Because We all have one. 🙂

1. Something learned about another culture that surprised or intrigued you.

I found Arabic music to be intriguing. I loved that they slid between the notes on the piano. I loved the way that the music sounds. It was interesting to learn that they have their own strict music theory for their culture…sometimes I forget that western music theory isn’t all that there is in the world.

2. Something realized about your own culture.

Western culture needs to be more inviting. I feel like we should incorporate other cultures into western culture. I think that it would be cool to be not only trained in western music but to have an arsenal of different cultures to work with. Think about classically trained musicians from America, if they had an arsenal of different cultures, they could fit in anywhere with ease. I just feel like Western culture should be more open to the idea of other cultures. A lot of times we don’t think about music from other cultures as being important-which they are and should be treated as such-so I think there should be more of a chance to learn about these other cultures.

3. Things liked and disliked about the class.

I loved all the cultures we got to look at. Sure, I didn’t understand some of the reasons for why they used music, but it was beautiful. I also loved getting to know the different instruments that people used and how they all came to be-where they evolved from. I wish that we had infinite amounts of time to go into each culture. I know that we only got the tip of the iceberg, but I wish that this class could be a series of classes…kinda like we have Music History 1-4…we should have Diverse Cultures 1-4 or so. It would be cool to be able to stay in one culture for more than a few days and get more knowledge about that culture.

4. Something that has inspired you to learn more about.

I definitely want to look more into Arabic culture. There are just a lot of cool sounds that come out of the middle east and I want to learn more about it! I would also like to learn more about the different types of flutes in each country through their folk songs and maybe incorporate those into my senior capstone. This class has inspired me to look for music that I never thought to look for…so I thank you, Kelly Vaneman, for opening my eyes. 🙂

Alright, in this blog we’ll be focusing on East and Southeast Asia. The first thing that I would like to talk about is Mongolian Throat Singing (I have been patiently waiting to be able to post this in this cool stuff blog since I read the syllabus at the beginning of the semester). Throat singing is when you’re able to sing two pitches at the same time. Most of the time it’s using your lower/bass voice with the other pitch coming out higher than your lower voice (hence the name throat singing). The video I’m going to attach has Vaanchig playing an instrument similar to a Rebab(a). I don’t think that the bow is intertwined with the strings on the instrument, so I don’t think it to be a Erhu.

Someone has to bring up the next group/their type of music…and I decided that I’d definitely bring it up. BTS (Bangtan Boys) are a South Korean boy band that got their start in Seoul in 2010. They are a part of KPOP culture which is essentially South Korean pop music. It’s been around since the 90s, but has recently started to gain international attention. BTS is one of my favorite groups to listen to because their music just makes me happy and their dancing is INSANE. Like…I wish I could dance like they do! The video attached is 37 minutes long (I’m sorry, but it is the most crazy thing I have ever seen and everyone deserves to see it). They sing a bunch of their songs and at the end you get to see Dionysus and their absolutely crazy routine they have for the song! (You should also check out the dance practice for Dionysus).

The last thing I would like to share with you is some Vietnamese rap. This is also on my ‘cool shit’ playlist. Her name is Suboi and she was the first female rapper in her country to become successful on the rap scene. Rightfully so, she is considered the Queen of Hip Hop. I love her music. It’s hype and helps to get me through my workouts! I’ve attached a video of her song N-SAO? and she is a complete badass. I love her and her music and hope you guys will like her and go listen to more of her stuff!

For this blog, I decided to interview my grandfather, Phil Edge. He was born in 1946 in Greenville, South Carolina. He likes to say he’s an only child because that’s how he grew up but he does have one brother (who is 12 years older than him). He has been married three times and has one child and one grand child. He has held many jobs throughout the years but spent most of his time as a pastor in the Christian Church.

Q: What is your earliest memory of music?

“I suppose radio.” When he was growing up there were only a few ways to listen to music. You had music on the radio, live music, and phonograph music.

Q: How did you listen to music when you were younger?

