Abstract
The introduction articulates the fundamental tension between singing as an embodied, potentially liberating action, and singing as a colonialist tool associated with the European colonizing and Christianizing projects of the last 500 years. It sets the analysis of congregational singing of this work in the context of the author’s life and commitments and outlines her use of decolonizing and liberating methodologies. The introduction also outlines the chapters and explains the “flipping the song bird” metaphor.
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Notes
- 1.
Augustine, “Book 9, Chapter (6) 14” in The Confessions, trans. Maria Boulding. (New York: New City Press, 1997), 220.
- 2.
Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias trans. Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 59.
- 3.
Martin Luther, “Preface to Gerog Rhau’s Symphoniae Iucundae,” in Luther’s Works, American Edition: Volume 53—Liturgy and Hymns, Ulrich S. Leupold (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965), 321–22.
- 4.
Don Saliers, “Liturgical Musical Formation,” in Liturgy and Music: Lifetime Learning, ed. Robin A. Leaver and Joyce Ann Zimmerman (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998), 385.
- 5.
A culmination of this distrust is exhibited in the rigid belief that music must always be subordinated to the Word and was exemplified by sixteenth-century Swiss reformer Huldreich Zwingli who completely banned music from public worship. Ibid., 386. Zwingli’s austere approach did not generally take hold, but the impulse to control and constrain music remained a strong thread in ecclesial practices. For example, French reformer John Calvin distrusted music’s power due to its potential to “greatly turn or bend in any direction the morals of men.” John Calvin, “Epistle to the Reader” from Cinquante Pseaumes en Français par Clem. Marot (1543), in David Music, ed. and comp., Hymnology: A Collection of Source Readings (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1996), 66. A denominational imprint may also be discerned in the degree of distrust; contrast the Calvinistic focus on psalm singing, for instance, with a more Wesleyan allowance for an engagement with the affections.
- 6.
Polycultural refers positively to the multiple cultures present in many contexts. In contexts outside Canada, the term multicultural is often used to describe this dynamic. In the Canadian context, however, multiculturalism was adopted as an official government policy by the federal government under Pierre Elliot Trudeau in 1971. We return to a critical analysis of this notion of multiculturalism in the Canadian context in Chap. 3.
- 7.
Divine is capitalized throughout when I am referring to Christian experience of the ultimate. It is not capitalized when it is an adjective or in a direct quotation.
- 8.
I use Kin-dom, after Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz. Ada María Isaisi-Díaz, “Kin-Dom of God: A Mujerista Proposal,” in In Our Own Voices: Latino/a Renditions of Theology, ed. Beahamín Valentín (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2010), 171–89. Isasi-Díaz insists that the mujerista “proyecto histórico” includes an “unfolding of what is called ‘the kingdom of God’” which rejects “present oppressive systems and institutions” and encourages the flourishing of liberation. Liberation along mujerista lines is: deeply praxical, rooted in a “‘doing,’ a way of claiming our right to think, to know critically”; communal and accountable; “embedded in a ‘grassroots ecumenism’ that skirts traditional doctrinal purity and embraces diversity”; and personal and political at the same time, 178–79. For her, “the deep nosotras/nosotros made possible by the ties of familia, the mutuality and reciprocity it entails, is at the heart of the new world order that is intrinsic in the Gospel proclamation, which is precisely why we believe kin-dom of God—famila de Dios—can function as a metaphor for what Jesus referred to as the “kingdom of God,” 182. I am aware that notions of family can be problematic, especially for those who have experienced violence within the family. But her insistence on mutuality and reciprocity, as well as praxis, invites a reconfiguring of notions of family—or kingdom—to be truly inclusive and free from violence.
- 9.
Cláudio Carvalhaes, “Liturgy and Postcolonialism: An Introduction,” in Liturgy in Postcolonial Perspectives: Only One is Holy, ed. Cláudio Carvalhaes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 4.
- 10.
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971).
- 11.
Ibid., 120.
- 12.
Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1973); Juan Luis Segundo, Liberation of Theology, trans. John Drury (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1976).
- 13.
