PHIL THOMSON looks at whether we can change our world through music.
'Mother Theresa plays Hammersmith Odeon'. Hardly. 'Taize support Def Leppard in US.' Unlikely. 'Billy Graham charts with house mega-mix' - Whatever, it takes. If there was a sure way of changing our world, through music, we'd still let someone else get on with it, even if expediency, rather than expertise, was the benchmark. The problem of settling for less is invariably the problem of relative values. We don't know what we've got till its gone - it's the one about the man who took his new scarf back because it was too tight.
PLATTITUDES
There must be a UK Bruce Cockburn or two waiting
around in the wings. But who is going to risk the wrath of the sales
reps with their bootfulls of unsold albums? We know the power of music
to galvanize a culture, to create a mind-set, to stir people to
action. Even in the obscenity of war it had its protagonist. How else
would a lone piper front the columns as they headed for the trenches?
Yet we'd rather follow than lead, fed on a diet of here-we-go-again.
Even when we all know what should be done. We're all armchair
politicians at heart. We have a crack at the theory. We fancy we could
settle the Argument. Yet our world-view rhetoric is couched in the
safety of spiritual platitudes. We are lulled. What I would call the
romance of inactivity. Sadly, Christian music does little to reverse
the trend. You see, the idyll is shattered when we have to get up and
do something, when we are challenged to face the reality of what the
media relentlessly pump out at us. Whether we are moved to feel rage
or compassion, imagine what it would be like if we all put feet to our
opinions and beliefs.
SMOKE SCREEN
Yet few of us are touched; and at least part of the
blame lies in our unquestioning acceptance of the status quo. Which is
why, in Christian music, there are precious few latter-day Dylans; few
who jangle our nerves. I have never understood why so much
contemporary Christian music seems to abdicate its responsibility to
the world it seeks to redeem. Kingdom issues are reduced, for the most
part, to a formula, which acts as a panacea to the masses. The
business of conversion is left to those who address the reality of the
human condition without the smoke screen of jingoistic piety. But
conversion to what, to whom? There is a classic example. While our
media priests strut out their well-worn altar calls. Sting - in full
native paint - cuts his arm and bleeds for his land-raped blood
brothers in a South American jungle.
VOLTAIRE
When he sings of Pinochet's lost sons and fathers, we
are drawn into the awesome darkness of personal loss - and the guilt
of our own silence. Stark, economic, incisive: somehow the armchair
isn't quite so comfortable. When was the last time a Christian artiste
did that to you? And when, clutching a fading photograph, he lines up
with a thousand weeping mothers, his 'one day we'll sing our freedom'
isn't hope misplaced; simply un-focussed. While the world waits for
the dawning of a better day, we claim it now - and do nothing. Perhaps
Sting's vision is not particularly uplifting, yet it was never more
real. It mirrors Voltaire's observation that 'Life is a comedy to
those who think, and a tragedy to those who feel'
The tragedy as
I see it, however, is that most of us prefer to put our feet up and be
entertained.