“Well, I used my ears.” Honestly, he is one of the funniest people that I know. He has a lot of dry humor and ‘dad jokes’ that I’ve come to love and I think that helped to shape his musical tastes. “Radio was the only thing there was back then. Radio and TV. And Phonographs. We had a fairly large device that was a radio and record player combination. It was a piece of furniture, stand alone piece of furniture in the living room.” He had lots of music he was able to listen to in a couple of different ways. He had the radio which played more recent hits back in his time and he had records of music before his time and some more current for him.

Q: How did listening to music change for you as you got older?

“Well, technology changed the way you listened to music with the advent of different sources of devices for playing records. Then tapes came along. Then A-tracks and cassettes and then CDs were after that.” It became more accessible for him to listen to music and have his own sets of music that he liked. He had lots of different ways to listen and experience music.

Q: Did your parents/siblings/spouse/family influence the music you listened to?

“No, I don’t ever remember hearing my dad sing anything. My mom had a good singing voice but she sang rarely, only at church. I had a brother, but he was older than I was and didn’t live at home when I was growing up. He had already gone on to other things.” I think even without him thinking about it, family did influence his musical tastes. Think about it, when you’re growing up and your dad puts on a CD of Frank Sinatra and you find that you really like the sounds you’re hearing (which is the story of how I came to love Sinatra) then you start to listen to more of that music. Whatever music he listened to on the radio or on records as he was growing up in his household was probably influenced by his parents.

Q: What music did you grow up with?

“The best music ever. Music when I was growing up is what’s known now as music of the forties or ‘oldies’ but good music at the time and people from my generation still believe that it was the best music ever created.” I will admit that listening to some of my dad’s favorite songs make me think that he is correct in saying that it was the best music ever created. There’s just so many wonderful tunes that you can go around bopping to. Honestly, I love putting on his music and watching the way his face lights up when he hears it.

Q: Do you have any favorite artists?

“Yeah, Elvis was one of the tops ones. Several groups: The Everly Brothers and numerous other ones.” Mostly everyone knows who Elvis is. He’s one of the most famous artists there has ever been (in my book).

Surprisingly when I held this interview, I had never heard my granddad talk about the Everly Brothers so I had to do some research. They are an American Country-influenced rock and roll duo. I’ve attached a video of their top 10 best songs which I find to be really nice to listen to!

Q: Is there any music you hated?

“Did not like country music at all. It was prevalent in the south and was not one of my favorites. It just didn’t appeal to me.” I found this fact surprising. I knew when I was growing up that he didn’t listen to a lot of country music but he would sing along with Mom and I in the car when a song he knew came on. Considering that now we travel in the car with either Talk radio on or country, I was really surprised he said he didn’t like Country music at all when he was younger.

Q: What music was considered scandalous when you were growing up?

“I don’t know of any. Today it’s different, but there was no music that was considered inflammatory. It was just music designed to be danced by or sung by the listeners.”

Q: Did your parents have disagreements on what you should listen to?

“No. I don’t ever recall that taking place.” When I was growing up there was heavy emphasis that I should not listen to rap music or hip hop because it was unpleasant. Now I listen to some that I find to have good meanings but my parents and I always had a disagreement about it. I find it kind of funny he didn’t experience that growing up.

Q: Did you listen to the same music your parents did?

“No the music they liked was music of their generation and era. Music that was popular during World War II.”

Q: Do you have any special songs from your marriage or other major life events?

“Yes, several. Music has a special relevance to me. It has a special way of transporting me back to the time or place that I listened to that music when I was younger. That is one of the most meaningful things of music for me.” I relate to this. Music is powerful, it’s able to take you back to a time that you enjoyed. Every time I hear my mom’s favorite song, I’m taken back to a memory of us in the car jamming out to it on our way to pick up Papa. I know of multiple times that Papa has told me about how he came to hear a song that pops up on the ‘oldies’ radio station we listen to.

Q: Did your experience with music when you were younger cause you to want to learn more about music like play instruments or sing.

