|
The title of this project can be split in to three separate parts, which I would like to examine one by one. The wording
was very carefully chosen to mean something quite specific while at the same time being vague enough not to be overly constrictive.
Traditional religious texts
The first of these elements is the idea of traditional religious texts. The word traditional was deliberately used for
it ambiguity, it doesn’t refer to any particular time period while at the same time excluding anything too recent,
as looking for relevance in contemporary religious writing is a totally different exercise from what I want to do here. By
religious I mean ‘that is concerned with spiritual matters’. This doesn’t refer to any particular
religious movement (though due to my upbringing in a Judaeo-Christian society, my knowledge of texts from these cultures is
far larger, which will no doubt influence my choice of texts). With texts I’m excluding oral tales and traditions.
Although this is important, and one that I do find very interesting, it would have made the subject too large and I believe
the question of relevance would have to be answered in a different way.
Post-modern Society
The second big idea is that of a post-modern society.
The name post-modern has two parts that we have to look at to understand it: post and modern. Post is very simply from
the Latin meaning after. Modern is slightly more complicated.
What we call the modern age is generally thought to have begun in the 18th century with the effects of the Enlightenment.
Immanuel Kant described this as:
“[…] man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use
one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding,
but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [Dare to know] "Have courage
to use your own understanding!"--That is the motto of enlightenment.”
The Enlightenment (and to a lesser extent, modernity itself) can be defined by the importance that it places on the use
of reason. This however, was not an original idea of Enlightenment philosophers. In the 16th century, the Reformation made
this possible by questioning what the church held to be true and (allowing people) giving people permission to study the scriptures
for themselves and think through what they believe as individuals. Martin Luther said:
“Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason — I do not accept the authority of popes and
councils, for they have contradicted each other — my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will
not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.”
To my mind, this flourishing of individual thought is one of the main consequences of the Reformation, and the Enlightenment
that it made possible. It led to an outburst of creative energy that shows itself very clearly in the Industrial Revolution.
But perhaps more importantly, it led to a particular way of thinking about life: the assumption that humanity was inevitably
improving with every passing year, and that our scientific discoveries would increasingly allow us to understand and control
our universe. The conflict between Galileo and the Church, which was frightened of such thinking, was the precursor to a
much wider struggle between the claims of science and the claims of faith. For the most part, science won the upper hand.
The post in the name implies that modernity is finished and something new is taking its place.
This breaking down of modernity can’t be given a precise date, as it was a long and gradual process. However,
just as the Enlightenment was the event that set modernity firmly in place, post-modern philosophers tend to agree that the
two world wars were what announced the end of modernity. Jean-François Lyotard, one of the pioneers of post-modern philosophy,
says: "Auschwitz is the crime which opened the post-modern era" . Not all agree on the same point in
time, some say it was the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The idea, however, is the same: that modernity’s
belief in human progress through technology was suddenly shattered as this technology was used for entirely negative purposes.
In dialectic terms there is no possible aufhebung*, modernity is dead.
Post-modernity therefore is simply what came after that. Though the name is nothing more than a negation of something
else, this makes it very hard to define. We can however, try to give some important characteristics of this newly emerging
society.
It’s a society that values such things as:
 Relationships
 Immediacy
 Tolerance of different belief systems
 Interconnectedness
 Spirituality
- Relationships
An important and possibly defining factor of modernism is individualism, the idea that the individual is more important
than the collective.
Amazing technological advances mean that we can now be just as close to someone on the other side of the world as someone
on the other side of the street. There’s now a sort of ‘global community’, where distance is
almost totally irrelevant. After the Asian tsunami of December 2004, there were calls not for charity – as would
have been the case not long ago - but for solidarity. This to me implies a definite sense of community among people of the
world.
Post-modern culture may not be totally individualist, but neither is it totally collectivist. As with most of post-modernism,
we’re somewhere between the two, and we can only describe the situation by what it’s not.
- Immediacy
There are two important aspects of the immediacy we see in the emerging culture. One is what’s known as the
‘fast-food syndrome’: people are impatient with any delay. Thanks to technology, we can have most of
what we want when we want it. A meal can be bought frozen and ready to eat in three minutes with the help of a microwave.
