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?