee; Kanye West calls himself Yeezus, suggesting that he has ‘become’ the redemptive figure that walked with him previously (‘Jesus Walks’, The College Dropout 2004). And Remy Ma identifies herself as ‘Shesus Khryst’, suggesting that she can triumph in the face of persecution and resentment. In addition, she can compete with her male counterparts, like Nas and Jay-Z, who readily identify with divine powers (see Utley 2012: 59–60). When rappers use, or usurp, divine names and capacities to accentuate their dominance, they continue a tradition of boasting, signifying and masking. In addition, artists indirectly show homage to ‘unorthodox’ black religious traditions like the Nation of Islam or the Five-Percent Nation that, in different ways, affirm the divine status of black bodies. Five Percenter philosophy, prefiguring the aforementioned god emcees, reinterprets and reappropriates traditional Muslim and Christian teachings and ideas in ways that diminish the proverbial gap between gods and humans. For instance, Five Percenters convert A.L.L.A.H. into an acronym – Arm, leg, leg, arm, head which signifies the embodied and physical nature of god(s), or black men and women. Self-identifying

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as ‘god’ on the mic is a long established practice that is indebted to the Five Percenter Nation of gods and earths.

Culture and power Hip hop’s cultural politics are in a word, complicated. By cultural politics I refer to how hip hop’s aural and visual dimensions mimic, reflect and trouble power relationships, especially around race, gender, class and sexuality. It is tempting to draw a distinction between positive and negative hip hop, between conscious rap and gangsta rap, the prophet and the thug, but these kinds of lines are too neat. Often, groups that are labelled ‘conscious’ because they speak truth to racist arrangements adopt and pernicious assumptions about gender and women’s ‘proper place’ in the social world. Mark Anthony Neal describes this ambivalence in his analysis of Public Enemy’s music in the late 1980s and early 1990s. While Public Enemy produced timely tracks responding, for instance, to the corporate exploitation of black youth or stereotypical images in Hollywood films, they also made songs like ‘She Watch Channel Zero’ (It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back 1988) that implicitly blamed black women’s habits for the predicament of black children (Neal 1999: 141–4). On a different note, Notorious B.I.G. often made songs that explicitly devalued women and relegated them to disposable sexual objects; at the same time, his first album contains selfdegrading humour and reveals a kind of vulnerability that undermines predictable expressions of black masculine power. Contemporary male-dominated hip hop is glaringly misogynist and homophobic. Yet male artists who wear skirts and ‘tight’ jeans spark discussions about ‘proper’ gender performance and the limits of tolerance in hip hop. This ‘queering’ of hip hop also brings to the surface anxieties about the instability of sexual identity, exemplified by the compulsion to say ‘pause’ or ‘no homo’ anytime an utterance sounds too homoerotic. Hip hop, like any cultural form, has always had an ambivalent relationship to power arrangements. One way to get at the complexities of hip hop’s cultural politics is to examine the recent film Straight Outta Compton (2015), a biopic by F Gary Gray that depicts the coming of age of the ‘gangsta’ rap group, NWA. The film draws on, and troubles, a kind of nostalgia about the golden age of hip hop, a time when hip hop was supposedly more pure, authentic and less constrained by corporate interests. The film is also a riff on the American fantasy that hard work leads to success and prosperity. Even though the end of the film screens group member Eazy-E’s AIDS-related death, this loss is immediately followed by images of Dr Dre and Ice Cube’s achievements in hop hop and popular culture. Eazy’s death is abruptly written into a triumphant narrative about NWA’s afterlife. Throughout the film, however, we see poignant representations of conditions that occasioned songs like ‘Fuck the Police’ (Straight Outta Compton 1988), as the members of the group are constantly monitored and physically harassed by police officers. The film therefore visualizes Robin Kelley’s description of the military-style methods used to contain crime in working-class urban spaces. He writes: While the rise in crime and the ascendance of the crack economy might have put money into some people’s pockets, for the majority it meant greater police repression. Watts, Compton, Northwest Pasadena, Carson, North Long Beach, and several other working class communities were turned into war zones during the mid-to late 1980s. Police helicopters,

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complex electronic surveillance, even small tanks armed with battering rams became part of the increasingly militarized urban landscape. (Kelley 1994: 193) Moments in the film where we see how performing blackness, and black maleness, can render black men vulnerable to police violence resonates strongly with contemporary incidents of State repression that have been exposed, and contested, by the Black Lives Matter movement. As many commentators have pointed out, the film’s gender politics is problematic. While we do see moments of black love on screen, moments where female partners are directly involved in contract negotiations, the women just seem to appear with no back story or history. Whether they are models, groupies or wives, women are presented as immediately available, and at times disposable, bodies in the film. This troubling quality follows trends in films like Boyz in the Hood (1991) where the female characters are props, both relegated to the background and rendered necessary to the development of the male characters (see Pough 2004: 127–36). More generally, we see this dynamic in rap videos as the female body is often reduced to an erotic object of desire or a symbol of male power and fantasy (Perry 2004: 175–6). Perhaps the creators of Straight Outta Compton could rejoin to these concerns by arguing that the film is trying to capture how NWA was living out and enjoying their early success as young, immature men. While this might be true, it is also true that the film refuses to capture certain incidents that might frustrate the male coming of age story – particularly Dre’s history of beating and tormenting women. While Dr Dre made a public apology for this history, as a kind of compensation for cutting out a segment of the film that addresses his assault of television personality Dee Barnes, this makes the violence seem like a personal aberration. It prevents the film from depicting male violence against women (in lyrics, visual representations, and ‘real’ life) as structural and systemic, as a central part of the development of gangsta rap, hip hop, male subjectivity and the social order. In other words, Dre’s violent encounter with Dee Barnes and the film’s erasure of this gendered trauma reflect a hip-hop culture and broader social world that normalizes and disavows the constitutive quality of gender-inflected violence. But as Foucault underscores, power and resistance are always intertwined (1977: 26–7). No arrangement of power is seamless or without moments of tension and instability. As Gwendolyn Pough points out, we hear and experience this tension when female emcees assume male-dominated spaces within hip hop and challenge, or interrupt, patriarchal assumptions and norms (Pough 2004). Think, for instance, of Queen Latifah’s 1993 track ‘U.N.I.T.Y’ (Black Reign 1993), a song that inveighs against everyday forms of disrespect towards women as well as domestic violence. In Eve’s powerful song ‘Love Is Blind’ (Let There Be Eve 1999), the Philadelphia emcee extends Latifah’s protest as she mournfully narrates a story about a friend who is beaten, raped, and ultimately killed by her ‘lover’. Throughout the track, Eve suggests that she might enact revenge on her friend’s assailant. In other moments, female emcees push back against male power and expectations through parody and comedy. One recent example of this is Nicki Minaj’s ‘Anaconda’ (The Pinkprint 2014), a song and video that samples, and riffs on, Sir Mix-A-Lot’s hit, ‘Baby Got Back’ (Mack Daddy 1992). Through phallic imagery and sexualized bodily movements, in addition to silly facial expressions, Minaj plays with and pokes fun at hip hop’s visual fantasies and depictions of female bodies. The lyrics of the song portray Nicki as a sexual agent, as a subject that uses men to satisfy her sexual desires. While this inversion has its own problems, the song and video present Nicki Minaj as a complex, ironic and 314

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nuanced emcee.4 While reminding the viewer of how women have been subordinated in hip hop, the track also suggests that women disturb, contest and reconfigure hip hop’s male-dominated terrains. At the same time, we might raise doubts about this ability to assume and usurp spaces traditionally designated for men and question whether it disturbs the order of things or mainly replicates pernicious tropes, fantasies and efforts to control others. For some scholars, hip hop’s ambivalent relationship to power expresses a religious sensibility. Anthony Pinn, most notably, interprets the struggle and striving (against unjust arrangements and regimes) heard in hip hop as a religious, or spiritual, endeavour. According to Pinn, listening to artists like Tupac, Scarface or Lauryn Hill enables us to hear what is essential to religion – the striving for identity and meaning in the face of absurd conditions, conditions that black and brown denizens of racial modernity know all too well. While Pinn acknowledges the significance of artists located in specific religious traditions and practices (Islam, Christianity, Rastafarianism), he is more interested in songs and artists that express the general features of religiosity. He writes: ‘Religion’s basic structure, embedded in history, is a general quest for complex subjectivity in the face of the terror and dread associated with life within a historical context marked by dehumanization, objectification, abuse, intolerance, and captured most forcefully in the sign/symbol of the ghetto’ (Pinn 2003: 86). For Pinn, religiosity is a kind of struggle against objectification and terror; a search for, and assertion of, subjectivity that is never complete and always holding in tension the multiple subject positions and relationships that we are thrown into and shaped by. While Pinn draws attention to the general dimensions of religion – the Camus-like confrontation with absurdity are constitutive parts of human existence – he suggests that this structural feature is ‘embedded in history’ and always tethered to particular social and historical predicaments. In other words, striving for subjectivity in hip hop cannot be understood apart from particular, historically formed arrangements like racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity and capital. There is much more to be written about hip hop – its history, aesthetic qualities and cultural politics. One can imagine new terrains in scholarship that examine the uncertain relationship between hip hop and global movements against State repression and imperial practices. I await more fascinating studies about the impact of technology, visual culture and social media on the circulation, consumption and archiving of hip hop. As suggested above, one of the more promising areas of interest is the intersection between hip hop and religion. While authors like Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson made initial forays into this terrain, Anthony Pinn has been the most consistent in clearing space to think critically and expansively about hip hop’s religious dimensions. Most recently, Monica Miller has challenged hip hop/religion scholars like Pinn to question, and be more critical of, taken-for-granted notions of religion. While many people assume that religion is a self-evident, universal attribute of human experience, Miller draws on postmodern theory to identify the power relationships and discursive practices that make religion seem like second nature (Miller 2012). In addition, Miller shifts our attention from an emphasis on rap lyrics and hidden meanings to bodily practices and rituals; religion in hip hop for Miller is less a quest for meaning and more a set of strategies that authorize certain projects. I propose that framing the religious qualities of hip hop through the language of the sacred and profane, and thinking more critically about the complexity of this distinction, might open up new trajectories and lines of flight. The story of hip hop flows on and on.

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Chapter 29

Goth Music and Subculture Isabella van Elferen

Goth’s relation to religion inspires public and academic debate. Popular imagination tends to link the scene with occult practices such as Satanism, necromancy and vampirism. In academic research, by contrast, Goth has been described as eclectic, postmodern and GenX (e.g. Fey 2000; Schmidt and Neumann-Braun 2004). While these views originate outside the scene, Goths describe their attitude to religion as detached interest (Powell 2007; Wiersema 2015). Enfolding my argument in personal experience, I propose that Goth is neither occult nor religiously eclectic, but that its detached interest in religion is driven by the yearning for a dissolution of borders, including those between the ordinary world and the spiritual world. This position can best be described through what Lois Lee calls ‘non-religion’, which is distinct from religion itself as well as from secularity (the absence of religion) and from irreligion (the rejection of any religion). It focuses on the difference to religion rather than on the rejection of religion: [Non-religion] is used to indicate not the absence of something [religion] but the presence of something [else], characterized, at least in the first place, by its relation to religion but nevertheless distinct from it. Non-religion is therefore any phenomenon – position, perspective, or practice – that is primarily understood in relation to religion but which is not itself considered to be religious. (Lee 2015: 32) Secular in its belief system but leaning on religion in its style and practices, Goth’s take on non-religion is characterized by a religious liminality. Localized between religious dogmas but extimate to them, it will be theorized here as non/religious occulture.

Goth symbols: Dark angels of sin The most notorious aspect of Goth’s relation to religion is its flaunting of religious symbols. Goths sport Christian crucifixes and Satanist sigils, Egyptian ankhs and Celtic triskeles, Wiccan pentacles and occult pentagrams. Besides black clothes and eyeliner, it is Goth’s appropriation of religious symbols that has acquired this scene the reputation of a Hebdigean ‘spectacular subculture’ (Hebdige 2005: 130–1). Because these symbols appear in the context of a ‘dark’ aesthetic that rests on the unlikely combination of nostalgic yearning, blasphemous irony and exhibitionist stylization, Goth’s use of them is easily misread as a reflection of religious engagement. While style is as defining for Goth as it is for gothic, however, it is not to be taken at face value but rather seen in the context of its cultural work. As in gothic writing, so too in Goth self-presentation the ‘negative aesthetics’ that informs its style employs elements from a long-gone sacrality which it

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recasts as a counterweight to the rational present (Botting 2014: 1–12). Fred Botting argues that this dialectic should not simply be seen as an idealization of the past or a rejection of the present, but as the juxtaposition of two opposed perspectives on the world: (M)ore than a flight of nostalgic retrospection or an escape from the dullness of a present without chivalry, magic or adventure, (Gothic) does not long for terrifying or arbitrary aristocratic power, religious superstition or supernatural events but juxtaposes terrors of the negative with an order authorized by reason and morality. (2014: 3) Goth’s religious references reflect this juxtaposing movement: the inverted crosses and pentagrams have less to do with subcultural participants’ personal religious beliefs than with a non-religious movement between contemporary reality and a variety of worlds in which the sacred, the supernatural and the occult replace the secular, the rational and the mundane. Since the scene’s birth this position of simultaneously detached and profound engagement with religion has resulted in a religiously fluid outward style. The Goth subculture originated in the Batcave in Soho, London, a weekly event during 1982–5 in which the bright colours and cheerful sounds of disco were countered by black clothes, black eyeliner and gloomy music. The Batcave walls were adorned with crucifixes, pentacles, skulls and coffins. Batcave visitors wore a multitude of religious imagery: crucifixes and inverted crosses, pentagrams and pentacles, ankh symbols. The clash of various religions that those combinations evoked was further strengthened by the torn fishnets and fetishwear which added the flavour of sexual transgression to that of blasphemy. The same imagery, along with a plethora of similarly appropriated and inverted religious symbols, can still be found in the Goth scene. The Amsterdam event Gothique Classique, for instance, has as its logo a bloody skull over a Celtic cross. Gothique Classique’s most recent party was called ‘The Occult Edition’. The poster for the event showed the event logo and a pentagram, a smoking candle and another skull (Figure 29.1). The organizers put up an absinth bar, burnt candles and incense and covered the walls with black sheets; to this standard Goth set-up, they added specific occult elements. A chalk circle with occult-looking symbols was drawn on the floor and cloths with single symbols were placed over the black wall sheets. The design of the symbols on floor and sheets was inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction and was meant to evoke the Elder Gods, the Necronomicon and cosmic horror of the Weird. The lighter cloths were dyed in pig’s blood to lend them an ‘uncomfortable’ look and smell, which would create an olfactory clash with the ‘inevitably churchly’ smell of incense (Wiersema 2015). I attended ‘Gothique Classique: The Occult Edition’ wearing an assemblage of religious and Goth symbols. I sipped absinth under the ominous sheets and danced on the chalk circle. To outsiders my presence there, my clothing and jewellery, my enjoyment of the décor and my dancing to tracks such as ‘Die Macht’ by Unheilig (‘The Power’ by Unholy1) may seem to indicate some sort of religious investment. But to what religious orientation do these heterogeneous symbols add up? Is the question even relevant? Although the party drew its name from a religious signifier, it did not favour any religious orientation over another. In fact, it was not geared towards religion at all. The organizers stated that their occult references were to give a suggestion of dark religiosity, but one that should remain undefinable: 317

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Figure 29.1  Gothique Classique poster. Design Frank Wiersema.

We did not want to use existing religious or occult symbols, but we did want to give that suggestion. We wanted to evoke the feeling that you would wander into a space where occult practices had taken place, but without literally referring to existing occult matters. … The designer painted non-existing symbols inspired by Lovecraft in white paint on black fabric. (Lovecraft) continuously refers to a higher, elder, primary evil that is omnipresent and causes madness, and in doing so he also uses non-existing sources. (Wiersema 2015) The apparent contrast between religious iconography and non-religious intentions, between being drawn to religion and playing ironically with its inversion, is typical for the interplay between enlightened ratio and religious superstition in Goth/ic negative aesthetics. The fact that the occult nature of ‘The Occult Edition’ was meant to exist only in the allusion to a dark sacrality – without further attachment to that sacrality – illustrates the scene’s interest in religion as an irrational, mysterious and shadowy alternative to the ordinary. It is precisely this liminal relation to religion that confuses the world around Goth, but that world takes style for content, symbolic evocation for direct meaning. It is impossible to make assertions about the subculture’s religious orientation on the basis of the symbols with which it adorns itself. Christian, occult, Pagan and Wiccan imagery is used 318

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without privileging any one of them in particular, and even though Goths sometimes experiment with these religions, sociological research shows that Goth is characterized by a pluralist and tolerant attitude to religion (Powell 2007: 365–71; Schmidt and Neumann-Braun 2004: 240– 52). The only thing that ties all these symbols together is that their Goth re-contextualization simultaneously invokes, appropriates and inverts their religious signification. Individual religious orientation, in short, is beside the point. The subculture’s appropriation and reversal of a multitude of religious signs has two important consequences. First, the excess leads to a stylistic in-between-ness reflecting the liminality of Goth/ic’s negative aesthetics. The continual flickering between light and dark creates its own twilight: the crepuscular zone between various borders. Like gothic, Goth is not anti- or proreligious, but liminal. Second, the constant convergence of such a large and heterogeneous amount of symbols empties out their signifying specificity. Rather than becoming floating signifiers that take on new, subculturally defined, meanings (Hebdige 2005: 117–27), these symbols lose their referential performativity and become meaningless as religious signifiers. Like in gothic novels, the excess of signification in Goth style leads to an expenditure of meaning, and the symbolic order of language and law is divulged of discursive power. Precisely the resulting fissure between meaning and absence of meaning is the genre’s objective: the irony of Goth/ic lies in the contrast of over-signification and referential void – hence the use of non-existent ‘Lovecraftian’ sigils at Gothique Classique. In contrast to gothic literature, this process applies to Goths themselves as well as to their style. Goths wear, drink and smoke their subcultural symbols. Because of these embodied practices, Goth identity is as over-signified, excessive and therefore ungraspable as Goth selfrepresentation in crucifixes and fetishwear. This is why members of the scene ironically embrace self-descriptions in worn-out clichés such as ‘dark angels of sin’ (Baddeley 2006: 222–43). Parents and journalists needn’t worry about Goth’s personal associations with Satanism or occultism: religious choices are irrelevant. Another part of the societal discomfort around this scene is concerned with Goth subcultural practices. Goths like to wander around on cemeteries and in churches. They enjoy the mysterious half-light of dusk and the darkness of night. If the subculture embodies the fissure between any and all religious orientations, then those are the concrete (and iconically gothic) spaces in which such religious liminality plays out. How should such liminal spaces be understood?

Goth spaces: Multisensory heterotopias Heterogeneous religious symbols transform ordinary places into ceremonial spaces in which the negative aesthetics of Goth are viscerally experienced: a London club becomes the Batcave, an Amsterdam student bar morphs into ‘Gothique Classique: The Occult Edition’. These spaces have as many dimensions as the human body has senses: visual input blends with the olfactory (incense, clove cigarettes), taste (absinthe, black vodka), the tangible (corsets, dance) and the sonic (music) into an all-encompassing borderland where past converges with present and the secular coincides with the sacred. The narratives of gothic literature are classically set in such zones: gothic protagonists meet the ghosts of trauma and superstition in haunted mansions, dark cathedrals or cemeteries. The Goth subculture emulates such spaces in order to create embodied versions of the traditional gothic tale. This happens not only at Goth clubs and festivals but also 319

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in the favourite haunts of subcultural participants such as churches and cemeteries. One of my most cherished Goth memories plays at a cemetery. Every year on the 30 April, the Dutch celebrate ‘King’s Day’, public festivities around the Royal Birthday with flea markets, street parties, loud music and omnipresent orange clothes and flags. A few years ago, some of my Goth friends and I fled the orange streets to a quiet haven in the heart of Amsterdam: the old cemetery-park Huis te Vraag, where the friendly guards permitted us to have a picnic.2 To the orange-oriented public eye, this group of figures clad in black among the ancient gravestones must have looked subversive, but the picnic was peaceful and quiet. The cemetery offered us a space that was affectively outside – though physically in the middle of – the loud world around us, a space that contested the orange imperative. It countered that here and now with silence, green and the presence of past realities. We did not escape the present, as we knew full well the origin of the music waving its way through the trees and among the graves: but we juxtaposed that present with an alternative. We were in a parallel zone whose existence ended when we cleaned up our rubbish and left the place just like we entered it. Some of the clichés, thus, are true. Goths enjoy strolling on cemeteries or in deserted ruins, often taking graveyard pictures of each other. But that does not mean that Goths sleep in coffins or practice necromancy – that prejudice merely reflects the difficulty that the non-Goth world has in assessing the scene’s liminality. An example of this is the Stasi file explaining that Gruftis (after the German word for grave: Gruft) sit in open graves telling each other ghost stories: the Stasi had political reasons to turn ambivalence into abjection and to frame difference as Otherness.3 Rather than through such exclusive strategies, the liminal spaces of Goth can be conceptualized through Michel Foucault’s inclusive concept of heterotopia. Foucault proposes the notion of heterotopias to describe external spaces that physically exist alongside societies but are never a complete part of them. A heterotopia can be compared to a mirror (1986: 24), a virtual space that inverts the culture it reflects. Heterotopias are real places … which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. (1986: 24) Like the Amsterdam cemetery described above, heterotopias are locatable but unlocated, material in their real presence and immaterial in their virtuality. They also engender ‘heterochrony’, a heterotopical time dimension which is analogous to but disconnected from ordinary time. As examples of heterotopias, interestingly, Foucault discusses cemeteries and festival events (1986: 25–6), which strengthens the conceptual link between his essay and Goth subcultural practices. Botting argues that gothic literature plays in and with heterotopias (2004). In the gothic novel, he argues, language performs a transgression between real and unreal worlds, especially in the labyrinthine spaces that are not just the topic of these texts, but constitute their very shape (2004: 249ff). Goth spaces are eminent homes for this kind of transgression. By decorating walls and floors with pseudo-occult symbols, or by having a quiet picnic among gravestones, in short by dwelling in spaces that burst out of their seams with religious signifiers, the Goth space becomes a labyrinth in which the sacred is indistinguishable from the secular and in which there is no boundary between the real and the unreal. 320

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The heterotopias of Goth are thus made operative by the two results of over-signification described above. First, the twilight zone of Goth religiosity is engendered by the excessive amount and variety of symbols. These symbols pervade not just the realm of the visual, but also that of the smell, taste, touch, and sound: a multisensory liminality transforms ordinary places into tangible, inhabitable gothic borderlands. Second, the surplus of symbols evacuates their signifying potential. With as many symbols in its subcultural world-building as there are metaphors in gothic literature, Goth reality is just as labyrinthine as, but far more corporeal than, its textual counterpart. The impenetrable religious signs that constitute Goth heterotopias do not lead to any religion in particular, but only ever deeper into a visceral, embodied, lived zone of liminality. The physical entry into the liminal zones of Goth/ic is enabled by the transgression of boundaries of religion and reality. Foucault argues that the movement across and in affirmation of limits is at the heart of transgression’s paradoxical phenomenology: The limit and transgression depend on each other for whatever density of being they possess: a limit could not exist if it were absolutely uncrossable, reciprocally, transgression would be pointless if it merely crossed a limit composed of illusions and shadows. (2000: 73) This mutual dependence of transgression and limit is crucial for gothic and Goth, genres that are less interested in transgression or limits for their own sakes but position themselves on the limen, within the moment of transgression. Eternally dwelling on thresholds, Goth subcultural practice has nothing to do with such transgressive acts as opening graves, but everything with savouring the heterotopic liminality of a cemetery picnic. Goth is not about performing occult rituals at an Amsterdam club night, but about the creation of a spiritual heterotopia by way of non-existent religious symbols. Axel Schmidt and Klaus Neumann-Braun have interviewed Goths about their religious orientation and practices. One of the interviewees comments that the alleged Goth obsession with death and Satanism is beside the point, as the scene is not interested in such one-sided choices: I don’t like direct death as such, that’s too precise for me. I prefer mysticism. … I am not at all afraid of those who are interested in Satanism in our scene. I’m just afraid of those … for whom it’s really a religion. (2004: 239–40 – translated by the author) Schmidt and Neumann-Braun conclude that religion in Goth reflects postmodern eclecticism: they consider it ‘religious bricolage’ (2004: 321) a playful, non-dogmatic exploration of ‘darkly connoted’ religiosity (2004: 306–21). But Goth’s engagement with religion does not stop at symbol collecting. Even though they do not believe in their religious meaning, Goths enjoy spiritual symbols and spaces, rites and rituals. In recognition of this, Anna Powell uses the term ‘parareligion’ (2007: 359) to describe Goth subcultural practices: Many goths can be characterized as religious nonbelievers who, nonetheless, derive pleasure from inventive and often ironic play with religious signifiers – a practice that may sometimes involve spiritual effects. (2007: 365) Like Schmidt and Neumann-Braun, Powell comments on the ‘bricolage’ (2007: 371) of religious signs in Goth aesthetics, but she also discusses the engagement with these signs and the ways in which this may have ‘spiritual effects’. She describes the rituality of Goth clubbing and dressing 321

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up, the ceremonial set-up of club nights, and visits to old churches or graveyards as ways in which Goths put into practice their nostalgia for bygone times in which the spiritual was a more integrated part of daily life (2007: 361). These practices, Powell argues, may share characteristics with religion, but are distanced from the supernatural and therefore parareligious (2007: 359). This approach importantly corrects popular views of Goth’s relation to religion: the parareligious detachment from spirituality falsifies the notion that Goths are Satanists or occultists. By distancing the subculture from active religiosity, however, Powell creates a dichotomy in which Goths are either completely involved in (occult) religion or they are not at all. And in Goth or gothic, matters are never as black and white as that. Goth is not so detached from the supernatural at all. The scene is saturated with it, both in its excessive appropriation of religious signs and in its spiritual practices of lighting candles and burning incense, visiting churches and strolling on cemeteries. Style and practices are an expression of a longing for a time when the supernatural and the empirical were not separated but intertwined. This type of nostalgia, which pervades Goth’s negative aesthetics, is emphatically not postmodern, but modern, and specifically gothic. Goth nostalgia engenders the will to create a parallel, more spiritual world that is located within and temporally synchronous to the dayto-day world: a heterotopia that is not an escape but that juxtaposes the ordinary world with its darkly religious counterpart. Rather than seeking to confirm or deny individual religious interests based on the semiotic interpretation of a deliberately ambiguous style, therefore, Goth’s relation to religion is better understood through its cultural role. Which function does religion have in a purportedly secular subculture? Gavin Friday remembers exactly what his 1980s band The Virgin Prunes wanted from religion: The Virgin Prunes were one of the few people at that time who had the guts to say, ‘Fuck the Catholic Church’. At the same time I liked a lot of religious imagery. And if religions were bands, Roman Catholicism would have the best show in the world, ‘cos it’s got that element of ceremony. (Reynolds 2005: 432) Friday’s ambivalence is the key to Goth religiosity. The band’s religious subversion did not make them turn their backs on the church, as they wanted to retain its aesthetic and ceremony. The ritual aspect of religion is as important to Goth as the assemblage of religious signs with which the subculture adorns itself. Just as the scene appropriates specifically ‘dark’ religious symbols, it appropriates specifically the sacrality that gives participants a glimpse of a mysterious not here and not now. Ceremony and ritual can open a door to this parallel world, which is the gothic other to rational Modernity. The negative aesthetic of Goth style and practices are too specific to be classed as postmodern bricolage (cf. Partridge 2004: 85). Instead, there is a kinship with what Christopher Partridge calls ‘Pagan occulture’ (2004: 78–84), the less saccharine version of New Age’s non-churchly and polytheist religiosities. Pagan occulture includes Wicca and witchcraft, Celtic religions and Satanism. It leans heavily on rites and rituals, through which it attempts to contact or channel the deities it worships: but instead of the ego-centric ‘higher Self’ in New Age, Paganism is oriented towards the spiritually other (Partridge 2004: 79). Pagan occulture is inspired by popular culture from fantasy literature to horror films and music (Partridge 2004: 119–84). Goth, with its focus on the dark side and with its explicit link to gothic popular culture, can be understood as part 322

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of Pagan occulture. Differently than the other forms of Paganism, however, it replaces religious clarity with ambiguity. With these insights in mind the idea of Goth non-religion presented in the introduction to this chapter needs slight adjustment. Non-religion is ‘primarily understood in relation to religion but (…) not itself considered to be religious’ (Lee 2015: 32). Goth fits this definition, but is not so much characterized by the difference to religion as by the excessive yet undogmatic appropriation of its dark sides. I propose a move from exclusive non-religion to inclusive non/religion, a step into in a shadowland on the threshold of transgression: a heterotopia of ambivalence which is characterized not by one-sided choices but by synchronicity. Goth is sacred and it is secular; it is neither religious nor irreligious. Both at the same time and neither, in gothic juxtaposition, betwixt and between, Goth non/religious occulture dwells on the limen.