To contact someone on the other side of the world, we only have to click ‘send’ and they can receive the
message instantaneously. The downside of this ability to do everything quickly is that we expect everything to be done quickly!
Anything that takes time (such as, in this case, reading religious texts) is generally not considered to be worthwhile.
The second and more subtle aspect has to do with a connection to the immediate experience. Kurt Cobain, the lead singer
of Nirvana, committed suicide in part because of this. In his early days, he felt an amazing feeling of exhilaration and
adrenaline when performing, especially in front of large crowds. Later in his life however, he found this feeling harder
and harder to get, despite being a superstar and performing in front of huge crowds. In his suicide note, he wrote, “…I
don’t have the passion anymore…”
For the post-modern, the past and the future have no importance next to the present. Delayed gratification has no meaning
compared to the thrill of the now. In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks writes about a man who has no
short term memory, he can’t remember anything that happened even a few minutes earlier. Sacks wrote of him, “He
is, as it were, isolated in a single moment of being, with a moat or lacuna of forgetting all around him…He is a
man without a past (or future), stuck in a constantly changing, meaningless moment.” In many ways, this describes
post-modern culture.
- Tolerance of different belief systems
At the crucifixion of Jesus, Pilate is alleged to have asked, “What is truth?”
This is an important question in today’s society, as truth is no longer easily definable as it was when the
church told people what truth was. Stanley Grenz, the evangelical theologian, says in a primer on postmodernism:
“[Postmodernism] affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent on
the community in which we participate. […] There is no absolute truth: rather truth is relative to the community
in which we participate.”
To claim to know the truth is, for the postmodernist, to marginalise those who don’t agree. Kenneth Gergen
writes “When convinced of the truth or right of a given worldview, a culture has only two significant options: totalitarian
control of the opposition or annihilation of it.” This can be seen by looking through history at, for example,
the early church that slaughtered millions who didn’t agree with its version of truth. Western society’s
version of truth led to half the world being invaded and being forced to conform to its truth.
This means that no religious belief system can claim to have the absolute truth, and people are generally very wary when
they do. One of the many consequences of this is that more people appreciate that their beliefs aren’t necessarily
‘right’, and are therefore open to other systems of belief.
- Interconnectedness
The great science-fiction comedy writer Douglas Adams said,
“The term `holistic' refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness
of all things. I do not concern myself with such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of pocket fluff and inane
footprints. [The character saying this is a private detective] I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the
pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with
our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose […]”
As I’ve said before, post-modern thought is rarely original, but more often a return to pre-modern thinking.
The idea that things are connected in ways we don’t understand is by no means a new idea, it’s very present
in Celtic theology (perfectly illustrated by the art of the time which is full of weaving and knots), as well as ancient Chinese
philosophies (it can be seen on a smaller level in the art of acupuncture, different parts of the body are connected in ways
that aren’t visible from a biological viewpoint).
Post-modern thought draws very much from these two sources, and the interconnectedness of all things plays a big part
in it. In my opinion this is where the importance we place on relationships and tolerance comes from.
- Spirituality
This interconnectedness is part of an increased interest in spirituality. The secularisation of society, which took place
throughout modernity, meant that very few people wanted anything to do with religion. I believe this is still the case, but
in a different way. The majority of people I speak to in daily life would say they disagree with ‘organised religion’,
but the idea of a transcendent force (i.e. a god) is something they believe in. I think post-modernity is moving away from
religion towards spirituality. Whether you see this as a good or bad thing depends on your personal viewpoint, but it can
be clearly seen just by talking to people.
Two major trends come from these elements: ‘post-textuality’ and the end of meta-narratives.
Simply put, few people read books anymore. Books are no longer the primary source of information; the written word has
to compete with computers, film, music, television, etc. Books are generally linear and progressive: we start at the beginning
and read till the end. This almost seems like a very awkward way of getting information compared to the hyperlinks of the
Internet. Post-modernism is, in my opinion, non-linear. People don’t want to start at the beginning and follow
a given course, they want to be able to explore freely in a way that is difficult with books, but to which other media is
much better suited.
