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Credenda on the Blues
Credenda Agenda’s recent issue is titled A Case of the Blues (PDF). The Thema is informative. Kinda odd though to learn something about the blues from a white guy in Idaho. Anyway, this quote was good. It seems to refer to subject matter that Jim and I have discussed before. Bill Gothard’s view of rock music.
This relates to another common complaint against rock music (and a feature which it shares with the blues)?the famous problem of the backbeat and the fornication some people believe it causes. This is an enormous subject, but allow me to touch on it here.With a backbeat in a 4/4 song, the accent falls on 2 & 4, not 1 & 3:dadumdadumdadumdadum
Now is this a phonic representation of music with a backbeat? Yes, it represents virtually every rock and blues song ever written. Or is this a line of iambic poetry? Perhaps it is a representation of “Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing.” Remember the line between music and poetry is not really that hard and fast. This metrical element of the backbeat is not only a strong feature of rock and blues, it is also a constituent feature of some of the greatest Christian poetry ever written. As a modified version of the old (iambic) Sunday School song put it, “Be careful what you damn, little men.”
Comments
Music has a mysterious way of communicating to hearts. People have often tried to control people by controlling music. Hitler used Wagner, so Churchill used Beethoven. Gothard and Larson burned KISS albums (which looking back, I would understand more from a quality than content standpoint...), so contemporary Christian entrepreneurs invented the Christian metal bands to fill the void (much to Larson & Gothard's chagrin). African Americans railed against Little Richard and Ray Charles for using 'church music' for the devil.
I read Wilson's article as soon as I saw the issue release. I don't really agree with much of it, frankly. The underlying premise is for Christians to,prayerfully, take the best of what the blues (and other genres)has to offer and leave the rest. I agree that we should think on what is true, what is just, etc. If we are to understand what people are going through around us, both elect and non-elect (since we are unable to tell), we must listen to what they say and watch what they do. The blues, at its root, is nothing more than snapshots of life of the singers, or those around them. Is it dark? At times. Is it happy? At times. The problem is that most evangelicals have bought into the idea that if you admit dark thoughts, doubt, etc., it reflects a weak belief in God. In truth, it may reflect a strong relationship with a loving Father who will not let you go.
The other thing is that he picked the wrong excerpt to illustrate backbeat. Blues is almost always a shuffle emphasizing the 2 & 4 beats, as Wilson said. The use of the 1000 tongues is, at best, unclear. The tune most of us know with that phrase is the tune Azmon. It is not in a 4 meter, but in 3. That is, there are only 3 beats per bar, not 4. It also begins with a pickup to the first full measure. The primary accent is on the first beat of each measure with a seconday accent on the second beat. No accent is on the last half of any beat. The beat accentuation in the blues is (in general) totally different than in rock and jazz. Usually, I agree with Wilson, but I think he's a bit off base with this one. (As if it matters...)
Jeff
Excellent thoughts, Jeff. I guess Wilson should have run the draft by Duck Schuler, his minister of music.
C'mon Jeff, don't let the facts get in the way of a good point.
I hate when that happens...
I obviously have not read the article in question, but my reading is that the author was evidencing 1000 Tounges based on its poetic form, not as it works itself out in musical notation. There is a difference. This makes his arguement more appropriate according to Jeff's standards.
Kelly,
1) True, he is using the meter of the literary phrase. I can't tell if he is saying this is the actual meter of the phrase or if he is showing how accents on every other beat would sound if imposed on the phrase. Even so, using the punctuation given, it's a little difficult to make the case that every other beat is emphasized when read.
I would tend to think if someone were reading the verse that it would sound more like this (caps used for emphasis points):
OH, for a THOUsand TONGUES to sing.
Could be wrong, trying to hear it in my mind. Try it aloud & see where your accent naturally lies.
True enough, there are eight syllables and he has stress on every other syllable, but in reality, not all syllables get equal amounts of time due to stress, elision and punctuation.
Suffice it to say, I think it is a poorly chosen example because it is too closely associated with musical structure which denies the point being made and because even it you can extract it from the memory of the music, the division of the meter doesn't aid the point either.
But again, what do I know?
Jeff,
Looking back I see that you are right. It's not really iambic pentameter, and your emphasis is much more natural than the authors. I'd outline the iambs and the other measures of meter, but I don't remember anything from the course I took four semesters ago. I just started Graduate School (yay!!!) and am feeling pretty un-inteligent right now.
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