Popular Music and Process Theology
Videos, Playlist, and Podcast
I am Human, Nothing can be Alien to Me
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I'd Like to Hear Your Voice in My Ear |
I'd Like to be a Rainbow in Your Cloud |
"Please share with me the music you love, so that can know a little of what it feels to be you."
First Thoughts
One purpose of listening to Popular Music is enjoyment.
Another is to develop a sense of identity, develop a worldview, feel
part of a larger community, and enjoy a momentary touch of transcendence.
An additional purpose, for some, is to to understand other people
by listening to the music they enjoy. It is to become a wide soul.
Becoming a Wide Soul
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Some Pioneering Wide Souls
who speak to the role popular music, emerging out of African and African-American culture, plays in religious life.
The Ring Shout:
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The Mother of Rock:
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A Little History
What's going on in Popular Music at its best?
- Creativity and Improvisation: openness to novelty, gathering many different motifs, sounds, ideas into a new reality.
- Transgression: Novelty and the Crossing of (Specious) Boundaries, for pleasure and transformation
- Romanticism: Hope for Harmony, personal and social
- Erotic Power; Reclaiming the unity of mind and body, Whitehead's withness of the body, no mental without the physical experience, even in God
- Prophetic Imagination: Availability of fresh possibilities for social critique and hope (Walter Brueggemann)
- Storytelling; the universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects; everything has and is a story
- Experiencing the Numinous (through sound): the power of emotions (subjective forms), appreciation for "the depths"
- Communitas (ritualized collective Joy in liminal states): Self-Enjoyment in Community with others, includes shared suffering as well as shared joy
Video Samples of the Eight Themes
Creativity:
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Romanticism:
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Romanticism:
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Erotic Power:
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