Holy Tuesday, 2015
31/03/15 05:10
I’ve read that music is stored in a different part of the brain than language. That is a good thing for those who have suffered stroke. What we know is that victims of stroke rarely lose all of their memories and functions. Many strokes involve relatively small areas of the brain. The bleeding creates pressure and damages some of the tissues in the brain, including interrupting the firing and reception of synapses. For those of us who are not neurosurgeons or neurological researchers, this means that one can have a stroke or other brain disease or injury that leaves us with a high degree of loss, but with also some things that are retained.
I have heard stories of musicians who were unable to speak, but still able to create beautiful music. I know one story of a very talented pianist and organist who lost the capacity to recognize even the closest members of her family, but somehow retained the muscle memory of years and years of practicing. When she returned to the keyboard, at first all they heard were scales and exercises. Later, however, she began playing entire compositions. The music was still inside of her and she was able to get it out and perform despite her other disabilities.
I’m not much of a musician. I dabble at the piano and played the trumpet through college and continue to play on occasion. I play rhythm guitar and know the chords. I love to sing, but have the voice and training for being a member of the choir, not a soloist.
Still, my head is full of musical memories. I love to listen to music, and I can recall many tunes and words. I suppose that might be a bit of a challenge for me, should I ever lose my language, because so much of the music that I can remember is mixed deeply with the words. I have come to love many songs because of their words. I use the combination of clever rhythm and clever words to remember hymns and show tunes and movie themes and many other songs.
I have such a clear memory of singing “Ever singing, march we onward, victors in the midst of strife. Joyful music leads us sunward in the triumph song of life!” through my tears at my father’s funeral. My eyes were too misty to have been able to see the words in the hymnal, but it was a hymn whose verses I memorized when I was quite young. That presents me with a bit of a challenge now that some of the words are different in the hymnal our congregation uses, but the hymn is planted deeply within my psyche and I doubt that I can recall all of the words without singing the tune.
The spiritual “Were You There” is so connected with Holy Week in my mind that I find myself humming the tune whenever I am thinking about, planning or journeying through this time of year. We rarely repeat the same hymn within a season, but we sang it last night and will sing it again on Thursday.
The anthem that our choir is singing for Easter is one that they have been rehearsing for several links. It has a dramatic piano and organ accompaniment and we have brilliant artists at both keyboards. It keeps running through my head, with all of the energy and enthusiasm of a great Easter anthem. The words are from a familiar hymn, but the tune is fresh and new. I find myself humming the tune and even thinking the words despite the solemnity of this week. Easter is like that. It breaks through despite our grief, despite our attention focused elsewhere. Easter is indeed irrepressible.
Music reaches deep within our souls. It is a great vehicle for expressing emotions, but it is deeper than that as well. It is a way of expressing the depths of our souls. Music and spirituality have been mixed since humans first recognized the presence of God. I know plainsong chants that have been around for more than a thousand years.
Tonight is our Holy Week blues concert. Jami Lynn, a member of our church who is a full-time professional musician and recording artist and who travels extensively and is often away from the church, will be with us, bringing a couple of her musician friends to perform. It promises to be an evening when we can just sit back, relax, and allow the music to enfold us. There’ll be no heavy liturgy. We’ve no candles to light or bulletins to print. Light refreshments and a place to sit around tables with friends invites us to just enjoy.
Somewhere around the end of the 19th century, in the deep south of the United States, African-American musicians were heard with a powerful fusion of spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants and even a few folk songs thrown in. The form was dubbed “the blues.” Many blues forms, such as call and response, blend the singing styles of Africa with traditions of the church.
It has been said that the blues are the result of so many generations of suffering that the pain can’t be kept inside any longer and it “oozes” out in the fingers on the frets of the guitar and the gravel in the voice of an old man. That may be true, but after three centuries of public performances, the music has so infused our culture that a white girl from South Dakota can sing the songs and bring a tear to your eye and you don’t even know why you are crying. Thats the blues.
That’s why we invite artists to sing the blues during Holy Week. It is an opportunity to connect with a tradition and expression of grief that is not often associated with the church. It is also an opportunity to invite into our church folks who might not be exactly what we would call “regulars.” The folks who are out in the clubs and venues until the wee hours after Saturday night, who sleep in on Sundays, who aren’t comfortable with our traditions and rituals - they are invited along with our “regulars” to sit together and share an experience.