Briefly put, coloniality can be described along the lines of decolonial scholars as the ubiquitous residue and ongoing manifestations of the modern-colonial capitalist world-system, the superstructure which encompasses the co-constitutive and global forces of colonialism, modernity and capitalism. The notion of coloniality as applied to congregational singing will be developed in subsequent chapters, especially Chaps. 3 and 4.
- 14.
Rebecca S. Chopp, “Toward Praxis: A Method for Liberation Theology,” in The Praxis of Suffering: An Interpretation of Liberation and Political Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1986), 139, 143. These points will be elaborated upon throughout the book. For foundational treatment of these theme, see Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation; Segundo, Liberation of Theology. I would argue that liberating praxis also includes liberation from forces of capitalism, individualism, and consumerism, which threaten not only the very fabric of our communities but also the delicate fabric of the interconnected web of God’s creation.
- 15.
I appreciate Michael Hawn’s term “song enlivener.” I use “song leader” along these lines. Hawn, “Chapter Eight: The Church Musician as Enlivener” in Gather Into One: Praying and Singing Globally, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2003).
- 16.
Early examples of an ethnographic approach in church music are C. Michael Hawn’s One Bread, One Body: Exploring Cultural Diversity in Worship, (Wisconsin: Alban Institute, 2003), in which he used a participant-observer approach; and Gather Into One: Praying and Singing Globally, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2003) which features several interviews with global song leaders from around the world. More recently, scholars with an ethnographic approach in Christian congregational music have been gathering for a bi-annual conference at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, Oxford, UK. Scholars in this field include: Monique Ingalls, Carolyn Landau, Tom Wagner, Mark Porter, Anna Nekola, and Jonathan Dueck, among others (see bibliography). See: Christian Congregational Music, accessed, March 8, 2020, https://congregationalmusic.org/
- 17.
Mary Clark Moschella, Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice: An Introduction (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2008), 25.
- 18.
The idea of a syncopated liberating approach was suggested by Néstor Medina. Néstor Medina, Email correspondence with the author (25 October 2016). In Chap. 3, issues of identity and how they impact song leadership, among other things, will be explored in far more detail. However, since I am raising the question of privilege and “other” spaces here, I note, for now, that I am a university-educated, Anglo-Euro-Canadian settler, middle-class, cisgender, able-bodied, adult woman, and a mother.
- 19.
Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “On the Coloniality of Being,” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2–3 (March/May 2007): accessed July 25, 2018, http://www.decolonialtranslation.com/english/maldonado-on-the-coloniality-of-being.pdf
- 20.
Walter D. Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom,” Theory, Culture & Society 26, no. 7–8 (2009): 178, accessed July 25, 2018, http://waltermignolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/epistemicdisobedience-2.pdf
- 21.
Juan Luis Segundo, The Sacraments Today, Volume Four of a Theology for Artisans of a New Humanity, trans. John Drury (New York: Orbis, 1974), 7.
- 22.
David Badke, “Nightingale,” in The Medieval Bestiary: Animals in the Middle Ages, accessed July 25, 2018, http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast546.htm
- 23.
Hawn, Gather Into One.
Bibliography
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Moschella, Mary Clark. 2008. Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice: An Introduction. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press.
Nekola, Anna, and Tom Wagner, eds. 2015. Congregational Music Making and Community in a Mediated Age. Farnham: Ashgate.
Porter, Mark. 2017. Contemporary Worship Music and Everyday Musical Lives. Abingdon/New York: Routledge.
Saliers, Don. 1998. Liturgical Musical Formation. In Liturgy and Music: Lifetime Learning, ed. Robin A. Leaver and Joyce Ann Zimmerman. Collegeville: Liturgical Press.
Segundo, Juan Luis. 1974. The Sacraments Today, Volume Four of a Theology for Artisans of a New Humanity. Trans. John Drury. New York: Orbis.
———. 1976. Liberation of Theology. Trans. John Drury. Maryknoll: Orbis.
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Whitla, B. (2020). Introduction: Flipping the Song Bird. In: Liberation, (De)Coloniality, and Liturgical Practices. New Approaches to Religion and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52636-8_1
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