What Do We Do Now that Rock Won't Go Away?-Part 7

What Do We Do Now that Rock Won’t Go Away?-Part 7 

        If religious music begins and ends with self, then this Christian’s music is autonomous because, when it comes to music and musicing, all his or her music endeavor is an autonomous act.   An autonomous musician owns all his or her acts of worship, because autonomous actions are personal offerings that are brought to the worship altar as an act of that musician’s free will.  This philosophical mind set is somewhat complicated, but it is the basis for many church musicians’ music praxis.

        What is even more complicated is the fact that when you own your musical offerings, they are yours and therefore they are not subject to any musical or worship standards, rules, regulations, or religious dogmas.  So, this autonomous musician does not have to have any discussible justification for the inclusion of rock music in his or her worship, or religious music praxis.

       Steve peters once wrote, “Few want to touch rock “n” roll because many listen to it and enjoy it at some level”.   Truth About Rock by Steve Peters, p.82.  He certainly touched a tender nerve even among conservative Christian musicians.  I have traveled extensively in the past forty years, and I can verify that many Christian musicians, who are conservative in many areas of Christian living, are not so conservative when it comes to their personal music choices.  Many Christian musicians that I have met in my travels like, listen, and even perform rock music at “some level”.

       If I was Satan, I would tempt Conservative Christians to get involved with rock music at some “mild” level.  I would first get them to develop a taste for the styles of music that amalgamated to become rock.  The younger generation Christian musicians seem to believe that rock music “fell from the sky” and that it does not have connections to very close “first cousins” that were very influential in the development of the multiplicity of rock styles that exist today. 

       If I was Satan, I would develop a very large family of closely related style “cousins” and I would get them together somehow for a “family reunion” in the hope that they would stay together and develop a conglomerate of closely related styles.  If I was Satan, the reason that I would desire to see this amalgamation or styles develop is that this plethora of styles, techniques, sounds, stereotyped rhythm patterns, clichéd melodic structures, and performance techniques would create artistic musical conglomerate that would appeal to almost everyone.