“I had the opportunity to take piano. I loved hearing it played but I didn’t feel confident that I would learn the piano. Grew up on a mill village. Two blocks from us there was a teacher and everyone learned from him. I never gave in to go. It was one of the things that boys my age weren’t in interested in so that’s one reason plus me thinking that I couldn’t do it. I do regret not going to try and learn it. I definitely think now that I would be able to play it and wish I had taken the chance.” Throughout my life, he has joked that he only knew how to play the radio. I never knew about the chance he had to play piano. I thought I was the only one that had an interest in music in my family, but apparently he had one when he was younger…he just didn’t chase it like I did. Now I can’t stop thinking about what he and I might have been able to accomplish together had he learned piano in the first place.

Q: What types of music do you listen to now?

“Mostly oldies. Some classical music and some religious music. I like really good presentations of religious music done by choirs. In Greer where I grew up, Praise Cathedral has a really good choir. First Baptist has a good choir here in Spartanburg. Also, the Brooklyn Tabernacle choir has some really good music. For classic music, I like Bach and Beethoven. Their piano concertos are some of my favorites.”

I love the big choir sound, so I decided to look up the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir and found one of the songs that Papa and I always used to include in our praise music when we had our church. As I was listening to it, I was transported back to the first time I’d heard this song. And it was magical. I absolutely love their sound, so I can understand why he does too.

Q: Did your religion influence your musical choices?

“No, not tremendously. I did sing in a church choir at one point in my life in the 60’s. It was enjoyable and we had a pretty good choir for what we were.”

Q: Do you like other religious music other than the big choir type?

“Some of the quartets I listen to. Some are good and some aren’t my favorites. I like some contemporary music though I don’t really know the artists because I don’t listen to it as often. I remember that you like Casting Crowns and I like some of their stuff. I think it was, Who Am I by Casting Crowns that I really liked when you showed it to me.”

Yes, I make Papa listen to contemporary praise songs. I’m not sorry and I’m glad I do.

Q: How much has your musical taste changed over the years in regards to the types of music you listen to, access, and influences?

“Types of music and my favorites have probably not changed. The way I listen to them grows with technology. When I was growing up I only had the radio and record players. Then we started to get cassettes and CDs. I had really good collections of music as technology grew. And now you don’t have to have anything. You can just get it like it’s falling from the sky.”

Q: Do you have a preference on how you like to listen to music?

“I still like the radio. In my car if I’m not listening to talk radio, I’m listening to music. I do listen to some country music even though I said earlier that it wasn’t my favorite. The Hank Williams type wasn’t my favorite, but the Garth Brooks type is pretty good.”

I had to look up some Hank Williams songs after the interview because I didn’t really know who he was…I can say that I agree with my granddad, this is not my favorite country music.

Now, the Garth Brooks type, I definitely like. I grew up listening to Garth Brooks so it’s nice to know that my granddad likes some of the same music I do. I can see why he’d like this better than Hank Williams.

Q: Do you like modern music?

“Some. Some of the music you and your generation likes, to be kind, does not appeal to me. The Rap type music is a complete turn off. If I had to listen to that all the time, I wouldn’t listen to music at all.”

Q: Do you prefer modern music or the music you grew up listening to?

“Still prefer the ‘old standards’ as we call them.

Q: Why do you like music?

“As stated before, music has the ability to transport me from where I am now to where I was when that music was popular. In 1978, I was traveling for an insurance company and I was in Murfreesboro, TN when I first heard Gladys Knight and the Pips sing Midnight Train to Georgia. The song captivated me. Every time I hear it now, I’m transported back to being in my car in that town, looking for my next appointment. It just, it does that. There have been several songs through my romantic relationships that have meant a lot of me and are able to transport me back in time and maybe that person’s not around anymore but it reminds me of a time when they were.”

After this question, I thought about my grandmother who passed away three years ago. There were multiple times a song would come on the radio and I’d see my granddad become a little quiet with a small smile on his face. Now that I think about it, maybe he was remembering a time when he and my grandmother went dancing for a date. I’m happy he has those memories to look back on and that music can help him to go back to a time when he was happier.

Q: What do you think of the music I listen to?