Goth sounds: Liminal liturgies Goth is more musical than any other form of Paganism. The Batcave bands defined the soundscape of the early years of the subculture; old school Goth was developed into an impressive list of Goth subgenres including darkwave, gothic rock, gothic metal, medieval Goth, neofolk, apocalyptic folk, cybergoth, and Hellektro (Van Elferen 2012: 138–67). These subgenres are mutually connected through a number of consistent factors. Their lyrical themes focus on such themes as isolation, nostalgia and hauntedness; all genres show a consistent musical preference for minor keys, moderate tempos, foregrounded bass structures, harmonic repetition, reverb and unusual timbres (ibid.: 167–9); and each of these styles leans lyrically and musically on religious references. As with Goth symbols and spaces, the provenance of these references is heterogeneous. Bands like Qntal and Gaë Bolg and the Church of Fand use Roman Catholic references in their work; Omnia and Inkubus Sukkubus employ Pagan and Wiccan imagery and sounds; Wardruna self-defines as Nordic paganist; Das Ich evokes Satanism; Dracul refers to vampirism. But no band is exclusive in its religious choices. Rather, acts tend to incorporate mixtures of all these elements or to perform simple reversals of a generalized religiosity. Band names such as Unheilig, Combichrist or Blutengel (Blood Angel), and album or song titles like Fallen (Evanescence, 2003) or ‘For the Fallen Ones’ (Triarii, Ars Militaria, 2005) are the textual equivalent of inverted crosses. Goth lyrics often quote sacred texts. German medieval Goth band Qntal’s ‘Palästinalied’ (Qntal II, 1995), for instance, cites words and melody of Walther von der Vogelweide’s thirteenth-century Crusade song. The Middle High German words and the modal melody are sung by classically trained soprano Sigrid Hausen and accompanied by an organ. These historical elements engage in a musical dialogue with contemporary sounds. Hausen’s voice is draped over a thick musical texture of digital samples, the triplets in the original melody are contrasted with a strong 4/4 dance beat, and the high melody of the original tune is complemented by a deep (sub) bass pattern and low keyboard chords. The result is an alienating mix of timbres, rhythms and connotations in which past and present occur as each other’s dark mirror image (see Van Elferen 2012: 158–9). While Qntal’s music revives a romanticized spiritual past in words and music, other artists infuse their lyrics with religious otherworldliness through single references. Gothic rocker Nick Cave, for instance, is well known for his references to Milton’s Paradise Lost; gothic metal band 323

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Within Temptation dedicated an album to a partly Gaian, partly Celtic Mother Earth (2000); the words of the Latin Requiem mass over an overused Catholic reference in Goth music. None of these acts attempts to adhere to the religious denomination of these references. They are appropriated and inverted to fit the twilight zone of Goth religiosity, so that the gospel according to Cave becomes a veritable treasure house of gloom. In typical Pagan occulture fashion, this religiosity is influenced by popular culture. The Requiem sequences ‘Dies Irae’ and ‘Lacrimosa’ are standard tropes in horror film soundtracks. As precise as the Catholic liturgy may be, overuse has rendered the romantic fantasy of funerary plainchant sung in dark medieval churches worn and hazy. That haziness beyond meaning, of course, is precisely what Goth/ic seeks. Such lyrical references to religion are comparable in function to Goth symbols, spaces and practices. They are diverse in background, they ignore dogmatism, they cannot be read semiotically, but their collective negative aesthetic achieves the borderland of Goth occulture. Their Goth recontextualization enhances this liminal effect. The work of German darkwave act Sopor Aeternus and the Ensemble, for instance, is drenched in references to Catholic, Egyptian, Satanist and vampiric spirituality. Sopor Aeternus’s album Es reiten die Toten so schnell (‘The Dead Ride So Fast’, Apocalyptic Vision 2003) contains the tracks ‘The Feast of Blood’, ‘Penance & Pain’, and ‘Holy Water Moonlight’. Sopor’s wallowing in the gothic potential of Catholicism is underlined by the subtitle of the album: ‘or: The Vampyre sucking at his own Vein.’ The vampire does what it does best: it inverts religious orders – in this case a religious order that in itself was already emptied out by the excess of over-signification. What is left is a labyrinth of non/religion, a world beyond the day-to-day that has undefinably eerie characteristics. Musical allusions to religion in Goth are often achieved by the use of timbre, the nebulous quality of music which can only described by unmusical adjectives such as ‘tone colour’ that can be ‘warm’, ‘hollow’ or ‘dark’, and which communicates nothing more precise than ‘the incommunicable’ (Nancy 2007: 41). Unsurprisingly, Goth musicians are fascinated by this ephemeral musical parameter. It is through their distinctive use of timbre that Goth tracks are instantly recognizable, and more often than not these timbres evoke religious spaces or rituals. Church bells and organs draw the listener’s attention to graveyards and dark churches, whose acoustics are often mimicked by the reverb slide. Other churchly connoted timbres are (samples of) choir vocals or the ‘heavenly voices’ of medieval Goth singers. Pagan timbres include the instruments used, for instance, by Dutch Paganfolk band Omnia: didgeridoo, bodhrán, hurdy gurdy, bagpipes, harps and flutes. Norwegian Pagan band Wardruna’s use of deer-hide frame drums, Kravik lyre, tagel harp and goat horn – as well as environmental sound like wind, thunder and snow – create specifically Norse soundscapes. Sometimes classical timbres such as violins, oboes and harpsichords are used in the musical evocation of dark religiosity. Their sound is reminiscent of other times and places, which befits Goth nostalgia: as the dark connotations of these timbres have been established by horror film soundtracks, in which villains remarkably often play classical instruments, they draw on the occulture’s fictional frame of reference. Goth music often creates the suggestion of rituality by way of repetition. Musical repetition is a key ingredient to any religious rite or liturgy, as its non-linear effect has the effect of temporal standstill. In the non-temporal vacuum of musical repetition, ordinary time becomes dislodged, creating an aperture onto the possibility of other times, other worlds. In Goth music this effect is achieved through slowly moving harmonic and rhythmic repetitions which are given religious connotations by way of lyrics and timbres. An example is ‘Winter’s Decay’ by German darkwave 324

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act Diary of Dreams’s (Cholymelan re-release, 1999), which appeared on the ‘Gothique Classique’ setlist. The harmony of the track consists of one chord, a solemn pedal point on D minor chord in synthesized horns that is strengthened by a drum moving in crotchets on D. The pedal point musically refers to the church organ, which gave this technique its name. Above it, floating in and out of earshot, dominant A and minor sixth B flat in the same horn timbre. Even higher, an ephemeral choir of female vocals voicing a D. Only the bass is loud: the other lines are barely audible, ghostly. This bare harmonic structure is sustained throughout the entire track: for over seven minutes there is no motion, no development, only this chord, this minor mood and this reverb on all parts. Within the vertical time of this musical design a male choir appears chanting a repeated motive of A-B flat-G-A, its melody evoking the minor sixth of the Dorian medieval church mode. Over this ominous soundscape frontman Adrian Hates, his voice heavily reverbed, whispers gloomy words: Grey clouds passing by Reflected in my eyes Above the sky, blood-red I turn to stone I want to move With its endlessly repeated structures, the irresistible draw of its minor gloom, and its indeterminate allusions to churchly ritual, this track traps listeners in a timeless space of transgression that never evolves but simply lingers on an unknown border. ‘I turn to stone/I want to move.’ Nowhere is the non/religious no-here and not-now of Goth liminality more tangible than in tracks like this. While visual and textual symbols indicate Goth heterotopias, and ordinary spaces are turned into the embodied settings of such heterotopias, it is music that enables subcultural participants not just to catch a glimpse of a parallel world but to move into it. Music brings the symbols and spaces of the subculture alive, and makes tangible the transition into the crepuscular zone of Goth/ ic. It is the liturgy to the non/religious ceremony of the Goth club night: just like in Christian, Pagan or occult ritual, the power of music alone establishes the crossing of boundaries between the day-to-day and the beyond. This liturgical vectrality is caused by the all-encompassing power of musical immersion (Van Elferen 2012: 30–2, 128–38). In listening, ordinary time and place dissolve into the spatio-temporality of rhythm, harmony, melody and timbre, and along with those the unconscious time-space of memory and emotion. Vladimir Jankélévitch describes this strong immersion in music as ‘a state of infinite aporia that produces a fruitful perplexity’ (2003: 96). Because music is ‘a form of enchanted temporality’ (2003: 69) as well as ‘not here, and not there, but everywhere and nowhere’ (2003: 103), he argues, this aporia dislodges listeners from any former spatio-temporal attachment, even that to their own subjectivity. In Goth, the aporia of musical immersion is established by the deliberate conflation of past and present time through the use of religious references and ancient timbres, and strengthened by the non-temporality of slow tempos and musical repetition. In this ‘enchanted temporality’ various perceptual layers blend into phenomenological obscurity: if fiction can produce labyrinths of signification and over-signification, then music, whose only signification exists in connotation and emotion, is a sonic labyrinth. The door to heterotopic realities is wide open. Jankélévitch discusses this type of immersion through metaphors of darkness. The ‘nocturnal dimension of Becoming (…) in a timeless Now’ happens at night, ‘when consciousness is plunged into the immanence of 325

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darkness’ (2003: 95). Musical immersion is not just a willing suspension of disbelief but a willing obfuscation of rationality, and that obfuscation is precisely the aim of Goth/ic’s cultural work. It is in this musical rapture, Jankélévitch insists, that humans can catch brief glimpses of the divine (2003: 127). While Jankélévitch talks about the ‘becoming’ and ‘immanence’ inherent to musical experience, Goth liminality is neither immanent nor transcendent. To be immersed in Goth heterotopias is to eternalize the fleeting in-between of the limen, and Goth music achieves this eternalization through its manipulation of temporal perception. Goth creates sonic heterotopias and heterochronies, heterochronotopias whose only spatial and temporal confines are those of the opening and closing tones of music. The musical heterochronotopias of Goth are virtual spaces, counter-sites that darkly mirror the real world. The embodied musical experience of dance and the visceral pounding of drums and basses ensure a deep corporeal immersion in the reality of a club night. Visitors’ bodies move to the music and, as the flow of dance joins that of musical immersion, gradually also into music, leaving the exchange between music and body the sole operator of temporality and location. Goth music is a sonic journey through the looking glass into non/religious parallel realities.

Non/religious occulture between God and the Devil Although there are many prejudices about Goth’s alleged links with occult religions, this chapter has argued that Goth cannot be thought in terms of distinctive positions, but only as a fluid inbetween-ness. This liminality, which has been conceptualized here as a non/religious occulture, plays out in symbols, spaces and sounds: the scene’s visual and musical aesthetics are suffused with religious imagery; the subculture dwells in religious heterotopias like cemeteries and churches; and music is the liturgy that moves Goth’s non/religious symbols and spaces into the magic zone of Goth’s dark sacrality, which is impossibly perched between transcendence and immanence. German electro-medieval band Tanzwut’s song ‘Tanzwut’ (Labyrinth der Sinne, 2000) succinctly characterizes these musical powers: ‘Inter Deum et Diabolum/Semper musica est’. Goth music moves listeners into a non/religious zone between God and the Devil.

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Chapter 30

Ambient Music Rupert Till

Introduction Ambient music, alongside related forms such as chill out, muzak and easy listening, occupies a generous quantity of real estate in the few record stores that still exist in the twenty-first century. It fulfils a very particular function, providing moments of stillness in a constantly moving world. This chapter explores the relationships of ambient music to religion and new age concepts of spirituality. It questions how ambient music has been used by religion and how it has used religion. In doing so, the chapter examines religion and popular music from the perspective of this genre rather than from the perspective of a religion or religions. This will involve exploring the nature of ambient music, beginning with its prehistory in a range of religious traditions that focus on meditation, ecstatic states and stillness. The development of ambient music will be explored through the integration of a number of elements. These include mysticism, spirituality and Eastern religious thought adopted both from within the popular music-driven counterculture that emerged from the 1960s, and from within experimental art traditions including the music of John Cage and minimalism. Such spiritualities, sometimes associated with the term New Age, reflect a post-secular search for meaning (Bailey 2002). Another element is European electronic music that focused on soundscape and a sense of space, beginning with European experimentalist Karlheinz Stockhausen and the popular music he influenced, including that of Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk. This is explored, although a more detailed historical overview can be read in David Toop’s Ocean of Sound (1995) or Mark Prendergast’s The Ambient Century (2003). These elements merge to create the aesthetic and cultural characteristics of ambient music. The emergence of the term ‘ambient music’ is discussed, including its original definition by Brian Eno. The popularization of ambient music in the 1990s is examined, following the Orb and KLF into the electronic dance music culture (EDMC) and electronica of club chill out rooms. Finally, the religious and spiritual role of ambient music is discussed. Overall, ambient music is examined in context as a genre and a musical style (Fabbri 2012; Moore 2009).

The development of ambient music Ambient music is used by individuals within spiritual practice ‘to create narratives of meaning that help them to understand the world and their place in it’ (Mulcock 2001: 181). Distinctions between the sacred and profane, or sacred and ordinary experiences, are no longer clear. This

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chapter seeks to explore particular experiences related to ambient music, often described as ecstatic and related to trance practices. Rouget (1985: 7) uses the term ‘ecstasy solely to describe one particular type of state – altered states, let us say, attained in silence, immobility, and solitude’. He also discusses a range of spiritual practices that explore ecstatic states, including the meditation practised by Tibetan monks or Christian mystics, the trance rituals of the Wolof of Senegal, Sufi dhikr, Indian yogic samādhi and Japanese mystical nembutsu. Such traditions discuss annihilation in God, abolition of all action and loss of everything (Rouget 1985: 7–8), the still small voice of calm. Ecstasy is characterized by immobility, silence, solitude, no crisis, sensory deprivation, recollection and hallucinations (ibid.: 11). The inner languaging stops (Becker 2004: 29). Such introspective seeking of ecstasy in stillness similarly permeates wider musical cultures. As well as a general background in various ethnographic contexts, ambient music has a specific musical history that is relevant to its religious context. One of the first specific references to ambient music is the work of Erik Satie. The French composer developed the idea of furniture music, music designed to be background music, to play unobtrusively, masking noise without imposing itself, a background for other experiences. Satie’s furniture music was first performed in a theatre intermission (Remes 2014: 448–9), and he carried the same ideas over into music he wrote for film. From its beginning, silent film played background music that provided a counterpoint to the onscreen action. As films developed soundtracks, synchronized music developed that was designed to set the scene, and to ‘communicate what characters played on screen are supposed to be feeling … using music to communicate a certain set of emotions’ (Tagg n.d. discussing the film music functions described by Lissa 1959; see also Chion 2009; Kassabian 2001; Sonnenschein 2001). Film music accustomed audiences to having a soundtrack to life. Without a film to watch, ambient music directs the focus of the listener within. Satie’s theories of furniture music were revived in the 1960s by John Cage, who knew of Satie’s work. Cage also explored Zen Buddhism, embracing the silencing of self and connecting with stillness (Shultis 2013). Cage’s use of silence in his compositions focused listeners’ attention on ambient sound outside of instrumental performance. As a result of Cage’s interest, Satie’s furniture music became better known, especially among minimalist composers. Cage’s music influenced a number of composers who embraced a minimalist aesthetic. Composers such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass mixed Cage’s ideas with influences from Gamelan, Indian classical music and other ethnographic forms, and created a genre that embraced Eastern spirituality alongside a meditative music style (Mertens 1983). Discussing the origins of ambient music, Brian Eno suggests that ‘La Monte Young is the daddy of us all’ (Potter 2002: 91). Young’s long, slowly developing minimalist structures emerged from Javanese, Balinese and Indian music, for Young music is part of a spectrum of vibration that models the temporal structure of the universe. He describes wanting to understand the relationship to universal structure and to time. Even in as simple a way as where do we come from, why are we here and where are we going? …Time is really a very important aspect of universal structure. What I have learned is it goes very slowly. (Young, quoted in Toop 1995: 178–9) Influenced by Young, minimalist pioneer Terry Riley also composed in a spiritual context, using systemic approaches and reduced resources, ‘staying on one note, there’s different ways but that’s 328

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definitely a way to ecstasy’ (Toop 1995: 185). His performances were influenced by peyote and shamanism, and he was involved in all-night musical events focused on improvisation. Riley says: You developed a kind of feeling, like you were a sort of channel for the energy that was coming in from the space. You were all joining together, which was more of a ritual experience (Toop 1995: 186), especially influenced by the spiritual and psychological elements of Indian classical music. Minimalism was an overtly spiritual musical form. It was set in the same countercultural context of an experimental 1960s search for new spiritual paths. German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen played a significant role in this firmament. Both Pierre Schaeffer’s manipulation of sound through tape splicing and sound collage, and John Cage’s exploration of space and silence are important references, but Stockhausen’s early advocacy of the use of electronic musical sources infused popular music in general, and ambient music in particular. Like Cage, Stockhausen saw spirituality and religion as significant within composition. Stockhausen’s compositions aimed to direct attention away from the self and towards the divine, his focus on serializing all elements of music provided a release from the ego, and a connection instead with supraconsciousness, connection beyond oneself. Electronics allowed structure and control to be systematized, reducing human agency, distanced from the composer, and separating audience from performance through recording. His aim was to take elements of the universe, transform them into musical materials and use these to create direct religious experiences and encounters. Much like Young, for Stockhausen, everything in nature, moving and living in its own rhythm is a vibration of the genius of God. … In music, human vibrations form the vibrations of nature in a way which transcends the functions of rational language. (Peters and Schreiber 1999: 101) Electronic music allowed the composer to reflect the order of the universe, controlling frequency spectra, pitch and duration to a level of detail not available with traditional musical instruments, reflecting the divine more accurately, and thus affording a more direct communion with God. Indeed, Stockhausen modelled his approach to composition on the process of God’s creation in the cosmos. (Ulrich 2012: 108). A number of young musicians and composers adopted Stockhausen’s ideas and adapted them for popular music forms. For example, he is pictured on the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). By 1973, a number of popular music artists were making electronic music that included elements of ambient music. The world of late 1960s popular music was linked to these musical and spiritual ideals. A wave of experimentalism influenced bands from the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) in the United Kingdom to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (1966) in the United States. The development and increasingly widespread availability of electronic musical instruments and other sound tools, including synthesizers with keyboards and tape echo units, influenced the soundworld of popular music. Rather than the rhythmic sound of the guitar and drum kit, the sustained tones of the Moog synthesizer and Mellotron afforded different possibilities. The counterculture ‘explored the values of peace and love, communality, creative expression, and Eastern forms of spirituality such as yoga and Buddhism’ (Sylvan 2002: 84). Music by bands such as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the Beatles was at the centre of this scene, placing psychedelic culture in mainstream view. Eastern religious beliefs 329

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were integrated by those returning from travelling (Maclean 2009), as epitomized by the spiritual explorations of the Beatles, manifest in songs such as ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ (Revolver: 1966). The mysticism missing from an increasingly secular Western 1950s culture contrasted with ecstatic experiences within Eastern religious practice, and was embraced by a 1960s culture involving psychedelic drugs and smoking marijuana. The latter encouraged stillness while enhancing sensory input and was particularly associated with popular musicians (Shapiro 1999: 26–54). Pink Floyd brought together a psychedelic mixture of free improvisation, jazz, experimentalism and electronics. Keyboard player Richard Wright had become interested in Stockhausen while studying piano at the London College of Art (Prendergast 2003: 259; Bayles 1996: 222). The band used Binorec tape echo added liberally to guitar and Farfisa organ, were early adopters of the EMS Synthi and VCS3 synthesizers, used found sound recordings of rain and wind, and tape splicing and editing techniques, mixing avant-garde classical and popular music sensibilities. The albums Ummagumma (1969) and Meddle (1971) developed these techniques, with long rambling structures based on the band’s live improvisations, including LSD-driven performances at the UFO club. Pink Floyd’s music is an elegant forerunner to ambient music, with complex structures and production. Dark Side of the Moon (1973) saw a flowering of the band into a full range of detailed experimental and electronic timbres, and Wish You Were Here (1975) featured long sustained motionless ambient textures. These two albums were hugely successful and brought proto-ambient music mass exposure, establishing a significant audience for such music. Christopher Franke joined Edgar Froese’s German psychedelic rock band Tangerine Dream in 1970, a group who were influenced by Pink Floyd’s improvisation and experimentalism. Franke had studied composition at Berlin Conservatory, and was influenced by John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He started to use Moog modular synthesizers to generate sequences of notes, creating a fast hypnotic sound that reflected minimalism, and became the characteristic fingerprint of the band. The group’s early music features few drums, and guitars that are transformed by effects units, moving away from conventional popular music instrumentation towards a purely electronic sound. Their experimentation involved ‘their own research leading directly to sampling technology and sequencing software’ (Prendergast 2003: 286). Franke helped to design the Roland Jupiter 8 synthesizer and left the band eventually to create Steinberg’s Cubase sequencing software, which would become the template for contemporary sequencers and digital audio workstations (Prendergast 2003: 289). Similarly, band member Peter Baumann worked with Emu systems on their electronic instruments and samplers. Synthesizers were highly prominent on the album Alpha Centauri (1971) and were used almost exclusively to produce the albums and Zeit (1972) and Atem (1973). Phaedra (1974) featured the innovative synthesizer sequencer patterns discussed above, which became a characteristic stylistic meme of ambient music, echoing the sequential musical approaches of Indian classical music and Gamelan. Tangerine Dream involved a number of musicians, with founder Edgar Froese the only constant. Like Stockhausen his attitude to composition involved spirituality. He describes how listening to music functions for the listener in relation to spiritual thoughts: It’s first inside you. Then you somehow see it or feel it outside yourself and start reflecting with what you experience first inside. So through that reflection, you somehow get those inside-out exchanges. (Toop 1990: 90–1)

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Tangerine Dream were part of a German experimental music scene that also included the band Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk were influenced by La Monte Young and Terry Riley (Toop 1995: 205) as well as by Stockhausen and the futurists (Flur 2003: 228). Their album Ralf und Florian (1973) relied on drum machines and largely home-made synthesizers, and their next album Autobahn (1974) integrated a Moog synthesizer and was a major success. Their music was overtly electronic, with titles like The Man-Machine (1978) and Computer World (1981). They influenced a wide range of music, including 1980s European synthpop by artists such as Ultravox, the Human League and Duran Duran, and in the United States inspired house and techno music, as well as the electro sounds of hip hop. Labelled ‘Krautrock’ in the media, bands like Kraftwerk, NEU! and Can used repetitive and mechanistic rhythms, elongated structures and electronic sources. Can were formed by Irmin Schmidt. Classically trained, he had worked with Stockhausen and Cage in Darmstadt, and with minimalists Young, Reich and Riley in New York in 1966. (Prendergast 2003: 280). Another band member Holger Czukay had also studied classically, and with Stockhausen, and met Schmidt at Darmstadt. The so-called krautrock bands gained further status when David Bowie adopted their sounds for his Low (1977) and Heroes (1977) albums, produced by Brian Eno in Berlin, who had discovered these German experimental popular minimalists. A year later Eno would recast krautrock as ambient music.

Brian Eno and ambient music Brian Eno was drawn into the world of experimental music by Tom Phillips, who taught him at Ipswich School of Art. Eno became a member of Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Ensemble, a group that performed experimental free improvisation and text scores. His musical origins are confused somewhat by his membership of the band Roxy Music, in which he performed on the VCS3 synthesizer. He was in the band for a short period, and acted as much as producer and sound engineer as band member. He has been associated throughout his career with minimalist and experimental art music composition. Before leaving Roxy Music he had already joined in 1972 the experimental ensemble the Portsmouth Sinfonia, producing their first two recordings. The ensemble’s leader was Gavin Bryars, a British minimalist composer who had studied with John Cage. Eno’s life and work is described in some detail by Sheppard (2008) and Tamm (1995). Eno released an album Another Green World (1975) that used random chance and Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards to structure the music, while staying broadly within a popular music form. In the same year, he opened a record label Obscure Records. Obscure released Eno’s Discrete Music (1975) involving Robert Fripp and Bryars, exploring Terry Riley influenced tape loops with Fripp. Eno also released Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic (1975), and the album Ensemble Pieces (1975) on which Eno performed alongside Cardew and others on compositions by John Adams, Bryars and Christopher Hobbs. In 1978 Eno released the first of a series of four albums labelled Ambient 1 to Ambient 4. The first was Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978). It contained extensive liner notes, in which he defined what he meant by ambient music: I have become interested in the use of music as ambience … using the term Ambient Music. My intention is to produce original pieces ostensibly (but not exclusively) for particular times and situations. … Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.

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Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting. (Eno 1978) Many predecessors, composers, musicians and producers had written music in a similar vein, but Eno did so overtly, setting out a manifesto to deliberately write ambient music, and in doing so established a new genre. As Demers puts it, Eno provides the template for many later works: repetitive, tonal language, an absence of abrasive or abrupt attacks, long decays, and non-teleological writing, as if the melody could continue on indefinitely. (Demers 2010: 117) Eno’s innovations are part of a larger field of (largely) instrumental downbeat music focused on electronic sounds. This included Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells (1973); continuing releases by Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream; film soundtrack albums Chariots of Fire (1981) and Blade Runner (1982) by Vangelis; and Oxygene (1976) by Jean-Michel Jarre, who had studied with Schaeffer at GRM in France, and subsequently with Stockhausen (Remilleux 1988). These sounds colonized commercial music in the 1980s, as British synthpop bands like Japan, the Human League, Cabaret Voltaire, and in Japan the Yellow Magic Orchestra, included instrumental or proto-ambient tracks on their albums. In the same decade, world music developed as a music industry catch all for music from around the globe, for example, the World of Music Arts and Dance (WOMAD) festival and record label emerged from 1980, and the Real Word record label in 1985, both driven forward by Peter Gabriel (http://realworld.co.uk). Releases of music by, for example, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Best of Qawwal and Party Volume 1 1986; Passion 1989) provided a new type of globalized ambient music. The development of digital recording technology, and digital synthesizers provided further opportunities for ambient sound to be explored. Synthesizers became more commonplace, for example, Dire Straits changed from a bluesy guitar-focus to the ambient electronic sounds of ‘Telegraph Road’ (Love Over God 1982). Although a number of musicians explored the same territory as Eno’s ambient music, few worked overtly in the genre. This was to change as a new wave of drug culture exploded in 1988, as the drug ecstasy mixed with electronic dance music and chill out music became the new face of ambient.