Because we all grieve, because grief brings together folks in unique patterns, because we never know when grief will enter our lives — for all of these reasons and more, the blues is part of our Holy Week journey.
I have heard stories of musicians who were unable to speak, but still able to create beautiful music. I know one story of a very talented pianist and organist who lost the capacity to recognize even the closest members of her family, but somehow retained the muscle memory of years and years of practicing. When she returned to the keyboard, at first all they heard were scales and exercises. Later, however, she began playing entire compositions. The music was still inside of her and she was able to get it out and perform despite her other disabilities.
I’m not much of a musician. I dabble at the piano and played the trumpet through college and continue to play on occasion. I play rhythm guitar and know the chords. I love to sing, but have the voice and training for being a member of the choir, not a soloist.
Still, my head is full of musical memories. I love to listen to music, and I can recall many tunes and words. I suppose that might be a bit of a challenge for me, should I ever lose my language, because so much of the music that I can remember is mixed deeply with the words. I have come to love many songs because of their words. I use the combination of clever rhythm and clever words to remember hymns and show tunes and movie themes and many other songs.
I have such a clear memory of singing “Ever singing, march we onward, victors in the midst of strife. Joyful music leads us sunward in the triumph song of life!” through my tears at my father’s funeral. My eyes were too misty to have been able to see the words in the hymnal, but it was a hymn whose verses I memorized when I was quite young. That presents me with a bit of a challenge now that some of the words are different in the hymnal our congregation uses, but the hymn is planted deeply within my psyche and I doubt that I can recall all of the words without singing the tune.
The spiritual “Were You There” is so connected with Holy Week in my mind that I find myself humming the tune whenever I am thinking about, planning or journeying through this time of year. We rarely repeat the same hymn within a season, but we sang it last night and will sing it again on Thursday.
The anthem that our choir is singing for Easter is one that they have been rehearsing for several links. It has a dramatic piano and organ accompaniment and we have brilliant artists at both keyboards. It keeps running through my head, with all of the energy and enthusiasm of a great Easter anthem. The words are from a familiar hymn, but the tune is fresh and new. I find myself humming the tune and even thinking the words despite the solemnity of this week. Easter is like that. It breaks through despite our grief, despite our attention focused elsewhere. Easter is indeed irrepressible.
Music reaches deep within our souls. It is a great vehicle for expressing emotions, but it is deeper than that as well. It is a way of expressing the depths of our souls. Music and spirituality have been mixed since humans first recognized the presence of God. I know plainsong chants that have been around for more than a thousand years.
Tonight is our Holy Week blues concert. Jami Lynn, a member of our church who is a full-time professional musician and recording artist and who travels extensively and is often away from the church, will be with us, bringing a couple of her musician friends to perform. It promises to be an evening when we can just sit back, relax, and allow the music to enfold us. There’ll be no heavy liturgy. We’ve no candles to light or bulletins to print. Light refreshments and a place to sit around tables with friends invites us to just enjoy.
Somewhere around the end of the 19th century, in the deep south of the United States, African-American musicians were heard with a powerful fusion of spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants and even a few folk songs thrown in. The form was dubbed “the blues.” Many blues forms, such as call and response, blend the singing styles of Africa with traditions of the church.
It has been said that the blues are the result of so many generations of suffering that the pain can’t be kept inside any longer and it “oozes” out in the fingers on the frets of the guitar and the gravel in the voice of an old man. That may be true, but after three centuries of public performances, the music has so infused our culture that a white girl from South Dakota can sing the songs and bring a tear to your eye and you don’t even know why you are crying. Thats the blues.
That’s why we invite artists to sing the blues during Holy Week. It is an opportunity to connect with a tradition and expression of grief that is not often associated with the church. It is also an opportunity to invite into our church folks who might not be exactly what we would call “regulars.” The folks who are out in the clubs and venues until the wee hours after Saturday night, who sleep in on Sundays, who aren’t comfortable with our traditions and rituals - they are invited along with our “regulars” to sit together and share an experience.
Because we all grieve, because grief brings together folks in unique patterns, because we never know when grief will enter our lives — for all of these reasons and more, the blues is part of our Holy Week journey.