“I believe that is your choice to listen to whatever you would like. I shouldn’t decide what you listen to. Maybe I can influence it so that I don’t have to listen to rap 24/7, but it’s ultimately your choice and your personality. Sure, I like some of it, but the rest, I just let you be you.” That’s honestly a better answer than I was going for. I’m surprised he thought that way about the music I listen to.

Q: Did you ever attend any live concerts?

“Yes. In High School, the popular groups traveled around in buses for concerts. For a $5 ticket, you might get 5 different groups with popular music. The 2 best concerts I went to, one was Ray Charles in Greenville. He performed alone. No other groups there. The best concert I ever went to was in Jacksonville, Florida. I had the opportunity to go see Elvis. He performed for an hour and forty-five minutes without any other groups there. I’ll remember that day for as long as I live. He sang American Trilogy, written by Mickey Newbury. Still hear it often today. There were 15,000 people in the building. I promise you that you could hear a pen drop.”

To say that I’m jealous that my got to see Elvis live would be an understatement. I’m glad he had the experience and was able to see the ‘King’ himself as I would have probably been very disappointed that he lived in the same time period as Elvis but he didn’t go see him.

Q: Did you ever meet a famous musician?

“Sadly, I didn’t get to meet Elvis…I know how cool that would have been for you. My brother had a business partner whose roommate in College was Ronny Dove. Ronny never made it really big, but he had a number of big hits in the 60s and early 70s. Had a chance to meet him and he was just a genuine and down to earth guy. He would come down to watch the Masters in Georgia and would perform at Johnny’s. It was a no charge thing, he was just there to entertain the people and watch the Masters. He was just a genuinely nice guy.”

My granddad has had a lot of interactions with music as he grew up and I’m glad to be able to share what he has experienced with everyone who reads this post. I’m glad to be able to have his influence on my music. It’s interesting to see how different yet similar our musical tastes are with someone of a different generation.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I like to find trap music in the cultures that we study. This time is no different. I found some amazing Arabian Trap music that includes some of the aspects we talked about in class. The bending between notes (quarter tones, etc) is present. The constant beat in the background gives the piece life. The repetitiveness doesn’t get annoying or boring, it actually gets more interesting as it goes on because you have a couple of breaks where the drum comes in and does some fun rhythms! The melodies are simple but seem complex when they’re all put together. I suggest looking more into this if you like the music!

Continuing with the Arab theme, I also found an artist I liked. His name is Omar Offendum. He’s a Syrian American hip-hop artist. The first song I listened to really connected to me in some ways. It’s about immigration, fatherhood, mortality, Syria, america, and mother nature. I related to the mortality of the piece so I decided to share it with all of you. In the piece they do use the Qunun, which I found to be very cool and really put the piece into perspective. The song is a mix of speaking and rapping. He narrates over the Qunun and then raps with the beat. The piece is just beautiful.

Lastly, we’re going to jump over to India. I found a YouTube page that takes wants to ‘make classical music cool’. They add in elements of Indian music to make it cool! The video I found had me amazed. They took Ed Sheeran’s song, Shape Of You and added in Indian elements. They use the percussion syllables and don’t exactly hit the note center. It’s very creative and I absolutely love this version. Other than Ed Sheeran’s original version, this will be the only other version I’ll listen to! I would definitely like for them to do more American popular songs like this!

In class when talking about South America, we only talked about Ecuador. I’d like to expand to Brazil. In Brazil the Bossa Nova is quite popular. It developed in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The name Bossa Nova actually means a ‘new trend’ or ‘new wave’ which I find beautiful. The Bossa Nova developed from a combination of the Samba and cool jazz. Instrumentation is varied and particularly simple with only a couple of rhythm instruments. I absolutely love listening to Bossa Nova music because it makes me calm down and focus on the here and now. If you ever need to just take a minute to gather yourself, look up Bossa Nova playlists on YouTube…you can never go wrong when picking one to listen to!