Chill out music From 1985 onwards, new forms of electronic music developed in the United States such as house and techno, but with little commercial impact. British DJ Paul Oakenfold, along with friends Johnny Walker, Danny Rampling and Nicky Holloway experienced the interaction of this music with ecstasy (the drug MDMA or ‘E’) while on holiday in Ibiza for his 24th birthday in 1987. They had been to Ibiza before, and would chill out in one of the few west-facing bars on the island, the Cafe Del Mar in San Antonio where watching the sun setting is an Ibiza rite of passage. Taking ecstasy for the first time, they went to the club Amnesia, which featured peripheral chill out areas as well as the dancefloor (Warren 2007). On their return to London they set up club nights trying to recreate their Ibiza experiences. In an upstairs VIP room at his Land of Oz events at the Heaven nightclub in London, Paul Oakenfold and some friends set up a chill out room called the White Room (Reynolds 1999: 189), where dancers could take a break from the intensity and volume of the dancefloor. Oakenfold had only one instruction for the DJs, ‘don’t get them to dance’ (Norris 2007: 135). 332

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Jimmy Cauty and Alex Patterson were the DJs, playing music that avoided drums, using samples, tapes and records as sources, mixing them with sound effects, combining them together as an extended ambient DJ set. This live approach was published in 1989 as the first single by the Orb ‘A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld’ (The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld 1991). The rear of the single proclaimed it ‘ambient house for the E generation’ (Reynolds 1999: 190), underlining the idea of listening to EDMC ambient music under the influence of drugs. Cauty left the Orb, causing some acrimony, as he found greater commercial success with KLF compared to the Orb, using the musical ideas and content he had developed with Patterson. He released Space (1990) and with Bill Drummond released KLF’s Chill Out (1990). Rather than the Orb’s ambient house, KLF coined the term ‘chill out’ and referenced ambient music with ‘file under ambient’ written on a sticker on the cover of an early KLF record. (Toop 1995: 58–63) These releases provided a revised template for electronic ambient music, providing a new term for a new genre, chill out. Both the Orb and KLF were aware of their ambient music predecessors. The Orb’s Alex Patterson had listened to Eno’s album Music for Films (1978) having taken LSD on tour as a roadie with Killing Joke, and was inspired to create similar music (Prendergast 2003: 407–12). He had also worked for Eno’s EG records, who released Eno’s ambient series (Reynolds 1999: 191). KLF sampled Pink Floyd’s ‘On The Run’ (Dark Side of the Moon 1973) on the track ‘Madrugada Eterna’ (Chill Out 1990) and the album this featured on also used synthesizers, Tuvan throat singing, slide guitar, Elvis Presley and lots of found natural sounds, such circadas, wind and waves. The Orb sampled ‘Electric Counterpoint’ (1989) by Steve Reich on their 1990 single ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ (The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld 1991), and their ‘A Huge Ever Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre of the Ultraworld (Loving You)’ (The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld 1991) samples Pink Floyd’s ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ (Wish You Were Here 1975). (Prendergast 2003: 408). This EDMC development was a second overt embracing of the term ‘ambient music’. The music was particularly targeted at clubbers coming down from the night before, congregating after a night dancing. Many other EDMC artists produced downtempo tracks to contrast with their dancefloor material. Warp Records released a range of experimental tracks on Pioneers of the Hypnotic Groove (1991) and Artificial Intelligence (1992) branded compilation albums, leading to the intelligent dance music (IDM) ambient subgenre. Aphex Twin released Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (1992). Another compilation Ambient Dub Volume 1 (The Big Chill) (1992) reflected the influence of Jamaican dub music on EDMC in general, and chill out culture in particular, especially the reverb and echo laden productions of Lee Scratch Perry and King Tubby (Partridge 2010). Ambient house, ambient dub, IDM and chill out developed the field of ambient music. Club chill out rooms proliferated alongside chill out club nights and festivals such as the Big Chill. As Sylvan puts it (2002: 138), ‘There is a rhythmic temporal oscillation between the intensity of the dance floor and the relaxing break of the chill room.’

Ambient music in religion and religion in ambient music Peter Baumann left Tangerine Dream in 1984 to establish the Private Music record label. This initially released new age music, including Tangerine Dream, that overtly integrated spirituality and ambient music. In 1987 the Grammy awards in the United States introduced 333

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an award for best new age recording, establishing new age music as a genre with increasing sales figures. A number of artists with more widespread popularity have been nominated for this category, including Clannad, Enya, Eno, Jean-Michel Jarre, Mike Oldfield and Tangerine Dream. Other artists are more overtly aligned with new age music, such as Don Robertson, Kitaro, Paul Winter and Peter Kater. A number of websites, such as http://www.newagemusic. guide discuss new age music. New age is a difficult term, as it has been applied indiscriminately to a range of disparate groups, alternative spiritualities emerging as a response to the re-enchantment of society (Gablik 1991; Partridge 2005). As Toop (1995: prologue) says of ambient music, ‘Sound was used to find meaning in changing circumstances.’ A more accurate term is self-spirituality, in which the self, rather than the divine is the ultimate source. Heelas et al. (2005) describe this in terms of a turn towards spirituality, rather than religion. The term ‘new age music’ is similarly problematic and ill-defined. New age music often draws upon world music, electronica and ambient music. It is separated from ambient or chill out music principally by presentation, packaging and its sales demographic, rather than by musical style. Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead (2005: 10) discuss religion giving way to spirituality, in ‘a less regulated situation in which the sacred is experienced in intimate relationship with subjectivelives’. As Lynch (2002: 89) states, ‘Western culture could then be seen as becoming increasingly “post-religious,” with the individual search for meaning taking on new and surprising forms.’ Beyond secularization (Bruce 2002; Davie 2007; Martin 2007), new age and ambient music fulfils a continuing need for spiritual exploration within an individuated world featuring the sacred popular (Till 2010). Lynch (2007: 136) describes: The sacralization of the self, in which the struggles, growth and interior life of the individual have developed a sacred quality without any necessary reference to a transcendent sacred or external religious authority. Fields such as popular music genres are also sacralized, and the boundaries between the sacred and profane in everyday life are eroded. Within new age spirituality, ‘the sacred and mundane become newly interfused. … This amounts to a social reconfiguration of the sacred’. (Redden 2011: 657) Numerous musical examples of EDMC ambient music choose to sample music that was originally set in a spiritual context, or uses religious signification. EDMC embraces transcendental or psychedelic experiences and spirituality in much the same fashion as 1960s counterculture (St. John 2004; Till 2009; 2011). MCMXC a.D (1990) by Enigma is an album created by Michael Cretu, a producer based in Ibiza who was caught up in the island’s involvement in the EDMC (Prendergast 2003: 405). The album mixes Gregorian chant with ambient beats and sounds. In the same year band the Beloved sampled a recording by Gothic Voices (1982) of ‘O Eucari’ by mediaeval Christian mystic Hildegarde of Bingen on their song ‘Sun Rising’, a track from the appropriately titled Blissed Out (1990). Such recordings helped to launch a revival of interest in Gregorian and other chant music as ambient listening. If this religious content appears to operate at a somewhat surface level, such appropriation of religious music has afforded religious institutions the use of ambient music, for example within the alternative worship movement of the Christian church, now sometimes subsumed within ‘fresh expressions’, or multisensory church. The Nine O’Clock Service in Sheffield, an Anglican church, used a range of ambient music in services from as early as 1987, including ‘Love on a 334

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Real Train’ (Risky Business 1984) by Tangerine Dream and ‘Someday’ (Ce Ce Rogers 1989). The latter was an underground club hit released as a single by Atlantic in 1987, the first house music to be released on a major label. Like many deep house or garage tracks from New York, the record featured gospel style piano and vocals, the lyrics inspired by the famous Martin Luther King ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. The Nine O’Clock Service (Till 2006) brought many elements of EDMC into their worship services, including DJs, club music, originally produced EDMC-influenced music, lighting, smoke, video and slide projections. Many other groups adopted these ideas, and in particular have used ambient music in services (Wallace 2002; Gay and Baker 2003). Ambient music has its origins in religious music, whether Gregorian or Tibetan chant, Hindu mantras or Sufi prayers, and its relationship with religion and spirituality is thus unsurprising considering its draws from Cage, Stockhausen, minimalism, 1960s counterculture and new age spiritualities, as well as its later placement within EDMC. EDMC activities involve ecstatic merger, communitas, connection, collective effervescence and create powerful emotional experiences (Till 2010: 131–66). Beate Peter (2009) describes EDMC dissolution of self on the dance floor as collective Jungian therapy, aided by the social lubricant of ecstasy (Till 2009). Such behaviour requires space afterwards to process after-effects, an opportunity afforded by chilling out to ambient music, whether in a club or at home. Becker (2004: 38) points out that ‘we sometimes enjoy the feeling of nothing but our own bodies in a space’, ecstatic experience through entrainment and entrancement of the body and mind, perceptions and expectations coordinated by entrainment to what is heard (Turow and Berger 2009). Listening to ambient music can play a part in an ontological experience, focusing on the nature of being and becoming, and of relationship with others. Toop (1995: prologue ii) describes ambient music as drifting or simply existing in stasis rather than developing in any dramatic fashion … encouraging states of reverie and receptivity in the listener … engendered by techniques for disrupting a conventional relationship with time … [O]ften uses multiple time signatures, a range of periodicities, or combinations of groups of prime numbers of beats. Alternatively … disrupted by a lack of musical beat. The musical style of ambient music affords a sense of kairos, or qualitative time, rather than chronos, quantitative time. A non-teleological musical approach allows pause, the creation of place and the opportunity to slow the frantic pace of life for a moment. A Western world characterized by stress and fear, a fluid post- or liquid culture in which it is difficult to find one’s place, has led many towards a sense of the homeless self (Heelas and Woodhead 2001). Ambient music sets a context, a sense of place that is calming and serene, re-establishing a sense of home. It draws the listener inwards, stilling time and moving the deep listener into a sense of kairos, to a greater or lesser extent. Even when ambient music is being largely ignored by the listener, the music is fulfilling this function, helping to set a scene, situating those who are listening to or ignoring the music. Describing ecstatic trances, Becker (2004: 27) tells us that by enveloping the trancer in a soundscape that suggests, invokes, or represents other times and distant spaces, the transition out of quotidian time and space comes easier. … One is moved from the mundane to the supra-normal: another realm, another time. 335

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Popular culture, and more specifically popular music culture, fulfils with ambient music a need for music that provides a soundtrack for those seeking a range of ecstatic states. The music focuses on stillness, on engaging with nothingness, setting an atmosphere and turning space into place. Yi-Fu Tuan (1977: 6) defines space and place. Whereas space allows movement, the contextualized place is stillness; ‘each pause in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place.’ Cresswell (2004: 11) describes places as contextualized spaces: Place is also a way of seeing, knowing and understanding the world. When we look at the world as a world of places … we see attachments and connections between people and place. We see worlds of meaning and experience. In a similar way, Demers relates ambient music to space that is situated, and the listening context of the audience, ‘not only the environments in which sound propagates but also those that listeners physically and metaphorically occupy’ (2010: 113). She describes listening space in ambient music as ‘a composite of the perceived spatial characteristics of a work’ (116), an emotional elicitation similar in concept to that within film music. For Demers ‘ambient music excels at creating the impression of an acoustic cocoon that surrounds the listener’ (119). Contextual consciousness of sound in space, transforms it into place. When listening to the time-based medium of sound in a specific place, we pause but do not stop, embedded within its soundscape (Till 2014). Listening to ambient music helps to turn a neutral, physical space into a contextualized, meaningful place, the music interacting with external sonic references (blanketing or absorbing them), disrupting a conventional sense of time by inserting its own free association with temporality. Ambient music is highly functional; it interacts with a habitus (Bourdieu 1977) of listening that is specific to the individual but relates to the field of the genre. It ranges along a spectrum from background atmosphere, to assisting in loss of self. This operates in a similar fashion to Hindustani music focused upon meditation, in which music listening is focused upon ‘refining of emotional essence, a distillation of his or her emotion that will lead to a transformation of consciousness to a higher level of spirituality … closer to the divine’ (Becker 2004: 76). Just like in ambient music, silent, still, focused listening is also the habit in some other musical traditions, notably the north Indian Hindustani tradition, where one sits quietly, introspectively listening to the gradual developing filigree of the musical structure. … Thoughts and feelings are turned inward. The setting is intimate, conducive to introspection and a distancing from one’s fellow listeners. (Becker 2004: 69) Becker describes such participants as deep listeners, characterized by expressions of transcendence and gnosis, in which out-of-body sensations abound, featuring nearness to the sacred, loss of boundaries between self and other, experiences of wholeness and unity. Ambient music embraces such embodied phenomenological listening. At its best, as Becker puts it, such musical experiences are a special blessing, a benediction … a life-enhancing skill … with the resulting intensely felt emotion and feelings of transcendent numinosity … to temporarily abide in an

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eternity … to feel more purposefully alive and in direct communication with the Holy … in an enchanted world. (2004: 195). With its effectiveness enhanced by the religious practices of alternative spiritualities or the drug-taking of EDMC, this music has for many become an important part of everyday sacred popular self-spiritualities. Whether encountered during an intense meditation session, or while shopping in a supermarket, ambient music plays a part in re-enchanting our daily lives.

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Chapter 31

Popular Music and the Religious Screen Mark Evans and Brent Keogh

In the beginning was the Word, And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word dwelt amongst us as Alanis Morisette.1

Introduction When thinking back to some of the epic film texts that come out of the Christian tradition, the sound that is most prominent is the orchestra. Not only does orchestral music have the power to coalesce the many people, places and time periods represented by movies like The Ten Commandments (Morris 2014), but it also has the power to represent the ethereal, spiritual realm. Popular music’s accompaniment to the religious screen has been much more limited, and in part, fraught. Like the music itself, there has been a dearth of research around the intersection between religious film and television, and popular music. While volumes like this one add considerable weight to the body of work concerning religion and popular music, and though religion and film have long been paired together, the sonic element has largely been overlooked. Indeed, very little has been written on the use of music in sacred/religious film and television, let alone the use of popular music. The definition of what constitutes a religious film or television text is a complex and convoluted space (see Kozlovic 2007), and not one that this chapter is concerned with. Rather, we would prefer to consider instances of popular music’s insertion into various screen texts, and what that tells us about the place and practice of popular music. Stewart Hoover has noted that recent years have produced a marked turn away from institutionalized religions toward more autonomous, individual forms of the search for spiritual meaning. Film, television, the music industry, and the Internet are central to this process, cutting through the monolithic assertions of world religions and giving access to more diverse and fragmented ideals. (Hoover 2006: 2) This obviously creates many opportunities for popular music to influence spiritual leanings. One cannot ignore the long history of the commercial and religious intersection; indeed, ancient temples were routinely commercial centres. However, despite this long history of the commodification of the sacred, as Pradip (2009) notes, ‘it is in the context of contemporary capitalism that it has become a ubiquitous aspect of popular culture’ (67).

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This chapter aims to consider what part popular music is playing amidst this commodification. For reasons of space, we will necessarily restrict observation mainly to filmic and televisual texts connected with Christian traditions. Though, in following Hoover above, we are also concerned with those moments where popular music has been employed to engage and foster more individualistic spiritualities.

Popular music for purpose In Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue, Robert Johnston (2006) devotes one chapter to the simultaneous treatment of music and image. While not contributing much that several decades of film sound studies hasn’t already explored in depth, he does assert that music ‘is increasingly being recognized by those writing in the area of theology and film [as] more than inaudible Muzak, [or] background filler of dubious artistic merit’ (2006: 178). As noted above, much of this pertains to orchestral score, which has dominated in religious film texts in any case. While orchestral score has allowed films to more easily create transcendent possibilities, particularly when evoking grand Wagnerian leitmotifs – equally true for biblical epics (Morris 2014) or ethereal Jedi forces (Hickman 2006) – there are other issues at play as well. Most pertinent is the safety of orchestral score. Popular music brings with it an attendant set of baggage (cultural, historical, political, racial etc.) that can cloud or even alter the religious message. Yet the extra identifications present in popular music can, we would argue, make it an even more powerful vehicle for the transmission of religious ideas. This is true with or without the presence of lyrics. Johnston (2006) goes on to note, in his study of the relationship between film and theology, that ‘movies [are] both a medium for “critical analysis of theological ideas” and a medium to “provoke religious experience,” as allowing theological questions and as being sacramental’ (2006: 240). We turn now to look at those instances of popular music provoking religious experience, and perhaps the most obvious genre within Christian messages is gospel music.

Gospel markers Sister Act I (Directed by Emile Ardolino, 1992) and Sister Act II: Back In The Habit (Directed by Bill Duke, 1993) represent one of the most successful attempts at using popular music to provoke and revive religious experience. The soundtracks to both films contain a number of what could be considered canonic soul, rhythm and blues and gospel tunes. While both films play with the idea of popular music as rebellious and the cause of ‘moral panic’, the films represent popular music more as a force that brings people together. There is a sense of an inverted salvation occurring in these films. Where one would expect the religious order to offer salvation to the secular casino singer, she instead is responsible for the ‘salvation’ of the religious practitioners in both their daily devotion and their mission. The inverted salvation of the church through popular music is also the salvation of the ‘white’ church through ‘black’ popular and gospel music. In this light, Sister Act I could be seen as a story in which the church receives salvation from an injection of specifically black secular popular music. The story plays on the traditional role of the church as a place of sanctuary for those in need (in this case the church assists Doloris, who has been placed in a witness protection programme). However, it inverts this theme through the character of Doloris, a casino singer from Reno. While heavily resistant to the strict regime of the convent, 339

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Doloris eventually gets involved in reinvigorating the church choir. Doloris’ arrangements of traditional church hymns, while obviously reflecting the Motown influences so prominent in the film, also reflect the stylistic features of black gospel traditions. As a result, Doloris is responsible for taking the music, her fellow nuns and the gospel of love and compassion to the streets. This theme plays on a familiar theological tension concerning the role of the church; contrary to the isolation from the world characterized by monastic traditions, the reinvigorated church community embraces a more missional approach, of being ‘both in the world but not of it’ (John 17). The result is that the nuns receive a renewed sense of purpose as they minister to the community. Attendance at church goes from just a few people to a packed house, climaxing with the Pope attending the local San Franciscan church. Sister Act II repeats the inverted narrative of salvation that occurs in the first film. The Nuns have started teaching in a high school as part of the initiative to get out into the community as established in the previous film. However, the kids are pretty unruly, and they once again enlist the help of Doloris to help connect, engage with the youth and ultimately save the school from closing due to financial and political pressure. Similar to Sister Act I, Sister Act II is a narrative about the possibilities of popular music to induce positive character transformation, of bringing communities together, including religious and secular communities, but also intergenerational reconciliation as dramatically staged in the relationship between Rita (Lauryn Hill) and her mother. Popular music here, albeit a slightly radical choice for the church choir, is a safe mechanism to convey meaning. The songs used are already wrapped in religious tone, and more often it is simply vibrant arrangements (by Marc Shamin) that transform the life of the music. Despite this, there is no mistaking the power of the songs to reach an audience. Sister Act I would gross over US$130 million from an estimated budget of US$31 million. The formulaic approach to incorporating gospel music does open up the possibility of parody. And, while these are often more statements about the nature of contemporary Christian music as it attempts to crossover into the world of popular music, they nonetheless cast some comment religion’s foray into popular music. One of the most recognized examples that parodies Christian music texts is the episode ‘Christian Hard Rock’ [Series 7 Episode 9, 2003] from the animated television series South Park. In this episode, the character Cartman creates a Christian rock band in an effort to create a high-selling album. As Clark observed: Cartman chooses the genre of Christian music for his band because he believes Christians are gullible and easily persuaded into buying a product simply because it has a Christian label or Christian lyrics, regardless of how superficially religious the message. After quickly securing a record deal, Cartman’s band makes a television commercial in which he sings a few lines from a number of cheesy love songs that treat Jesus as the object of the singer’s romantic feelings. (2012: 14) There are two dominant themes critiqued by the South Park writers here. The first is the (ever) growing commercialization of Christianity. In discussing a range of possible research avenues at the launch of the Journal of Media and Religion, Thomas Lindlof observed: Religiously inflected cultural products valued in the billions of dollars are now produced and distributed by publishers, bookstores, recorded music divisions, video companies, television networks, and other media companies. Many of these products are targeted 340

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solely for the evangelical Christian market, but a growing number of them … demonstrate crossover appeal to a broader consumer base. Even the mainstream entertainment industry is taking the ‘faith market’ more seriously than before, with overtly religious characters and themes featured in movies and primetime television series. (Lindlof 2002: 62) Religious characters and themes might be one thing, but music is another. Lindlof here refers to the crossover market, the desire for Christian (and really any religious) artist to cross over into the mainstream market. Apart from generating huge sales, this is also seen to help amplify the religious message. There is an inherent evangelical quality, or at least an evangelical ambition to these texts. This is exactly what Cartman taps into. But his music is commenting on another feature of religious popular music, in this case the romantic objectification of Jesus in contemporary Christian music. This is an area much debated within congregational music studies and other emerging disciplines (see Evans 2006; Nichols 2008). The prevalence of the debate and the market reach of the product make this ripe for parody. That Cartman is able to achieve massive success simultaneously lambasts the music product and those that consume it.

Racial markers Popular music has also been used as a racial marker in religious film. This is evident in the 2011 film The Help (Directed by Tate Taylor). The story focuses around the relationship between a young journalist Eugena Pheelan/‘Skeeter’ (Emma Stone) and Aibileen (Viola Davis), the hired help in a white home. Skeeter decides she wants to interview and write a book from the perspective of The Help – black maids/cooks/nannies who serve wealthy white people. While The Help is primarily a story concerning race relations in Jackson, Mississippi, strong religious themes are woven into this narrative of race, including an implicit critique of a white racist Christianity versus a sincere black Christianity. The lead characters themselves (at least Aibileen and Minny played by Octavia Spencer) are compelled to progressive political action by their preacher, as he extols the virtues of bravery and love, even for their enemies. In this way, The Help presents a powerful, religiously motivated account of race relations in the American South, and uses popular music to identify and mediate these relationships. As per other films set in the American South, such as the Coen Brother’s film O Brother Where Art Thou? (Mazur 2011: 137), popular music is used to identify the film’s temporality and locality. Songs such as Ray Charles’s ‘Hallelujah I Love Her So’, Bo Diddley’s ‘Hey! Bo Diddley’ and ‘Sherry’ performed by The Four Seasons are used to this effect. Johnny Cash and June Carter’s ‘Jackson’ is an obvious place marker, though through the lyric ‘I’m going to Jackson, look out Jackson town’, the song also prophetically identifies the role that journalist Skeeter plays in exposing the racism and exploitation of black people in Jackson. The movie also makes use of a familiar trope in associating Bob Dylan’s ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ (from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, 1963) with the progressive politics of Skeeter. The song plays as Skeeter’s boyfriend breaks up with her on account of publishing the book The Help. While many of these songs are quite obvious and almost clichéd choices for situating the film in this time period, the music itself reflects the racial tensions of its time. With segregated performance spaces, distinct radio channels for the music of black musicians, and rock ’n’ roll itself being seen as the white appropriation of black music, the popular music industry was a 341

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racially charged and structured enterprise (Peterson 1990: 99; Roy 2004: 268). This atmosphere is reflected at a number of points in the film, notably when the rock ’n’ roll song ‘Carolina’ by Justin Tapp is performed by an all-black band for an all-white ball. The trope of the black entertainer (in this case the rock ’n’ roll musician) is temporarily overturned at a key moment in the film. Minny had previously got her revenge on Celia by baking her a pie containing hidden excrement and watching her eat it (with great satisfaction). Celia’s mother laughed hysterically as she watched Minnie explain to Celia the contents of the pie, to which Celia responded by putting her mother in a nursing home. At a fundraiser for one of Celia’s foundations, Chubby Checker’s ‘Let’s Twist Again’ is used non-diegetically as Celia (Jessica Chastain) realizes that her mother has donated $200 for just two slices of Minny’s pie. The rock ’n’ roll number, a favourite of white dance balls, is almost reclaimed in this moment as the woman who had built separate bathrooms for the help for ‘sanitary reasons’ is forced to remember that she had been contaminated by ‘eating Minny’s shit’. The final scene of the movie again presents a powerful use of popular music in the intersection of race and religion. The scene features the main character Aibileen as she is fired on account of Celia’s accusation that she had stolen from her employer. Aibileen delivers a scathing critique of Celia, describing her as a ‘godless woman’. She says goodbye to the child she has been caring for and walks out of the house to the tune of ‘The Living Proof’, written specifically for the final scene by noted rhythm and blues singer Mary J Blige (available on her 2011 album, My Life II … The Journey Continues (Act 1)). The lyrics of the song reflect on the hardships faced by the characters, but also focus on hope for a better future, which reflects Aibileen’s decision to take up professional writing.

Spatial markers As mentioned above, the Coen brothers film O Brother Where Art Thou? uses popular music to place the film geographically. Set in the North American Deep South, the film oozes religion. Yet the story itself is based on Homer’s Odyssey. As T Bone Burnett, the musical mastermind behind the film, noted in his acceptance speech for ‘Album Of The Year’ at the 2002 Grammy Awards: ‘James Joyce said that if you took any town in the world, as a whole, that the entire odyssey of Ulysses would be repeated in that town every day’ (quote in Marshall 2003: 214). What is not repeated is the particular character, pressure and sound of every town. Though featuring safe gospel music akin to other religious films, O Brother Where Art Thou? uses accent and acapella arrangements to speak specifically to a temporal location. But Mazur has observed far more at stake here, with the popular music of the film striking at larger narratives: The true theme of O Brother, Where Art Thou? is American mythology. Set in the Deep South during the Great Depression, the film portrays the electrification of the South by the WPA, the career of the bank robber ‘Babyface’ Nelson, the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan, and the bluesman who makes a deal with the Devil … there is yet another layer of mythology – this one quite serious and based on sound historical research. This is the origin myth of American popular music and, one might argue, of America itself. O Brother reveals this origin as a miscegenation: a mix of black and white cultures (the protagonists are mistaken for black), folk and commercial cultures (their success on the quest is tied to

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their recording a hit song), and the sacred and secular (we hear the same music used for political campaigns and for religious revivals). (Mazur 2011: 139) So clearly more is at stake than merely geographical location. However, the spatial markers here give the film-makers the chance to comment on broader themes and to achieve that through the popular music (in this case performed) throughout the film. Herein lies the value of popular music in religious screen texts, to bring more than a purely theological commentary. Whole other narratives can be embedded simply through the diegetic or non-diegetic involvement of popular music. One of the more developed ways that popular music is used in religious screen texts is to assist the transition to new spaces. Oftentimes religion is posited on the quest for new spiritual enlightenment – including personal transformation and journey, sense of peace or altered state of consciousness – or even ‘places’ of spiritual freedom and worship: Mecca, Jerusalem, and the Ganges are the most obvious examples, and in the metaphysical realm, heaven as variously described in by the world’s religions. Popular music has the ability to present these abstract places or states of being, and to make them feel real or attainable to audiences. Of course, one of the most challenging depictions is always the dark side of religion, hell or its equivalent. As Matalon notes: ‘How does one visualize, represent, depict or imagine hell? What are the limits of depicting human suffering especially when the scene is recreated along with a set, costume, casting and a musical score?’ (2009: 240). When Constantine (Keanu Reeves) transports into hell (Constantine, directed by Francis Lawrence, 2005) he is accompanied by a mediocre contemporary score that is most influenced by ominous sound effects rather than any true attempt to depict the surroundings. While the visuals burn and seethe with horror and despair, the soundtrack seems incapable of replicating the visual abyss. In this instance popular music could have provided a far more provocative setting for the viewer/listener to engage with. An example of a religious journey movie that does attempt to utilize the potential of popular music is The Book of Eli (directed by the Hughes Brothers, 2010). In this post-apocalyptic film, Eli (played by Denzel Washington) is on a divine quest to protect and transmit the last copy of the Bible (King James Version) to an unknown place. As he walks west, his quest is obstructed by a local warlord who seeks to use the power of the Book as a means to bring the townspeople (largely illiterate) under his complete control. Eli eventually manages to produce a copy of the Book with the help of Solara (Mila Kunis), where it is stored among the other great books of humankind, including religious texts such as the Qur’an. While popular music is used sparingly throughout the film, when it features, the songs and references express powerful religious significations and drive the film’s narrative. The sparing use of popular music, reflecting the scorched earth and minimal resources left for the remaining people who live on the earth, actually contributes to its powerful effect in the narrative and provides a contrast from the future world of the character to our own present time. Where popular music consumption in the present is ubiquitous, cheap and taken for granted, in the post-apocalyptic world popular music is costly, scarce and highly prized. The value of popular music is (ironically) symbolized in the film by an iPod. The iPod is one of Eli’s most prized possessions. The value of the iPod is clearly demonstrated as Eli barters and risks mortal danger in order to get his iPod charged when he visits the main town. It is also part of Eli’s nightly ritual of reading the Bible and listening to his iPod. The first use of popular music in The Book of

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Eli comes as Eli settles down for the evening, plugs in his ear phones and listens to Al Green’s ‘How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?’ Like the Hebrew psalms, popular music in this instance is used to communicate Eli’s own personal pain, but also the pain of the world around him, so unimaginably great, seemingly beyond the possibility of healing. The only answer to Green’s question lies in transporting the Book west. A key moment in the film occurs when Eli is trying to convey the concept of faith to his travelling companion Solara. Rather than refer to the biblical text, around which the whole narrative pivots, Eli instead defers to popular music to achieve his purpose. He explains that faith is: Eli: ‘… the flower of life in the field of darkness that’s giving me the strength to carry on, you understand?’ Solora: ‘Is that from your book?’ Eli: Nah, its Johnny Cash, live from Folsom Prison. The use of Johnny Cash in this instance provides a moment of relief in an otherwise tense film, but the use of popular music here also opens up a number of communicative channels. Popular music in this instance creates connections with a time period pre-Apocalypse, a time where people were ‘more civilised,’ though perhaps ignorant of the horrific consequences of such a civilisation. It also invokes the redemption narrative of Johnny Cash himself, who is well known for his drug addictions and subsequent conversion to Christianity. As with Johnny Cash and the prisoners he was singing to, the post-apocalyptic world of the Book of Eli has the potential to be redeemed, to be liberated from the dire consequences of human action through divine restoration. In The Book of Eli, popular music serves as a nostalgic, sometimes chilling reminder of the time before the ‘apocalypse’. At certain points in the film, this nostalgia is sorrowful, as per the example of Al Green, but at other points it is both humorous and disturbing. As Eli and Solara escape from the local warlord to find a safe place to deposit the Book, they stop at an old farm run by the elderly couple George and Martha. As they knock on the door and enter the house, ‘Ring My Bell’ by Anita Ward is playing on an old phonograph. The song provides humour, simply because it is so unexpected and that it so clearly points to what must be a rare occurrence for George and Martha – strangers knocking on their door. The song acquires darker meanings when it dawns on Eli that George and Martha are actually cannibalists. This nostalgic and kitsch tune becomes the soundtrack and sadistic lure used to ensnare unsuspecting travellers.

