Viewing Music through “Christian Eyes”
One
of the shortcomings of music education both in secular and religious settings
has been the lack of educating students multi-culturally. Christian musicians
have too often viewed music through “Western” eyes. There are musics from many cultures that do
not violate Bible principles of musicing.
If a type of music does not violate Christian principles then it is
redeemable in Christian culture. One of the objectives of a Christian music education philosophy (CMEP) is to study
musics of other world cultures and evaluate them in light of Christocentric
music aesthetic. All too often CMEP has
excluded the study of any music that is not clearly Western and follows the
rules of music of the Occident.
Christian music educators must not look at non-Western music through
“Western eyes” but rather through “Christian eyes” recognizing that many styles
of music are redeemable if they do not violate biblical principles of musicing
or are closely related to anti-Christ
culture.
Every Christian music educator should be reminded
that the music notation of the entire Old Testament (the te’amim) does not
follow the rules of music of the *Occident, yet no one could say that the music
of the Bible does not follow its own precepts. All the Old Testament was
notated long before and without the influence of the music of the Occident. (See
chapter 8 of Music of the Bible in
Christian Perspective)
No comments:
Post a Comment