Coming back to Ecuador, modern music can take interesting twists and turns. Of course you have singers with instrumental accompaniment, but one twist I found was an instrumental background with a South American Flute at the forefront. The South American flute is like a pan pipe. It has all different lengths of pipes to make different pitches. The group that I found use a backing track to play the beats while one of the men plays the guitar and the other man plays the South American Flute. The flute is the most pure sounding natural flute I’ve heard and just makes me happy! What’s cool about the video I’m going to share is that near the end he switches to another flute and also adds in a shaker!

Let’s shift gears to Black American Blues. I don’t know if I’m going to be the only blog to mention this man-I hope not because he deserves lots of recognition-but I’m going to bring him up anyway. Louis Armstrong.

Louis Armstrong is an amazing musician. He was an amazing American trumpeter, composer, actor, and vocalist. He was one of the most influential people in jazz! His career spanned from the 1920’s-1960’s (and I wish I had lived during that time so I could see him perform live). What would have helped influence him music wise would be where he grew up- New Orleans. Today we think of New Orleans as a party city with good musical culture. The same would be true back when Armstrong was growing up. I’d say that spanning 5 decades with his music would point out how amazing of a musician he is. I encourage everyone to look up his music because every time I listen to his music I feel like I’m transported back in time.

As I’m pretty sure most of you know/have figured out by now, I’m a band kid. I live and breath band. I love Marching Band and all sorts of band music (and let’s be honest, I have A LOT of stories that I could tell you-a.k.a. ‘That one time during band camp…’). If you would like to hear all of my old band camp stories, please find me and ask! I’d love to relive the ‘good old days’.

In my experience with Marching Band, there were certain gender specific instruments. The flute, my instrument, was most definitely a female dominated instrument. Whether that was because that was what was expected or females were just better at it, I’m not sure. On the other hand, Percussion was mainly a male dominated series of instruments-especially the drum line. Of course, even with the predominant gender in these two sections, there were a few outliers-some boys that played the flute and some girls that did percussion. Other sections that were dominated by a single gender happened to be the low brass: trombones and tubas. Again, there were a few females, but it was mostly males. Is this because it’s expected that males play the heavier/lower instruments? Maybe…or maybe it’s because their lips are better suited to play the lower brass instruments than a female’s lips are.

Now, let’s think of a band room setting. Usually you have flutes on the first row, clarinets/saxophones on the second row, another row of clarinets with low reeds and maybe french horns, low brass and trumpets, and then all of the percussion. Maybe you can say that the actions of these sections is dependent upon how close they are to the band director, but it could also have to do with the make up of the sections. In my experience (from high school), the front row barely talks to each other. They ask a few questions then let it be. The second row is slightly more talkative-clarinets and saxophones are a pretty even mixture of male and females, The third row you can usually hear lots of whispers coming from. The fourth row (containing most of the males in the band) are a little louder and you hear laughter quite often. The percussion row…let’s not even talk about them, they’re in their own world. Is the difference because of the gender or the distance from the band director? Honestly, it’s probably a little of both.

Going through school, I got a lot of different music styles thrown in my face. My friends were a mix of males and females and they all had their own tastes. That being said, I could see some similarities in music between the male group of friends and the female group of friends. Let’s start with the guys. We all had a playlist of songs that we compiled for when we spent time together. The guys almost always put trap music/rap/R&B and so forth. While they didn’t all listen to those three specifically, enough of it overlapped to make it stand out. As for my female group of friends, some did contribute to the trap/rap/R&B, but they mostly went with pop/rock/punk. Maybe it’s that we gravitated towards each other because we liked the same music or maybe it’s because that’s the music our genders are supposed to like. Honestly, it doesn’t seem to really matter with my group of friends because we listened to everyone’s music when we were together.

