This is something that’s bothered me ever since I was kid attending the local liberal Methodist church: upper-class white congregations singing black spirituals in dialect. Spirituals were the most frequently sung, but there were also Native American hymns, Filipino hymns, Spanish hymns, all sung in their respective languages. They were called “ethnic” music (since “white” is neutral, duh). It probably goes without saying that my congregation’s [rather old] choir butchered them pretty well, and at least on one level, that’s what upset me: they didn’t know what they were doing, what they were saying, how to sing this music, and they were making fools of themselves. I blushed thinking what my classmates would say if they walked in there on a Sunday morning. [Edit: I want to add for full disclosure that I myself was in the choir!]
On another level, I remember finding it deeply, deeply offensive in a way that I couldn’t–and still really can’t (which is the reason for this post, BTW)–articulate. When we sang “Japanese” hymns with plinking, sparse piano notes, all I could think of were the WWII-era chinaman films my mom had showed me when I was in third grade in order to explain, “That’s racist.” When we belted out hymns with “dat” in place of “that” and “de” in place of “the,” I thought of blackface movies and the cartoons in an old New Yorker anthology we owned. I felt like my discomfort had at least a little automatic legitimacy, since I was only half white, but I also knew that, for most intents and purposes, I basically was white, at least compared to the other half of my family and to most of the kids I went to school with. So, I worried about the dangerous possibility that my distaste for some kinds of music was actually my distaste for what I considered “Other,” a fear of “contamination.” I never really knew what to think, except that there was something really “off” about 300 well-meaning white people, who could literally tell you (proudly, too) the number of non-white friends they had if you asked, holding hands and singing, “We shall overcome someday” in the building of one of the most affluent churches in town.
The best description I’ve found to date for what [in my opinion] was going on is orientalism (mutatis mutandis that, if you’d like, so it can apply to other cultures). Is that the right word? I don’t know. Blindness to white privilege? Any help? There was a kind of naivete, a “cultural ornamentation” going on that plucked trinkets from other peoples in order to adorn and admire itself (“just look how diverse we are!” “multicultural!” “a global church!”), all the while blissfully ignorant that, well, maybe it was exactly what many people were hoping to “overcome someday.”
Anyway, I am probably unqualified to write about this, but I started thinking about it (and I really have thought about it since I was a kid) just tonight when I read an online discussion about a pastor who was hesitant (not for reasons that I would call my own) to have his mostly white congregation sing black spirituals. What struck me, and I mean really struck me, was that it wasn’t until I had scrolled halfway down the very long page that somebody brought up the issue of white privilege and the fact that power, particularly power wielded systemically and historically, through institutions and constructions of identity, is what makes racism tick. Here’s what that person, Jennifer Breedlove (this Jennifer Breedlove?), said:
Just a note regarding comments such as “ Would we rather than Jesseye Norman didn’t sing Mozart or Brahms? Would we deny Kathleen Battle Handel to sing? ” and “I wonder if we would be having this same discussion if the situation were turned, and the choir director of a predominently African-American choir selected Mozart’s Ave Verum?”…These are not apt comparisons at all.The African-American population of this country still faces systematic oppression and disadvantage, and racism is alive and thriving. “Reverse racism” is generally not considered a valid approach, because a key component of racism is power, and the reality now is that there is considerable power and privilege, whether those who hold it want or are even aware of it, which white-skinned people have over brown-skinned ones. (I’d recommend http://www.nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf as a pretty decent base article for those unfamiliar with the issues–and whether one agrees with this perspective or not, it comes a lot closer to addressing the perspective of people of color in this country than a lot of other things one could find directed to white readers.) The very fact that (at least to my awareness) no African-American choral director has weighed in on this thread is telling, though we could surely debate exactly WHAT it tells. In any case, simple reflexivity between the two cultural traditions–e.g. if we can’t do spirituals, they can’t sing Mozart– does not work where this power disparity is at play. …
Megan McCabe
Julia
Erin Kidd
Bridget
Elizabeth
Katie Grimes
Beth
Nichole M. Flores Henry
Sonja
Women of Wit
Wonderful, thought-provoking post. This brings up some somewhat raw feelings with me (a straight white male presbyterian pastor) because I find a lot to agree with here and, some that challenges me, because I like spirituals. I sing some of them as lullabies for my boys. I program them in worship and yes most of my white congregation massacres them (not all – some understand the music).
