The Seedy Legacy of Rock Music

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>It is the story of how the American sense of the body changed and deepened in the twentieth century -- how Americans began the slow, painful process, still barely started now, of transcending the mind-body split they’d inherited from European culture...For most people of the time, most Western music -- highbrow and lowbrow -- could neither express nor release that tension. Even the greatest Western music, on the order of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven, was spiritual rather than physical. The mind-body split that defined Western culture was in its music as well. When you felt transported by Mozart or Brahms, it wasn’t your body that was transported. The sensation often described is a body yearning to follow where its spirit has gone -- the sense of a body being tugged upward, rising a little where you sit. And you almost always sit. And, for the most part, you sit comparatively still. The music doesn’t change your body. The classical dance that grew from this music had a stiff, straight back and moved in almost geometrical lines. The folk dances of the West were also physically contained, with linear gestures. The feet might move with wonderful flurries and intricate precision, but the hips and the spine were kept rigid. That way, the energy that lived in the hips and the loins would proceed through proper channels -- and those channels were defined well outside the dance.
[later][Clement quote]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This just further shows us the gnostic/dualistic mindset of most of western Chritain history, which is condemned all throughout Paul's writings just as much as lasciviousness. This assumes all bodily movement, except the feet perhaps, is wrong. We should walk around like robots without ever moving our hips or spine. He perfectly describes the way people enjoyed those classical pieces as "rigid". This is just an opposite unbiblical extreme from the sensuality of later on. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> When white intellectuals started to discover rural blues in significant numbers, in the late fifties and early sixties, they were discovering it out of context. On records or in “folk music” settings, for them, it was strictly a music to be listened to. In the joints where it was played in its heyday, it was a dancing music. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Because, rather than purifying the fallen nature, rigidity (even with the truth of "the Law") only makes it rebel and go further into sin, as Rom.7 teaches.
Yes, movements of the hips and spine can be sexual, but they aren't always, except to people who are very weak in that area. (He never does tell us what the "proper channels" of the hip/spine energy is)

 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Aaron:
Smoke,

One has to ask, "How does God desire to be worshipped?" Should the focus be on the body or on the Spirit?

John 4:23, "But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him."<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Aaron, the Bible says that we're to worship "in spirit and in truth". I don't think anybody's arguing otherwise. I have no idea where you're going with this.

Aaron, please, I've asked you four times now. How does any of this show that contemporary music is good or bad?

Mike

http://www.keylife.org

[ December 28, 2001: Message edited by: Smoke_Eater ]

 

But the point is, that those charges of "sensuality" are overgeneralized, as we have shown you.
And no, Christianity is not the cause of society's ills, sin is. But Christianity consists of humans who are fallen in sin. Inasmuch as we think we can eliminate our sin by suppressing the body (Col.2) and being so hard on people, we, who are God's light, distort the Gospel, and further fuel rebellion. People see the Church not as the truth, but as some control tool, of one culture in one time period. This whole music issue is apart of that.

 

Wait a second, you're telling me that a song like Stonehill's "Hymn" or "Breath of God" causes the body to move in a sensual manner?

Man, you really need to get out more.

You haven't demonstrated anything except that it affects YOU in this way.

When you assume that every CCM song by every CCM artist is exactly the same, you discredit yourself.

It makes us wonder exactly how much CCM you've listened to in your "research".

You also make the mistake of assuming that it affects everyone the way it does you.

Every scientific study needs a "control group" and a "variable group".

Obviously, you're the control group in this case.

It's not enough to report only the findings of the control group. You also have to explain why the vast, vast majority of us listen to contempory music to no ill effects if you want to be taken seriously.

Obviously, you have an axe to grind and we all get your point: you don't like contemporary music and your fear of contemporary music has clouded your objectivity. But don't insult us by trying to pass it off as some sort of scientific study.

Like I said, I've already been there myself and, like my dad used to say, "You can't con a con man."

Besides, you never specified that this was limited to gospel music. It's just not fair to hold mainstream music to church music standards when they serve two different purposes.


Mike

http://www.keylife.org

[ December 28, 2001: Message edited by: Smoke_Eater ]

 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Aaron:
It's not enough to report only the findings of the control group. You also have to explain why the vast, vast majority of us listen to contempory music to no ill effects if you want to be taken seriously.

Please describe to me what, in your mind, constitutes an "ill effect," and I will endeavor to be more specific.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Aaron, you're the one making the argument, it's up to you to tell me. What are you afraid will happen to us if we listen to contemprary music?

