Check out Light into the World in use in a congregation below!
Thanks to Ascension Lutheran Church in Austin, Texas for this footage!

In responding to a statement from a theologian that, “Freedom was known in relief against the structure,” in jazz (in comparing jazz to the flexibility and improvisation within worship), I wrote the following:

I wonder what happens when we take that analogy and stretch it to its logical ends?… Both Parker and Gillespie, as well as Coltrane were strung out most of the time in their early years. They went all night long, and they DID stick to the ‘structures’ all the time, if you listen carefully. They all played within the scale. The bebop scale — an 8 note scale, instead of a 7 note scale.

That’s a simple trick that’s been employed by many composers over the last few hundred years, but these guys, starting with Parker, took it to a whole new level. They were able to play faster, more notes, more rhythms…

But, when you think about it — Parker died before he could change, Gillespie stuck with the same stuff, because he made a fortune at it, and Coltrane changed dramatically (I’ll say something about that in a second)… These were kids pushing the limits.

This is the movement I’m asking for. This is the movement that I would love to see in the church — of pushing the boundaries — a young elite rising up and challenging the body of the church with a blend of traditionalism and modernity that works!

Bebop became the style that everyone played, within a few years. Aggressive change could really make a churchwide revival of good liturgy possible!

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But what I’m coming around to, or trying to, is that John Coltrane was different. If you listen to his early records, he imitated Charlie Parker, he pushed Parker’s limits in terms of speed, and he had a tone that was all his own, which is why he got picked up by Miles Davis…

And at some point, Coltrane quit drugs. He quit the road. He quit the high life. And he started to pray, and changed his life completely. The records that were truly transcendent, and what turn this jazz analogy into the perfect metaphor for our discussion about the liturgy, are the late records Coltrane did.

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He brought jazz back to its roots, though he never lost sight of where he came from. He stood in front of an audience with his quartet, and they simply played from the heart. Nothing prepared, nothing planned. If anything, a few phrases… And they played muses. Emotions. Scriptural references…

If we can get to that level — take the traditional jazz we learn in seminary (for me in my music PhD program), and internalize it so much that, when called upon to sing with emotion, to pray with fervor, to shout with the angels, to suffer with the afflicted… We will push it out, and it will be good:)

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2 stories come to mind. The Velveteen Rabbit, and a Zen story that I learned in college. The Velveteen Rabbit, of course, is a story about a stuffed rabbit that is loved very much, and then discarded and forgotten… But it was so loved, and so ragged, that it became ‘real’… That is the way it is with our worship. We should never lose sight of ragged Paul, ragged Christ — people that suffer, people starving around the world, and in our own communities…

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The other story is a Zen story on the same lines. A boy learned to play the flute from a master teacher from a very young age. He studied with the old master for all of his life, until he turned 15. Then he was impatient. He said, “Master, when will I be able to play the flute like you? Like a master?” The master had never allowed him to play the melodies he wanted. Every time he had a lesson, he had to play one song over and over and over again…

Finally the boy gave up, and he went into manual labor. He got married, had a child. He worked every day, and his flute was sitting on a back shelf somewhere — he never played once since he was a boy…

And one day, a great tragedy ensued, and took the life of his wife and child. He turned to drinking, and slept in the streets, until one day, a man came to him and offered him a bite to eat, and place to sleep. The man told him he would help him.

The man said thank you, and didn’t know how to repay his friend, the Good Samaritan… (amusing cross-reference:)… One day, they were having dinner in the evening with many friends, and, in the corner was a small child playing the flute — a similar one to the flute this man had played as a boy.

The man crossed the room, and asked the child if he could play a tune or two on it. The boy, delighted, agreed, and asked the man if he was a master flute player — as he was very old and wrinkled in the face… “No,” the man replied… “I was once very good, but never a master…”

The man picked up the flute, and played the same melody he had played over and over all those years ago, and when it came through his fingers, everyone in the room stopped talking and turned to listen.

When he was finished, there was a hushed silence across the room, and the eldest man in the room finally said, “He is a master flute player…”

So are we in our faith, I think, and as pastors, as musicians, as vocational human beings… But we can’t lose sight of that flute… We have to keep an eye out for it when it crosses our path again.

Both liturgical and classical music come alive through interpretation. Each musician takes and breathes their breath into the shell that the composer has created.

I have my training in classical composition, and have dealt with the issue of the ‘performer’ many times, and in many different ways. In the academic circle, I tend to create music that forces the performer to step outside their ‘comfortable’ zone, and put a great deal of themselves into the piece. The music I create for the church is the opposite, and attempts, at all costs, to be ‘performable.’

I have often been pegged as (only) a bluegrass/folk musician, when my training is classical, and my composition style quite varied. I am now recording a ‘pop’ album in the city with some incredible musicians… I played and wrote mostly jazz/funk in college. I have been in a dozen rock and roll bands. I have studied Arabic music in Jerusalem…

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The road for any new liturgy or music to be adopted by a congregation is rocky at best. My goal is to create music that is easy to play by any variety of musicians, and easy to sing for the congregation. The reason I choose folk as the medium for much of my liturgical music is because it is accessible by both old and young church-goers.

