What Is Music?

I've always loved music. And I've always enjoyed stuff that was "off the beaten path." Not content to listen to the usual top 40 songs as a kid, I wandered up and down the dial and discovered foreign but intriguing sounds I'd never heard before. In this way I discovered classical, jazz, and big band music, as well as progressive rock in my teens. See my profile for an idea of the wide range of tastes I have in music.

But for many years I was still "programmed" in a way. Or should I say in THE Way. My time in that organization served to condition my ideas of what was "Godly" music and what was not. But in recent years I have found myself re-evaluating those ideas, in addition to re-evaluating my doctrinal beliefs. Many Christians (not just in The Way) are taught that your basic, straight-forward, Western music is the most Godly, while other forms are pagan or devilish. But strangely they never referred to any Scriptures that demonstrated this. As a matter of fact there is a verse that says that "nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean" (Rom. 14:14). The context is talking about food, but I believe it can be applied to many other things as well. In terms of music, there is none that is evil in itself - it depends on what you do with it in your head. If it influences you in a negative way, then it's not good for you, though it may not be bad for someone else.

I started realizing this when I began to learn a little about music theory and how Western music developed the system of 8 notes in a scale. But in other cultures the system was different, which accounts for why music from, say, India or China, sounds so "different." I used to be afraid of listening to such music, because I was taught that it was "devilish" - whatever that meant. Granted, some Indian music was used in the worship of other gods, but that doesn't mean I have to. Is God so limited that He can only be worshiped with Western Church music? In fact, there is much evidence that the music of the Psalms, and music of the middle east in general, in Biblical times probably sounded more like the Indian or Arab music we hear today than Western music.

Then I started to see the validity of 20th century composers who experimented with 12 tone technique, atonality, randomness, and other things that to some ears just sounds like "noise." As I recall, many adults in the '60s said the Beatles sounded like noise, yet they have since been recognized as musically talented and innovative. Modern composers like Edgard Varese, Arnold Schoenberg, and John Cage weren't just making noises to annoy people. They were experimenting with "breaking the rules" and so challenging people to think about what, in fact, is music. There is still some controversy about whether some of their compositions are music, but that's the whole point - thinking about it and reconsidering, and not limiting oneself to what's familiar.

Another composer that is often underestimated is Frank Zappa. For years I had only ever heard the few "novelty songs" he had done, like "Don't Eat Yellow Snow", "Dancing Fool", and the big radio hit "Valley Girl". But I recently discovered that he was highly influenced by Varese and others, and in fact was quite an accomplished musician. He wasn't a drug-addled hippy, as he is often thought of. In fact he didn't use drugs and thought the use of drugs was stupid. Also, he didn't just play rock music, although he was a hell of a guitarist. He included classical and jazz elements, as well as experimental things like musique concrete (a movement started in the late 1940s and 1950s in which pieces were produced by editing together natural and industrial sounds - think of the Beatles' "Revolution 9"). Many of his instrumental pieces had weird titles, and his songs frequently had sexually explicit lyrics, but musically he was innovative. A lot of his stuff can be seen on YouTube. Check out "Peaches En Regalia", "Watermelon in Easter Hay", "G-spot Tornado", "St. Etienne", and "Yellow Shark Overture" to name just a few.

A lot of this modern stuff may not be everybody's cup of tea, but I've always enjoyed "weird" stuff. That's not to say I don't enjoy more traditional music as well, but a lot of times I like going outside the "comfort zone" and being challenged. I think the avant garde recordings of John Lennon and Yoko Ono were good for that, and some of it is still hard to listen to, but I enjoy trips like that from time to time, if for no other reason than to rethink what music is.