The second term, meta-narratives, brings us close to the heart of post-modernism. A meta-narrative is basically a grand,
all-encompassing story that is used to justify a particular worldview by claiming it to be universal. Jean-François Lyotard
wrote that “simplifying to the extreme, [he] define[s] post-modern as incredulity towards meta-narratives.”
He suggests replacing them with localised narratives (petits récits), which fit the post-modern view of truth.
The ultimate example of a meta-narrative is the Bible. Over the years, the Bible has been used to justify such things
as slavery, the oppression of women, and the slaughter of countless millions of people who don’t conform to the
dominating class’s ideals.
These are all reasons why traditional religious texts are badly received in today’s society. I do believe however,
that these texts are essentially very relevant to us all, but they need to be presented in a way that is more accessible to
post-modern society.
Music
This brings us to the third element of the title: music.
Through the ages, philosophers have asked why music can affect us in the ways it does. The Greek philosopher and mathematician
Pythagoras saw music as purely mathematical. It was simply a branch of mathematics, as we see geometry and algebra.
Plato saw it as a branch of ethics; the various modes of the different scales had different effects on people. Complicated
music could cause disorder and depression so Plato’s ideal music was simple, and should “echo the divine
harmony”. He advocated a censorship of music, as it could evoke emotions in people that would cause them to act
immorally.
For Kant, it was the lowest of arts, due to its lack of words. When it contained words, he gave it limited value.
Music was particularly important to Hegel because it needs no physical support in the way a sculpture or a painting does.
Hegel’s idea of beauty was a fusion between the idea and the physical support, hence the importance of arts such
as poetry and music.
Personally, I see music as being able to convey things in a way that words can’t. Even the most gifted poet
would be unable to describe Handel’s Messiah in a way that would make us feel the sheer transcendence that can be
felt listening to it. Victor Hugo said that “music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible
to be silent.” What I hope to do is to express what has already been said in a new way that can be better understood
by the emerging culture, in the hope that it can help us to get out of the “constantly changing, meaningless moment.”
I’ve chosen electronic music because I think it represents post-modern culture better than any other style.
First of all it is a very large term that is relatively difficult to define. To call it a style of music is, at best debatable
and at worst wrong. Many would say that it’s any music that’s created using electronic equipment. This
however, would include anything that has been amplified electronically, from classical symphonies to heavy metal. As a more
general term it refers to music that is based on synthesisers, samplers, drum machines, etc. Electronic music refers therefore
to the means of creation rather than the style per se. There are many different genres grouped under this term, such as techno,
drum and bass, house, trance, etc.
Another important aspect of electronic music is that it borrows from many different styles and cultures. Sampling is
a very common practice where artists take parts of other songs and use them in their own. This originally started in hip-hop,
but is now very common in many different styles. Although it’s regarded by some as stealing and as a lack of creativity,
it is an integral part of electronic music.
The project
This project is an attempt to bring all of these together. To look at how the traditional religious texts can sit along
side a society that regards them for the most part as being worthless or at the very least out of date.
I’m going to do this by looking at three examples of religious writing then trying to find out the meaning behind
them and how this is relevant for today’s society.
Once I’ve done that, I’m going to attempt to interpret this using music, for the reasons I outlined
above.
Making the music
To achieve this, I’ll mostly be using a programme by Propellerhead Software called Reason (Figure 1). This
is a programme that allows you to create different sounds using a mixture of synthesisers and samplers (Figure 2). It also
allows you to create effects modules to modify these sounds (Figure 3). Once they have been created, and the devices linked
to each other via virtual cables (Figure 4), the sounds can be controlled by a hardware keyboard and arranged in the sequencer
part of the programme (Figure 5).
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Reason is an extremely complex programme: the things you can do with it seem endless. The ability to modify every property
of the sounds give an almost infinite selection of sounds, added to this the range of effects that are possible, and the only
limits are imagination and processor power.
I feel I have learnt to use it quite well; it’s rather intuitive and easy to use once you get over the initial
confusion due to its complexity. This also means however, that to master the programme in all its subtlety would take a very
long time and a very deep understanding of both music and the physics behind the machinery represented in the programme.
Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris
The first traditional religious text I would like to look at is from a meditation by John Donne.
The author
John Donne was born in London, in 1572 to a rich Roman Catholic family, which in a time of great anti-catholic feeling
was a precarious thing. After studying both law and divinity, in 1615 he entered the ministry and was appointed Royal Chaplain
that same year. Donne wrote Devotions upon emergent occasions, which is a collection of personal meditations, while suffering
from serious illness.
Devotions upon emergent occasions was published in 1624, and Donne finally died of the illness in 1631.
The text
The text we’re looking at is nunc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris: now this bell tolling softly for another, says
to me, thou must die.
“Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I
may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for me,
and I know not that. The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she
baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and engrafted
into the body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and
is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every
chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some
by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again
for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings a sermon calls not upon
the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near
the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were
mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined that they should
ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would
be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his whose indeed it is. The
bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought
upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when
that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which
is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if
a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore
never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee […].”
There are two major symbols used in this meditation: the bell and the island.
In the tradition of the time, the church bell would be rung to mark the death of one of its parishioners. This would
most likely be a frequent occurrence, since when he was writing this work many people around him were dying from the Plague
and other illnesses. Being constantly surrounded by death, and being seriously ill himself, the tolling of the bell came
to mean more than one more death out of so many. Andrew Sanders, in The Short Oxford History of English Literature says:
“Death, as all of Donne's contemporaries readily recognized, was not simply inevitable and all-pervasive; it
was a familiar presence in an unstable, unhygienic, and disease-ridden world. The tolling of the passing bell for a dying
parishioner was to Donne not simply a stimulus to pray for a troubled soul but a personal memento mori.”
The bell therefore becomes a symbol not only of death, but also of Donne’s own human mortality.
This is linked with the other important image, the island. Islands are a symbol of isolation and solitude. Donne believes
that humanity is interconnected. To use his own imagery, mankind is not a group of islands, each independent of the others,
but part of one great continent. Even the smallest lump of dirt falling away into the sea has an effect on the continent.
In the same way, one person’s death affects the whole of mankind.
Though medicine has made huge advances since the 17th century and the Plague is no longer a big problem, Donne’s
reflections are far from irrelevant. Every day, more than 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes. This is a huge
amount, 5,840,000 children per year. (Switzerland has around 1,243,235 children ; that’s the amount that dies of
hunger in two months.)
If humanity is one continent, then how can we sit back and watch as large parts of it are dying because they don’t
have enough to eat.
The music
The song I’ve composed starts with a bell ringing every five seconds which continues through out the song.
Every time the bell rings, one of these children will have died. The bell therefore has the same symbolism as in the original
text. It serves as a reminder throughout the song that the constant death that surrounded Donne hasn’t gone away.
The bell is not just for poor children in far away countries, if “any man’s death diminishes me”,
then is it not also for us?
The piano melody that starts soon after the beginning is taken from Moby’s Why does my heart feel so bad?, a
song about the deep despair lying at the heart of humanity which many people recognise but can’t articulate with
language. The words (which I don’t use) are simply:
“Why does my heart,
Feel so bad?
Why does my soul,
Feel so bad?
These open doors.”
The lyrics, though very simple, show a feeling of longing and despair, something that I wanted to get across with my own
song. It starts off with nothing more than a bell, and builds up to a more symphonic piece.
The last line of Moby’s song also shows some hope, ‘these open doors’ may provide a way
out, a way to what he longs to find.
This is reflected not only in the lyrics but also in the chord structure:
Am Em G D
The two minor chords at the beginning give a feeling of tension, while the major G and D not only relieve this tension
but also have a distinctly positive sound.
I also wanted to incorporate this sense of hope into my own song, I have achieved this by using the chord structure of
the sampled piano loop, and also by taking a sample from Gavin DeGraw’s live unaccompanied version of the classic
song A change is gonna come and repeated it over my song.
