esrosedotblog

A little known fact is that I grew up in and on church music.

Old hymns are part of my musical soul.

I bet you didn't even know I had a musical soul did you?

It is the only part of church that I really got.

My mother and my other family, her sister Aunt Flora and my female cousins particularly, sang hymns all the time. Around the house. While working, ironing, doing the day to day.

My mom was a good singer. She had a light soprano and it cut through to the heart. A fond memory. But my mom was a bible thumper and that took the beauty out of it.

The cousins were also, along with me, among the most profane people I have ever been with. But we all loved the hymns.

We sang them seriously and also made fun of them. We were touched by them emotionally. For us, church was an emotional experience that had little to do with the religion.

But the religion did come into it because we were old school Methodists.

I was to become a church organist and choir director, paid but really an amateur like most of them in those days. I worked with other Methodists and also Baptists (the liberal American kind but they still love those old hymns) and Evangelical United Brethren who eventually joined up with the Methodists. Who are all bastards today. Anti everything. Especially gay.

Nothing much stuck. I was even able to let go of my resentments against the church and the churchy people whose gospel was "mind everyone else's business".

But the music stuck.

It still goes through my head today. There are many hymns that I remember all the words to. Some more than one verse.

Today, it is "Jesus Calls Us".

You must remember it.

Jesus calls us, oe'r the tumult

Of life's wild and restless sea.

Day by day, his sweet voice soundeth saying Christian*, follow me.

(*)I think christian but I am not sure)

Is that weird or not?

I still get an emotional kick out of them too. A few chills.

I think that this is because of the music. Terrific lines of notes that fit the emotional spectrum that all good pop and other thematic music touch. The chord progressions too.

This is a science as well as an art and I have read a lot about it but I could not do it to save my ass. Write a good song. Or hymn.

It has nothing to do with theology. It has nothing to do, for that matter, with Jesus although the Jesus impulse to love and kindness does remain with me after all the horsehit is taken away.

This has to be heard with a singing congregation. It is the way I hear it.

Labels: hymns, music