On one level I think you are bringing up something for which there is no solution, and in fact any “solution” would do more harm than good. Culture is fluid. It is not just select “ethnic” hymns where we see the dominant groups co-opting the artistic expression of minority groups. Virtually all American music is heavily indebted to African American musical expression. There is no Rock or Rap or R&B without Jazz, Ragtime, Blues. Is every white blues or jazz musician illegitimate?
Is there really any artistic expression ever that would be immune from this kind of analysis? Are Scottish/English descendents like me really able to claim Mozart or Beethoven or Bach? Is that our cultural heritage? Plainchant, Shaker Tunes, Bluegrass – which of these are really “my” music culturally speaking?
You’re right to point out the importance of power dynamics. Not every use of another cultures artistic expression is morally equal. But the very mechanism of human creativity is to borrow and blend. Any lines we might be tempted to draw would be working against the nature of creative expression. After all – isn’t it also possible that the art by infiltrating the dominant cultural group serves to undermine the power dynamics which support racism? Isn’t the musical domination of the white mind by black musical forms also part of overcoming racism as much as it is still a part of a racist society?
Aric, yes, definitely, all these things go through my head too when I think about this issue, and once you realize that we’ve “always already” done it, it’s hard to find a sturdy foundation for this kind of critique. Excellent point about secular music also being “taken over” from black culture. Why is it that I only get upset when I see it happen with hymns? That’s a real question; I don’t know the answer, and it really makes me think.
I wonder also about whether borrowing the music of “the oppressed” can work to subvert the structures that enable racism. I really don’t know. All subversion both challenges and replicates existing power structures, so it’s hard to say. I suppose it also matters a great deal *who* is doing the subverting. What I worry about (and I believe our Katie might be doing a followup post on this) is affluent white congregations consoling themselves by singing black spirituals, as if that were the equivalent of doing the hard work of questioning their own complicity in the structures of racism. It’s like a more subtle version of the “I can’t be racist; some of my best friends are black” argument. Of course, I’m not saying you’re doing that at all; it’s just that when I spin that line of thought out in my head, that’s where I end up.
As always, Sonja, I think that you’ve provided me with a lot of food for thought. I’m no expert on sacred music, but I did take a class on congregational song with Patrick Evans (who is) last semester. We actually had a large discussion about the dangers of “ethno-tourism” when it came to using what’s called “Global Song” (which includes everything non-white other than spirituals and gospel songs, it seems); interestingly enough, there was no such discussion when we discussed spirituals and gospel songs.
There’s a fine, fine line here. Certainly, I don’t think it’s defensible to sing spirituals in dialect. That is, if not blatantly racist, at the very least deeply problematic. However, the two African American musicians who came to discuss spirituals and gospel songs with my class actually encouraged those of us who were not African American to sing such songs in our congregations–as long as we sang them well. That comes down, I think, to being respectful of the culture of origin. Most of us who are going to end up as pastors probably won’t be able to afford traditional ethnic instruments every Sunday, but the pianist doesn’t have to “plink” out the notes just because this song is from Asia.