The sound of the bell is that of Big Ben in London. I got the .wav file from <http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/wavworld>
and then converted it to a .rex file* using Propellerhead’s Recycle. This allows it (among many other things) to
be played in Reason using a Dr. Rex Loop Player*. I also set the sound to automatically pan to alternating channels each
time it plays, this turned out to be more complicated than I had expected, but I wanted both to have the sense of the bell
swinging from side to side and a sense of movement to reflect the fact the effects of poverty in today’s world are
not static but constantly in motion.
The piano loop was done by the some basic process. I also put this through a compressor and a parametric equaliser to
add depth to the sound.
The pad that appears after the first piano loop is from a Malström Graintable Synthesizer* put through some reverb* and
a phaser*. I inverted the chords from the piano loop to make them flow more smoothly and simply played them over it with
this once and copied it for the rest of the song.
The double-bass sound is from an NN-XT Sampler*, using sounds which came packaged with Reason. It is simply the root
note of the chords.
The choral sound is also a pre-packaged Reason sample which I have slightly tweaked in various ways, played using an NN-XT
Sampler. Again, it’s the chords from Moby’s song played and looped.
The violin is essentially a Reason sample (also an NN-XT) that is going through different effects (reverb and chorus)
to add depth.
My father read the vocal parts for me, which I then recorded and converted to .rex files that I opened in Reason with
an NN-XT sampler. This allowed me to split it into different parts and assign each one to a key on my keyboard, meaning I
could trigger them at the right points in the song.
I did the same with the samples from A change is gonna come.
In the beginning was the Word
The text
The next text I would like to look at is taken from the New Testament of the Bible, at John 1:1-15. I’ve taken
it from The Message by Eugene Peterson, which is a very poetic translation and I feel it gives a much better idea of the feeling
of the passage than more traditional versions.
“The Word was first,
the Word present to God,
God present to the Word.
The Word was God,
in readiness for God from day one.
Everything was created through him;
nothing--not one thing!-
came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life,
and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
the darkness couldn't put it out.”
In The Message, Eugene Peterson
In these first few verses of his gospel, the author (who may or may not have been John) presents a Christological view
of Creation, affirming that Christ played a central role in the creation of the universe.
He refers to Christ here as ‘the Word’. This is from the Greek word logos, which as well as word
can also mean reason or argument.
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus was probably the first to use Logos in a metaphysical sense; he believed that the Logos
was a divine force which produces order in the chaos of nature. He said the world is constantly changing (he famously said,
“You cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.”) and is controlled
by this eternal force which not only governs the world, but is the world; Heraclitus was one of the first pantheists*.
In Chinese Bibles, Logos is translated as Tao. In Chinese philosophy, Tao is the supreme Force, the Rhythm of Life which
pulsates throughout the whole universe. The Chinese religion of Taoism is largely based on the writings of the sixth century
BCE philosopher Lao Tzu. He said of the Tao:
“The Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The name is the mother of the ten thousand things.”
This is, in a lot of ways, very similar to the beginning of John’s gospel. The Tao was with God, and at the
same time was God.
Whatever we choose to call It, the important part (to my mind at least) is that the Logos had an important part to play
in the creation story, and It did not simply disappear after the creation act, but goes on even today.
The music
My song was inspired by a quote from the New Zealand author Mike Riddell.
“In the beginning was the Singer…and the Song goes on”
It begins, like the Greek creation myths, with Chaos. Over this loud unintelligible noise, you can begin to hear what
sounds like a piano. As the chaos begins to subside, the simple piano melody begins to become more complex, and then more
sounds appear.
As the song continues, the piano melody from the very beginning remains and the rest of the song is built around it.
I also thought of the text in relation to Genesis 1:2,
“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters.”
I wanted to the song to evoke images of rough seas, to convey the image I had of “God's Spirit brood[ing] like
a bird above the watery abyss.”
I did this by starting my song with a very loud and echoic noise. It’s actually a Malström Synthesiser going
through a phaser, lots of reverb, a Scream 4 Destruction Device* and a BV512 Vocoder* being used as an equaliser to keep the
bass down. I created this sound by accident when playing around with different effects and thought it represented Chaos (in
the sense of a cosmic ‘emptiness’) quite well.
