Category: Music

The Work of Art and the Art of Life

Art, religion, ritual, dance, and song are not different phenomena, but moments in an existential struggle to act vicariously upon the world—bringing it into being. By Michael Jackson

Two-Part Invention

Our vocational lives tend to be complex, unpredictable searches for meaning on many levels, from the quotidian to the transcendent. By Nancy J. Nordenson

God: Chart Topper

If you want to hear folk singing praises to God these days, no need to go to church. Just turn on a local top-40 radio station. Or the Grammys. By Ben Westhoff

Gospel According To . . .

While Kanye West’s hip-hop “Jesus Walks” can be considered a turning point in the history of black sacred music, the fears that it represents the wresting of the
“sacred” from the faithful are ahistorical. By Wallace Best

Toward a Theology of Sound

In Santería possession performance, “divinely targeted sound,” through drums, rattles, and maracas, as well as discourse about that sound, map the experience of divine transcendence onto a human grid. By Katherine J. Hagedorn

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