Machine Gun Preacher Machine Gun Preacher (directed by Marc Forster 2011) is perhaps not a film one would expect to feature in this discussion of popular music and religious film. The preacher, Sam Childers, (Gerard Butler) is not the kind of person that one would associate with the ideal pastor. Childers is a violent man, a criminal, a drug addict, and shows abusive tendencies towards his wife and daughter. However, the film tells a religious narrative of redemption and mission. It is also an intriguing film due to its ideological work that aligns strongly with both conservative Christianity and right-wing politics in America. 344

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The film begins by painting Childers as the archetypal ‘bad guy’. The genre of hard rock in the film is used to quickly associate Sam with a certain type of life, namely his former ‘godless’ life of drug addiction and crime. A number of canonical hard rock songs – Deep Purple’s ‘Child in Time’, Lynard Skynard’s ‘Saturday Night Special’ (which was released in 1976 as the B-side to ‘Sweet Home Alabama’) and Y & T’s ‘Dirty Girl’ – are played during scenes in the movie that involve hard drug use, pubs, violence and murder. Hard rock is mostly used non-diegetically, as though it were simply the soundtrack to a life of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Childers’s life of crime and violence is disrupted on a number of fronts that ultimately lead to his conversion. His wife, a former stripper, refuses to go back to working in bars, has got a ‘clean’ job, and has evidently found faith in God. In a series of near-death experiences, Childers’s reluctantly attends church with his wife and he too accepts Jesus and is baptized. This radical change in his life is accompanied by a change in the music that surrounds him; hard rock is replaced with traditional hymns, gospel songs and African ‘world’ music. The African ‘world’ music is significant in the film, because it corresponds to the ‘world’ mission of the church, a mission that is taken up by Childers as he goes on a short-term mission to Africa with the aim of helping the locals to build schools and orphanages. Hard rock only features prominently again in the film when Childers experiences a crisis of faith, as ZZ Top’s ‘Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers’ provides the soundtrack to a violent Childers caught up in a bar brawl. While this film at first glance might not be what one would expect of a religious film (it is a far cry from a biblical film such as Exodus!), Machine Gun Preacher follows a very archetypal redemption narrative and uses popular music to convey this clear distinction between pre- and post-conversion. Like the ‘man with no name’ in Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider, Childers’s violent past appears to be something he cannot escape. Historically situated around the Kony 2012 campaign and the activities of the LRA in South Sudan, Childers’s makes a decision in Africa to take up arms against these military groups, and to protect the people from genocide and torture. Notably, the film tells a religious narrative that is close to the union of right-wing politics and religion in America. Ideologically, the film takes a pro-gun, pro-violence, pro-Christian stance. Guns are present all the way through the film, from his former life of crime and drug addiction through to his conversion and missionary work in Sudan. This fits the NRA mantra that the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, a mantra embodied in the redemption narrative of Childers who is both these ‘guys’ at distinct points in his life. The ‘good guy with a gun’ is clearly depicted in the film in the relationship between Childers and a pacifist aid worker. They disagree as to the method and use of violence to help war-torn Sudan, but when the aid worker attempts to negotiate her way across a bridge and is about to be killed, Childers comes to the rescue. Once again, it is the gun-toting Christian North American that saves the day. This story in a sense provides a microcosm of America’s violent intervention in sovereign nations around the world, justifying the intervention in orientalist terms that pit a righteous ‘Christianity’ versus an oppressive ‘Islam’ (Said 1978).

Conclusion Popular music is yet to take a firm footing in religious film and television soundtracks. Despite the swathe of research outlining the power of popular music in soundtrack construction (Inglis 2003; Smith 1998; Wojcik and Knight 2001), religious texts remain enamoured with orchestral 345

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and instrumental scoring. Perhaps this provides the ‘safer’ option, free from connotations of the world, free from the extra-textual messages that come with popular music. Where popular music is present it often falls into stereotypes: hard rock music to showcase sin and depravity; gospel music to highlight the enlightenment of the church, electronic dance music to highlight the dangers of (drug-fuelled) dance parties; or, at best, blatant lyrical connections that speak of journey and self-discovery. Of course, there is a broad world of popular music and huge diversity in religious screen texts – especially when various religions are considered. As such there is a power in popular music that could enhance religious messaging in films. Movies like Machine Gun Preacher, although partly stereotypical in approach, should be recognized for its no-holes-barred approach. Its soundtrack is raw, real, popular music-driven and as a result the film demands a reflection from the audience. If the popular music that surrounds us is so dangerous, what is the alternative?

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Chapter 1 1 In the context of universities, similar tertiary institutions and other organizations that carry out research involving human subjects, a code of ethics will typically apply. Those intending to carry out research involving human subjects will need to familiarize themselves with this code of ethics and make the necessary application for ethical clearance before commencing their research.

Chapter 3 1 ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing, often referred to as “The Negro National Anthem,” was set to music by the poet’s brother,’ John Rosamond Johnson, in 1899.

Chapter 5 1 See also Negus (1992) on sexism in the internal workings of the music industry, and Cohen (1992) on sexist assumptions among local bands in Liverpool. Cohen’s analysis of the connection of these assumptions with ideologies of rock and pop, reality and play, purity and ‘selling out’, is consistent with mine in this chapter. 2 On the Rolling Stones and masculinity, see Gracyk (2001: ch. 1). 3 Many other popular music scholars have also criticized the interwoven genre and gender hierarchies that structure the popular music field – see, among others, Bannister (2006), Coyle and Dolan (1999), Frith and McRobbie (2007), Knightley (2001), Leach (2011), Shuker (2001: ch. 7).

Chapter 6 1 Lennon’s views on religion are of interest not least because of the enormous influence his music has on later songwriters. On the reception of his ideas about religion by post-John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band musicians, see Gilmour 2015. 2 There are many examples of musicians using their art as a platform to express religious commitments. The recent albums from Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) are a case in point (An Other Cup, 2006; Roadsinger, 2009; Tell ‘Em I’m Gone, 2014). 3 On diverse theoretical approaches to the intersections of religion and popular culture, see Klassen 2014. For wide-ranging discussion about the Bible specifically in popular culture, including several chapters on music, see Culbertson and Wainwright, eds. 2010. 4 She may also intend listeners familiar with the Sermon on the Mount to remember that just a few verses later Jesus calls for a non-violent response to enemies (Matt. 5.39). 5 In a different song on the same album she asks, ‘If there’s a God where is he now’ (‘Shine Over Babylon’), which seems to indicate a secular point of reference. 6 For a primer on the genre and theological considerations of the blues masters’ work, including Patton, Burnett (2014) is essential reading.

Notes

7 According to Thompson, the line ‘was a direct reference to his album’s most special guests’ (2012: 110–11). 8 ‘If the light of a thousand suns suddenly arose in the sky, that splendor might be compared to the radiance of the Supreme Spirit’ (11.12; taken from Mascaró, 2003: 53). 9 For further discussion on the use of apocalyptic imagery in heavy metal, see Till 2012. On Iron Maiden specifically, note pp. 105–106.

Chapter 7 1 Another way of putting this is to say the locus of significance is primarily situated ‘behind’, ‘within’ or ‘in front of’ the work. These three categories correspond to the major theoretical approaches to the study of music and emotion, which centre on expression, resemblance and arousal or affect. 2 For an illuminating discussion of various ways in which artworks might be related to or enjoyed ‘in God’, see Burch Brown (2000: 117ff.). Several of Burch Brown’s categories – such as dedicating or consecrating something to God – highlight the role of the subject’s disposition in determining a religious dimension. See also Wolterstorff (1980) for a sustained defence of ‘intentionality’ as a criterion of aesthetic and religious significance. 3 This way of thinking has precedents in the socio-political sphere (the political philosopher Michael Oakeshott proposed that we should think about human conduct in terms of ‘adverbial’ conditions rather than ‘substantive’ practices); though it also has a theological precedent in the work of Augustine, whose famous distinction between ‘frui’ and ‘uti’ evinces a sort of ‘adverbial’ logic and who argues more pervasively in The City of God that the realm to which we ultimately belong is determined not according to what we love but according to the kind of love we exhibit. 4 Building on psychological models of ‘extended cognition’ – in which the human organism is linked with something in its external environment in a way that constitutes a sort of coupled system – Joel Krueger has developed a related theory of the ‘musically extended mind’, which views music as part of a ‘brain-body-music’ assemblage or a relationally constituted extended system, by means of which certain experiences are realized (Krueger 2013). For a parallel discussion of music as a ‘prosthetic’ augmentation of the listener’s body, which enhances, configures and extends its capacities, see DeNora (2000). 5 See Brown (2007), Viladesau (2000) and Burch Brown (2000). 6 Marion’s theory distinguishes between created phenomena not in terms of their substantive properties but in terms of their function or the comportment they engender. Thus, any phenomenon can function as an idol – irrespective of its content – if the gaze it elicits terminates in and is exhausted by its object, just as any phenomenon can function as an icon – again, irrespective of its content – if it orients the gaze beyond itself towards the unenvisageable divine. See Marion (1991). 7 According to Ricoeur’s ‘revelatory’ construal of poetic discourse, the locus of significance doesn’t lie ‘behind’ or ‘within’ the text – which is to say, it isn’t primarily a matter of authorial intention or pre-existing correspondence. Instead, it has a ‘cataphoric’ referentiality, in that it opens up a world ‘in front of’ the text, which it summons the reader to bring into being. See Ricoeur (2008). 8 For a good discussion of the neglect of affective revelatory experiences of God’s presence outside the church and the need for a countervailing openness to aesthetic experiences of ‘general revelation’, see Johnston (2014). 9 William Dyrness has put forward a sharp critique of Begbie’s approach, which highlights the neglect of such concerns: according to Begbie’s account ‘music is still only metaphor; it is a giver of insight. But perhaps … it be can be something more. Can it perhaps be a kind of icon, transparent to its eternal ground? Can it perhaps stop us in our tracks and make us aware of a Presence before which we may be transformed?’ (2011: 151).

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10 A detailed discussion of Adorno and Scruton’s views – which there isn’t space to consider here – is offered in Hopps (forthcoming). 11 While Begbie pointedly avoids discussion of popular music – and gives the impression he considers it to be an inferior art form that is of little or no religious significance – his pioneering work on theology and music has nonetheless had an influence on the field. Broadly speaking, the alternative I am proposing may be summarized as follows. Whereas Begbie’s approach is ‘anaphoric’, in that his evaluation of music’s significance looks backwards to a template of predetermined correspondences (equating particular musical structures with certain Christological postulates), I wish to advocate a more ‘cataphoric’ approach – that doesn’t ignore but isn’t exclusively focused on ‘intrinsic’ significance – which is oriented more towards the world ‘in front of’ the text, in recognizing the openness of music’s affects and in allowing its significance to be determined in part by its functions and uses. 12 In 2005, The Guardian ran a feature about ‘A new breed of rock star: quietly Christian’ (Gibson and Barkham 2005), and in 2015 there were articles in The Believer and Consequence of Sound on the prevalence of ‘the spiritual in indie’ (Berman 2015) and the ‘new wave of Christian indie rock’, which was opening up ‘nuanced discussions of faith inside a largely secular genre’ (Sackllah 2015). For an excellent account of contemporary ‘re-enchantment’, which includes a discussion of popular music, see Partridge (2004). 13 Charles Taylor has described this weakened diffusion of religious faith as a ‘nova effect’ – which vividly captures the explosive profusion of possible positions – whose defining characteristics are fragmentation, pluralization and fragilization. See Taylor (2007). 14 In my account of the ‘post-secular’, I am indebted to McClure (2007). 15 One can also liberate this sort of in-between space from the opposite direction, in moving away from rather than towards the religious, as in the ‘Christ-haunted’ work of the American indie singer-songwriter David Bazan – whose solo recordings, after a loss of faith, continue anxiously to wrangle with religious questions – or perhaps even the music of Metallica, whose lyrics have been characterized as a ‘theological atheism’. For a discussion of the latter, see Mertens (2005). 16 The band have themselves referred to music as a ‘strange religion for non-believers’ (liner notes to Fleet Foxes). 17 See ‘The Shrine/An Argument’ and ‘Bedouin Dress’ on Helplessness Blues (2011). 18 See, for example, ‘The Place I Live’ from Clear Moon (2012), ‘Lost Wisdom Pt. 2’ or ‘Between Two Mysteries’ from Wind’s Poem (2009), which contains musical allusions to ‘Laura Palmer’s Theme’. 19 Dante speaks of a ‘good sorrow’ that ‘remarries us to God’ (Purgatorio, XXIII, 81). 20 Begbie’s approach to music assumes that religious significance is solely a matter of doctrinal correspondence, so he interprets any divergence from his Christological template as a defect. (See Begbie (2000: 145–6) and (2007a: 175), in which he criticizes the music of Tavener and Messiaen for its failure to match up with his theological criteria.) He also adopts a curiously ‘all or nothing’ attitude towards religious content, arguing that only music that evokes all three days of Easter should be endorsed by Christians, and that religious music which doesn’t do this should be denounced as pathologically ‘sentimental’ (2007b: passim). I thus disagree with Begbie on three principal counts: first, I want to advocate a wider conception of religious significance that, in addition to matters of ‘content’, takes cognizance of what music does; secondly, I wish to argue that music that only evokes some aspect of the Christian story may still be of service from a religious point of view (though I would also maintain, against Begbie’s one-sided interpretation, that even ‘sentimental’ music may serve a positive religious function); and thirdly, I want to suggest that artistic divergence on matters of doctrine may have a salutary productive dimension. Indeed, aside from the evangelical advantages of ‘weakened’ or abbreviated engagements with theological issues – which may challenge, intrigue or accommodate the message for those outside the church – it seems to me that teasing partial correspondences can be an especially effective way of bringing the particularity of what they fall short of into focus.

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21 The term is borrowed from Shearman, who cites the following gloss of ‘transitivity’ from the OED as the basis of his definition: ‘taking a direct object to complete the sense, passing over to or affecting something else, operating beyond itself’ (Shearman 1992: 33). 22 Affordances are the properties of an object or event that suggestively lend themselves to certain actions. 23 This isn’t the place to elaborate a counter-case, but I cannot agree with Martha Bayles, who speaks of a ‘loss of beauty’ in popular music, which she claims has been replaced by an ‘anti-musical’ ‘ugly excess’ (1994: 3–5). 24 See, for example, Frith (1996: chapter 7). 25 By sheer coincidence, another Garvey – Guy Garvey, the singer and songwriter of Elbow – has a song (‘The Bones Of You’), which describes precisely this experience. 26 See, for example, Marsh and Roberts (2012: chapter 6).

Chapter 8 1 Although religious themes and lyrics are often evident in secular popular music styles, see Partridge 2014. 2 Although this is beginning to change, see Engelhardt 2015; Rommen 2007; Lange 2003.

Chapter 10 1 ‘The former Cat Stevens, Yusuf Islam, to perform at Nobel Peace Prize Concert’, International Herald Tribune, 31 October 2006 (retrieved from http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/31/europe/ EU_GEN_Norway_Norway_Nobel_Peace_Concert.php). 2 It is tempting to assume that the word musiqa (sometimes musiqi) has always been the equivalent of music as it is today, but musiqa is the preferred word in philosophical texts on music inspired by Greek thinking. For the acts of playing, singing and listening to music, a variety of terms are employed in Islamic texts, the most common being ghina’ (singing), sama‘ (listening), sawt (voice, song, sound), ’alat al-tarab (musical instruments), al-tarab (enchantment, ecstasy) and malahi or lahw (distraction, diversion). However, we will use ‘music’ as a generic term, in accordance with the practice of scholars writing in this field. 3 This assumption can be found all throughout the Hellenistic world (and often beyond): see Hulsether 2015; Partridge 2013. 4 For examples, start by exploring the following webpages: http://www.muslimhiphop.com/; http:// www.islamiclyrics.net/ (accessed 2015). 5 For more information about this festival, see: http://www.fez-riads.com/fes-festival-of-world-sacredmusic/(accessed 13 December 2015). 6 See http://www.cokestudio.com.pk/season8/ (accessed 15 December 2015). 7 For more information about this band, see https://www.facebook.com/alnamroodofficial (accessed 22 November 2015). 8 See, for example, http://muslim-peoples.blogspot.se/2010/09/biography-of-mais-shalash.html (accessed 13 December 2015). 9 For more information about this group, see http://poeticpilgrimage.co.uk/about-poetic-pilgrimage/ (accessed 13 December 2015). 10 The documentary can be viewed via http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2015/03/hiphop-hijabis-150305091541022.html (accessed 13 December 2015). 350

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Chapter 11 1 There is now a literature on The Jazz Singer from a Jewish point of view, and especially on how Robin’s (Jolson’s) blackface might be read (see especially Rogin 1996 and Gubar 1997). 2 It is worth noting that film was not a success. It was generally disliked by critics and the album made more money than the film.

Chapter 12 1 World music is defined here as a category that includes different styles of music from across the world, particularly the non-Western world. While the category has undoubtedy provided exposure to nonWestern musics, it is often marketed as the music of the traditional, non-technologized, exotic other. 2 Timothy Brennan in ‘World Music Does not Exist’ objected to the term on the grounds that it lumps together musics that have nothing to do with one another either in terms of genre or in that of region, say Qawwalis of Pakistan with Benin rock (2001: 47). 3 Stephen Feld’s critique of the appropriation of the forest music of Central Africa as pygmy pop through Herbie Hancock’s adaptation and others’ sampling of a rare recording of Ba Mbuti and Ba Benzele’s song focusing on the ethical ambiguity between cultural exchange and cultural exchange set the tone of the World Music debate that was continued by Timothy Brennan in his essay ‘World Music Does not Exist’ and several others in a number of essays (1996). A collection of essays titled Disorienting Rhythms edited by Sanjay Sharma, John Hutnyk and Ashwani Sharma extended the debate to the othering of Asian music that was the central argument of Hutnyk’s monograph Critique of Exotica (2000) in which he implicated both Western music producers, companies and consumers in exoticizing the cultural production of the orient for the consumption of the global consumer under the benevolent gesture of making it visible.

Chapter 13 1 Ethnomusicologist Ter Ellingson refers to the Tibetan monks’ chordal chanting style as ‘tonecontour’ chant (1979; see also Ellingson, 1970: 826–31). 2 Smith originally recorded the album Music of Tibet: The Gyuto Multiphonic Choir in 1967 for the Smithsonian Folkways label. In 2005 the master tapes were digitized for a CD on the GemsTone label, on which Mickey Hart provided technical assistance. 3 Robert Thurman, professor of Indo-Tibetan Studies at Columbia University, was a disciple of Tara Tulku, the then-abbot of Gyuto Tantric monastery in Dalhousie, India. In 1985, Thurman first brought the Gyuto monks to North America. At that time, Mickey Hart was with the Grateful Dead on the East coast, and went to see them perform in Amherst, Massachusetts. Afterwards, he told the monks that he would like to bring them to California, which they accepted. Hart staged a press conference prior to their performance at the Berkeley Community Theater, in which he raised the profile of their sonic art. 4 The nuns were recorded inside a sacred space – a 1,000-year-old temple dedicated to Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Compassion. 5 The Grammy was in the category Best Chamber Music Performance. It was the first time an Asian musician had been awarded a Grammy; which illustrates the influence and acceptance of South Asian Classical Music at the time. 6 The Shakuhachi flute is well known as an instrument that embodies, in its performance practices, a Zen Buddhist musical genre of meditative attention to the present moment. 7 The work is divided into three movements: 0′ 33″, 2′ 40″ and 1′ 20″; and the breaks between movements are treated as they would be during a conventional piece, thus demarcating the time for 351

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paying attention to ‘the work.’ Whereas the real work for Buddhists is transforming one’s mind by first noticing its present state – the very opportunity presented by Cage’s piece. 8 Cage also composed pieces for ‘prepared piano’,defying conventions of musical performance consisting of a form in which organized pitches make music. 9 Cage recounted the experience in Silence: ‘When I described it to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation. Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death’ (Cage 1961: 8). 10 The first ‘bed-in’ was held in a hotel in Amsterdam (25–31 March 1969), enacted during their honeymoon. 11 Ono has since collaborated with various artists on a series of projects, including the Imagine Peace Tower http://imaginepeacetower.com/light-house (accessed 8 December 2015). 12 Kurt Cobain had identical criteria for Nirvana’s song ‘Come As You Are’. 13 Steve Jobs’s ‘Think Different’ campaign was inspired by the song-campaign of John and Yoko some twenty-six years earlier. 14 See Philip Glass’ website: http://www.philipglass.com/music/recordings/kundun.php. Also here is the instrumentation used in his orchestration: 4 vln, hp, vc, cb, Tibetan horns, Tibetan cymbals, xyl, bdm, vox (Tibetan Monks), fl. bd,. 2 tmb, glock, fr hn, piano, celeste, oboe, bn, tpt, pic, t dm, vox (chorus), tuba, triangle, syn. 15 Philip Glass met the Dalai Lama in 1972, and felt an affinity with Tibetan Buddhism. He co-founded Tibet House in New York City with Richard Gere and Robert Thurman (Uma Thurman’s father). 16 He read more than ten times the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Guide to the Liberation Inbetween). He has served as impresario for many of the Tibet House benefit megaconcerts at Carnegie Hall on the Tibetan New Year in February, bringing together A-list artists for solo performances and collaborations. 17 In Mahayana Buddhist practice, the Bodhisattva vow is committing oneself to work for others’ benefit, to relieve their suffering. Yauch’s lyric extols the virtues of compassion and generating an altruistic intentionality which recognizes all beings’ suffering – and this underlies the practitioner’s motivations on the path of Mahayana Buddhism (the Universalist Vehicle) towards enlightenment. 18 See Michaelsen’s discussion of three contemporary dharma songs by different artists, including one of her own (2011) 19 Their Buddhist-inflected songs are available online: http://www.joanzen.com/music (accessed 15 July 2016). 20 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z2_IE6NfSE (accessed 12 June 2016).

Chapter 15 1 Note on transliteration: Throughout this chapter, Mandarin pinyin is used for most Chinese words and phrases. However, for song titles or quoted lyrics, either Mandarin or Cantonese pinyin are used, depending on the original language of the song. For easy identification, Mandarin pinyin is marked with the letter ‘M’ while Cantonese pinyin is marked with the letter ‘C’.

Chapter 16 1 Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain was excluded as it is not popular music; however, the Pagan connection, especially to Samhain, is clear in the Disney movie Fantasia animation of this piece, which no doubt accounts for its inclusion. 2 A full list of artists is included at the end of this chapter. 352

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Chapter 17 1 The website http://fusionanomaly.net/aleistercrowley.html lists several of the influences of Crowley in Led Zeppelin, as well as other details relating to Jimmy Page’s interest in Crowley. 2 The band’s self-titled first album was released in 1984, and contains the song ‘White Magic/Black Magic’. 3 First self-titled album in 1985. The very name of the band is, of course, an occult reference. 4 Candlemass’ first album, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, was released in 1986, and includes songs with titles such as ‘Crystal Ball’ and ‘A Sorcerer’s Pledge’. 5 This is also noted by Marcus Moberg, see Moberg 2009: 141; 2011: 123–4. 6 Moonsorrow describes its genre as ‘Epic Heathen Metal’. 7 I should mention that I have been a member of the band since 2013. 8 MLO was formed in 1995. Kristiansen 2012b: 549. 9 The name of the group refers to Aleister Crowley’s religion and philosophy of Thelema, the number value of which is 93. 10 Moynihan does not use the label neofolk to describe the band. 11 The Rune-Gild is an initiatory organization, where the Master level entails teaching more novice members and developing the Gild itself. In order to reach this level a member needs to be approved by a committee of three existing Masters and complete a Master-Work – usually a piece of art, music or literature which demonstrates Runic mastery and promotes rune magic (Thorsson 2005: 61–2). For Moynihan’s involvement in the Gild see Thorsson 2007: 157. Moynihan first met founder of the Rune-Gild, as well as high-degree Temple of Set member, Stephen Flowers/Edred Thorsson in 1999, and joined the Gild soon thereafter. 12 In Burghart 2002: 90 Blood Axis is deemed to be a ‘White Power Band’ in the category ‘Fascist Experimental’. 13 It should be noted that the Five Percenters do not see themselves as Muslims. See God 2016; Knight 2009: 188. 14 For an example from hip hop, see Knight 2011: 4.

Chapter 19 1 A similar, and equally problematic, argument has also been made by Rupert Till (2010), who offers an interpretation of heavy metal as a popular music ‘cult’.

Chapter 21 1 Former punk musician Brad Warner (2003, 2007) released two similar books at the same time from a different Buddhist tradition.

Chapter 23 1 For example, Lloyd’s version of ‘Blood-Red Roses’ with Euan McColl and Peggy Seeger can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz3Ee0jsAUc (accessed 19 April 2016). 2 A video of which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnvCPQqQWds (accessed 19 April 2016).

