So in this time of great busy-ness, my good friend Carlo has responded to the need and provided us with another excellent post. This one extends a little further on the theme he began with in his Johnny Cash post: 20th century American music and the Old Testament prophetic imagination. Enjoy.
♣ ♣ ♣
Forsaking dignity for grandeur: Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, and the prophetic imagination
So after the handsome “man behind the curtain” of this blog put my post about Johnny Cash up, it got me to thinking. He said that my criteria for music was “would the Old Testament prophets have like it”, and to a large degree, I think he’s right. So when I was driving home from the quiet, one room record store I discovered in a place called Ravenna, Ohio, which is about an hour south of Cleveland; and after having purchased some high-fidelity singers on low-fidelity records, I couldn’t help but think of what the OT prophets would have thought about my expenditures.
I was driving home itching to spin the black circle and thinking about two of my most recent finds; an old record by the great female jazz singer Billie Holiday, and an old best-of record by the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. I was thinking about two of my favorite songs by them, one called “Strange Fruit” by Holiday, and the other, “Study War No More”, by Jackson. And then (yes i’ve heard its bad form to start a sentence with ‘and’, and also to put in a useless parenthetical that disrupts the flow but screw you anyway) I got to thinking about Isaiah and Amos, two of my favorite prophets…the only two I’ve read a little of…don’t let me ever fool you by the way. I was thinking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. too. Mostly I was thinking these things because I had recently read part of a book by the great Jewish theologian, Abraham Heschel, who marched with Dr. King in Selma. Heschel was a so-called expert on the prophets of old and had keen eyes to spot the prophets of new.
Abraham Heschel defined the Old Testament prophets speech as “rarely cryptic, suspended between God and man; it is urging, alarming, forcing onward, as if the words gushed forth from the heart of God, seeking entrance to the heart and mind of man, carrying a summons as well as an involvement. Grandeur, not dignity, is important. The language is luminous and explosive, firm and contingent, harsh and compassionate, a fusion of contradictions. His tone, rarely sweet or caressing, is frequently consoling and disburdening; his words are often slashing, even horrid – designed to shock rather than to edify. The mouth of the prophet is “a sharp sword”. He is “a polished arrow” taken out of the quiver of God.”
When I think about hearing Dr. King shout and yell his sermons and speeches from old newsreel footage I understand exactly why Heschel saw him as a prophet. That being said, I want to reiterate something from my last post. The theologian John Wesley said that the majority of people’s theology comes in the form of the worship music that they sing. So as I am sitting in my usual chair listening to Mahalia Jackson and Billie Holiday I realize that this would have been the exact kind of music that was both accessible and popular to Martin Luther King as he was growing up. Billie Holiday was recording from the 1940’s to the 60’s, and Mahalia’s career was on a similar timeline, if I may be a bit vague.
So Heschel goes on to talk about the structure and intention of a prophet’s speech, and my mind starts racing. He says that “the prophet is sent not only to upbraid, but also to ‘strengthen weak hands and make firm the feeble knees.’ Almost every prophet brings consolation, promise, and the hope of reconciliation along with censure and castigation. He begins with a message of doom; he concludes with a message of hope. His essential task is to declare the word of God to the here and now; to disclose the future in order to illumine what is involved in the present.”
“There it is!” I say to myself. Billie Holiday’s song “Strange Fruit” was possibly the first overtly anti-racist song ever recorded. And (hehe), in typical prophetic style, Billie Holiday is the last person you would expect to be the voice of God’s emotions. She was discovered in the music industry by someone who saw here singing at the whorehouse where she was forced to work and slave, having been sent away by her family.
Mahalia Jackson’s song “Study War No More” was not a new theme or sentiment to gospel music but I like it, and anyway this is my post. Here are the lyrics to Holiday’s song. Jackson’s song is pretty easy to understand, but you really have to read the lyrics of Holiday’s as well as listen to it.
I’ve got no questions or discussion points because I don’t feel like thinking of any. I just wonder…perhaps we need to take a closer look at the kind of leaders the Christian church is raising and at the kind of so-called worship music we are singing. I can’t help thinking that we lost something somewhere, or maybe it was stolen. Oh, by the way. A little irony perhaps. The song, “Strange Fruit”, was written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx.
