Defining Music

If you go to almost any place in Africa and join a group of worshipers, be they Christian or some other faith, you will quickly see a major difference between the congregational song of Africa and Euro-American Christianity. There are many differences, of course, but what we do and how we define congregational music making in worship is a big one.

In Western Christianity, especially in the mainline denominations, we usually stand and sometimes sit for singing. We hold hymnals and songbooks in our hands, or we read the lyrics from projected words on a large screen. Sometimes there is a song leader using hand and arm motions, facial expressions, and body movements to lead our singing. Some congregations clap or raise their hands, wave their arms, allow their bodies to sway, or make use of other physical manifestations of the music. Some singers jump and others dance. We sing to organs and pianos, guitars, handbells, drums, orchestras, and different instruments; or we sing with no instrumental accompaniment. In recent years we have taken to incorporating dancers in our singing, although this is usually done FOR the congregation by one or more trained and rehearsed dancers. Some of our churches and denominations maintain a rigid prohibition against dancing in worship or as part of congregational singing for a number of reasons, but usually because it is seen as an activity of the secular culture that exists outside our church and home walls; or because dance is associated with sexual expression.

In this great diversity of congregational singing in the western church, we understand music as one particular component that consists of notes, chords, rhythms, melodies, forms, and words. The musical component has its own defining characteristics and identity. The fact that we sometimes join other components or activities with music in congregational song does not really alter how we understand and define music.

This is not the case in some African cultures and faiths. In some African churches, music does not exist in isolation. It is not something that is joined to other activities. Rather, music is defined radically differently than in the USA. In some African languages and cultures, there is no concept or even word for music that does not also include dance and movement. To say to an African church, "Let us now have music" or "Let us now worship God with our song" is the same as saying, "Let us sing, dance, move around, clap, retell the story, and physically act out the words." Music is understood and defined to include all these other elements. The concept of music in isolation of dance and movement is unknown to them.

Even after five centuries of separation from their African origins and even after slavery and oppression, African American worship maintains some elements of the African concept of music. There is often freedom in African American singing for physical movement and clapping. Part of the spell-binding appeal and power of African American preaching comes from its very musical nature, its rhythm and tempo of speech, the intentional use of meter, the rise and fall of the voice, the long and sustained crescendo of delivery, and the frequent climax of the sermon in actual song.

The ancient Greek understanding of music was similar to that of the African understanding. Music and poetry were the same thing — one did not exist in isolation from the other. This carried over into drama, as well.

Even in the Bible, we have examples of this larger understanding of what music is. There is great unity between music and story or storytelling in many places in the Bible: the songs of David, the song of Moses, the song of Mary (Magnificat), the song of the angels (Gloria), and others. The Book of Psalms was the historic church's songbook, and it was always sung. The Jews would have been perplexed by our modern practice of reading of the Psalms, or our dividing them up into short phrases for responsive or antiphonal recitation. There are words, phrases, instructions, and directives in many of the Psalms that we believe are related to music — who sings, who directs, how to sing, what instruments to use, and when to use them, and so on. We've lost the original meaning and context of these words and phrases today, just as we have mostly lost the ancient musical understanding of the Psalms.

Today in the Western church, we continue to cultivate our music tradition mostly in isolation from these other elements. We continue to build our choirs, purchase special music, hold special rehearsals, put the choir in special liturgical garb, carve out a special place for them in the sanctuary, and give them their own special performance time in worship. We continue to sing our hymns, but we are reluctant, even embarrassed, to incorporate physical movement as we sing. It is a mystery to me how we can sing a hymn such as "Lord of the Dance," while standing rigidly in our pews with hymnbooks in hand.

It will be interesting to see the future of congregational singing in the Western church. As we continue to decline in numbers while the African church explodes… as we continue to see the impact of global and ethnic music in our worship services and musical practices… as General Conference and the general agencies of The United Methodist Church continue to transform the denomination into a global church… all these will have a great impact on what we sing and how we sing it. We will inevitably redefine what it means to sing as a congregation in worship.