What Patrick ultimately told us was that if we couldn’t reproduce the song in a way in which the culture of origin was treated with respect, we shouldn’t sing it. I think that’s a good rule of thumb. But I do think that white churches need to be singing such songs. As St. Augustine noted, “Singing is praying twice,” and what we sing has a deep impact upon what we believe. If white Christians only sing English hymns, metrical psalms, and German chorales, we’re going to continue thinking that our way is the only way to truly be Christian. All we have to do is look at the history of missionaries, Catholic and Protestant alike, forcing evangelized peoples to give up their traditional culture to see how this is problematic. Singing only “our” hymns is another form of racism, one which reinforces cultural imperialism. If we we want the church to start believing St. Paul that “there is neither Jew nor Gentile,” then we need to start singing differently. But we also need to do the hard work to make sure that we’re sining well.
Sonja, I really enjoyed this post. This issue is exactly something I’ve been uncomfortable with for a while now. I just have two thoughts to share.
1) I wonder at what point a genre of music is just part of a general cultural milieu and is more fluid? Kind of along the lines of Aric above, thinking especially with jazz and rock & roll. The only issue is, that it’s not simply that white people began listening to or playing these styles of music, they were taken over, and generally (though not completely) it’s been forgotten that they have their beginnings in African American culture. With all of these things I’m pretty uncomfortable just saying “it’s fluid,” because there has always been problems of power and co-optation; at the same time, at what point is there room for fluidity, or is a genre part of a general cultural context that allows for white Americans to take part in it without it being highly problematic? My sense is that at some point we have to allow for cultural fluidity, but I’m not sure where that is, and it would have to take a real and honest look at the history of the formation of white identity (the little of which I know about I owe to WIT’s Katie).
2). For me at least, singing “ethnic music,” but especially African American spirituals in churches that I have been in (almost exclusively white, reasonably financially privileged, etc) is that by singing these songs, we do not simply adopt them in the sense that we too get something spiritual out of them. Rather, by adopting them for the ways in which white Americans can relate or find spiritual meaning, it seems that we remove the real force of their context and meaning, thus silencing any kind of prophetic critique that would confront white Americans to examine their/our own complicity in maintaining a white supremacist society. Even when seemingly well-intentioned (and I’m sure most people do mean well), this practice has the underlying dynamic of white communities maintaining the power in a society still deeply marked by racism.
Sonja –
Thanks for a wonderful post. Have you ever read Cavanaugh’s BEING CONSUMED? One of the things he talks about is the way we are losing context -and thus, losing both reality and the particular. the example he uses is Moby’s taking of a Vera Hall rendition of an anti-slavery spiritual TROUBLED SO HARD – the following short video clips demonstrate it really well”
1. her original rendition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9SENzRLk_M
the refrain “nobody knows my troubles but God.”
2. Moby song called “natural blues” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivtKcM1DGeY
and as Cavanaugh points out – this particular Moby album was the 1st to have EVERY SINGLE SONG on the album licensed out for use in TV, MOVIES, and Commercials. The best ex of his point I found was this school project in Sweeden – making an IPOD commercial with this African American spiritual lyrics in the background:
The question I pose to my undergraduates is does it matter what the song in the background of the commercial is about? is it inappropriate? is it weird? do kids in Sweeden NEED to understand the context of the song they put in the background?
I wonder if the problem is not white churches singing African American spirituals – but the lack of attention to the context and purpose of said music? One of the things about music is its ability to influence not only the culture it is created in… a lot of music and dance development comes through cross cultural influences – and I think music has a unique ability to explain and bring people into a different context – provided we are open and listening.
The questions I would ask: Are we attentive to the history/context/meaning of the song? Are we using it appropriately – does it fit the context we wish to use it in? And are we attentive to where we FIT into this history? This last one is perhaps the most difficult – b/c it requires allowing the music, as we are to allow the rest of liturgy, to indict and challenge US in our comfort?
I may be out of line – but it appears to me – that the issue is not so much “white churches can’t sing these songs” as are those churches using them appropriately/properly/consciously and not to “seem” diverse, etc. If that distinction makes sense….
Thanks for the links, Meghan! Wow.