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3 A recording is posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxo-zayI6tE (accessed 19 April 2016). 4 See the UK version recorded by Billy Bragg and Heathens All https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=SjJLDjjYXMM (last accessed April 19th 2016). 5 See also Hesmondhalgh’s helpful discussion of national music in Afghanistan (Hesmondhalgh 2013: 157). 6 An example can be found here with Paul Simon’s own rendition of Scarborough Fair from 1964 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvt3r6Xs-CM (accessed 19 April 2016). 7 A good example is Paul Simon’s live rendition of ‘Diamonds on the souls of her shoes’ with Ladysmith Black Mambazo from 1987 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmf9ZJ_Yn0A (accessed 19 April 2016).

Chapter 25 1 For example, a now-removed fundamentalist Christian Website ‘Truthaboutrave.com’ purported to reveal the ‘awful truth’ that raves are ‘a means of the devil to solicit worship’. 2 ‘RAVE’ is an acronym for ‘Reducing America’s Vulnerability to Ecstasy’ the apparent vocation of then-Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA). An update on the repressive ‘crack-house’ laws extended to temporary, one-off, and open-air events, the ‘Rave Act’ legislation was embedded in the Child Abduction Protection Act of 2003. 3 The ‘vibe’ has often been circumscribed via Victor Turner’s concept of ‘spontaneous communitas’, a social liminal occasion in which participants may experience a spontaneous ‘flash of mutual understanding on the existential level, and a “gut” understanding of synchronicity’ (Turner 1982: 48). See, for example, Tramacchi (2000), who discusses ‘psychedelic communitas’ at Australian ‘bush doofs’. 4 These substances include phenethylamines (like 2CB, 2CT7 and DOC) (see Shulgin and Shulgin 1991, 1997) and tryptamines (notably psilocybin-containing mushrooms and dimethyltryptamine, or DMT) (see Milhet and Reynaud-Maurupt 2011), including a host of novel psychoactive substances in widespread circulation given the advent of the darknet. For the integral role of DMT in the formation of psychedelic electronica, see St John (2015b: chapters 7 and 8). 5 See Winkleman (2015) for a biogenetic appraisal of raves vis-à-vis ancient shamanic practices with which raving is favourably compared.

Chapter 26 1 Epstein creatively draws powerful theological metaphors from Tharpe’s predicament. Tharpe is a ‘prodigal daughter’ who is the ‘locus of both exploitation and proclamation; a confusing site of pollution and emancipation that mocks naïve devotional demands for purity and integrity’ (Epstein 2004: 167). 2 Nevertheless, Burnett suggests that ‘the relationship between the church and the blues … was not quite so one-dimensional. … Blues artists went back and forth between careers as preachers and blues performers, and churches hosted blues artists – Blind Willie McTell from Georgia was one who often performed his music is a church setting’ (Burnett 2014: 6). 3 Similarly, David Evans remarks: ‘When jazz bursts onto the scene in 1917, shifting the focus of interest toward the performer’s momentary improvisations, the new musical stylists featured many blues tunes. Audiences could now view blues as a type of jazz’ (Evans 2002: 27).

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4 One might call attention to the fact that jazz is given a slot on BBC Radio 3 – a British radio station that promotes mostly classical music and high art. Similarly, the influence of jazz idioms can be seen in the music of many serious twentieth-century composers such as Stravinsky and Walton. 5 For an excellent text that discusses examples of this, see Bivins 2015. 6 See, for example, the work of Vanhoozer 2004, Vondey 2010 and Benson 2006, 2011.

Chapter 28 1 On the importance of pleasure in post-industrial urban landscapes, see Kelley 1997: 37. 2 See Miller 2012: 149–76. 3 At the same time, hip-hop narratives tend to privilege certain influences over others. We do not hear enough about the influence of house music on hip hop for instance. I am indebted to my conversations with David Stevens on this issue. 4 I am indebted to my conversations with Courtney Bryant, who first taught me how to read Nicki Minaj in a complicated manner.

Chapter 29 1 Full playlist available at http://www.gothiqueclassique.com/playlists.php (accessed 08 January 2016). 2 https://www.amsterdam.nl/toerisme-vrije-tijd/groen-amsterdam/begraafplaatsen/huis-vraag/ (accessed 08 January 2016). 3 The file was part of the 2015 exhibition ‘Kinder der Nacht’ (Children of the night) in the Stasi museum Runde Ecke in Leipzig.

Chapter 31 1 Alanis Morissette (God) at the end of the film Dogma (Directed by Kevin Smith 1999) destroys the two fallen angels (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) by the power of her voice.

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108, Holyname. Equal Vision, 1993. 2 Live Crew, As Nasty As They Wanna Be. Luke/Atlantic Records, 1989. Abba, The Singles: The First Ten Years. Epic/Atlantic, 1982. Abba, Waterloo. Epic/Atlantic, 1974. Adams, Ryan, Easy Tiger. Mercury, 2007. Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force, Planet Rock. Tommy Boy, 1982. Aitken, Laurel, ‘Baba Kill Me Goat’. Caribou Records, 1959. Aitken, Laurel, ‘Nebuchnezer’. Kalypso Records, 1958. Alabama 3, Exile on Coldharbour Lane. Geffen, 1997. Allen, Lily, Hard Out Here. Parlophone, 2013. Allen, Lily, It’s Not Me, It’s You. Parlophone, 2009. Alpha & Omega, The Sacred Art of Dub. A&O Records, 1998. Amorphis, The Karelian Ithmus. Relapse, 1992. Andy, Horace, In the Light. Hungry Town, 1977. Andy, Horace, In the Light/In the Light Dub. Blood & Fire, 1995. Antony and the Johnsons, Antony and the Johnsons. Durtro, 2000. Aphex Twin, Selected Ambient Works 85-92. Apollo, 1992. Armstrong, Louis, Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra. Okeh, 11 March 1932. Arthimoth, Flowers in the Desert. EMI, 2010. Bahamadia, Kollage, Chrysalis Records, 1996. Base, Rob, and DJ E-Z Rock, It Takes Two. Profile Records, 1988. Bathory, Bathory. Tyfon, 1984. Beach Boys, The, Pet Sounds. Capitol, 1966. Beatles, The, Revolver. Parlophone, 1966. Beatles, The, Rubber Soul. Parlophone, 1965. Beatles, The, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Parlophone, 1967. Beloved, The, Blissed Out. East West, 1990. Bill Haley and the Comets, Rock Around The Clock – The Very Best of Bill Haley & His Comets. One Day Music, 2015. Birkin, Jane, and Serge Gainsbourg, ‘Je T’aime … Moi Non Plus’. Fontana, 1969. Black Lace, Agadoo. Flair Records, 1984. Black Lace, Party Party. Ronco, 1993. Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath. Vertigo/Warner Bros, 1970. Black Sabbath, Master of Reality. Vertigo/Warner Bros, 1971. Black Sabbath, Paranoid. Vertigo/Warner Bros, 1970. Black Uhuru, Black Sounds of Freedom. Greensleeves, 1981. Black Widow, Sacrifice. CBS Records, 1970. Blige, Mary J., My Life II … The Journey Continues (Act 1). Geffen Records, 2011. Blondy, Alpha, and the Wailers, Jerusalem. EMI, 1986. Blood Axis, Blót: Sacrifice in Sweden. Cold Meat Industry, 1998. Blur, Blur. Food/EMI, 1997. Bond, Graham, Holy Magick. Vertigo, 1970. Bowie, David, Heroes. RCA, 1977.

Discography

Bowie, David, Low. RCA, 1977. Bowie, David, ‘Seven Years in Tibet’. RCA, 1997. Bragg, Billy, The Internationale. Liberation Records, 1990. Brooks, Mike, Book of Revelation. I Sound, 2001. Brown, Barry, Cool Pon Your Corner. Trojan, 1979. Brown, Dennis, The Promised Land. Blood & Fire, 2002. Bryars, Gavin, The Sinking of the Titanic. Obscure, 1975. Burnett, Gary W., The Gospel According to the Blues. Eugene: Cascade, 2014. Burning Spear, Man in the Hills. Island, 1976. Burning Spear, Marcus Garvey. Island, 1975. Burzum, Deathlike Silence, 1992. Burzum, Hvis lyset tar oss. Misantrophy, 1994. Bush, Kate, Wuthering Heights. EMI, 1978. Byrds, Turn! Turn! Turn! Columbia, 1965. Campbell, Glenn, Oh Happy Day. Capitol, 1970. Candlemass, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus. Black Dragon, 1986. Capleton, More Fire. VP, 2000. Carlos, Don, Plantation. CSA, 1984. Carlisle, Bob, Butterfly Kisses (Shades of Grace). Diadem/Jive, 1997. Carter Family, The, ‘No Depression in Heaven’. Decca, 1936. Carter Family, The, When the Roses Bloom in Dixieland: Their Complete Victor Recordings (1929–30). Rounder 1995. Cash, Johnny, A Believer Sings the Truth. Cachet Records, 1979. Cash, Johnny, American Recordings. American Recordings, 1994. Cash, Johnny, American IV. American Recordings, 2002. Cash, Johnny, Any Old Wind that Blows. Columbia, 1973. Cash, Johnny, Believe in Him. Word Records, 1986. Cash, Johnny, The Christmas Spirit. Columbia, 1963. Cash, Johnny, Hello, I’m Johnny Cash. Columbia, 1970. Cash, Johnny, The Holy Land. Columbia, 1969. Cash, Johnny, Hymns by Johnny Cash. Columbia, 1959. Cash, Johnny, I Believe. Arrival Records, 1984. Cash, Johnny, Junkie and the Juicehead (Minus Me). Columbia, 1974. Cash, Johnny, Man in Black. Columbia, 1971. Cash, Johnny, My Mother’s Hymn Book. Lost Highway, 2004. Cash, Johnny, Orange Blossom Special. Columbia, 1965. Cash, Johnny, Ragged Old Flag. Columbia, 1974. Cash, Johnny, The Rambler. Columbia, 1977. Cash, Johnny, Ring of Fire. Columbia, 1963. Cash, Johnny, Unearthed. American Recordings, 2003. Cash, Johnny, and June Carter, ‘Jackson’. Columbia, 1968. Cat Stevens, Teaser and the Firecat. Island Records, 1971. Cave, Nick, The Boatman’s Call. Reprise, 1997. CCCP Fedeli Alla Linea, Ortodossia. Attack Punk, 1984. Celtic Frost, To Mega Therion. Noise, 1985. Charles, Ray, ‘Hallelujah I Love Her So’. Atlantic, 1956. Checker, Chubby, ‘Let’s Twist Again’. London Records, 1961. Cheung, Leslie, LESLIE. Capital Artist, 1984. Chic, Risqué. Atlantic Records, 1979. Chou, Jay and A-Mei, Jay Chou’s Bedtime Stories. JVR Music & Sony Music, 2016. Collins, Lyn, Think (About It). People Records, 1972. 393

Discography

Coltrane, John, Kulu Se Mama. Polygram, 1965. Cooke, Sam, Ain’t That Good News. RCA, 1964. Cooke, Sam, Songs by Sam Cooke. Keen Records, 1957. Coven, Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls. Mercury Records, 1969. Cro-Mags, The Age of Quarrel. Profile, 1986. Crow, Sheryl, Detours. A&M, 2008. Current 93, LAShTAL. L-A-Y.L.A.H. Antirecords, 1984. Current 93, Nature Unveiled. L-A-Y.L.A.H. Antirecords, 1984. Dark Buddha Rising, Dakhmandal. Svart Records, 2013. Dark Buddha Rising, Inversum. Neurot Recordings, 2015. Darkthrone, A Blaze in the Northern Sky. Peaceville, 1992. Darkthrone, Under a Funeral Moon. Peaceville Records, 1993. Das EFX, Dead Serious. East West Records, 1992. Deep Purple, ‘Child in Time’. Harvest, 1972. Delphine Tsai, Yuanfun (緣份). Linfair Records, 1994. Devil’s Blood, The, The Time of No Time Evermore. Ván Records, 2009. Diary of Dreams, Cholymelan. Accession Records, 1999 (re-release). Diddley, Bo, ‘Hey! Bo Diddley’. Checker, 1957. Dire Straits, Love Over Gold. Vertigo, 1982. Disciples, The, Rebirth. Third Eye Music, 1997. Dissection, The Somberlain. No Fashion, 1993. Dissection, Storm of the Light’s Bane. Nuclear Blast, 1995. Dissection, Storm of the Light’s Bane (ultimate reissue). Black Horizon, 2006. Dissection, Reinkaos. Black Horizon, 2006. Divine Comedy, The, Regeneration. Parlophone, 2001. Dolce, Joe, Shaddap You Face. Full Moon, 1981. Donovan, The Hurdy Gurdy Man. Pye Records, 1968. Dread, Mikey, World War III. Dread at the Controls, 1980. Drolma, Choying, and Steve Tibbetts, Chö. Six Degrees Records, 1997. Drolma, Choying, and Steve Tibbetts, Selwa. Six Degrees Records, 2004. Dylan, Bob, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Columbia, 1963. Dylan, Bob, Highway 61 Revisited. Columbia Records, 1965. Dylan, Bob, John Wesley Harding. Columbia, 1967. Dylan, Bob, Oh Mercy. Columbia Records, 1989. Dylan, Bob, Planet Waves. Asylum, 1974. Dylan, Bob, Tempest. Columbia, 2012. Earl Zero, Visions of Love. Epiphany, 1979. Eason Chan, Life Continues. Cinepoly Records, 2006. Eason Chan, H3M. Cinepoly Records, 2009. Elbow, The Seldom Seen Kid. Polydor, 2008. Elvrum, Phil, Clear Moon. P.W. Elverum & Sun. 2012. Elvrum, Phil, Wind’s Poem. P.W. Elverum & Sun. 2009. Emchi, Karma, Shaphaley. Available online 24 March 2011 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z2_ IE6NfSE (accessed 7 June 2016). Emperor, In the Nightside Eclipse. Candlelight Records, 1994. Enigma, MCMXC a.D. Virgin, 1990. Eno, Brian, Ambient 1: Music for Airports. Ambient/Polydor, 1978. Eno, Brian, Ambient 4: On Land. Ambient/Polydor, 1982. Eno, Brian, Another Green World. Island, 1975. Eno, Brian, Discrete Music. Obscure, 1975. 394

Discography

Eno, Brian, Music for Films. EG, 1978. Eric, B., and Rakim, Let the Rhythm Hit Em. MCA Records, 1990. Erickson, Roky, and the Aliens, Roky Erickson and the Aliens. CBS, 1980. Erickson, Roky, and the Aliens, The Evil One. 415 Records, 1981. Evanescence, Fallen. Wind-Up Records, 2003. Eve, Let There Be Eve … Ruff Ryders’ First Lady. Ruff Ryders/Interscope, 1999. Fairport Convention, Leige and Lief. Island, 1969. Faithless, Sunday 8PM. Cheeky Records, 1998. Finntroll, Midnattens Widunder. Spikefarm Records, 1999. Fire+Ice, Rûna. Fremdheit, 1996. Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues. Sub Pop. 2011. Fleetwood Mac, Tusk. Warner, 1979. Forgotten Horror, The Serpent Creation. Woodcut Records, 2011. Forgotten Horror, Aeon of the Shadow Goddess. Woodcut Records, 2015. Four Seasons, The, ‘Sherry’. Vee Jay Records, 1962. Fun-Da-Mental, There Shall Be Love. Nation Records, 2001. Gaye, Marvin, What’s Going On. Tamla, 1971. Genesis, Selling England by the Pound. Atlantic, 1973. Glass, Philip, and Linda Ronstadt, Philip Glass: 1000 Airplanes on the Roof. Virgin, 1989. Gong, Magick Brother. BYG Actuel, 1970. Gorgoroth, Pentagram. Embassy Productions, 1994. Gorgoroth, Antichrist. Malicious Records, 1996. Gothic Voices, A Feather on the Breath of God: Sequences and Hymns by Abbess Hildegarde of Bingen. Hyperion, 1982. Gowns, Red State. Cardboard, 2007. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, The Message. Sugar Hill Records, 1982. Grant, Amy, Lead Me On. Myrrh, 1988. Green, Al, ‘How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?’ London Records, 1972. Greenbaum, Norman, Spirit in the Sky. Reprise, 1969. Greyhound, Black and White. Trojan, 1971. Guess Who, The, Share the Land. RCA Victor, 1970. Gyume Monks, Sacred Tibet: Chants of the Gyume Monks. Spirit Music, 2004. Gyurme, Lama, and Jean-Philippe Rykiel, The Lama’s Chant: Songs of Awakening/Roads of Blessings. Taktic Music/Virgin, 1994. Gyuto Monks, Freedom Chants from the Roof of the World. Rykodisc, 1989. Hall, Tom T., We All Got Together And … Mercury Records, 1972. Hallucinogen, Twisted. TIP Records, 1995. Harrison, George, All Things Must Pass. Apple, 1970. Hazardous Dub Company, Dangerous Dubs, Vol. 2. Acid Jazz, 1993. Head of the Demon, Head of the Demon. Head of the Demon/The Ajna Offensive, 2012. Head of the Demon, Trismegistos Sathanas. Ajna Offensive/Invictus Productions, 2016. Hellhammer, Apocalyptic Raids. Noise Records, 1984. Hillage, Steve, Rainbow Dome Musick. Virgin, 1979. Hobbs, Christopher, John Adams, and Gavin Bryars, Ensemble Pieces. Obscure, 1975. Hui, Sam, The Private Eyes (半斤八兩). Polygram, 1976. Ice Cube, Death Certificate. Priority Records Inc, 1991. Ice Cube, The Predator. Priority, 1992. Impressions, The, Keep on Pushing. Paramount, 1964. 395

Discography

Impressions, The, People Get Ready. Universal 1965. Impressions, The, We’re a Winner. Universal 1968. Incredible String Band, 5000 Spirits or the Layers of an Onion. Elektra, 1967. Incredible String Band, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. Elektra, 1968. Inkubus Sukkubus, Beltaine. Independent/Resurection Records, 1998. Iron Maiden, A Matter of Life and Death. EMI, 2006. Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast. EMI, 1982. Islam, Yusuf, An Other Cup. Atlantic, 2006. Islam, Yusuf, Roadsinger. Universal, 2009. Islam, Yusuf, Tell ‘Em I’m Gone. Legacy, 2014. Isley Brothers, The, Between the Sheets. T-Neck Records, 1983. Isley Brothers, The, Go for Your Guns. T-Neck Records, 1977. Isley Brothers, The, ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’. RCA Victor, 1960. Jackson, Michael, Thriller. Epic, 1982. Jackson, Mahalia, ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’. Columbia, 1958. Jah Shaka, Dub Symphony. Island, 1990. Jah Shaka, Revelation Songs. Jah Shaka Music, 1983. Jarre, Jean-Michel, Oxygene. Disques-Dreyfus/Polydor, 1976. Jay-Z, Reasonable Doubt. Priority Records, 1996. Jay-Z, The Blueprint. Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam, 2001. Jefferson Airplane, Surrealistic Pillow. RCA Victor, 1967. Jess and the Ancient Ones, Jess and the Ancient Ones. Svart Records, 2012. Jex Thoth, Jex Thoth. I Hate Records, 2008. Jex Thoth, Blood Moon Rise. I Hate Records, 2013. JiaJia, Lan Ling Wang TV Drama OST (蘭陵王電視劇原聲帶). B’in Music/SONY Music Entertainment (Taiwan), 2013. Jihad Against America, Jihad Against America. Soul Bludger, 2003. Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced? Track, 1967. Jimi Hendrix Experience, Axis: Bold As Love. Track, 1967. John, Elton, ‘Candle in the Wind’. Rocket/A&M, 1997. John, Elton, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Rocket, 1973. John, Elton, Madman Across the Water. DJM, 1971. John-Newton, Olivia, and John Travolta, ‘You’re the One that I Want’. Grease Soundtrack. Polydor, 1978. Johnson, Linton Kwesi, Dread Beat An’ Blood. Virgin, 1978; Heartbeat, 1989. Johnson, Robert, ‘Hellhound on my Trail’. Vocalion, 1937. Johnson, Robert, ‘Me and the Devil Blues’. Vocalion, 1938. Joshua Nelson & The Kosher Gospel Singers, Mi Chamocha?. Joshua Nelson, 2005. Juice Newton, Juice. Capitol, 1981. Karmapa, Gyalwa, The Lion Roar. Wind Music, 2006. Kendrick, Lamar, Kendrick Lamar EP. Top Dawg Entertainment, 2009. Khan, Nusrat Fateh Ali, Best of Qawwal and Party Volume 1. Womad, 1986. Khechog, Nawang, Rhythms of Peace. Sounds True, 1989. Khechog, Nawang, Music as Medicine. Sounds True, 2005. Kinks, The, Kinkdom. Reprise, 1965. KLF, Chill Out. KLF Communications, 1990. Klezmatics, The, Possessed. Piranha, 1997. Knowledge, Straight Outta Trenchtown. Makasound, 2002. Kominas, The, Wild Nights in Guantanamo Bay. Poco Party, 2008. Korpiklaani, Spirit of the Forest. Napalm Records, 2003. Kraftwerk, Autobahn. Philips/Vertigo, 1974. 396

Discography

Kraftwerk, Computer World. Kling Klang/EMI-Electrola/Warner Bros., 1981. Kraftwerk, Ralf und Florian. Philips/Vertigo, 1973. Kraftwerk, The Man-Machine. Kling Klang/EMI-Electrola/Warner Bros., 1978. Lady Gaga, Born This Way. Polydor, 2011. Lam, Raymond, Your Love. Emperor Entertainment Group, 2008. Lapis Niger, At the Throne of Melek Taus. Athanor, 2008. Lau, Andy, 2004. Coffee or Tea. EMI Hong Kong, 2004. Lau, Andy, Sound (聲音). East Asia Music, 2006. Leaves’ Eyes, Lovelorn. Napalm Records, 2004. Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti. Swan Song, 1975. Lee, Hacken, Red Sun (紅日). Polygram, 1992. Lennon, John, ‘Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)’. Apple, 1971. Lennon, John, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Apple, 1970. Lhamo, Yungchen, with Monks from Namgyal Monastery, Tibetan Prayer. Self-released, 1995. Lhamo, Yungchen, Tibet, Tibet. Real World, 1996. Lil Wayne, The Carter IV. Cash Money, 2011. Lin, J. J., JJ Six JJ (陸). Ocean Butterflies Music, 2008. Lloyd, A. L., Euan McColl, and Peggy Seeger, ‘Blood Red Roses’. Classic Maritime Music. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2004. Lord Jamar, The 5% Album. Babygrande, 2006. Luciferian Light Orchestra, Luciferian Light Orchestra. Adulruna Studio, 2015. Lynard Skynard, ‘Sweet Home Alabama’. MCA Records, 1976. Lyte, MC. Eyes on This. First Priority Music, 1989. Madonna, Like a Prayer. Warner, 1989. Madonna, Like a Virgin. Sire, 1984. Madonna, Material Girl. Sire, 1984. Mak, Juno, Dream of the Earth Born by the Sky (天生地夢). Silly Thing, 2009. Mak, Juno, Non-attachment (無念). Silly Thing, 2010. Marley, Bob, and the Wailers, Burnin’. Island, 1973. Marley, Bob, and the Wailers, Catch A Fire. Island Records, 1973. Marley, Bob, and the Wailers, Confrontation. Island, 1983. Marley, Bob, and the Wailers, Exodus. Island, 1976. Marley, Bob, and the Wailers, ‘Jah Live’. Tuff Gong Records, 1975. Marley, Bob, and the Wailers, Natty Dread. Island, 1974. Marley, Bob, and the Wailers, Survival. Island Records, 1979. Marley, Bob, and the Wailers, Uprising. Island, 1980. Martha, and the Vandellas, ‘Dancing in the Street’. Gordy, 1964. Matisyahu, Akeda. Elm City Music, 2014. Matisyahu, Live at Stubb’s. Or Music, 2005. Matisyahu, Shake Off the Dust … Arise. JDub Records, 2004. Mayfield, Curtis, Super Fly. Curtom, 1972. Mayhem, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. Deathlike Silence/Century Black, 1994. Mayhem, Live in Leipzig. Obscure Plasma Records, 1993. McFadden and Whitehead, ‘Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now’. Philadelphia International Records, 1979. McKennitt, Loreena, The Book of Secrets. Quinlan Road, Warner Bros., 1997. McKennit, Loreena, The Mask and Mirror. Quinlan Road, Warner Bros., 1994. McKennitt, Loreena, The Visit. Quinlan Road, Warner Bros., 1991. McLean, Don, American Pie. United Artists, 1971. MC Lyte, Eyes on This. First Priority Music, 1989. Megadeth, Countdown to Extinction. Combat/Capitol, 1992. 397

Discography

Menahan Street Band, Make the Road by Walking. Daptone, 2008. Menuhin, Yehudi, and Ravi Shankar, West Meets East. Angel Records/EMI, 1967. Merger, Exiles in Babylon. Ultra, 1977. Metallica, Kill ‘Em All, Magaforce, 1983. Metallica, Ride the Lightning. Megaforce/Electra, 1984. Mighty Diamonds, Right Time. Well Charge, 1976. Mighty Maytones, Madness. Burning Sounds, 1976. Minaj, Nikki, The Pinkprint. Cash Money, 2014. Mingus, Charles, Mingus Ah Um. Columbia, 1959. Minor Threat, Complete Discography. Dischord, 1981. Monks of Sherab Ling Monastery, Sacred Tibetan Chant. Naxos World, 2003. Moonsorrow, Suden Uni. Plasmatica Records, 2001. Morbid Angel, Altars of Madness. Earache, 1989. Morrissey, You Are the Quarry. Attack, 2004. Mortuus, Grape of the Vine. The Ajna Offensive, 2014. Mötley Crüe, Shout at the Devil. Elektra, 1983. Mussorgsky, Modest, A Night on Bare Mountain. 1886. Mutabaruka, Outcry. Shanachie, 1984. MxPx, Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo. A&M/Tooth & Nail, 1998. Nas, Illmatic. Columbia Records, 1994. N’Dour, Youssou, Egypt. Nonesuch Records, 2004. Nicks, Stevie, In Your Dreams. Reprise, 2011. Nikki Minaj, The Pinkprint. Cash Money, 2014. Norman, Larry, Upon This Rock. Capitol, 1969. Norman, Larry, Only Visiting This Planet. Verve, 1972. Northside, Chicken Rhythms. Factory Records, 1991. Notorious BIG, Ready to Die. Big Beat Records, 1994. NWA, Straight Outta Compton. Ruthless Records, 1988. Ofermod, Tiamtü. Norma Evangelium Diaboli, 2008. Ofermod, Thaumiel. Spinefarm Records, 2012. Old Dirty Bastard and the Rza, Return to the 36 Chambers. Elektra, 1995. Oldfield, Mike, Tubular Bells. Virgin, 1973. Orb, The, The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld. Big Life, 1991. Osborne, Joan, Relish. Mercury, 1995. Osbourne, Ozzy, Blizzard of Ozz. Jet Records, 1980. Osbourne, Ozzy, Diary of a Madman. Epic, 1981. Ossie, Count, and the Rasta Family, Man From Higher Heights. Vista, 1983. Pendderwen, Gwydion, Songs For the Old Religion. Meneton, 1975. Pentagram, Pentagram. Pentagram Records, 1985. Perry, Katy, Teenage Dream. Capitol, 2010. Perry, Lee, Rastafari Liveth Itinually. Justice League, 1996. Petty, Tom, and the Heartbreakers, Hypnotic Eye. Reprise, 2014. Pharoah Sanders, Tauhid. Impulse! Records, 1966. Pharoah Sanders, Jewels of Thought. Impulse! Records, 1969. Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon. Harvest/EMI, 1973. Pink Floyd, Meddle. Harvest/EMI, 1971. Pink Floyd, Ummagumma. Harvest/Columbia, 1969. Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here. Harvest/EMI, 1975. Plant, Robert, Lullaby and … The Ceaseless Roar. Nonesuch, 2014. 398