We need to search for the commonness between us — to worship together as one people of God. Tell me — when did we last see children worshipping on a regular basis with the elderly among us? We segregate our young from our old. How could that be good?

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More important than the genre for me is the community of faith. I welcome all music that works to try to unite us! To take worship out of the hands of the few, and bring it to all of us, so that we can pray and sing together. There’s no band up front making loud music that half of us don’t like, and the remaining half simply listen or dance to. There’s no staid organist droning the bars while we sing the songs that our grandparents sang. (Though I enjoy both praise and traditional music myself — I’m just being a devil’s advocate here!) There are liturgies that both old and young can embrace together.

I love Mozart. He pushed the limits. As did most classical composers we know and love today. But we don’t use Mozart’s music the way it was intended for use. People of his time interacted with the musicians, shouted for them to repeat a movement if it was especially daring and incredible… Now we have become afraid to interact with our music, to try new things, to reward innovation.

I challenge every church to ask its banjo players, its accordion and tuba players, violin and oboe players, and so on, to step forth and join in this psalm-like chorus of instruments and voices!

I have always encouraged congregations, my publisher, and everyone else to market my music as something besides ‘just’ bluegrass, and, unfortunately, it wasn’t altogether too successful!…

I would love to have people of faith worship with Mountain Vespers or Light into the World using all varieties of instruments! I think the problem is the label ‘bluegrass.’ The service is about the melodies and the texts for me, not the ’style.’ If I was concerned about ’style,’ I probably wouldn’t have chosen folk. I chose folk so that the most congregations could easily use the service…

I have never asserted that there is a ‘correct’ playing style for my music, which has gotten my music into some fantastically strange, interesting and wonderful locations!…

There is a great connection between what I would call authenticity and acceptance — in our faith, do we believe that the Prodigal Son should get the big party when he comes home, that the murderer be granted reprieve, perhaps even more so than the devout Christian?… Are we ‘authentic’ if we convert? Are we ‘authentic’ if we say we are saved in the more fundamentalist churches? What if we have that glimmer of doubt?

It is the same in music. If I play triple-time music (instead of quarter time), called ’swing’ in modern terms, I don’t sound quite as home as I do in quarters… When I get up and dance, I mark myself as the gangly Swede… If I play jazz, can I be ‘authentic?’

I think there are two answers. There is the observer, and there is the participant. The observer makes judgments based on more knowledge than the participant has on hand. The participant does not often know how foolish he/she looks on the dance floor, or sounds in concert, but FEELS as if he/she is John Coltrane himself.

Authenticity is a problematic term, and can be argued about for ages, because of this important distinction between performer and observer, and the constant battle between the two!

My music sounds one way to me when I write it, but it sounds another when it is looked at by a church, or by outside observers (perhaps looking for a new service). Though I find the music easy to play (as it, indeed, is), it frightens many church musicians because it is different. They don’t believe that they could play it ‘authentically’.

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My POINT, after all of this, is that my goal is to teach churches that authenticity comes from within. They don’t have to play it like on the record. They need to play it the way they CAN.

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I think this is actually where the analogy between jazz and a congregation doesn’t quite work. I’ll draw a similar analogy instead. When folks, traditionally, in Appalachia sat on the porch in groups in the evenings, playing and singing music, they were limited by the people at hand. If one fella could play a little banjo, he pulled it out, and if another fella could dance a bit, they would play and dance. If someone could sing ballads, they would make a space for that. It wasn’t a jam session. All of the musicians didn’t know how to play with one another, but they were in the mini-community together on the porch, and they listened to one another with great glee, and sometimes were able to all join in on something.

In the church, there is most often a guitar, usually a piano, sometimes something strange like a banjo or a ukelele, often a few horn players, a few winds… What do you do with musicians like that? How do you bring a new service in when you can barely maintain your own traditional patterns?

I will, in the future, continue to create liturgies, in many genres. I hope I can jump out of the hoop! I think every new service has a good effect on a congregation — I have seen it happen — it is quite wonderful.

But most congregations, especially our Lutheran ones, are reluctant to try new things. When they do, they are very excited! I hope that we can have a new movement within the church that can rise up and start CREATING new music from within. I vow to be part of that movement — it’s a real passion of mine… I think there are so many kids out there with talent — and young adults, etc., that could be encouraged to be something besides just pianists and organists.

There are young musicians just waiting to be asked to help, to play, to write music, to be involved. We just have to do it! A new liturgy can create that new atmosphere, where they might be integrated. Or an opportunity to write something, or play something, for the service… But we all have to be open!

The church tends to close doors instead of open them. I keep knocking, but there are many doors to go:) I have had some incredible conversations with many people in the ELCA about the relationship between adults and children in the church, as mitigated by music, and have heard the same things as I have voiced here, over and over again.

But few have the courage to move. The new book of worship is full of songs that are scarcely playable, hard to sing, and not accessible to non-musicians or appealing to young adults… Why do we continue to ask the staid, tried composers of the church to write our music when it doesn’t express our living worship body?

Young people in the church are HUNGERING for AUTHENTIC.