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.

It is clear to every pastor, church musician, and theologian that we lose young people after high school, when they entertain the notions of sin for a while, then finally finding a job, settling down, finding a spouse and getting married. When they have their first child, they start listening to their parents and find a church. So what happens in those 15 years in between?

I find myself in a region of the country that is, to my eyes, either atheist or fundamentalist, and much heavier in the former. I have no problem with fundamentalism, socially, either, I just don’t enjoy their patterns of worship as much as I enjoy the liturgy of my youth. I still love Setting 2 (in the Lutheran Book of Worship) the most. I grew up with it.

I see the only reason that the youth do not join churches, attend worship, or anything else in those 15 years, is that the church loses them in their youth. We teach them the wrong things! We teach them to value praise music with its empty theology and great beat, and when they first experience suffering, and when they outgrow their childhood faith, they find God and religion uncomfortably restricting, and they embrace the ‘reality’ of our new world on the internet, in chatrooms and in clubs…

How do we, as composers, liturgists, creative pastors, etc., connect to kids who are into hip-hop, alternative, pop, country, when forming new worship resources for the church?

Do we write a liturgy in each style, and pray that congregations will choose one genre and stick with it? I think the solution is in the congregations themselves. If you give a child a chance to have input, they will work themselves on finding new music. If you tell them to be in a praise band, that is what they will do. If they like country, why not encourage the students to work on that. Or if they like jazz, to work jazz into worship?…

The problem is, how do you INTEGRATE old and young within the church, WHILE still having worship that the young like?…

There are many issues involved:

1) Church musicians — traditionally, there are organists, and in ‘modern’ congregations, there is a band. What about the under-disclosed talent in the church? I guarantee, in every church, there is a banjo player. I’m not saying that the banjo belongs in every church, but why not?…

2) The ‘traditions’ — because of such strict traditions in the church, the only modern music allowed in most congregations is the music called ‘contemporary’ by Baby-Boomers. It is from the 1970s, hardly contemporary any longer! And when those churches realize that, they form a band, hoping that the band will amuse itself, and not disturb the ‘contemporary’ or ‘traditional’ services…

3) The liturgies/music available — more modern music is simply not available from any centralized source. Augsburg hasn’t opened its doors to independent artists and composers yet. They stick with the tried ‘contemporary’ of the 1970s. I have heard that they are trying to change that… We will see in the coming months/years…

I think the reason that so many people connect emotionally to two elements in their lives: music and liturgy (or ‘church’) is that those two practices make us exposed, naked and vulnerable, though safe in the context of the congregation.

My music tears me open at the seams, and shows everything I’ve got! That’s also why it’s intensely emotional for me to take praise and criticism both — this is the filet of my soul waiting for the spices of judgment!

I think youth connect better than any of us to things like music and faith, but we don’t trust them to think for themselves, so we often closet the doors they discover. I had many doors closed, as a child — in school, in church, all over… Luckily, I had parents and art/music teachers that taught me to look out the window when the door was closed!…

And even so, I didn’t feel comfortable stepping into the shoes of an artist until I was halfway through with college — it’s an exposed, difficult path (with little monetary reward:)…

The newest American Roots Music Podcast is about my own special brand of roots music! Check it out for a sample from my upcoming album Troublin’ Mind: a secret window into the ways of working in the studio with the raw track I bring in!

Listen here: www.kentgustavson.com/podcast

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