“Strange Fruit”
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
6 Comments
December 4, 2007 at 7:50 pm
One of my favorite recent memories is being at the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest listening to an African-American jazz trio and seeing the intense discomfort of the U.S. Ambassador to Romania (seriously, I have never seen a public official so obviously flustered and unsure what to do) when the trio led the whole audience in a 15 minute sing-along of Jackson’s “Study War No More”. It was TOTALLY subversive and prophetic. I remember riding the subway home that night feeling like I had a better idea of jazz as a tool of the prophetic imagination and the manner in which it could shape us if we would listen (I also remember wishing that Carlo could have been there to experience it, knowing his man-love for jazz). It also made me wonder about the role of what we sing in leading/guiding/transforming us, as opposed to just viewing singing as “praise”. It seems like we have forgotten that singing shapes our view of the world and our imagination, too.
December 5, 2007 at 8:25 am
Is anyone hearing master’s thesis here?
December 5, 2007 at 10:43 pm
I really enjoyed this post because it hit on something I have been thinking about for the past couple of weeks. The Sunday before Advent the Pastor at my church gave a sermon on the crucifixion and talked about the need for self reflection before Advent and the start of the “new church year.” He called on the congregation to think about who they were in the story, the guards that hung Jesus upon the cross, the crowd calling for His death, Ponchus Pilot, either of the men beside him or the disciples. My Pastor then went on to discuss how self reflection and repentance is a necessity in the church and when we have lost the ability to be self reflective and repent we have lost the ability to be the Church. After reading this post I then starting thinking about more “stuff” and realized how music especially blues, folk and gospel music can call us into a self reflective state and show us how we are not living out the Gospel, because obviously when strange fruit is hanging from the trees, we as a church are not living out the convictions of the gospel correctly. In regards to Ron’s comment/question about how music can influence and transform the way we think. I find it interesting that in a time when materialism and self centeredness is so prevalent our music is reflecting those ideals. One example would be modern day praise music. It is focused on getting a personal fix of Jesus and not on creating a community or reflecting Christ/church centered values. The lyrics from a particular praise song I heard sung at the Vern come to mind “Fill me now.” I would venture to say that the music we listen to and sing in church should be regarded as more then praise or something we do before we hear what really matters (the sermon) but as one of the ways the church defines, identifies and molds itself. I second Clint’s call about this being a Master’s Thesis.
December 6, 2007 at 12:50 am
Drew,
“I find it interesting that in a time when materialism and self centeredness is so prevalent our music is reflecting those ideals.”
I hope you’re not implying I have to give up my Bon Jovi? It’s my life, bitch! Have a nice day!
December 6, 2007 at 2:48 am
More seriously, though, I’ll share here what I told Carlo after he sent this to me. In a lot of ways, this reveals why I’ve stuck with the ‘Network’ theme on this site. It embodies for me that spirit of “forsaking dignity for grandeur.” When Carlo mentions that the prophet intends to shock rather than edify, I think of Howard Beale and his message, which essentially says, “Wake up, dammit! You’re a human being, and you’re letting yourself whittle away to a television-inspired feel-nothingness shell of a person! You can’t love, you can’t hate, you can’t enjoy sex, and you can’t even get angry if it doesn’t happen the way TV tells you it does! This box is killing you, and you don’t even know it! The first step to wakiing up – get mad!” I really see Paddy Chayevsky operating within this OT prophetic tradition with this screenplay, and in it we see Beale not as heroic or glorious, but rough, wild, dangerous, and likely crazy. Again, when Carlo says that prophetic revelation is “urging, alarming, forcing onward, as if the words gushed forth from the heart of God, seeking entrance to the heart and mind of man,” I think of how Beale wakes up and grumblingly scuffles out into the rain, and eventually to the station, as if he can barely contain this weird vision he’s been given. The exchange between he and the doorman on the way into the station says so much about his mission, and the relation between ourselves sometimes and the prophets:
Doorman: How are you today, Mr. Beale?
Beale (grumbling, barely noticing): I must make my witness.
Doorman: Sure thing, Mr. Beale.
Thus, the obsession.
December 6, 2007 at 1:47 pm
All my thoughts come from Abraham Heschel these days…all of them. But I did get something from a combination of he and the poet W.H. Auden. “Inspiration is a moral act”.
Heschel talks about the moral component to having a message from God and the destructiveness the could/will ensue if the inspired one doesn’t share that message. I’ve read a few places where God puts the blood of many on the head of one man who is told to tell the many that they need to pull their heads out of the sand. When I think of this possible moral component of inspiration and also the nice phrase “all truth is God’s truth” I think we may have a way to begin talking about modern day prophets and why we need attentive ears to what’s being said, or rather shouted, just above the normal drone of life. Heschel says that its hard to hear people who speak like that because it grates on the ears. They speak one octave too high for our comfort.