Religious music sounds many roles

Since the age of 12, when he handled piano duty for Sunday night hymn-sings at his Baptist church, Marini has played and sung sacred music in a variety of settings. He now attends a Congregational church and performs with a music group he founded after arriving at Wellesley in 1976.

You write that among Congregationalists, the gender-inclusive language movement faced greatest resistance over hymn lyrics.

It's kind of a banner-carrying liberal denomination. They de-gendered and de-classed and de-raced all of their language, from the worship book to official proclamations. The one place they got significant resistance [was] the "New Century Hymnal." They went back to these classic hymns of Isaac Watts or Charles Wesley and inclusified those. My own feeling is that somewhere around a quarter to a third of [congregations] either stand pat or want to buy something that is more traditional than the New Century. It says something about the power of sacred song. This is the place where the experience of the believer and the institutional forces of change collide.

What does sacred song tell us about American religious culture?

It tells us that it's very diverse. A new religious group -- say, the New Age or the Mormons -- have their own kind of hymnody. That's very different than hearing Bach chorales in Lutheran churches, where the music tells you, "We come from the 16th century."

You have some interesting insights about music helping legitimize the Mormons.

The Latter-day Saints were regarded in the 19th century as a dangerous, alien community, in part because of polygamy, but just as importantly because they were a separatist movement that constructed a semi-autonomous society in the West. They used radio in the late 1920s, broadcasting concerts by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. These were not Mormon hymns; they were Protestant religious classics. The sermons were not filled with LDS doctrine, rather with baseline Christian morality. You're sitting there in Pittsburgh or Boston listening, and you go, "They sound like great people, what a wonderful choir." They've been doing this now for the better part of 75 years. They've sung at three presidential inaugurations. It's a very conscious strategy.

What role has music played in the Catholic Church?

One of the things Vatican II did is declare that the music for the Mass no longer needed to be Latin, Renaissance, counter-Reformation, but that it should use the musical styles of the nation or people in the vernacular language. The American Catholic Church suddenly had to create an entire body of sacred song out of thin air. This was the early `60s. What was there in the culture was rock 'n' roll, which wasn't going to work; pop, which wasn't going to work -- Bing Crosby kind of music wasn't really going to work for Masses. So Catholic musicians started writing folk-Mass music. Starting in the 1980s, American Catholics started to latch onto older Protestant hymns and folk-rock style. John Michael Talbot is the most successful performer in the charismatic Catholic movement, the experience of the Holy Spirit directly in your life, a huge constituency. Talbot [began] writing ballads to Jesus or in the words of the Scripture.

What is the difference between African-American churches' use of music and the approach of non-black believers?

The black church experience was radically different, through slavery, segregation, the civil rights movement. The shaping forces have created a musical style that is different than for white evangelicals. White evangelicals get emotional, but they kind of keep it wrapped up. In the black church, forms like call-and-response, gospel blues, the chanted and sung sermon are the center of the service. The act of singing together brings the Spirit into the presence of the people. Performers use techniques of improvisation, like in jazz, to work out over a chanted melodic or rhythmic line.

Can sacred songs stay sacred if they become just another commercial product?

I have my doubts. Once you put something on the market, it automatically becomes a product for profit. The capitalist answer would be, we're providing choice. If you want Christmas music for spiritual purposes, fine. And if you want it to be background Muzak at your Christmas party, fine. This goes to whether you think commercialization is just the way Americans produce anything.

Rich Barlow can be reached at rbarlow.81@alum.dartmouth.org.