Over this noise I played a very simple piano piece with an NN-XT player and looped this till the end of the song. It
is the notes of an E minor triad (E, G and B) played quickly. To this I added some more piano, which is simply an inverted
E minor (E, B, G going down the scale) played in the same way.
I then played the notes E, C, A and C over this with a SubTractor Synthesiser using a preset and lots of echo.
Next there is a sound which was originally an NN-XT flute, put through reverb and a phaser then vocoded with a Dr. Rex
drum loop.
Then there’s an NN-XT orchestra playing the same notes as the SubTractor, this adds some depth to the song.
Lastly another NN-XT is used to create a strings sound, which I then vocoded with the two piano parts from the beginning.
Touched by the hem of His garment
The text
My third text is taken once again from the Bible, it is actually two separate texts that I’m grouping into one.
The first is found in the book of Matthew at chapter eight, verses one to four. The second is from Mark 5:25-33
“When he came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before
him and said, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean."
Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" Immediately he
was cured of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, "See that you don't tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest
and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them."”
And also:
“A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve
years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better
she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought,
"If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that
she was freed from her suffering.
At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched
my clothes?"
"You see the people crowding against you," his disciples answered, "and yet you can ask, 'Who touched
me?' "
But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell
at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth.”
At first glance, these biblical verses may seem completely irrelevant to us here today, but if we take a closer look,
we can begin to see similarities with what’s happening in the world.
We know today that leprosy (Hansen’s disease, though the Greek lepra could refer to many different skin diseases)
is not contagious, but in Jesus’ time Jewish law was quite clear about how it should be treated:
“The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower
part of his face and cry out, 'Unclean! Unclean!'
As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp.”
People were certainly afraid of contamination, but the disease became more of a ritual impurity than a medical problem.
Those living with the disease were forced “outside the camp”, no longer allowed to be a part of normal
life, they were considered worthless.
Today of course, we tell ourselves that we’re far more civilised than that, that we wouldn’t make
people walk around shouting that they’re ‘unclean’, that we’re not as primitive as
to marginalise a woman because she’s “bleeding”. The world has moved on we say…
In 1989, as the AIDS virus was spreading rapidly, Amanda Heggs, a young sufferer of the virus said, “Sometimes
I have a terrible feeling that I am dying not from the virus, but from being untouchable.”
Untouchable is exactly the right word to describe those who had leprosy and the woman who’s bleeding. Unfortunately,
it’s also a word which all too often can be used to describe people with AIDS today.
AIDS is still associated with homosexuality, prostitution and drug use, increasing the psychological and physical exclusion
of the sufferer.
In 1985, the late Princess Diana shocked people by touching a patient in an AIDS hospital. Two thousand years before,
Jesus shocked everyone by touching a leper and a haemorrhaging woman. Both were breaking down social boundaries and prejudices.
The music
This summer, I had the opportunity to spend two weeks at an AIDS resource centre in Malawi, a country heavily affected
by the virus.
The aim of the centre is to spread a message about the dangers of HIV/AIDS, how it can be caught, what to do to avoid
contracting it, etc., they encourage young people to spend time at the centre instead of hanging around the streets or in
bars. They have lots of activities for the young people to do, and at the same time they educate them about the virus. Until
very recently, the stigma surrounding it was a very big problem, people refused to acknowledge it was there, but as it spread
even more, people had no choice but to talk about it.
They spread these messages through dramas, dance, music and many other ways.
When I heard how they were using music, I was immediately of what I’m trying to do here. They were taking a
message found in a traditional religious text, and applying this to the world today, not only as part of an intellectual exercise,
but as a way of saving lives.
This song is based on one that they use to spread this message. I was lucky enough to be able to write it with Stalin
Mughandira who as well as being a devoted youth worker is a talented musician. We wrote the words together, in the style
of the others that they use, and Stalin sang it to the tune of one of these.
