Faith Music: The Substance of Songs Hoped For

I was asked by a magazine to create a CD mix informed by the theme of "Religion" and to write about the mix.


The Substance of Songs Hoped For

Every Sunday, every goddamn Sunday, off to a modest Presbyterian church for white folks like us, where the religious music was desiccated, and faith – an unpalatable medicine, a cure-all we were forced to swallow lest we die and go to hell. This faith did not assure us of eternal contentment so much as it provided bragging rights allowing the faithful to strut around with an “I got mine, you get yours” attitude toward backsliders. It did not uplift even though uplift was demanded of us. Certainly, the music wasn’t meant to uplift, and so it spilled from our mouths like exhalations of bad air. “Why are we singing?” We were certainly not making a joyful noise unto the Lord. The lyrics promised triumph and glory in God’s fold, but our singing, our inhibited, but so earnest singing – even when we’d turned to the rare, felicitous melody – resulted in astringent hymns. Paradise could not, absolutely not, be so tedious; God, not so grim, flinty.

And that’s why I’m an atheist. Because of the goddamn music.


Alright, actually, people, if anything will bring this lost lamb into the fold it will be African-American and Bluegrass gospel music. At a Catholic school in which I formerly taught, I created a Gospel Choir of teens and faculty of all backgrounds. We opened for Maya Angelou once, got invited into African-American churches in East Palo Alto, and rocked the Mass at school. If you don’t feel some spirit move you while singing and swaying amidst the hallelujahs and hollers, and it turns out there is a heaven, well, you ain’t goin’. Hell’d do you some good: at least you’ll feel something!

Bluegrass gospel evokes an ecstasy, too, but unlike African-American gospel, bluegrass compels me to sit perfectly still, shivering.

And while I’m certainly drawn to other music inspired by faith, you won’t find it here. I love it, but . . . no cantors, no Indian ragas, no Persian devotional music, nothing from the European classical tradition, no Rastafarians, no Tibetan chanting, no Gregorian chants, no “Christian rock” (as the term is, and forever must be, an oxymoron). No, here you have black and white gospel, mostly from the 50s or inspired by that era (see the Sounds of Blackness who open the CD), with a few oddities and musical commentaries thrown in: There’s the great multiple Tony award winner Audra McDonald pondering an abortion decision as she writes to her boyfriend in “Come to Jesus,” a lovely melody and lyric by Richard Rodgers’ grandson Adam Guettel, who sings with Audra here, too. Mahalia Jackson sings Duke Ellington’s great devotional piece “Come Sunday” with Ellington and his orchestra. Jamaica’s Jimmy Cliff sings “Many Rivers to Cross,” a Judeo-Christian motif if ever there was one and the song always sounded so devotional to me. The extraordinary and extraordinarily overlooked Percy Mayfield prays to God for Peace on Earth and “if it’s not asking too much, please send me someone to love.”

Then, I get gutsy: I provide the jazz singer Nina Simone’s brief, otherworldly, and, generally considered, definitive version of “Take My Hand Precious Lord,” and I follow it with Elvis Presley’s version in which he lays off the histrionics and sings beautifully, devotionally and, I like to think, well enough to honor and impress Nina. See what YOU think (insofar as I believe deeply in the pre-Army Elvis). We hear Elvis again inspired by the many great gospel groups here from the 50s: the Fairfield Four, the Swan Silvertones, the Pilgrim Travelers (with a young Lou Rawls), the Soul Stirrers (featuring a young Sam Cooke), and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, with Pops Staples on the guitar, who are heard here in a production of “The Gospel at Colonus,” which is the Oedipus Trilogy presented in the African-American gospel tradition. Speaking of Pops Staples, he and his daughters are here with their weird, haunting, black country gospel.

The Sounds of Blackness add a brief traditional slave lament, “Ah Been ‘Buked,” in response to which the ethereal voice of Alison Krauss sings yet another startlingly lovely melody, this time on the theme of theodicy. But at least three artists aren’t having it: Randy Newman, a Jew and an atheist who has no truck with the “all will be revealed” nonsense of theodicy, caustically ridicules faith in “God’s Song.” Post-Beatles John Lennon is more gently dismissive in “God.” And Hayes Carll has lost his partyin’ girlfriend to Jesus and if he ever finds Jesus, he’s gonna “kick in his ass.” After all, “I’ll bet he’s a commie . . . or even worse yet a Jew.”

Finally, three songs of surrendering to faith, converting: There’s Hank Williams (Senior . . . accept no substitutes except maybe his grandson) seeing the light in one of the greatest white country hymns, John Prine with some extreme backwoods white country accapella, and for fun, a lot of fun, we’re near heaven with the penultimate offering, Stubby Kaye giving up craps and joining the Salvation Army in “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat” from “Guys and Dolls.”

Then, as promised, heaven: I ended it all with Aretha affirming faith . . . joyously. How can we resist this? Come on up to the altar with me now. Come right here and proclaim your faith in . . . the power of faith to give us all this beauty.