PRAYER SINGER

I recently watched a movie set in Somalia.  To create the location, a tall tower is shown, with a single human figure silhouetted, and a voice resonates outward calling the faithful to prayer.  I think that might be a number one coolest job ever-to be the singer entrusted with ancient songs, taught a technique for throwing the voice, and set to sing a city's people to acts of reflection, charity and human connection.

What would my days be like if my talent were to serve that kind of purpose?  In my world, singers are entertainers.  They perform tricks that cause children to laugh, and help adults mitigate their tears.  The prevailing attitude is that music is simply charisma so exposure to musical education and participation in community musical groups is declining rapidly.  Music is becoming nothing more than a culture's emotional venting mechanism.

In the movie, however, war stops when the singer calls.  Guns are put down as those fighting for their side bend to the same devotions as their enemies.  The singer speaks peace and reminds the city of its human connections.  That voice is heard over the exploding, shouting, shooting, panting, and dying.

I make no argument that being called to prayers led to a solution to famine, war, disease, and death.  I make no argument that the singer was himself a person of any great integrity or kindness.  I cannot even claim that any significant change was wrought within that moment of music.  Nevertheless, I was struck by the awesome power in the idea that a single human voice, beautifully sustained on breath, falling like dew over the tumult and the strife, can stop time and open a space for change.

If I could have a different job, I think I might like to try for that one.

GOOD vs. EVIL

I am concerned that I have been pushing my metaphor too far.  It is time to take a moment and chuckle at myself; time to write a little about how music is simply music.  Alone, it will never deliver you to the holy.  Music itself has no power to condemn and can never deliver you to the darkness.

Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries was beloved by people responsible for the extermination of millions of their neighbors in a place and time not so far from here and now.  That piece of music is still a tremendous piece of music.  Some of those same people sang hymns that are sung today in my own worshipping community-a place of reconciliation, acceptance and peace.  An artist such as Marilyn Manson, accused of promoting violence and hate with his music, is revealed as a person with integrity and an insightful social critique in an interview following the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

A group like They Might Be Giants and music from Once Upon a Mattress express fun, light things that allow us to inhabit a world of silly and simple for a time.  A group like Metallica and music from Requiem for a Dream express darker, angrier, bleaker things, and touch the terrible depths of our human experience.   That is not to say that one set of songs is safe, and the other set is dangerous.  That is not to say that one musical expression is good and the other is evil.   What it is: we are responsible for the uses to which we put the powers at our command.  That should not be mistaken for the purposes to which another would put the same powers.

Music is simply sound.  Soul is what gives it power, and the soul is human.   Many humans with many different kinds of souls are always tuning in.  Many humans with many different kinds of souls are always singing out.  May we be wise in choosing which sounds we will empower.

TRANSCENDENCE

The singer has to first be the subject of the song.  In order to sing love, the singer has to be the subject of love-to have loved, to be loved, to desire love, to reject love.  Blues singers tell you that you have to have had the blues to sing the blues.  Something beyond sound has to come through the horn, or you simply have an interesting note.  In order to communicate feeling, the singer has to be the subject of the song.  Yet, singers that get stuck here may find themselves the popular expression of a particular thing which doesn't last past the next big thing.  Feelings and experiences alone do not last.  They can be changed in a moment by a different slant of light or the passing smile of a stranger. 

The singer that can be the object of the song has power, too.  It takes skill to communicate a reality which may be uncomfortable or unflattering to the audience.  Bruce Springsteen's American Skin, Bob Dylan's Blowin' In the Wind, and Dar Williams' I Had No Right share prophetic visions by using an objective lens to show how commonplace racism, war, and injustice have become in this United States. The singers view their own American identities as objects, making the contradictions between stated values and taken actions quite clear.  However, a keen social critique alone is not enough.  Political slogans set to music will only move people predisposed to that point of view.

So, the real power in the singing comes by transcending the subjective and the objective, going past both into something else entirely.  This is the power of Alice Walker's The Color Purple.  The voice of an African-American woman rings clearly, because the author is subject of the story-she is herself an African-American woman.  The story has power because the characters are objects of the author-the author doesn't simply share their experiences, she shows us those experiences and exposes the actions and consequences which they engender. What transcends is that I, not being an African American woman, can yet take part in the story.  The life of Celie becomes a metaphor with which I can identify, though I may never have shared a single experience with her.

Great singing holds subjectivity (the singer's experience) and objectivity (the singer's clear analysis) in a balanced tension which shares a quality of human existence neither contains alone.