The words are:
Aids is a killer, it’s a killer
Aids is a killer, it’s a killer
There’s no medicine, of [sic] HIV,
There’s no medicine, of [sic] HIV,
Prevention is better, than cure
Prevention is better, than cure
Oh God help us to unite
Oh God help us to unite
Let us help those people who are infected, without discrimination
Let us help those people who are infected, without discrimination
They are still our friends, they are still our friends
Without discrimination
Jesus loves us all, without discrimination
Let us help those people who are infected
Without discrimination
Let us help those people who are infected
Without discrimination
Jesus loves us all
Jesus loves us all
Let us help those people who are infected
Without discrimination
Let us help those people who are infected
Without discrimination
AIDS is a problem in the world
AIDS is a problem in the world
Let us help those people who are infected
Without discrimination
Let us help those people who are infected
Without discrimination
Let us help those people who are infected
Without discrimination
It is very repetitive due to the fact that they’re trying to get a message to a lot of people, most of whom
are illiterate, and the songs may be one of the only ways they can hear about HIV.
It shows a link between Jesus’ treatment of the socially outcast and how we treat them today.
Musically it’s a mix between reggae, gospel and western pop. It’s not something I personally would
choose to listen to for pleasure (though admittedly it is very catchy), but that’s not the aim of my including it
here. I was very interested in the way music was being used, and the part both music and religion play in their daily lives.
Despite the culture not being post-modern (in fact in some ways it’s decidedly pre-modern), the message behind the
music is still relevant for us here today.
Conclusion
The three texts that I have chosen are all from sources that can seem to many to be outdated and useless: after all, how
can something written that long ago have any link with today’s society? In doing this project, I’ve seen
that, though they may be caused by new reasons, today’s problems essentially the same problems people have been
struggling with throughout history.
In trying to show the relevance of these religious texts, I’m not trying to demonstrate and kind of transcendent
force acting on them and keeping them relevant. I don’t believe that because texts were chosen to be in the bible
that they have any magical power in and of themselves: the wonderful thing about all literature is that it can always be relevant
to us in one way or another.
Glossary
Aufhebung: In Hegelian dialectics, everything happens in three stages: thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis. Aufhebung is
the process by which this happens. It’s from the German verb aufheben, which can mean to keep, to remove and to
exceed.
.rex file format: The type of file used by Reason’s Dr. Rex Loop Player. Made by converting a .wav file using
Propellerhead’s Recycle
Dr. Rex Loop Player: The Reason device that allows you to play .rex loops. These are split into smaller parts, for example
a drumbeat could be split so that each beat is one slice, and this allows the sample to be played at different speeds without
changing the pitch. As well as changing overall properties such as modulation and oscillation, the same is possible for each
individual slice, making the possibilities for making new sounds from existing ones endless. The different attributes can
also be controlled remotely (via a hardware interface or virtual CV cables from other devices).
Malström Graintable Synthesizer: A 16-voice polyphonic synthesiser based on a mix between granular and wavetable synthesis
(hence the name graintable)
Synthesiser: A device used to produce an electronically generated sound. The waveform can be edited to modify the sound
and it can be made to sound like real instruments or all number of strange and bizarre sounds.
Reverb: echo
Phaser: A phaser works by taking the sound and adding it to the original slightly out of phase. This causes certain frequency
bands to be cancelled out. When the frequencies are altered, the familiar sweeping phaser sound is created.
NN-XT Sampler: One of the two sampler devices used in Reason. Unlike synthesisers, samplers cannot create sound. They
take a sound, and play it at different pitches which can be assigned to a hardware keyboard. This allows you to record an
instrument (or several, an orchestra for example) being played and replicate the sound exactly using the sampler.
Pantheist: Pantheism is from the Greek words pan (all or everything) and theos (god). It’s a belief that everything
that exists is made of the same substance, which is god. It implies therefore that there is no ontological distinction between
good and bad, as everything is God.
Scream 4 Destruction: A distortion device in Reason. As with most modern effects, distortion was something musicians
tried hard to avoid, it occurs naturally when the sound is too loud for the speakers for example. People then started to
like the sound and used it in their own style of music. The Scream 4 device allows you to control the distortion and gives
effects from slightly warming the drum sound to total destruction.
Vocoder: A vocoder works by taking two sound sources (a carrier and a modulator) and ‘moulding’ the
waveform of the carrier into that of the modulator as in the diagram below
|
