Martin Luther grew up in the tradition of the old church, where only the learned were allowed to sing (chant) in religious services. At the same time, he grew up on the poorer side of a festival society, which to a large extent relied on festivals for merriment and escape from earthly indigence. Music was a great part of his life on that end of things as well. He learned to play the lute, and he learned to compose music.
When Luther came to find himself at the head of the movement which was to take Europe by storm (not entirely by his own choice), his translation of the bible became the stepping stone for both a new, more inclusive society, and for a new era, in which ‘gospel songs’ could be sung by every tongue.

Here, Luther is quoted in a ‘Christian History Institute’ article:

“With all my heart I would extol the precious gift of God in the noble art of music….. Music is to be praised as second only to the Word of God because by her all the emotions are swayed.”

Luther wrote many hymns, and by many, is also considered the founder of Protestant song, though he is only one in a chain of like ‘reformed’ composers in his era (16th century).

These ‘reform’ hymns found their way into all of Europe like wildfire, hitched to the societal explosion that Luther unwittingly set off. In Germany, the chorale form took shape and developed over the hundred years after Luther into a fine and precise form of ‘ornamenting’ simple liturgical texts using nothing but tonal harmonies and contrapuntal progressions.

It is a wicked world, in which the power of any individual to cause suffering is so great and his power to do good is so slight, but here we are… and signs of loving Providence are everywhere around us.
– Garrison Keillor, From Time Magazine. November 27, 1995.

I wrote a pretty extensive solo for the classical upright bass last year, and it had a wonderful performance by my good friend Nicholas Walker, who I think is one of the premiere bass players in the New York City area. His tone is exquisite.

These are four fairly long mp3s of his performance (One mp3 for each of the movements).

Providence, Movement I mp3
Providence, Movement II mp3
Providence, Movement III mp3
Providence, Movement IV mp3

The bass solo starts with the melody Idumea from the Sacred Harp tradition, “And am I born to die — to lay this body down — or must my trembling spirit fly into a world unknown…”, and concludes with the melody from Green Pastures, “Those who have strayed were sought by the master — he who once gave his life for the sheep. Out on the mountain, still he is searching, bringing them in forever to keep…”

This piece of music was, and is, my answer to the hatred that I have become aware of in growing into my adult boots. This piece is the answer to my growing fear of violence, and deepening belief that Christ is the light for all of us — rich and poor.

I suppose you are wondering why I would spend so much time and effort on one small solo piece for such a gregarious and preponderous instrument? Because people haven’t used the beautiful and the nasty sounds of the instrument to their fullest, I don’t believe — and Nicholas has a touch on the instrument like no other. I think that the upright bass is like an orchestra in itself.

May we all recognize God’s loving Providence all around us tonight, after a long Valentine’s Day with family, or with only memories to keep us warm. Let us pray for those who have no one to celebrate with, and no joy in their lives, that they too might find Providence.

Click here to check out more of my performance music.

Oh what a beautiful city
Oh what a beautiful city
Oh what a beautiful city
Twelve gates to the city, hallelujah.

Christo’s Gates have come to New York City’s Central Park. It is truly an experience to walk through them, around them, see them flapping in the wind, and see them like a silent line of fire curving through the sketched trees of winter.

We spent the day weaving in and out of awed crowds, looking up, jumping around, smiling, basking in the sunny Sunday afternoon joy of Central Park, and thrilled by the display of color tracing the city’s paths.

There’s three gates in the east
And three gates in the west
There’s three gates in the north
And there’s three gates in the south
And there’s twelve gates to the city, hallelujah.

The old song, “O what a beautiful city” is very fitting today… “Twelve gates to the city, hallelujah…” Well, there are more than 12 gates, but the song speaks to some kind of divine wonder that struck Central Park yesterday in the form of Christo’s gates. What a wonderful thing that we humans can create something so wonderful and beautiful in the middle of God’s creation. The fiery saffron fabric falling from the iron and aluminum gates lit the earth as if this had been an act of nature — an early spring — a burst of light in this dark season.

The Gates by Christo are truly magnificent — this time not simply in concept, but in true, earthy saffron orange fire, weaving through the sketched black branches of the city’s dingy February.

Oh what a beautiful city
Oh what a beautiful city
Oh what a beautiful city
Twelve gates to the city, hallelujah.

Peace.

Here are a couple of free samples of what I have been working on at One Soul Studios in New York (there are more samples of this and my other music at http://www.kentgustavson.com/sounds.shtml)

Troublin Mind
Gospel Plow

If you dig the tunes, keep coming back here for more updates on the new Troublin Mind project — things are in the works to try and get some of these new tunes on the radio — we’ll see if that will happen — I don’t have all of my eggs in one basket — but there are a lot of them in this one!

I’ll keep posting new mp3’s to this site — some more full length ones as well…

I’ll also refer you to a free full-length, non-downloadable mp3 at the NPR All Things Considered site — where I was featured singing with my trio Stolen Shack last spring. http://www.npr.org/programs/asc/archives/asc60/#shack

I met a really incredible flash designer in my work at One Soul Studios recently… He designs flash ‘games’ for folks to play for free on his site… and the one called the Ganesh Music Machine is one you have to check out. Go to his site at — he has a lot of amusing links to his flash art/games on a drop-down list.

Click here to go straight to his Indian Shankar Drum Ganesh Machine and I guarantee you will be amused.

Kek will also hopefully be designing a special ‘Music Machine’ for one of my songs, which I’m very excited about — and should be very amusing and beautiful — and hopefully will attract some folks to my music — he gets lots of hits per day — up to 30,000 different people. (And he designs these games mostly for fun!)…

Also check out his blog at http://www.pk-prod.com/blogkek/ — right now he is in New York — so you will find lots of pictures of New York in the snow there — but if you scroll down, you will find that he often includes his flash art, or amusing flash games on his blog that he has designed for folks to mess around with:)

Check it out!

All urban music proceeds, at its origin, out of rural music. Whether jazz or bluegrass, religious music or secular, Arabic music or pop, everything comes from the country. Folk music, roots music, blues, baladi… all of these names apply to musics that didn’t have categories for the people that participated in singing and playing them… People singing in the cane fields of Texas, people out working in the hot sun of the middle east. People sitting around the table after dinner, or on the porch, singing ballads about the murder in the next town, or about kings and enemies and battles.

Folks are all similar… The “Volk” in German doesn’t just mean ‘folks’ – it means the entirety of the collective existence. Folk music isn’t music that didn’t have a creator necessarily – it is just music that can represent the feelings of an entire group of people. The music created by grinding coffee, the singing of ballads for one another, songs and circumcisions or weddings. All of these kinds of songs are pan-cultural. Every country, every language shares them…

At the core of these songs is the feelings tied up with simplicity and home. Copland’s gregarious setting of “Tis a gift to be simple” perfectly embodies what the urban genre did with ‘country’ music in the United States… Classical music, pop, jazz, and everything else emerged out of country music… whether the country music of the Hungarians and the rural Germans a few hundred years ago, or the hillbilly music that developed into jazz and modern ‘country’ or bluegrass music.