Discography

Primal Scream, Screamadelica. Creation Records, 1991. Prophet, Michael, Righteous are the Conqueror. Greensleeves, 1980. Psy, Psy 6 (Six Rules), Part 1. YG Entertainment, 2012. Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet. Columbia Records, 1990. Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Def Jam, 1988. Qntal, Qntal II. Gymnastic classX Records, 1995. Queen Latifah, Black Reign. Motown Records, 1993. Quintessence, In Blissful Company. Island Records, 1969. Quintessence, Quintessence. Island Records, 1970. Radiohead, OK Computer. Parlophone, Capital, 1997. Raihan, Puji-Pujian. First on a local label, 1996, then reissued by Warner Malaysia, 1997. Ranking Ann’s, Something Fishy Going On. Ariwa, 1984. Ranking Joe, Armageddon. Kingdom, 1982. Ranking Trevor and Trinity, Three Piece Chicken and Chips. Cha Cha, 1978. Reich, Steve (Kronos Quartet/Pat Metheny), Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint. Elektra Nonesuch, 1989. Relient K., Five Score and Seven Years Ago. Capitol/Gotee, 2007. Revelation, Book of Revelation. Burning Sounds, 1979. REZ, Awaiting Your Reply. Star Song, 1978. Riley, Winston, Meditation Dub. Techniques, 1976. Roach, Max, We Insist: Freedom Now. Candid, 1960. Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock, It Takes Two. Profile Records, 1988. Rogers, Ce Ce, Ce Ce Rogers. Atlantic, 1989. Rolling Stones, The, ‘Mother’s Little Helper’. Decca, 1966. Rolling Stones, The, ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’. London Records, 1965. Rolling Stones, The, Beggar’s Banquet. Decca, 1968. Rolling Stones, The, Their Satanic Majesties Request. Decca, 1967. Rollins, Sonny, Freedom Suite. Riverside, 1958. Romeo, Max, Revelation Time. Different Records, 1978. Romeo, Max, War ina Babylon. Island, 1976. Rusby, Kate, Little Lights. Pure Records, 2001. Ruts, The, The Crack. Virgin, 1979. Sabbath Assembly, Restored to One. The Ajna Offensive/Svart Records, 2010. Sabbath Assembly, Ye Are Gods. Svart Records/The Ajna Offensive, 2012. Safam, Encore. Safam Records, 1978. Saint Vitus, Saint Vitus. SST, 1984. Sanders, Pharoah, Jewels of Thought. Impulse! Records, 1969. Sanders, Pharoah, Tauhid. Impulse! Records, 1966. Saturnalia Temple, UR. PsycheDOOMelic, 2008. Saturnalia Temple, Aion of Drakon. Nuclear Winter Records/The Ajna Offensive, 2011. Saturnalia Temple, To the Other. The Ajna Offensive/Listenable Records, 2015. Scientist, World at War. Black Ovation Records, 1981. Seeger, Pete, and Bruce Springsteen, ‘This Land is Your Land’ (recorded January 2009) https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=wnvCPQqQWds (accessed 19 April 2016). Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Virgin, 1977. Shelter, Mantra. Roadrunner, 1995. Slayer, God Hates us All. American, 2001. Slayer, Haunting the Chapel. Metal Blade/Enigma Records, 1984. Slayer, Hell Awaits. Metal Blade, 1985. 399

Discography

Slayer, Show no Mercy. Metal Blade, 1983. Simon and Garfunkel, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Columbia, 1966. Simon, Paul, Graceland, Warner Bros, 1986. Sinatra, Frank, My Way: The Best of Frank Sinatra. Reprise, 2002. Sir Mix-A-Lot, Mack Daddy. Def American Recordings, 1992. Skyclad, The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth. Noise International, 1991. Smith, Michael W., The Michael W. Smith Project. Reunion, 1983. Smith, Patti, Peace and Noise. Arista, 1997. Snoop Dogg, Malice in Wonderland. Priority Records, 2009. SoCalled, HipHopKhasene. Piranha Musik, 2003. SoCalled, The So Called Seder: A Hip Hop Haggadah. JDub Records, 2005. Sol Invictus, Against the Modern World. L.A.Y.L.A.H. Antirecords, 1987. Sopor Aeternus and the Ensemble of Shadows, Es reiten die Toten so schnell, or: The Vampyre sucking at his own Vein. Apocalyptic Vision 2003. Space, Space. KLF Communications, 1990. Spacegoats, Tribadelica. Mandala, 1999. Springsteen, Bruce, Born in the USA. Columbia, 1984. Springsteen, Bruce, Live/1975-85. Columbia 1986. Steel Pulse, Earth Crisis. Elektra, 1984. Stevens, Cat, Teaser and the Firecat. Island Records, 1971. Sugar Hill Gang, Sugar Hill Gang. Sugar Hill Records, 1979. Summer, Donna, I Remember Yesterday. Casablanca, 1977. Swift, Taylor, 1989. Big Machine, 2014. Tangerine Dream, Alpha Centauri. Ear, 1971. Tangerine Dream, Atem. Ear, 1973. Tangerine Dream, Phaedra. Ear, Virgin, 1974. Tangerine Dream, Zeit. Ear, 1973. Taylor, James, James Taylor. Apple, 1968. Therion, Lepaca Kliffoth. Nuclear Blast, 1995. Therion, Theli. Nuclear Blast, 1996. Therion, Secret of the Runes. Nuclear Blast, 2001. Therion, Gothic Kabbalah. Nuclear Blast, 2007. Therion, Sitra Ahra. Nuclear Blast, 2010. Thiel, Lisa, Circle of the Seasons. Sacred Dreams Productions, 2005. Throbbing Gristle, The Second Annual Report. Industrial Records, 1977. Tibetan Buddhist Monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery, Sacred Music, Sacred Dance: For Planetary Healing and World Purification. Music & Arts Programs of America, 1992. Timberlake, Justin, ‘What Goes Around … Comes Around’. Jive, 2006. Torres, Sprinter. Partisan, 2015. Tosh, Peter, No Nuclear War. CBS, 1987. Triarii, Ars Militaria. Eternal Soul Records, 2005. Tsai, Jolin, 1019. Universal Music, 1991. Tseng, Jenny, Inner Voice (心聲). Jenfu Record, 1981. Týr, How Far To Asgard. Tutl, 2002. Tweets, The, ‘The Birdie Song’. PRT, 1981. U2, October. Island, 1981. U Roy, Dread in a Babylon. TR International, 1975. Underoath, Define the Great Line. Solid State, 2006. Urfaust, Geist Ist Teufel. Christchrusher Productions, 2003. Urfaust, Apparitions. Ván, 2015. 400

Discography

Vangelis, Blade Runner. EMI, 1982. Vangelis, Chariots of Fire. Polydor, 1981. Various Artists, Ambient Dub Volume 1 (The Big Chill). Beyond, 1992. Various Artists, Artificial Intelligence. Warp, 1992. Various Artists, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968. Elektra, 1972. A significantly expanded version was released on CD by Rhino in 1998. Various Artists, Helpless Amongst Friends. Tooth & Nail, 1994. Various Artists, Passion. Real World, 1989. Various Artists, Pioneers of the Hypnotic Groove. Warp, 1991. Various Artists, Risky Business. Virgin, 1982. Vegan Reich, Jihad. Uprising, 1999. Velez, Martha, Escape from Babylon. Sire, 1976. Venom, Welcome to Hell. Neat Records, 1981. Venom, Black Metal. Neat Records, 1982. Wailer, Bunny, Black Heart Man. Island, 1976. Ward, Anita, ‘Ring My Bell’. T.K. Disco, 1979. Wardruna, Runaljod – Gap var Ginnunga. Indie Recordings, 2009. Watain, Rabid Death’s Curse. End All Life Productions, 2000. Watain, Sworn to the Dark. Seasons of Mist, 2007. West, Kanye, The College Dropout. Roc-A-Fella, 2004. West, Kanye, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Def Jam, 2010. Williams, Hank, ‘I Saw the Light’. MGM Records, 1948. Williams, Pharrell, Despicable Me 2 Soundtrack. Back Lot Music, 2013. Williams, Willie, Armagideon Time. Studio 1, 1982. Within Temptation, Mother Earth. DSFA Records, 2000. Wonder, Stevie, Innervisions. Tamla, 1973. Wonder, Stevie, Talking Book. Tamla, 1972. Wong, Anthony, Like Water (若水). Music Icon Record, 2006. Wong, Anthony, Brushed Yet It Stays (拂了一身還滿). Music Icon Record, 2011. Wong, Faye, Love Strangers Only (只愛陌生人). EMI Hong Kong, 1999. Wong, Faye, Fable (寓言). EMI Hong Kong, 2000. Wong, Ivana, The Sensibilities of Poets and Paintings (詩情·畫意). Universal Music, 2006. Y & T, ‘Dirty Girl’. A&M Records, 1981. Yabby, U., Chant Down Babylon Kingdom. Nationwide, 1977. Yardbirds, The, ‘Heart Full of Soul’. EMI, 1965. Yellow, Peter, Hot. Black Music, 1982. Yes, Close to the Edge. Atlantic, 1972. Yes, Going for the One. Atlantic, 1977. Yeung, Miriam, Electric Girl (電光幻影). EMI Virgin, 2004. Yeung, Miriam, Unlimited. Gold Typhoon, 2006. Yidcore, Eighth Day Slice/Fiddlin’ On Ya Roof. Boomtown, 2005a. Yidcore, Wind Beneath My Wings. Boomtown, 2005b. Young Jeezy and 2 Chainz, It’s Tha World. Def Jam, 2013. Yung, Joey, Love Joey Love Four (喜歡祖兒) 4. Emperor Entertainment Group, 2008. Yusuf, Sami, Al-Mu‘allim. Awakening Records, 2003. Yusuf, Sami, Songs of the Way Vol. 1. Andante Records, 2015. Zen, Joan, This Is The Fortunate Life. Self-released, 2016. ZZ Top, ‘Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers’. London Records, 1974.

401

Filmography

Abhiman (1973). Directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Awaara (1951). Directed by Raj Kapoor. Book Of Eli, The (2010). Directed by Albert & Allen Hughes. Boyz n the Hood (1991). Directed by John Singleton. Buddha of Suburia, The (1993). Directed by Roger Michell. Constantine (2005). Directed by Francis Lawrence. Countryman (1983). Directed by Dickie Jobson. Dam Busters, The (1955). Directed by Michael Anderson. Devdas (2002). Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Dogma (1999). Directed by Kevin Smith. Electronic Awakening (2011). Directed by Andrew Johner. Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Geet Gata Chal (1975). Directed by Tarachand Barjatya. God Is My DJ (2006). Directed by Carin Goeijers. Goliyon ki Raasleela Ram-leela (2013). Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Gospel Road, The (1972). Directed by Robert Elfstrom. Groove (2000). Directed by Greg Harrison. Heart of a Dog (2015). Directed by Laurie Anderson. Help, The (2011). Directed by Tate Taylor. Khalnayak (1993). Directed by Subhash Ghai. Kundun (1997). Directed by Martin Scorsese. Liquid Crystal Vision (2002). Directed by Billy Rood & Torsten Klimmer. Machine Gun Preacher (2011). Directed by Marc Forster. Mughal-e-Azam (1960). Directed by K. Asif. Nadiya ke Paar (1982). Directed by Govind Moonis. Neel Kamal (1968). Directed by Ram Maheshwari Ninth Gate, The (1999). Directed by Roman Polanski. O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000). Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen. Pale Rider (1985). Directed by Clint Eastwood. Philip Glass: A Portrait in 12 Parts (2007). Directed by Scott Hicks. Pinjar (2003). Directed by Chandra Prakash Diwedi. Ram Lakhan (1989). Directed by Subhash Ghai. Ram teri Ganga Maili (1985). Directed by Raj Kapoor.

Filmography

Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978). Directed by Raj Kapoor. Seven Years in Tibet (1997). Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. Sister Act I (1992). Directed by Emile Ardolino. Sister Act II: Back In The Habit (1993). Directed by Bill Duke. Straight Outta Compton (2015). Directed by Gary Gray. Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam (2009). Directed by Omar Majeed. Taqwacores, The (2010). Directed by Eyad Zahra. Ten Commandments, The (1956). Directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Welcome to Wonderland (2006). Directed by James Short. Wicker Man, The (1973). Directed by Robin Hardy. Yogis of Tibet, The (2002). Directed by Jeremy M. Pill.

403

Index

2 Live Jews  123 2nd Chapter of Acts  105 2Pac, see Shakur, Tupac  315 Abba 235 Abber, C.  248 Abdul Noor, Sukina  120 Abraham, I.  5–6, 241, 243–5, 247, 249 Acheron 226 acid folk, see psychedelic folk  294 acid house  82, 279, 302 Acid King  294 acid, see LSD Ackfeldt, A.  117–28 Adam Again  110 Adams, John  331 Adams, Ryan  57, 84 Adler, W. M.  38 Adorno, T. W.  24–5, 56, 79, 84, 87, 307, 349 adverbs/adverbial significance  78–9, 89, 348 aesthetics  5, 62, 90–2, 97, 103, 162, 206, 225, 227, 241, 245, 249, 279, 282, 316, 318–19, 321–2, 324, 326–8 affect/affective space  7–8, 17, 24, 26–31, 38, 46, 55, 62, 76, 78–9, 83–9, 91, 97, 103, 134–5, 178, 182, 233–6, 247, 261, 263–4, 267, 279–80, 283, 295, 301–2, 304, 320, 348–9 affordance  85–7, 96 Afghanistan  43, 48–50, 53, 354 Africa  13–4, 36, 38, 39, 44–5, 48–51, 114, 116–17, 211–15, 217–18, 252–3, 257–9, 266, 268–9, 287–8, 351 African Head Charge  302 Afro-Christianity  252, 255 Agape 107 Agency for Cultural Affairs  160 Aitken, Laurel  216 Ajna Offensive/Ajnabound  204 Akercocke 226 Akron/Family 294 Al Jazeera  120 al-Bashiri, Samir  116 al-Dunya, Ibn Abi  115 al-Farabi 113

Al-Faruqi, L.  112 Al-Ghazali, A. H. M.  114 al-Jassmi, Hussein  116 al-Joumeyli, Omar, see Mekka  116 Al-Juda’iʻ, ʻAbd Allah bin Yusif  114 Al-Munajjid, M. S.  115 al-Namrood 118 al-Qaradawi, Y.  115, 120 al-Tamistani, A. B.  114 al-tarab 350 Alagha, J.  112, 116 Aleichem, S.  121 Alexander, J.  7, 98 Algeria  45, 47, 49 Alice Cooper  47, 110 Alim, H. S.  117 Allen, Lily  58, 83 Allen, Richard  101 Allman, T.  167 Alperin, M.  121 Alpha Blondy  252 Alphonso, Roland  217 Altamont 107 Ama no Uzume  163 Amaterasu 163 ambient  23, 30, 96, 156, 187–9, 191, 204, 206, 209, 258, 302–4, 321, 327–7 America, see United States of America American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)  106 Amon Düül II  294 Amorphis  199, 227 Amos, Daniel  110 Amos, Tori  8, 59, 239 Anderman, J.  141 Anderson, Laurie  158 Andraé Crouch and the Disciples  105 Andreasen, E.  160 Andy, Horace  257 ankh 317 anthems  139, 303 Anthrax 224 anti-authoritarian 269 anti-Semitism  24, 207, 228

Index

Antoinette 312 apocalyptic  28, 73, 75, 123, 125, 225–6, 243, 251, 254, 256, 274, 232, 243–4, 348 Arcade Fire  72–4, 79, 239 Ardolino, Emile  339 Armageddon 255–6 Armstrong, G.  18 Armstrong, Louis  128 Arnett, A.  228 Arosian Black Mass  204–5 Arthur, Dave and Toni  300 Asahara, Shōko  166 Ásatrú  185, 226 Ash Ra Tempel  294 ash-Shabab 112 Astley, J.  99–100 Astral Projection  294 Astralasia 294 atabales 211 Atlanta Fest  107 atman 297 Audio Adrenaline  105 August Burns Red  243 Augustine 348 Aum Shinrikyō  165–6 Australasia 14 authenticity  3, 21, 56–9, 61–2, 64, 91, 98, 194, 227, 232, 238, 244, 248, 264, 266, 270, 279–80, 293, 300, 302 Autonomous Individuals Network (AIN), Guénon, René 205 avatar 169 Averill, G.  210 awra 120 Azerrad, M.  244 B-boy  168, 308 Babylon  38–9, 215, 219, 251–2, 254–9, 347 backward masking  46–7, 52 Badarou, Wally  259 Baddeley, G.  319 Badger, E.  279 Bahamadia 311 Bailey, E.  327 Baily, J.  49 Baker, J.  335 Baker, L.  54 Bakker, Jim  102 Bakker, Tammy  102 Ball, P.  263 Bambaataa, Afrika  55, 308

banality  56, 59, 64, 85–7 Banco de Gaia  302 Banhart, Devendra  294 Banks, Tony  236 Bannister, M.  347 Bardo Pond  294 Barendregt, B.  117 Baring-Gould, S.  262 Barkham, P.  349 Barlow, J.  75 Barnes, Dee  314 Barrett, Aston  218 Barrett, L. E.  253 Barzel, T.  1, 125 Base, Rob  310 Bastide, R.  281 Batcave  317, 319, 323 Bathory  199, 226 Battersby, C.  55, 57, 60 Baumann, Peter  330, 333 Bayles, M.  330, 350 Baynton, M.  54 Beach Boys, The  47, 329 Beastie Boys, The  144, 157, 168 Beatles, The  26, 35, 46–9, 52–3, 61, 105, 139–40, 148, 234, 295, 297–9, 329, 330 Beaudoin, T.  82 Beaujon, A.  105, 108–9 Beck, G.  31, 92, 279 Becker, H. S.  13–4, 18 Becker, J.  92, 95, 98, 328, 335–6 Bedford, S.  295 Beeber, S. L.  1, 129, 246–7 Begbie, J.  78–9, 84–5, 97, 348–9 Belfagor (Ofermod)  200, 202, 204 Bellah, R.  245, 260–1, 263–4 Bellman, J.  295 Beloved, The  334 Bendix, T.  22 Benjamin, W.  307 Bennett, A.  1, 5–6, 13–7, 19–21, 184, 226 Bennett, H. S.  13, 15 Bennett, Sanford Fillmore  38 Benson Music Company  106 Benson 107 Benson, B. E.  293, 355 Berg, C.  111 Berger, H. M.  15, 223 Berger, P. L.  296 Berlin wall  165 Berlin, Irving  128, 262

405

Index

Beyoncé  54, 131, 142, 267 Bhabha, H.  39 Bhagavad Gita  26, 74 bhakti  132–4, 246 Bhikha, Zain  116 bhor bhaye 134 Biblical apocalypticism  225 Big Daddy Kane  208 Bilby, K.  251 Bill Haley and the Comets  234 Billings, William  101, 106 Birkin, Jane (and Serge Gainsbourg)  234 Bivins, J. C.  286, 290, 293, 355 Bizet, Georges  28 Black Ark Studio  219, 258 black metal  4, 18, 51, 118, 190, 198–206, 209, 224, 226–9, 231 Black Sabbath  47, 198, 203, 224–5, 300 Black Uhuru  254 Black Widow  203, 300 Black Zionism  252 Blackwell, Chris  216, 219 Blakey, Art  118, 291–2 Blasphemy 199 blasphemy  46, 51, 115, 317 Blecha, P.  44, 46, 51–2, 118 Blige, Mary J.  342 Blood Axis  206, 353 Bloodgood 227 blues  33–4, 38, 41, 61, 70, 82, 101, 103, 125, 128, 150, 158, 186, 188, 198, 205, 216–8, 224, 229, 268, 270–1, 286–93, 295, 302, 311, 339, 342, 347, 349 Blumberg, A.  168 Blur 235 Blush, S.  242 Blutengel 323 Bohlman, P.  117, 123 bokushi 167 Bollywood 142–3 Bon Odori  168 Bond, Graham  188, 300 Bono (Paul Hewson)  69, 157, 238 Book of Eli, The 343–4 Borthwick, S.  241, 294 Bosnia  111, 120 Bossius, T.  1, 6, 228 Botting, F.  317, 320 Boukman Eksperyans  211 Bovey, S.  241 Bowie, David  55, 144, 148, 154–5, 331

406

Boxi 167 Bradley, A.  309, 311 Bragg, Billy  354 Brahman  31, 297 Brain, Chris  41 Brand Nubian  118, 208 Brattleboro Free Folk Festival  302 break dancing  306 Brennan, T.  131, 140, 351 Brevett, Lloyd  217 Brian Henke  192 bricolage  309, 321–2 Bright, Bill  107 British blues boom  229 Britten, Benjamin  264 Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI)  106 Bromell, N.  298 Brooks, Mike  255 Brown, A.  228 Brown, C.  234 Brown, David  2, 78, 305 Brown, F. B.  78, 113, 348 Brubeck, Dave  287 Bruce, S.  334 Bryars, Gavin  331 Buckland, F.  279 Buckley, J.  270 Buddha  144–5, 150–1, 154–6, 159, 161, 164, 167, 204, 351 Buddhism  2, 141, 144–5, 147–8, 151, 156, 158–61, 163–4, 169–9, 176–7, 181, 236, 243, 248–9, 239, 352 Buddhism, Chinese  176 Buddhism, Tibetan  144–5, 147, 153, 158, 352 Buddhism, Zen  144–5, 152–3, 173, 328 Buddhism/Buddhist  29, 144–62, 164–8, 169, 175–7, 180–3, 234, 248–50, 293, 297, 351–3 Bufwack, M. A.  272, 277 bukkyō sanka 167 Bullett 107 Bureus, Johannes  202–3 Burghart, D.  353 Burleigh, Harry  33 Burnett, G. W.  288, 292 Burnett, T Bone  110, 342 Burning Man  18 Burning Spear  253, 257 Burns, L.  59 Burroughs, William S.  296 Burton, R. D. E.  252 buru 215

Index

Burzum 199 Bush, Kate  56, 62–3 Busman, J.  96 Bussmann, J.  304 Busta Rhymes  118, 208 Butler, A.  131 Butler, Win  239 Byrds, The  299 Cabaret Voltaire  332 Cage, John  144, 152, 327–31, 335, 352 Caldera Pagan Music Festival  192 Caldwell, C.  95 Callaway, K.  261 Calvin, John  94, 101 Campbell, J.  146 Campus Crusade for Christ  107 Can  294, 331 Candlemass  199, 353 Canterbury Sound  21 Cantopop  178–9, 181 Capitol Christian Music Group  108 Capleton 220 Capra, F.  295 Card, Michael  105 Cardew, Cornelius  331 Carlisle, Bob  109 Carlos, Don  225 Carr, L.  296 Carroll, Lewis  298 Carter Family  262, 269, 272, 275 Cartmel, F.  279 Cash, Johnny  4, 27, 83, 107, 269, 272–7, 341, 344 Cashmore, E.  255, 258 Castle, Ray  280 Cauty, Jimmy  333 Cave, Nick  83, 323–4 Cavicchi, D.  15, 17, 237 CCM, see contemporary Christian music Celia 191–2 Celtic Frost  226 Celtic  185, 188–9, 191, 193, 195–7, 223, 227, 316–7, 322, 324 censorship  3, 8, 36, 43–4, 46–51, 53, 115 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)  161 ceremony  112, 130, 161, 200, 212, 215, 322, 325 Cézanne, Paul  261 Chalice 220 Champion, S.  304 Chang, J.  307–9 Chaos Magick  205, 207, 304

Chapman, Stephen Curtis  105 Charanga Forever  213 Charles, Ray  35, 341 Chase, C. W.  286, 291 Chase, Charlie (DJ)  308 Chasney, Ben  302 Chebat, J.-C.  95 Checker, Chubby  342 Chevannes, B.  251 Chic 310 Chicago School  14 Chicago  14–5, 157, 302, 311 Chidester, D.  43, 229 Chik, Lam  181–3 Children of the Bong  303 Children of the Day  105 chillout 23 Chilson, C.  160 China  154, 158–9, 161, 164–5, 176, 178, 213–4 Chinese music  179 Chinese popular religion  177 Ching, B.  270 Chion, M.  328 Christian metal  227 Christian punk  18, 243–6 Christian rock  44, 105, 107–9, 167, 340 Christianity  2–3, 18, 27–9, 33, 35, 37, 43–52, 60, 67–9, 74, 77–8, 81, 89–110, 113, 122, 139, 160–2, 164–9, 174, 188, 194, 199, 206, 209, 212, 214, 216, 223, 225–9, 234–9, 241–8, 251–2, 255–8, 269, 272–3, 275–8, 286, 289, 291–2, 301, 303, 312, 315–6, 318, 325, 328, 334, 338–41, 344–5, 349, 354 Chu, S. Y. W.  178–9 church arsons  199, 227 Church of Satan  27, 200, 206 CIA, see Central Intelligence Agency Clannad 334 Clarence 13X  207 Clark, J.  340  Clarke, E. F.  90 Clarke, P. B.  253, 279 Clash, The  255 Clay, E.  312 Cloonan, M.  43, 52 club culture  15 club  15, 20, 26, 41, 56, 148, 171, 279, 295, 310, 319, 321–2, 325–7, 329–30, 332–3, 335 Coates, Eric  27 Cockburn, Bruce  110 Coggins, O.  5–6

407

Index

Cohen, H. G.  290 Cohen, Leonard  148, 156–7 Cohen, S.  13, 15, 18, 147 Cohen, Stanley  14 Coke Studio 117 Coldplay  142–3, 237 Cole, F.  283 Coleman, S.  98 Collective Soul  110 Collingwood, R. G.  60 Collins, Bootsy  294 Collins, Lyn  310 Coltrane, Alice  26 Coltrane, John  39, 291 Columbia (Record label)  106 Combichrist 223 Company, R. F.  175 Composer, Lord  216 Comus  294, 300 Cone, J.  34 Confucianism 176–7 Conn, C. P.  276 Constantine 343 consumption  13, 24, 91, 95, 104, 111, 145–6, 177–8, 315, 343, 351 Contemporary Christian Music (CCM)  2, 91, 101, 104–10, 235, 243, 340–1 conventions  2, 15, 20, 26, 58, 96, 99–100, 226, 245, 249, 271, 276, 288, 330, 335, 351–2 Cooke, Sam  39–40, 129, 289 Cooper, C.  255, 257 Cordero, J.  223, 229 Cornerstone Festival  108–10 Coughlin, E. K.  271 COUM Transmissions  205 Count Ossie and the Rasta Family  253 counterculture  101, 103, 107, 118, 139, 148, 153, 243, 245, 294–5, 297, 300, 302, 304, 327, 329, 334–5 country music  21, 235, 269–73, 276–7 Coupe, L.  125, 296 Covach, J.  61, 186 Coven 203 Cowan, D. E.  186 Cox, H.  295, 298 Coyle, M.  347 Crazy Legs  308 Cream  224, 294–5 Creation Festival  107 Creation Northwest  107 Credential 107