I don’t know if I would say that the music is that much different in the all female environment than in a mixed gender environment. Converse is known for it’s diversity and that includes musical tastes. My roommates and I hang out all the time and have started a playlist where we add 10 of our favorite songs per every few months. It’s a mix of oldies, rap, country, trap, pop, punk, electronic, all country’s folk songs (mostly because of me), and you name it. I feel like this is a more diverse music setting than a mixed gender setting would be simply because we’re not trying to fit into a gender norm. In high school I could see that there was this one kid who didn’t like rap music, but he wanted to be cool so he would turn up the rap music in his car and blast it for his ‘friends’ to listen to. I feel like that would sort of be the case in a mixed gender setting. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe not. Honestly, there isn’t a way to know if I’m right or wrong because I’d have to go out and experience more mixed gender settings than I already do (and I have no time for that).

Sub Saharan Africa is full of different tribes. There’s the Shona, Sukuma, Kikuyu, Kongo, Mongo, Luba, Swahili, and Amhara (just to name a few). Each tribe has their own beliefs and differences in sound culture. Their beliefs influence their sound culture…and it’s just beautiful.

The Shona people are based in Zimbabwe. Their music often is accompanied with mbira, singing, hosho, dancing, and drumming. There’s also very little distinction between the performers and the audience as they all are active in the music performance. In religious ceremonies (called Bira), they use a mbira dzavadzimu which consists of 22-28 keys. These keys are constructed from hot or cold forged metal and are fixed to a hardwood sound board (called gwavira) in three different registers! As with the usual mbira, there are bottle caps, shells, or other things attached to it that create an extra buzzing sound. This mbira dzacadzimu is considered a sacred instrument to the Shona people. It’s played to communicate to the ancient spirits. The ceremony that takes place happens all night long (typically). The communication to the ancient spirits is to ask them questions. The way the spirit answers is to take over the participants’ bodies and the music of the mbira helps to put them into a trance so the spirits can take over the bodies. (ISN’T THAT COOL? Possession!)

Honestly, I was unsure of what to put on this blog, so I started looking up the different tribes in Sub Saharan Africa, and this is what I came up with. I’m so happy to have looked into the Shona tribe because this is absolutely intriguing! Think about it, people are willing to be possessed by their ancient spirits to get answers from them and tell them their grievances! How many of us can say that we would willingly let ourselves be possessed by an ancient spirit for others to get their questions answered and their grievances heard?

Continuing on the idea of religious ceremonies, let’s jump over to America to catch up with Cherokee Indian beliefs and ceremonies. The Cherokee Indians believe that there were certain beings that came down to create the moon and the stars. They believe that the world was created at the New Moon of Autumn when the fruits were ripe. They also praise the sun for bountiful crops and good health among other things. Therefore it makes sense that their ceremonies would revolve around the moon and crops.

The First New Moon of Spring ceremony starts when leaves begin to form on the trees again and the grass begins to grow. It’s basically like the New Years celebration that we have on January 1st, but on their first day of Spring (in March). This ceremony lasts seven days and includes dancing and the relighting of the sacred fire. They would sacrifice deer tongue in the fire in order to get blessings from the creator. As usual the instrumentation used is a drum for the heartbeat and sometimes shakers to give the dancing a little spice.

What I find interesting about the moon dance is the meaning of the dance. They are thanking the great creator for the crops they are going to grow. They are thanking the creator and praying for his blessing for their crops to grow and to have a bountiful growing season. Even in present times they are at least praying to the creator to have a bountiful season where they can grow personally.

So, keeping with the Native American Theme, I have a lot of different music interests…one being Native American Trap Music…I bet some of you didn’t even know this was a thing. Being that I like to find weird and amazing things in my free time, I have a whole playlist on YouTube labeled ‘Cool Shit To Look Into’. From there, I ended up making my N.A. Trap Music playlist. Here’s one of my favorites.

It has the Native American music in it, but it’s re imagined with a contemporary beat that is sick (for lack of a better word). Like, I can’t get enough of it and everyone should experience it. There’s not much I can say about the music other than it’s amazing and I wish I could go all day every day listening to it!

Let’s start off by saying that I was raised in the church. My father was a preacher at a church that my family owned. We categorized ourselves as the Charismatic Episcopal Church (similar to the Episcopal church).