Notice how I answered your question the first time you asked? I've asked you the same question over and over four times now and you still won't (my guess is can't) answer my question.

Mike

http://www.keylife.org

 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Aaron:
Smoke,

You simply wanted to know what was evil about rock music. I told you, it's sensual and God does not accept it.

Now you've changed the definition of something evil as something that has an some kind of undefined "ill effect." This could mean anything.

What could possibly be the ill effect of Cain's offering the plants instead of an animal? We know that it wasn't accepted, (and no, it's not just because of Cain's heart).

My whole point is that it is not acceptable. Anything else I post on the effects is to debunk the myth that music is neutral or that there is no such thing as sensual music.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Aaron,

You need to go back and read my posts a little more carefully.

First of all, I didn't ask you why you believe contemporary music is evil. You've made it more than clear that you think it's sensual.

Secondly, I didn't change any definition of anything. You were the one who claimed that contemporary music was evil and sensual. I asked two distinctly different questions pertaining to each of thise ideas that you've never answered.

I would ask you again, but if you're not going to answer after four requests, I don't think you'd answer after five.

I'll just have to believe that you have no answer.

Mike

http://www.keylife.org

 

Aaron,

I give up. Same old thing over and over and over.

All of your circular reasoning is starting to make me dizzy.

You are right, however, that I did ask specifically which beats are evil and why. I'm still waiting for an answer.

You keep saying contemporary music is senual, contemporary music is senual.

There's no doubt that there is some contemporary music that is sensual, but to base your entire argument on this doesn't work because you refuse to acknowledge that every song is different, that every artist is different and that everyone is affected differently by the music they listen to.

If a song like Jimmy Buffett's "1921", "Captain and the Kid" or Whiteheart's "Montana Skies" affects you in "a sensual manner", then you are in need of some serious psychological counseling.

What "authorities" have you produced? av1611 and Kimberly Smith? There were more holes in their arguments than the cooler Anne Marie Fahey's body was stuffed in.

In the case of av1611, they had to resort to outright deception to try to convince us that contemporary music is evil. The Bible says that God hates a lying tongue, but to you, they're a perfectly acceptable resource?

I guess I just don't understand why you would make yourself out to be such an expert on contemporary music when, clearly, you don't know anything about it.

In another thread, you kept mislabling different genres of music and you couldn't match the artists with their respective categories, yet we're supposed to believe that you know all about them?

You can't see past all of the fallacies of av1611 (even though we've pointed them out)and you've tried to pass them off as though they were true. How is that supposed to lend credibility to your argument?

So sad.

I was told in no uncertain terms by one frequent poster here (who I do give credit to for apologizing in a private message) that I was an idiot and not qualified to speak on CCM.

Having spent six years with Come Alive/Metro Concerts (the production company responsible for the "Creation" festivals) as well as an additional three years with three other production companies and having done in the neighborhood of 90-100 CCM concerts with a wide variety of artists, I don't know what would qualify me more.

Mike

http://www.randystonehill.com

[ September 23, 2002, 11:23 PM: Message edited by: Smoke_Eater ]

 

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Now you've changed the definition of something evil as something that has an some kind of undefined "ill effect." This could mean anything.

What could possibly be the ill effect of Cain's offering the plants instead of an animal? We know that it wasn't accepted, (and no, it's not just because of Cain's heart).

My whole point is that it is not acceptable. Anything else I post on the effects is to debunk the myth that music is neutral or that there is no such thing as sensual music.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You're the one who keeps defining the music as "sensual", and what is this but an ill effect (leads me to sin with my body and/or mind). Now you're trying to suggest that it's evil simply because God just doesn't like it or it violates some principle of His (like Cain's offering) but the only proof you or anyone else has that it's evil and offensive to God is its "ill" ("sensual") effects.

 

No, I don't believe that "sensuality" is an ill effect.

I believe it's a condition of some kinds of music that may or may not lead to ill effects, not an "ill effect" in and of itself.

I didn't skip out on anything. It was your argument all along that all comtemporary music is bad so it's not my job to define your terms for you. You couldn't do that so you tried to get me to fight your battle for you.

You're the one who has argued that contemporary music is bad and affects everyone who hears it in destructive ways.

Mike

http://www.keylife.org

[ September 23, 2002, 11:24 PM: Message edited by: Smoke_Eater ]

 

Please, let's not bring up the dead!

 

I agree. This was silly enough the first time.