408

Creed 110 Cretu, Michael  334 critical musicology  1, 7, 25 Crosby, David  299 Crosby, Fanny  101 Crow, Sheryl  68–9, 150 Crowley, Aleister  188, 198, 301, 353 crucifix  316–7, 319 Crypton’s Vocal Synthesizer  169 Cuba  210, 212–3, 220, 308 Culler, E. M. J.  26 culture industry  2, 25, 101–2, 270 Curiel, J.  41, 129 Current 93  205, 207, 294, 300–1 Curtis, E.  114 Cusic, D.  271, 288 Czukay, Holger  331 D’Andrea, A.  279–80, 303 da’wa 116 daff 115 Dalai Lama (14th)  147, 155, 352 Damh the Bard  191, 193 dance/dancing  1, 6, 17–8, 23, 26, 28–9, 41–2, 44, 46, 49, 55, 58, 60–3, 114, 199, 132–3, 135, 140–1, 143, 145, 154, 162–4, 166, 168, 170–4, 184, 189, 191, 194, 206, 211–5, 217, 233–5, 239, 258, 263, 277–85, 287, 301–2, 304, 308–9, 317, 319, 323, 326–7, 332–3, 335, 342, 346 Daodejing  176, 182–3 Daoism 176 Dark Buddha Rising  204 Darkthrone  199, 226 Das EFX  310 Das Ich  323 Davie, G.  334 Davies, Ray  299 Davis, S.  256 Davis, W.  160 Dawson L. L.  186 Dayspring 107 dc Talk  105 De Certeau, M.  86 de Rosen, L.  166 Dead Can Dance  28, 184, 191, 194 DeAngelis, A. M.  45 Death in June  205, 207 death metal  198–9, 203, 224, 226, 229 Death SS  199 Death 226

Index

Deathchain 203 Debu 117 Deep Purple  224, 345 Def Leppard  224 DeGarmo & Key  105 Dekker, Desmond  217 Demers, J.  332, 336 Denisoff, Serge  32 DeNora, T.  7, 24–6, 29–30, 92, 95–6, 348 Depeche Mode  27 Dervishes 114 Destruction 199 deviance  14, 100, 263, 279 Devil, see Satan Devil’s Blood, The  203 dharma punx  156, 248–50 Diamond Head  224 Diamond, Neil  127 Diary of Dreams  325 Dibben, N.  59 Dickerson, Dez  110 Dickerson, J.  54 Diddley, Bo  341 Diehl, M.  242 Dillinger 220 dilruba  26, 148, 298 Dines, M.  246 Diouf, M.  212 Diouf, S. A.  287 Dire Straits  332 Disciples, The  259 disco  28, 55, 58, 62, 278, 282, 309, 310–1, 317 Dissection  201, 208 DIY  242–3, 249–50 DJ Charlie Chase  308 DJ  41, 168, 172, 280, 282–4, 304, 308, 310, 332–3 DMT  279, 354 documentaries  16, 120, 148, 247, 280, 350 Dogma 355 Dolan, J.  347 Dominican Republic  210–12, 220 Donovan  294, 297, 302 doom metal  199, 225 Doors, The  8, 296 Dorsey, Thomas  38, 101, 128, 275 Dove Awards  107 Dr Strangely Strange  294 Dr. Dre  311, 313–4 Dragon Rouge  200–3 Drake 312 Dread, Mikey  256

Drewett, M.  3, 8, 47, 49, 50 Driver, C.  20 Drolma, Ani Choying  147, 150–1 drone metal  225 drugs  14, 26, 46–7, 49, 57, 68–9, 82, 100, 115, 139, 156, 171, 173, 237, 241, 249, 276–7, 279, 295–9, 303–5, 308, 330, 332–3, 337, 344–6 Drummond, Bill  217, 333 dub  254, 258–9, 281, 295, 302, 308, 333 Duran Duran  331 Durkheim, É.  7, 14, 229, 237, 263 Dvořák, Antonín  33 Dwyer, R.  135 Dyer, R.  28 Dylan, Bob  4, 47, 70, 71, 124–5, 264, 341 Dyrness, W.  348 Dyson, M. E.  315 E (ecstasy)  279, 303, 332–3, 335 Earhart, H. B.  160 Earl Zero  255 Eastwood, Clint  345 Eat Static  302 Eavis, Michael  239 Echo and the Bunnymen  294 eclecticism  240, 295, 321 Eco, U.  86 Edelman, M. B.  124 EDM, see electronic dance music Edmonds, E. B.  252 Edwards, L. H.  4, 273 Egypt  47, 53, 115–7, 223, 252–3 Ehrlich, D.  31 Ehrlich, L.  258 Eighmy, J. L.  278 Elbow  237, 350 Electric Moon  294 Electric Prunes  294 electronic dance music (EDM)  1, 6, 18, 26, 28–9, 58, 189, 206, 278–85, 304, 327, 332, 346 Eliade, M.  229 Elijah, Muhammed  207 Ellingson, T.  164, 351 Ellington, Duke  190 Ellis, Alton  217 Ellwood, R.  160 Eluveitie  191, 193, 196 Emerald Rose  191, 193 Emerson, Keith  236 EMI Christian Music Group  106, 108, 244 EMI Gospel  107

409

Index

EMI  106, 108, 154 emotion  7, 23–4, 27, 29, 30–2, 58, 93–4, 128, 160, 235, 296, 300, 325, 336, 348 Emperor  199, 226 Endō, Shūsaku  161 Engelhardt, J.  350 England  32, 55, 102, 129, 154, 236, 257, 260, 262, 286, 300 Enigma  28, 334 Enlightenment  92, 122, 240 Eno, Brian  147, 327–8, 331–4 Enslaved 227 entheogen 279 Enya 334 epiphanic experience  79, 82, 84–8 Epstein, H.  78, 288, 354 Ergüner, Süleyman  117 Erickson, G.  5 Erickson, Roky, and The Aliens  203 Eriksson, Tommie  200 Erlewine, S. T.  56–7 Erni, J. N.  178–9 Ernst, C.  114 Eroglu, S. A.  95 erotic/eroticism  27–9, 44, 132, 134, 234, 288, 313–4 escapism 89 Eshètè, Alèmayèhu  294 Eshun, K.  259 Eskridge, L.  108 Esler, P. F.  13 esotericism/esoteric  142, 163, 167–9, 199, 204–5, 207–9, 227, 251, 258–9, 280, 300–1 Espers 294 essentialism  78–9, 141 ethnocentrism 14 ethnography  5–6, 13–6, 21–1, 26, 279 euphoric trance  23 Europe/European  13, 25, 37, 55, 59, 94, 112, 114–5, 117–8, 130, 145, 150, 154, 193, 206–7, 209–10, 215, 223, 247, 251, 269, 281, 287, 289–90, 295, 309, 327, 331 European art music  165, 174 Evanescence 232 Evangelical Lutheran Tokyo Church  167 Evangelicalism  2, 33, 37–8, 52, 92, 95, 97–8, 101–10, 227, 243–4, 247–8, 250–1, 271–2, 341, 349 Evans, D.  288, 354 Evans, K.  205 Evans, M.  93, 341 Eve 314

410

event-culture 282 Evola, Julius  206 Explo ’72  107 expressive revolution  296 Fab 5 Freddy  118 Fabbri, F.  327 Facebook 21 Fairport Convention  194 Faith and the Muse  191–2, 196 Falwell, Jerry  104 Fan, L.  175, 179–80 fandom  15, 237 Fang, W.  182 fann al-hadif 116 fans  5, 13, 17, 20–1, 25–7, 36, 45, 47, 53, 70, 75, 107–9, 118, 169, 193, 201, 203–4, 207, 230, 232–3, 236–9, 242, 244, 250, 267, 269, 283, 299 Fard, W. D.  207 Farley, H.  229 Farmer, H. G.  112, 114 Farner, Mark  110 Farrell, G.  299 Fast, S.  26, 299 fatwa  51, 115 Faulkner, Q.  93–4 Faun  191–2, 196 Feld, S.  131, 351 feminism  54, 242 Ferrell, V.  46 Fes Festival of World Sacred Music  117, 350 Fessy, T.  50 festivals  6, 16, 18, 38, 41, 104, 107–11, 117, 126, 131, 142–3, 150, 158, 162–4, 166, 170, 186, 190, 192–5, 204–5, 209, 229, 239, 278, 280, 282, 302–4, 315, 320, 332–3, 350 Fey, J. W.  316 Fikentscher, K.  279 Filene, B.  270 film music  328 filmi git 132 Finnegan, R.  54 Finney, Charles  94, 104 Fire+Ice 206–7 Fiscella, A. T.  118, 247–8 Fish, S.  26–7 Fishnet  107, 109 Fisk Jubilee Singers  101 Five Percenters  117, 207–8, 312, 353 Flea, Lord  216

Index

Flippo, C.  273 Flores, J.  308 Flowers, Brandon  239 Flowers, Stephen, see Thorsson, E. Floyd, S. A.  287–8 Floyd, Sam  311 Flur, W.  331 Fly, Lord  216 focus groups  16, 18–9, 81 folk metal  188–9, 195, 199 folk music  4, 91, 111, 114, 117, 120, 123, 162, 166, 174, 193–5, 199, 216, 260–9, 272, 300–2 Forbes, B. D.  1–3 ForeFront 107 Forgotten Horror  203 Fornlorn Fest  204–5 Foster, P. R.  38 Foucault, M.  314, 320–1 Four Seasons, The  341 Franke, Christopher  330 Frankfurt Institute for Social Research  24 Frater N.  201 freak folk, see psychedelic folk Freedman, J.  121 Friday, Gavin  322 Fripp, Robert  331 Frith, S.  5, 25, 27–8, 55, 59–60, 86, 91, 95, 232–4, 237, 239, 347, 350 Fritz, J.  278 Frizzell, N.  184 Froese, Edgar  330 Fruit of Islam  118 Fuller, Charles  101 Fun-Da-Metal 117 Funkadelic 294 Furlong, A.  279 Gablik, S.  334 Gabriel, Peter  150, 332 Gaë Bolg and the Church of Fand  323 gagaku 163 Gaia Consort  191 Gaither, Bill  106 Gamble, Kenny  40 Gammond, P.  185 Gardell, M.  118, 206–8 Garnett, R.  242 Garvey, Marcus  214–5, 219–20, 253 Gates, Henry Louis  311–2 Gauntlett, D.  95 Gauthier, F.  278–9, 281

Gay, D.  48, 335 Gaye, Marvin  40, 235 Gazzah, M.  112 Geldof, Bob  238 gematria 301 gender  8, 54–7, 84, 114, 276, 279, 313–4, 347 Genesis (band)  236 Genesis P-Orridge  205 genre  1, 3, 17, 21, 35–7, 41–4, 55, 57, 70, 74, 101, 103, 108, 111–2, 116–7, 119, 132, 147, 158–9, 168, 172, 178, 181–2, 186, 188, 193, 198–9, 202, 204–5, 208, 213, 223–5, 231, 241–3, 245, 258–9, 267, 269–72, 280, 288, 292, 294, 300, 306, 319, 327–8, 332–4, 336, 339–40, 345, 347, 349, 351, 353 Gentz, J.  176 George, N.  40, 306 Gerard, M.  279, 283 Germanic  199, 206–7, 223, 227 ghina’ 350 Ghost 203–4 Gibson, O.  349 Giddens, A.  95 Gilmour, M. J.  1–2, 4, 71, 347 Ginsberg, Allen  296, 299 Giraudy, Miquette  304 Gitlin, T.  102 Gladiators, The  218 glam metal  198, 224 Glass, Philip  150, 154–6, 328, 352 Glastonbury Festival  239 globalization  120, 286 Glock, C. Y.  245 glossolalia  86, 258 Gnod 294 gnosis  279, 282, 336 Goa Gil  282 Goa trance  280, 304, 282–3 Goat 294 God-Free Youth  245 Godstock 107 Godwin, J.  35 Goff, P.  110, 166 Gokurakujodo 169 Goldstein, R.  122–3 Gomyo 168 Gong  294, 300, 302, 304 Good News  107 Goodall, H.  262 Googoosh (Faegheh Atashin)  37 Gorgoroth  199, 206, 209

411

Index

Gospel Music Association (GMA)  107 gospel music  38, 101, 103, 105–6, 109, 128, 271–2, 275, 287–9, 292, 339–40, 342, 346 Gotee 107 goth music  6, 316, 324, 326 Gothic Voices  334 gothic  28, 187, 189, 192, 194, 202–3, 316–7, 319–24 Gothique Classique  317–9, 325 Gottlieb, J.  128, 242 Gracyk, T.  186, 347 Graham, Billy  101, 104, 106–7, 273, 275 Grainger, Percy  262–3 Gramsci, A.  25 Grand Funk Railroad  47, 110 Grand Ole Opry  107 Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five  308 Granholm, K.  4, 6, 198, 200, 202, 223, 226, 229 Grant, Amy  105–6 Grateful Dead, The  47, 75, 146, 294, 299, 329, 351 Green Day  242, 244 Green on Red  294 Green, Al  344 Green, B.  17, 23, 29 Green, Keith  105 Greenberg, A.  130 Gregorian chant  28–9, 78, 286, 334–5 Gregorius, F.  201 Gregory, B. S.  265 Greyhound 255 Grizzly Bear  294 Groenewegen, J.  179 Gubar, S.  351 Guess Who, The  68 Guralnick, P.  58 Guru Guru  294 Guru 311 Guthrie, Woody  262, 266 Gwydion Pendderwen  188, 191, 193 Habermas, J.  24, 79 Hafez, Abdel Halim  112 Häger, A.  1 Haight-Ashbury district  171 Haile Selassie I  38, 214–5, 219, 220, 253–4, 258 Haining, P.  296 Hall, B.  286–7 Hall, S.  14, 25 Halliwell, M.  300 Hallucinogen (Simon Posford)  172, 294 Hamas  111, 119

412

Hammond, A.  112 Hancock, Herbie  292, 351 Handel, George Frideric  162, 165, 268 Handy, W. C.  101 Hanegraaff, W. J.  280 Hannan, M.  283 Hannya Shingyō  164, 166, 168–9 Hanser, S.  30 Haram  45, 51, 112, 119–20 Hardy, Robin  301 Hare Krishna, see International Society for Krishna Consciousness Hargreaves, D.  29–30, 262 Harris J  116 Harris, Emmylou  151 Harrison, George  26, 70, 139–40, 148, 298–9 Hart, Mickey  144, 146, 351 Haruch, S.  54 Hassan, Nazia  37 Hates, Adrian  325 Hatsune, Miku  169 Hawkwind  294, 299, 302 Haynes, Jerry  217 Hazardous Dub Company  259 Head of the Demon  200 Headlam, D.  292 Heaney, Seamus  32 Heard, Gerald  296 Heard, Mark  110 Hearn, Bill  107–8 Heartwarming 107 heathen  199, 229 heathenism  207, 185, 199 heavy metal  1–2, 6, 29, 34, 36–7, 41, 47–8, 51, 61, 74, 97, 105, 109, 118–9, 166–7, 193, 195, 198, 203, 208, 223–31, 300, 348, 353 Hebdige, D.  5, 14, 20, 25, 100, 242, 255, 316, 319 Heelas, P.  250, 279–80, 296, 334–5 Hegarty, P.  80, 300 Heimert, Alan  110 Hellhammer  199, 225 Hellsodomy 118 Help, The 341 Hendershot, H.  2 Hendrix, Jimi  44, 47, 61, 224, 294–5, 297 Hendry J.  163–4 Henke, Brian  192 Heptones 218 Herder, J. G. von  261 Here & Now  294, 302 Herrmann, Bernard  27

Index

Hesmondhalgh, D.  263, 266–7, 354 Hesse, Hermann  236 heterochronotopia 326 heterotopia  281, 319–23, 325–6 Heylin, C.  242, 300 hierophany 229 Hill, Lauryn  315, 340 Hill, R.  251, 253–4, 259 Hillage, Steve  304 Hillsong (Record label)  107 Hillsong Church  95, 97–9 Hindu/ism  2, 31, 131, 139–41, 143, 148, 236, 243, 245–6, 248, 335 Hine, C.  21 Hinton, Joie  302 hip hop  5, 38, 41, 105, 116–20, 130, 144, 157–8, 166, 168, 186, 189, 198, 207–9, 233, 306–15, 331, 353, 355 hippies  26, 103–6, 139, 170, 243, 245, 294–5, 303–4 Hirschkind, C.  97 Hisba 112 Hitchcock, Alfred  27 Hitler, Adolf  24 Hizbullah 111 Hobbs, Christopher  331 Hobbs, D.  19 Hodkinson, P.  13, 16, 19–21 Hofstadter, R.  36 Holloway, Nicky  332 Holzman, Jac  294 Hoodie Monks  168 Hopkins, J.  8 Hopps, G.  2, 77, 349 Howard, J. R.  2, 44, 97, 109 Howell, Leonard Percival  254, 257 Huber, P.  269 Hughes, D. W.  162 Hulsether, M.  268, 350 Human League, The  331–2 Huncke, Herbert  296 Hunt, G.  279 Hutnyk, J.  131, 139, 351 Hutson, S  280 Huxley, Aldous  295–6, 303 hymn  124, 167, 214, 237, 251, 262, 272, 275 Ibrahim, Abdullah  45–6, 286, 291 Ice Cube  118, 310, 313 Ichthus 107 iconography  118, 131, 141, 160, 169, 255, 318 Idema, H.  296

Ikhwân al-Safâ’  113 Illuminates of Thanateiros  207 imagination  23, 32, 59, 62, 79, 84, 87, 89, 126, 153, 198, 251, 260, 286–7, 292, 316 Imari Tones  166–7 Immortal 199 Impact 107 implicit religion  179–81, 183 incense  71, 317, 319, 322 Incredible String Band, The  184, 294–5, 300–2 India  26, 131, 139–43, 145–8, 155, 165, 176, 246, 262, 280, 295, 297–8, 303, 351 Individualism  240, 271, 273, 303 Indo-chic 141–3 Indonesia  118, 223 Industrial (music scene)  205–6, 209 Industrial records  205 Ingalls, M.  90–1, 96 Inkubus Sukkubus  188, 191–2, 194, 196, 323 Inner Circle  220 International Society for Krishna Consciousness  139, 245, 298 interpretive communities  26–7 intertextuality  26–7, 311 interviews  5–6, 14–7, 19–22 inversion  94, 226, 229, 257, 314, 318 Iran  36–7, 43, 48–50, 115–16, 223 Iron Maiden  28, 36, 41, 74, 224–5, 348 Islam  2, 37, 40, 43–5, 48–51, 111–20, 160, 207, 209, 243, 247–8, 250, 287, 291–2, 312, 315, 345 Islam, Yusuf  111, 116, 347, 350 Islamic State (Daesh)  111–2, 119 Islamophobia  120, 248, 309 Isley Brothers, The  310 isopsephy 301 Jackson, J. A.  40 Jackson, Mahalia  38, 129, 275 Jackson, Michael  235 Jah Shaka  255, 259 Jaise Radha Shyam  135 Jankélévitch, V.  325–6 Jansen, M. B.  163–5 Japan  145, 160–1, 163–70, 173–4, 332 Japanese music  164–5 Jarre, Jean-Michel  332, 334 Jars of Clay  109–10 Jay-Z  310, 312 jazz  13, 18, 24, 33, 39, 45, 101, 118, 126–8, 158, 186, 215, 217, 263, 286–93, 302, 309, 311, 330, 351, 354, 355

413

Index

Jefferson Airplane  47, 294–5, 298, 303, 329 Jefferson, T.  14 Jenks, C.  8 Jensen, J.  270 Jess and the Ancient Ones  203–4 Jesuits 121 Jesus Movement  101, 103–4, 106, 243 Jesus  27, 33, 37, 41, 47, 51–3, 67–9, 73, 75, 78, 84, 90, 103–5, 107–9, 167–8, 235, 243, 253, 264, 271, 273–7, 286, 312, 340–1, 345, 347 JesusFest 107 Jewish music  93, 123–6, 129, 290 Jewish  24, 38, 67, 93, 121–30, 139, 156, 235, 238, 243, 246–7, 250–1 Jex Thoth  203 Jōdo Shinsyū Hongwanji  167 Joe-Laidler, K.  279 Johannesson, I.  201 John, Elton  47, 67, 105 Johner, A.  278–9 Johnson, J. W.  33 Johnson, Linton Kwesi  255 Johnson, Robert  34, 198, 288 Johnston, R. K.  88, 161, 165, 339, 348 Jones, A  91, 97 Joseph, M.  235 Josephson, J. A.  160 Joyce, James  342 Judaism  2, 4, 121–7, 129–30, 235, 243, 246 Judas Priest  51, 224 Jung, S.  21 K-pop 21 kagura 163 Kahn-Harris, K.  1, 19, 90, 92, 96, 100, 223–6, 228 Kakar, S.  132, 134 Kalahari Surfers  51 Kalra, V.  1, 131 Kansas 110 Kant, I.  59–60 Kanter, K. A.  127–8 Karan, P. P.  163–4 Karlsson, Thomas  202–3 Kassabian, A.  233, 328 Kater, Peter  334 Katz, D.  259 Kaufman, G.  141 Keaggy, Phil  105 Keenan, D.  301–2 Keightley, K.  232, 236, 238 Kelley, R.  312–4, 355

414

Kellianna  191, 193 Kellner, D.  142 Kerouac, Jack  296 Keuss, J.  2 Khan, Nusrat Fateh Ali  31, 117, 332 Khechog, Nawang  150–1 Kibby, M. D.  16, 20 Killers, The  79, 239 Killing Joke  333 King S. A.  38 King Tubby  333 King’s X  110 Kings of Leon  239 Kinks, The  299 Kirkegaard, A.  52 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B  122, 129 Kishibe, S.  162 Kitaro 334 Klassen, C.  349 Klein, A.  129 klezmer  121–3, 126, 129–30 KLF  327, 333 Knibb, Lloyd  217 Knight, M. M.  1, 118, 207–8, 247, 353 Knight, W. E. J.  30, 345 Knott, K.  6 Kodály, Zoltán  261 Koen, B. D.  31 Konečni, V.  86 Kony 2012  345 Kool Herc  308 Korean popular music  21 Korn 110 Kornicki, P. F.  160 Korpe, M.  43, 45–6 Korpiklaani 199 Korsmeyer, C.  57 kosmische music  294, 302, 331 Kraftwerk  55, 327, 331 krautrock, see kosmische music Krishnacore  243, 245–6, 248–50 Kristeva, J.  26 Kristiansen, J.  201–2, 353 Kristofferson, Kris  107 KRS-One 312 Krueger, J.  348 Krusty, DJ.  280 Ku Klux Klan  342 Kubrick, Stanley  28 Kula Shaker  140 Kumar, R.  131

Index

Kumina  214, 251 Kunib Mela  304 Kurtis, Mesut  116 Kuwagata P.  169 Kyuss 294 labyrinth  320–1, 324–5 Lady Gaga  8, 79, 208, 235 Ladysmith Black Mambazo  266, 354 Lafrance, M.  59 Lahickey, B.  245 Laing, R. D.  296 Lam Chik (a.k.a. Lin Xi)  181–3 Lamar, Kendrick  81, 84, 306 Lamont, A.  19 Lang, G.  175 Lang, K. D.  55 Lange, B. R.  350 Lapis Niger  204 Larson, B.  44, 47 Larsson, G.  2, 4, 111, 117 Lash, S. M.  95 Lasher, Count  216 Laurent (DJ)  281 Lavezzoli, P.  298–9 Lawrence, D. H.  84 Lawrence, Francis  343 Leach, E. E.  347 Leaf, M.  160 Leary, Timothy  158, 238, 297, 299, 303 Leaves’ Eyes  199 Leblanc, L.  242–3 Led Zeppelin  26, 46, 47, 224, 353 Lee, Annabel  68 Lee, Byron  217 Lee, Christopher  301 Lee, L.  316, 323 Lee, M. A.  299 Lee, S.  21 Lee, T.  198 Leech, J.  300 Leftovers, The  86, 88 Leib, E.  251 Leitch, Donovan, see Donovan Lennon, John  139, 144, 153, 299, 347 Leonard, M.  54 Leonard, N.  293 Lesiuk, T.  95 Leszkiewicz, A.  57 Letcher, A.  194, 302 Leung, J.  182

LeVine, M.  36, 37 Levine, N.  156, 249 Levitin, D.  265 Lewin, O.  214–15 Lewin, P.  245, 248, 250 Lewis, C. S.  88–9 Lewis, G.  270, 276 Lewis, I. M.  252 Lewis, R.  253 Liber Azerate 201 Liberty 107 Liele, George  252 Liew, K.  51 Lil Wayne  311 liminality  82, 99, 172, 278, 280, 281–5, 316, 318–20, 323–6, 354 Lindsey, H.  256 Lindvall, H.  54 Lipsitz, G.  270 Lissa, Z.  328 Listemann, B.  33 Liszt, Franz  261–2 liturgy  42, 121, 123–5, 236, 286, 290–2, 324–6 Live 8  238 Live Aid  237–8 Livgren, Kerry  110 Livingston, Neville, see Bunny Wailer Lloyd, A. L.  253, 260, 261, 263, 264 Lomax, Alan  262 Lomax, John  262 Long, C. H.  283–4 Longhurst, B.  238 Loop Guru  303 Lord Composer  216 Lord Flea  216 Lord Fly  216 Lord Power  216 Lord Tanamo  216 Lost Dogs  110 lounge music  23 Love Song  105 Love, D. Wayne  82 Lovecraft, H. P.  317–19 Lovejoy, A. O.  14 lover’s rock  251 Lowe, M.  19 LSD-25  279, 295, 297, 298, 299, 303, 330, 333 LSU 110 Luciferian Light Orchestra  203 Lueck, E.  91 Luhr, E.  2, 104

415

Index

Lumerians 294 Lund, J.  271 Luther, Martin  94, 101, 103, 255 Luti-Kriss, see Norma Jean Lyden, J. C.  261 Lydon, John  239 Lyman. S.  15 Lynard Skynard  345 Lynch, G.  169, 170, 229, 237, 278, 279, 334 Lynxwiler, J.  48 MacDonald, D.  112, 114 MacDonald, I.  297, 298 Machine Gun Preacher 344–6 Machleit, K. A.  95 Mackenzie, R.  46 MacLean, R.  330 Madonna  8, 56, 59, 62–4, 86, 106, 131, 141–2, 235 Madrid, A.  279 Maffesoli, M.  279 Maha Mantra  298 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi  297 Mahavishnu Orchestra  26 Malaysia  51, 116, 117, 120, 158 Malbon, B.  15, 19, 20, 279 Malcolm X  118 Mali 49–50 Malini, Nanda  37 Mall, A.  90, 91, 100 Malm, W.  162, 163, 164, 165 Malmén, J.  205 Malone, B. C.  269, 270, 271, 272, 273 Mama Gina  191, 192, 193 Mandopop  178–9, 181 Mangeshkar, Lata  134 Mankey, J.  184, 185, 188, 191, 194, 195, 196 Mankin, B.  107 Mann, T.  32 Manson, Charles  206 Manson, Marilyn  27, 52 Mantle, L. F. C.  253 mantras  291, 297, 298, 335, 345 Manuel, P.  211, 212, 216 Maranatha! 107 Marcus, G.  242 Marcus, S. L.  112 Marion, J.-L.  78, 348 Marley, Bob  39–40, 50, 215, 216, 218–20, 251, 253, 255, 256–7 Marley, Ziggy  256 Marlin-Curiel, S.  41

416

Marriot, Steve  299 Marsden, G. M.  102, 104 Marsh, C.  4, 30, 237, 239, 350, 261, 264, 267 Marsh, D.  262 Marshall, S.  342 Marson, C.  262 Martens, P.  4 Martha and the Vandellas  35, 235 Martin, D.  334 Martin, George  105 Martin, L.  24, 52 Martin, P. J.  24 Maryammiya Shadiliya  116 Mason, J.  15, 17 mass culture  25, 269–70, 277 Masters, T.  232 materialism  88, 139, 140, 149, 159, 168, 272, 304 Matisyahu 129–30 Matsui, K.  160 Matsumoto 165 matsuri, see festivals Matthews, D. G.  271 Mattsson, D.  118 Mayfield, Curtis  39–40 Mayhem  199, 201, 226 MC Lyte  310, 312 MC Shan  312 McCarthy, Thomas  264 McCartney, Paul  70, 297 McClary, S.  28 McCleod, S.  240 McClure, J.  80, 82, 349 McColl, Euan  266, 353 McCook, Tommy  217–18 McCoy, N.  21 McDonald, D. A.  120 McFadden, Gene  40 McGuinn, Roger  299 McGuire, Barry  105 McKennitt, Loreena  188, 193, 197 McKinnon, J.  93 McLaughlin, John  26 McMullen, I. J.  160 McPherson, Aimee Semple  104 Meadan, B.  278 meditation  139, 141, 144, 149–50, 156, 158–9, 167, 177–8, 233, 249, 327–8, 336, 337 Meek Mill  312 Megadeth  110, 224, 225 Mehdid, M.  45, 49 Melechi, A.  279, 296