Our services were as follows: Processional hymn, Opening Acclimation, Collect for purity, Hymn, Collect (prayer), 1st lesson (old testimate), Psalm, 2nd lesson (new testimate), hymn, Gospel, Sermon (Homily), Nicene Creed (in my church, we would all stand in a circle and hold hands as we said this), Prayers of the People, Confession, Absolution, and The Peace. Part two consistes of: the Offertory Hymn, Communion Service (Great Thanksgiving: Preface of Incarnation, Sanctus, Lord’s Prayer, Breaking of the Bread), Post communion prayer, Blessing, and Dismissal.

As a child of the preacher, I was expected to be at every service and participate in some way. The way I did that was, as I was younger, I would work the projector that had the words to the hymns on them. As I became older, I would help my dad pick out the hymns (which really turned into more contemporary songs the more independent I got with the music). Soon, I stopped working the projector and became the sound board person (let me tell you, that was my favorite part of church). Through the journey of being the music person, I was able to expand my musical repertoire. I came to find contemporary songs that I loved and some of them, I still listen to today.

In my experience, hymns and contemporary music are used to bring yourself closer to God. It’s used to glorify God and give Him all the praises. Usually the processional hymn in my church would be about how great God is. It would tell about how He was the creator of all things and He is a gracious and most loving God. The hymns or songs following would depend on the time of year the church was experiencing (Lent, Pentecost, Easter, etc). The songs after the processional in Lent would differ greatly from the songs during Easter.

This glorification of God and being closer to Him can be expressed in many ways. The only truly wrong thing to do is nothing. You have to be willing to give yourself over in mind and body to Him. Let Him move you. In my experience, just worshiping Him-singing, speaking tongues, raising your hands to the sky, praying to the music-it all is the ‘right way’ to worship because God is leading you to do those things. From what I’ve experienced in the few times I’ve been to The Church of The Advent (where my father is currently a member) what I previously stated might not be the ‘right way’ to worship. I don’t see people breaking out in tongues, dancing to the music, praying to the music. Everyone is still, rigidly singing the hymns-which there is nothing wrong with that. It’s just not my kind of worship. Honestly, I don’t think there’s a right or wrong for the music to be performed in Church. As long as your heart is in the right place and it’s to glorify Him and worship Him, there’s nothing wrong with it.

What I find beautiful and meaningful in the contemporary Christian music that I listen to is that you can be from any type of social status or any type of church and still worship to the music. It’s not specifically Anglican or Episcopalian, it’s for everyone. It speaks to the younger generations and it still upholds the traditional way older generations think. I had the amazing experience of being able to go to Winter Jam with my friend’s church. Winter Jam is a huge gathering of Christians who come to listen to the music of different Christian contemporary artists. I was able to go when Casting Crowns was able to perform (and let’s just say I may have fan-girled a little). Talking to the people surrounding us, they were from all different churches around the Greenville and Spartanburg areas. Being from these different churches didn’t stop us from worshiping together, in fact, it brought us closer. That’s the beautiful thing. That’s what’s meaningful. No matter where you come from, the music brings you together.

All this being said, I’ve kind of been having an identity crisis since 2016. This was the year that my mom passed away. Everything that I had been taught in the church had been that God is an all loving God. He only gives us what we can handle. At 17, I didn’t know how He thought that He was being all loving and giving me what I could handle by making me go through the death of the parent I was closest to. For a year, I didn’t go to church services. I didn’t whisper the name God, I didn’t pray, and I didn’t believe. The following year as I started College, I believed that there was a higher power, but that he didn’t give a shit about us. I was angry at God and I believed he was angry at me. It’s going on four years now. I’m not fully back into believing but I’m here in the middle. I’m still mad, but I’m worshiping in my own ways.

Currently, I have a job at a local church where I play the flute for a Wednesday night Celtic service. This has helped me to getting back to where I’m in the middle. I’ve found that I’m being put to work by God to worship Him even if I’m still mad at him. It’s kind of like how you still sit in a car with your parents so they can take you to get food even after you’ve had a fight with them. I guess that this is just how music works. It calls to you and moves you in ways you didn’t know it would…but it’s all powered by Him and He’s moving me to worship.