Index

Mellow Candle  188 Melodians 218 Méndez, Kinito  212 mento 215–17 Mercyful Fate  226 Merger 255 Mertens, W.  328, 349 Messiah Prophet  227 Metallica  224, 225, 267, 349 Metcalfe, S.  303 Methodism  32, 33, 239, 246 Mevlevi order (‘Whirling Dervishes’)  114 Middleton, R.  185 Mighty Diamonds, The  252 Mighty Maytones  256 Miku, Hatsune  169 Milhet, M.  354 Miller, D. E.  103 Miller, M.  1, 315, 355 Miller, M. M.  97 Minaj, Nikki  54, 306, 314, 355 Mingus, Charles  39 Mingyun 179–80 Minor Threat  242 Misanthropic Lucifer Order (MLO)/Temple of the Black Light  201–2 Mittoo, Jackie  217 mizik rasin 211 Moberg, M.  1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 223, 227, 229, 230, 353 Moliné, K.  301 Monet, Claude  261 Monterey International Pop Festival  107 Moody Blues, The  295 Moody, Dwight L  94, 101, 104 Moonsorrow  199, 353 Moore, A.  100, 186, 217, 288–9, 327 moral panic  8, 14, 97, 100, 223, 278, 339 Morbid Angel  198, 226 Morgan, A.  49–50 Morgan, D. L.  19 Morgan, Derrick  217 Morisette, Alanis  338 Mørk, G.  229 Morrison, Jim  8, 47 Morrow, C.  254 Mortuus  200–2, 204 Moskowitz, D.  215 Moskowitz, M. L.  178 Mothersole, D.  282 Mötley Crüe  198, 224

Motown Gospel  107 Motown  58, 217, 218, 340 Motta, Baba  216 Motta, Stanley  215 Moy, R.  62, 63, 241, 294 Moynihan, Michael  206–7, 227, 253 Muhammad (Prophet of Islam)  115, 116, 120 Mühlmann, W.-R.  204 Mulcock, J.  327 Müller, D. M.  117 Mullins, Rich  105 Munro, James (DJ)  304 Murrell, N. S.  254 musicking  77–8, 96, 97, 100 musiqa  119–20, 350 Mustaine, Dave  110 Mutabaruka 256 Mute Math  110 MxPx 243–4 Myalism 258 Mylon Le Fevre and Broken Heart  105 mysticism  23, 26, 27, 114, 116, 131, 132, 139–43, 169, 177, 199, 202, 217, 259, 282, 296, 299, 301, 303, 304, 305, 321, 327, 328, 330, 334 mythology  34, 36, 38, 101, 132–6, 140, 143, 146, 163, 187–8, 195, 199, 202, 206, 209, 216, 223, 227, 253, 258–9, 261, 264, 269, 288, 296, 299, 300, 304, 342 N’Dour, Youssou  117 Nāda-Brahman 31 Nancy, J.-L.  324 nanomedia 284 Nas 208 nashid  117, 119–20 Nashville  106, 107, 270 Nasr, S. H.  114, 116 Nation of Gods and Earths (Five Percenters)  117–18 Nation of Islam  117–18, 207, 209, 312 National Socialism  223 nationalism  214, 216, 261–3 Native Deen  116 Nawaz, Aki  117 Neal, M. A.  307, 313 necromancy  316, 320 negative aesthetic  316, 318, 319, 322, 324 Negus, K.  15, 347 Nekola, A.  44, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97 Nelson, Joshua  129 Nelson, Willie  272 Neo-Platonism  94, 113

417

Index

neofolk  187, 189, 198, 205–7, 209, 301, 323, 353 neotribe 279 Netsky, H.  122 NEU! 331 Neumann-Braun, K.  316, 319, 321 Neumann, B.  44, 46 Neusner, J.  122 New Age  21, 139, 156, 184, 188, 279, 295, 322, 327, 333–5 new musicology, see critical musicology, New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM)  224 Newsboys, The  105 Nichols, E.  341 Nicks, Stevie  68 Nidrosian Black Mass  204 Niebuhr, H. R.  90, 97 Nietzsche, F.  28 Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat  117 Nine O’Clock Service  334–5 nirvana  155, 164, 169 Nirvana 352 Nödveidt, Jon  201 Noebel, D. A.  35, 44 non/religion 323–4 Norma Jean  110 Norman, Larry  105, 109 Norris, P.  332 North, A.  262 Northside 303 Norwegian black metal  199, 204, 227 nostalgia  27, 194, 242, 270–1, 294, 313, 316, 317, 322, 344 Notorious B. I. G.  310, 313 Nuzum, E.  46, 48, 51–2 NWA 313–14 Nyabinghi  215, 217, 251 O Brother Where Art Thou? 341–2 O’Neill, K. L.  261 Oakenfold, Paul (DJ)  332 Oasis 237 Obama, Barack  262 Obeah 258–9 occult/Occultism  2, 4, 28, 169, 188, 194, 198–209, 223–7, 229, 231, 258, 259, 282, 299–302, 303–4, 316–26, 353 occulture  169, 316, 322–3, 324, 326 Odinism  206, 226 Oermann, R. K.  272, 277 Ofermod  200, 201, 202, 204 okagura 163

418

Ol’ Dirty Bastard  312 Olaveson, T.  279 Oldfield, D. M.  30, 102 Oldfield, Mike  30, 332, 334 Oliver, P.  271 Olson, B.  223 Omnia  191, 323, 324 Ono, Yoko  144, 152–3, 352 Opal 294 Opel, Jackie  217 Orb, The  52, 327, 333 Orchestra Baobab  294 Orchestre Poly Rythmo De Cotonou  294 Osborne, Joan  83, 235 Osbourne, Ozzy  69, 109, 198 Osmond, Humphry  295–6, 303 Otterbeck, J.  2, 44–5, 51, 53, 112, 114, 115, 119 Ozric Tentacles  294, 302 P.O.D. 109 Pagan Spirit Gathering  192 Paganism  2, 21, 170, 184–97, 199, 206, 223, 226–7, 229, 231, 264–5, 299–302, 303, 322, 323 Page, Jimmy  198, 299, 353 Paisley Underground  294 Palm Desert scene  294 palo music  211–12 Paradise, M. G.  206 Paragon 107 Paragons 218 Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC)  48, 51 Parliament 294 Parsons, T.  296 Parti Islam Se-Malaysia  117 participant observation  5, 6, 14, 16, 17–18, 19 Parton, Dolly  269252, 258, 259 Partridge, C.  1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 13, 18, 23, 26, 35, 93, 169, 170, 203, 223, 237, 231, 238, 251, 260, 261, 262, 264, 279, 280, 282, 300, 322, 333, 334, 349, 350 Patel, A. D.  27 Patterson, Alex  333 Patti Smith Group  294 Paulo FG  213 Peacock, Charlie  110 peak experiences  17, 229 Pearce, Douglas  205 Pedro the Lion  110 Pendderwen, Gwydion  188, 191, 193 pentacles  316, 317 Pentagram 199

Index

pentagrams  202, 316, 317 Pentecostalism  50–1, 104, 202, 242–5, 277 People! 105 Pepler, Merv  302 Perry, Brendan  196 Perry, I.  311–12, 314 Perry, Katy  8, 54, 56, 239 Perry, Lee (Scratch)  219, 254, 258, 259, 333 Pessen, E.  128 Peter, B.  335 Peters, G.  329 Peterson R.  14, 342 Peterson, B.  246, 254 Peterson, J.  309 Petra 105 Petridis, A.  111 Petty, Tom  68–9 Phillipov, M.  19 Phillips, Tom  331 Pickett, Wilson  35 Pini, M.  279 Pink Floyd  51, 294, 295, 330, 332, 333 Pinn, A.  1, 315 Pitzl-Waters, J.  184, 187, 191, 194, 196, 301 Plant, Robert  69–70 Poceski, M.  176, 177 Poetic Pilgrimage  120 Poison 224 Polanski, Roman  28 political progressivism  165 Poloma, M. M.  97 pop 233–5 Popl Vuh  294 Portsmouth Sinfonia  331 Posford, Simon  304 Possessed 226 post-secularism  79–85, 240, 327, 349 Post, K.  253 postliminal 278 postmodernism  98, 110, 140, 279, 309, 315, 316, 321, 322 Potter, K.  309, 328 Pough, G.  314 Povedák, K.  91 Powell, A.  316, 321, 322 Powell, E. H.  243 Powell, M. A.  109 Prana 294 premodern  264, 265, 269, 270, 300, 301, 302 Prendergast, M.  327, 330, 331, 333, 334 Presley, Elvis  28, 44, 47, 82, 333

Primal Scream  305 Prince  51, 54, 79, 110 Process Church of Final Judgment  203 progressive rock  26, 61, 105, 236 progrock, see progressive rock Prophet, Michael  256 prophetic  71–2, 74, 125, 286, 313, 341 prosthetic technology  23, 29–30, 31 Protestantism  91, 92, 94, 95, 97, 102, 103, 104, 106, 165, 271, 272, 276 psych folk, see psychedelic folk, psychedelic folk  294, 299–302 psychedelic music  139, 140, 146, 169–72, 203, 224, 258, 279, 280, 281, 282, 284, 294–305 psychedelic trance, see psytrance Psykick Warriors ov Gaia  302 psytrance  169–72, 280–1, 302–4 Public Enemy  41, 118, 313 punk  18, 20, 61–2, 91, 105, 118, 119, 129, 130, 156, 157, 194, 202, 194, 202, 224, 228, 238, 241–9, 254, 255, 263, 266, 294, 302, 303, 353 Pupy y Los que Son Son  213 Purgatory 116 Purple Door  107 Putnam, P.  167 Pye, M.  177 Qawwali  31, 117, 351 Qntal 323 Quakerism  23, 35 qualitative research  13–16 Queen Latifah  208, 314 Querner, P.  281 Quintessence  26, 294, 297, 298, 304 Qur’an  45, 46, 49, 52, 115, 119, 343 racism  120, 154, 206, 228, 237, 248, 255, 308, 313, 315, 341 Radical Traditionalism  206 Raef 116 Rafiq Qadri, Huriya  116 raga  26, 134, 148, 197–8 rai music  45, 49 Raihan 116–17 Rain Parade, The  294 Raja Ram (Ron Rothfield)  304 Rakim  118, 208, 309 Ramones, The  241 Rampling, Danny  332 Ranking Ann  256 Ranking Joe  256

419

Index

Ranking Trevor and Trinity  255 rap  5, 306–15 Rashida, Muneera  120 rasin, see mizik rasin Rastafarianism  38–9, 126, 129, 210, 214–15, 217–20, 251–9, 315 Rastovac, H.  49 raves  141, 169–72, 173, 266, 278–85, 302–5 re-enchantment  79, 334, 349 Reader, I.  160 Reagan, Ronald  256 Ream, A. K.  125 Reck, D.  295, 298 Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) 105 Red Krayola  295 Redden, G.  334 Reed, Lou  158 Reed, T. L.  13 Regev, M.  232 reggae  1, 38, 39, 116, 129, 130, 215, 218–20, 251–9, 302, 308, 309 Reich, Steve  328, 331, 333 Reid, D.  46 Reischauer, E. O.  163, 164, 165 Reitov, O.  43, 45 Relient K.  244 Remes, J.  328 Remilleux, J.-L.  332 Remy Ma  312 Requiem mass  324 Resurrection Band, The  105, 109 Reynaud-Maurupt, C.  354 Reynolds, S.  284, 303, 304, 322, 332, 333 Richard, Cliff  110 Richie, Lionel  112 Rickard, N. S.  30 Ricoeur, P.  78, 85, 89, 348 Rietveld, H.  282 Riley, Terry  328–9, 331 Riley, Winston  259 Rill, B.  279 riot grrrl  242, 247 ritual black metal  4, 202, 204–5, 209, 227, 231 Roach, Max  39 Robards, B.  21 Roberts, A.  296 Roberts, V.  4, 30, 237, 239, 261, 264, 267, 350 Robertson, Don  334 Robson, J.  115 Rock Against Racism  237

420

rock steady  215, 217–18 rock 232–40 passim Rodriquez, Rico  217 Rogers, Ce Ce  335 Rogers, J. N.  269, 271, 277 Rogers, Roy  273 Rogin, M.  351 Rolling Stone  106, 148 Rolling Stones, The  47, 55, 298, 300, 347 Roman Catholicism  52, 210, 212, 243, 291, 322, 323, 324 Romani Gypsy music  91 Romanowski, W. D.  104 Romanticism  3, 28, 55, 92, 238, 240, 261–2, 266, 280, 295, 297, 301, 302, 323 Romeo, Max  255 Rommen, T.  97, 350 Roots Manuva  79 Roots, The  311 Rootsman, The  259 Rose, T.  307–8, 309 Rouget, G.  95, 283, 328 Routley, E.  94 Roxy Music  331 Ruane, D.  279 ruh (divine spirit)  113 Rule, Wendy  191, 192, 193 Rumi, Jalal al-Din  114, 248 Rune-Gild  206, 207, 353 Rusby, Kate  188, 193, 196, 266 Russell, D.  32 Ruts, The  254 Ryback, T.  37 Ryman, C.  251 Ryūichi  168 RZA (Robert Fitzgerald Diggs)  208, 312 Sabbath Assembly  203 Sabri Brothers  117 Sabri, M.  116 Sackllah, D.  349 Sacks, O.  28 Sade, Marquis de  28 Safam 124 Said, E.  131 Saint Vitus  199 Saliers, D. & E.  263, 266, 267 Sample, T.  271–2 sampling  55, 81, 130, 206, 228, 245, 281, 282, 284, 303, 309–10, 314, 323, 324, 330, 333, 334

Index

Samy Alim, H.  117 sanbutsuka 167 Sanders, Alex  300 Sanders, Pharoah  118 Sankey, Ira  94, 101 Santana, Carlos  26 Santana, R. W.  5 Santeria  210, 212, 258 Sapsford, R. J.  14 Sarcófago 199 Satanism  35, 36, 46, 50, 198–203, 226, 227, 228 Satie, Erik  328 satokagura 163 Saturnalia Temple  200, 204 Saunders, N.  304 Savage, J.  242 Savage, M.  99–100 sawt 350 Saxon 224 Scarface 310 Scarface 315 Schaeffer, Pierre  329, 332 Schaffer, Doreen  217 Schmidt, A.  316, 319, 321 Schmidt, Irmin  331 Schreiber, M.  329 Scientist  256, 259 Scott, D. B.  60 Scott, S.  168 Scruton, R.  79, 87, 88, 349 Search, Amy  117 secularization  116, 165, 233, 236–7, 271–2, 334 Sedgwick, M.  206 Seeger, Peggy  353 Seeger, Pete  262 Sekino, Kazuhiro  167 Selassie I, Haile  38, 314–15, 220, 253–4, 258 Seperic, Kevin  168 Sermon, Erick  311 Seroussi, E.  123–4 Servant, J.-C.  49, 53 Seto, Y.  165 Seventy Sevens, The  110 Sex Pistols, The  241, 244 Seymat, T.  111 Shaabi 119 Shakespeare, William  309 Shakur, Tupac  315 Shalash, Mais  120 shamanism  41, 170, 188, 278–85, 303, 304, 329, 354 Shankar, Ravi  139, 148, 297, 298–9

Shannon, J. H.  111, 116 Shanti/Ashtangi 141–2 Shapiro, H.  330 Sharma, A.  131, 351 Sharma, S.  131, 351 Sharp, Cecil  262, 266 Sharpe, Samuel  258 Shearman, J.  85, 350 Shelter  245, 246 Shepp, Archie  39 Sheppard, D.  331 Shiloah, A.  112, 114 Shingon Buddhism  168 Shinran 167 Shintō  160–5, 170 Shires, P.  107 Shlain, B.  299 Shpongle  294, 304 Shuker, R.  185, 186, 347 Shulgin, A.  354 Shultis, C.  328 Sidran, Ben  39 sigils  200, 316, 319 Simon, Paul  266, 354 Simply Red  112 Sinatra, Frank  36, 239 sincerity contract  269 Sinker, M.  241 Siouxsie and the Banshees  241 Sir Mix-A-lot  314 Sisters of Mercy  27 sitar  26, 27, 139, 140, 148, 298, 299 Siti Nurhaliza  117 Six Organs of Admittance  294 Sixpence None the Richer  109 ska  215–18, 244 Skatalites  217, 218 Skjelbo, J. F.  112 Skyclad  199, 227 Skylight Company  106 Slayer  224, 225, 226 Sleep 294 Sleeper, M.  258 Slick, Grace  298 Slobin, M.  260, 261, 266, 267 Sloboda, J.  30, 95 Sly and the Family Stone  294 Small Faces  299 Small, C.  78, 96, 288 Smith, Clarence Edward  207 Smith, Harry  351

421

Index

Smith, Huston  144, 146 Smith, Jeff  345 Smith, Michael W.  105, 106 Smith, Patti  8, 55, 151, 155, 294 Smith, S. A.  269, 271, 277 Smithsonian American Art Museum  173 Snoop Dogg  310 SoCalled 130 Söderlind, D.  227 Sodom 199 Sol Invictus  205, 206, 207 Solid Rock  105, 107 sonic theology  31 Sonnenschein, D.  328 Sonshine 107 Sopor Aeternus and the Ensemble of Shadows  324 Sorgenfrei, S.  115 soul music  38, 41, 58, 118, 129, 158, 218, 251, 294, 310, 339 SoundScan 108 South Africa  45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 116, 266, 291 space rock  294 Spacegoats 302 Spacemen 3  294, 299 Spargo, R. C.  125 Sparrow 107 speed, see amphetamine Spencer, J. M.  271, 289, 293 Spencer, W. D.  256, 257 Spice Girls, The  8 Spiral Rhythm  192, 193 Spiral Tribe  304 Spirit-Filled Hardcore  243–5 spiritechnics  26, 278, 285 spiritual reformism  165 Spiritualized 294 Springsteen, Bruce  17, 60, 237, 262 Spurgeon, R.  278 St John, G.  1, 6, 13, 18, 23, 26, 170, 171, 278–84, 290, 303, 334, 354 Stamps-Baxter Music Company  106 Starwood Festival  192 Steel Pulse  256 Stefansson, F.  160 Steffens, R.  257 Sterling, Lester  217 Stevens, Cat, see Islam, Yusuf Stevens, J.  296 Stevens, K.  146 Stevens, Sufjan  77

422

Stewart, F.  6, 241, 243, 249 Stockhausen, Karlheinz  327, 329, 330, 331, 332, 335 Stonehill, Randy  105 stoner rock  294 Stowe, D.  1, 243 Straight Edge  241–2, 245–7, 249 Stratton, J.  2, 4, 129, 130, 246 Streck, J. M.  2, 44, 97, 109 Street, J.  43 Strongman, K. T.  97 Stryper  105, 227 subjunctive  78, 80, 83, 85, 89 Sudan  49, 50, 345 Sufism  111–14, 116, 117, 119, 328, 335 Sugar Hill Gang  306 Sugarman, D.  8 Sugimoto, Y.  165 Sullivan, M.  48 Summer of Love  300 Summer, Donna  235 Summerlin, Ed  291 Sunburned Hand of the Man  294 Sunday, Billy  94, 101, 102, 104 superliminal  278, 282, 285 Supreme Alphabet  207 Supreme Mathematics  207, 208 Supreme Wisdom  207 Sutcliffe, T.  166 Swanson, P.  160 Swift, Taylor  54, 57 Switchfoot  109, 110 Sylvan, R.  1, 2, 6, 23, 230, 279, 280, 284, 299, 329, 333 System 7  304 Tagg, P.  328 Takahashi, M.  279, 280, 283 Taliban  48, 49, 53, 111, 112 tambouras  26, 211, 212, 298 Tamm, E.  331 Tanabe, G.  160 Tangerine Dream  294, 327, 330–1, 332, 333, 334, 335 Tanzwut 326 Taoism, see Daoism Taqwacore  118, 247–50 Tattva 140–1 Taves, A.  229 Taylor, C.  261, 266, 267, 296, 349 Taylor, James  47, 70

Index

Taylor, P.  252 Taylor, S.  279 Teardrop Explodes, The  294 techno  41, 45, 141, 170, 172, 278–85, 302–4, 331, 332 technoshamanism 278–85 Temples 294 Tengkorak 116 Tharpe, Sister Rosetta  275, 288–9, 354 Thatcher, Margaret  256 Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth  205 Thelema  301, 353 Thiel, Lisa  188 Third World  220 Thirteenth Floor Elevators  294 Thompson, D.  348 Thompson, E. P.  32 Thompson, J.  243, 244 Thompson, Richard  300 Thompson, S.  242, 250 Thornton, S.  15, 100, 279 Thorsson, E.  353 thrash metal  224, 225, 226 Thrasher, F.  14 Throbbing Gristle  205–6 Tibet, David  205, 301 Till, R.  1, 2, 42, 334, 335, 336, 348, 353 Tillich, P.  7, 88 timba 213 Tin Pan Alley  24, 60, 127, 128 Tinariwen 266 Tokita, A. M.  162 Toop, D.  327–31, 333, 334, 335 Tooth & Nail Records  244 Tormentor 199 Tosh, Peter  219, 256, 257 Toure, Ali Farka  50 Toynbee, J.  241, 251 Tracy, S.  289 Traffic  295 Tramacchi, D.  304, 354 trance music  1, 23, 26, 38, 169–72, 278–85, 294, 300, 302–4 trance states  44, 114, 258, 281, 282, 283–5, 302, 328, 335 transcendence  18, 55, 60, 62, 63, 81, 83, 87–8, 90, 91, 92, 93, 96, 99, 100, 113, 134, 146, 176, 232, 237, 239, 250, 263, 268, 280, 282, 284, 285, 291, 293, 295, 297, 299, 300, 302, 305, 326, 329, 334, 336, 339 Transcendental Meditation  139, 297

transformation  19, 38, 79, 88, 89, 97, 110, 114, 122, 142, 147, 154, 156, 161, 170–2, 176, 205, 227, 249, 250, 278, 279, 282, 286, 296, 301, 308, 319, 321, 329, 330, 336, 340, 343, 348, 352 Transglobal Underground  303 transgression  8, 27–9, 35, 42, 45, 46, 54–5, 81, 96, 100, 166, 228, 280, 317, 320–1, 323, 325 transitivity  79, 84, 350 Triarii 323 Tribal Drift  303 tribal  44, 170–1, 206, 210, 240, 262, 263, 264, 266, 279, 303 Tribe Called Quest  311 triskeles 316 Tuatha Dea  191, 192 Tucker, S. J.  191, 192, 193 Tucker, Sophie  128 Tupac, see Shakur, Tupac Turner, J. F.  36 Turner, J. G.  107 Turner, L. D.  287 Turner, V.  172, 281, 354 Turow, G.  335 U Roy  255 U2  110, 157, 235, 238 Ufomammut 294 Ulrich, T.  329 Ultra-Orthodox Judaism  223 Ultravox 331 Umm Kulthum  112 unblack metal  227 Underoath  110, 244 Unheilig  317, 323 Upsetters 219 Urfaust 204 Urry, J.  95 Utley, E.  312 Uwaifo, Victor  294 Vahdat, M.  49 Valens, Ritchie  70 vampirism  316, 323, 324 Van Dijk, K.  117 Van Elferen, I.  6, 323, 325 Van Gogh, Vincent  261 Van Nieuwkerk, K.  116 Vangelis 332 Vanhoozer, K. J.  355 Vattimo, G.  80 Veal, M. E.  251, 258

423

Index

Vegan Reich  247 Velez, Martha  255 Velvet Underground, The  295 Vengeance Rising  110 Venom  199, 226 Verney, P.  50 vibe  41, 158, 279, 354 Vidich, A.  15 Vigilantes of Love  110 Viking folk  193, 195 Viking metal  191, 199 Viladesau, R.  78, 348 Vineyard 107 Virgin Prunes, The  322 virtual music  20, 21, 280 Vodou, see Voodoo Vokey, J.  46 Vondey, W.  355 Voodoo  44, 68, 210, 288 Wade, B.  162 Wagner, Richard  339 Wagner, T.  2, 92, 94–5, 97, 244 Wailer, Bunny  256 Wailers, The  216, 218–20, 252 Wainwright, E. M.  347 Wakeford, Tony  205 Wakeman, Rick  232, 236 Wald, E.  289 Wald, G.  242 Walker, Johnny  332 Wallace, S.  335 Walser, R.  5, 61, 228, 230 Ward, Anita  344 Ward, G.  89 Ward, P.  97 Wardruna  323, 324 Warner, B.  353 Warren, E.  332 wasatiyya 116 Watain 201–4 Watts, Alan  297, 298 Watts, Isaac  101 Webster, J. P.  38 Weinstein, D.  195, 223–5, 227–30 Welch, Brian ‘Head,’  110 Welch, Gillian  266 Weller, J. E.  177, 277 Wesley, Charles  101 Wesley, John  32 Wesley, Philip  197

424

West, C.  315 West, Kanye  79, 311–12 Western plainchant  28, 324 Weston, D.  6, 184, 195 Wharnsby, Dawud  116 White Magic  294 Whitefield, George  101 Whitehead, John  40 Whiteley, S.  26, 59, 298, 303 Whyte, W. F.  15 Wicca  185, 190, 191, 300, 316, 319–19, 322, 323 Wickström, G.  22 Wiersema, F.  316–18 Wild Goose  107 Williams, Hank  272, 273 Williams, J. P.  245, 248, 250 Williams, L.  254 Williams, Mary Lou  290–1 Williams, Oswald, see Count Ossie Williams, Pharrell  235 Williams, R.  25 Williams, Willie  255 Willis, P.  5, 14, 25–6, 29 Wilson, S.  7 Winter, Kurt  69 Winter, Paul  334 Wise, S.  28 Within Temptation  197, 324 Wolfe, C.  269 Wolterstorff, N.  348 Wonder, Stevie  40, 235 Wong, Anthony  182, 183 Wong, Faye  181 Wong, Ivana  182 Wong, James  183 Wood, A.  130 Wood, Graham  304 Wood, R. T.  241, 246 Wooden Baby  302 Wooden Shjips  294 Woodhead, L.  250, 279, 296, 334, 335 Woods, F.  260 Woods, P.  202 Woodstock Festival  107, 108 Woodward, Edward  301 Wordsworth, William  55, 82, 88, 309 world music  35, 111, 116–17, 119, 131, 149, 150, 188, 260, 266, 267, 332, 334, 351 worship-as-lifestyle 99 Wright, M. A.  303 Wright, Richard  330

Index

Wright, Robert  52 Wright, S.  234 Wu-Tang Clan  118, 208 Wuthnow, R.  298 wyrd folk  301 Yabby U  257 Yang, C. K.  175 Yang, F.  175 Yardbirds, The  299 Yawning Man  294 Yellow Magic Orchestra  332 Yellow, Peter  253 Yes  232, 236 Yidcore 247 Yih-yuan, Li  175 Young, La Monte  328–9, 331

Young, R.  210 Young, S. D.  1, 2, 106 Young, Victor  128 Youngren, W. H.  289–90 Youssefzadeh, A.  44, 49 Yuanfun 179–80 Yusuf, Sami  116 Zain, Maher  116, 117 Zanfagna, C.  168 Zedikiah 38 Zen, see Buddhism, Zen Zion  214, 251–4, 259, 278 Zorn, John  126 Zschech, D.  97 Zwingli, U.  94 ZZ Top  345

425

426