And yeah, I am unsure how–or even whether–to articulate my discomfort in general terms. I think I’d agree with you that contextualizing songs matters; but I also think that there’s a huge difference between a white American congregation failing to pay attention to the context of black spirituals and a white American congregation failing to pay attention to the context of Bach’s Mass in B Minor. It’s that difference, which I guess has mostly to do with histories of power, that I’m worried about obscuring by talking in general terms about the need to pay attention to context.
I do a lot of thinking about the question of “original context” and contemporary practice, but in relation to biblical interpretation. I’ve never thought hard about it in relation to liturgical music (although the two are by no means mutually exclusive things). As for biblical interpretation, I feel iffy about whether it’s always necessary to refer to “original context.” True, attention to original context did help challenge a lot of oppressive things in the church (e.g., slavery, the role of women), but there is no sure-fire way to integrate “what it meant” with “what it means” and have it come out in a life-affirming, not life-denying, way. So, yeah, I’m not sure how I should think about this. I guess I’d say that, to the extent that attention to original context serves to relativize, or at least lay out for us, those unconscious beliefs that structure our lives and identities, attention to context is inherently a good thing. I just wouldn’t want to equate this issue with the Bach and Mozart examples. It’s the historical particularity that makes this problematic, more than the abstract principle of paying attention to context.
OH – I agree that it is not the same as Bach/Mozart…however, it is the same abstract principle of paying attention to context that makes attention to the particularity of certain Wagner problematic despite its skill, beauty, musical genius, etc. –the ways in which Wagner has been used matters to how his music gets used today. I think part of the distinction may be music that a response to contemporary society of the time? – as opposed to something more abstract…and here I’m failing to find a word that sums up writing “MASS in B – Minor” haha.
Or the preoccupation I found myself having Sunday in church as mass ended with America the Beautiful (the first verse of which I often say would be a better national anthem than the Star Spangled Banner) – as the choir hit the 2nd verse all of a sudden I found myself squirming with the multiple references to Manifest Destiny that come in the 2 and 3rd verses. Perhaps I should’ve investigated this earlier, but I honestly don’t ever remember more than the 1st verse….as I look in the hymnal for the dates it was written – smack in the middle of Manifest Destiny’s westard push.
A secular example of I think is bothering you – is the perpetual tendency of the English “claiming” of Irish as “British” ie. writers – Joyce, Keats, Swift, etc — Irish writers, poets, musicians of note being claimed as “British” while the “British were keen to content oppress/allow Irish to starve — even those particularly writing AGAINST the oppression of the Irish.
I agree about the original context and current state all mattering – and yes particularity is key! I just want to push that it isn’t JUST this particularity – but it is all particularities where there are instances of oppression/injustice/etc. at play either as resistance (as in the spirituals) or positively portraying the oppression (as in manifest destiny/wagner’s anti-semitism) — music because of its power — must be used carefully and with attention to justice/sin. I don’t think there is a sure fire way to guard against misuse….constant vigilance? allowing ourselves to be attentive enough to feel the discomfort you are naming – when something just does not feel right.
(on a completely different note, my brother’s dominantly white college used an African – American spiritual that is a funeral hymn as part of the graduation mass…..and I’m still bothered by it – so I really liked your post!)
Best quote: “It’s not about “fairness” as if everyone were already on a level playing field, language were simply about referents, and people weren’t enmeshed in history.”
That was an eye opening realization for me as well. As a white Episcopalian, I’ve visited black churches before and loved being there, yet still felt a little like an intruder, knowing that their worship is part of their cultural expression which has come out of their own history.
Which is also why I have a hard time singing some of the white hymns as well, especially ones about Christ having dominion. Because the Christ of the white church is the Christ of empire, colonization, manifest destiny, exploitation and oppression. Sung from the top looking down is not quite the same as singing it from the perspective of the persecuted first century century church, when the vision of the King of Kings riding a white steed gave them hope while in their daily lives they were surrounded by the propaganda of “Roman cavalry choirs” . Okay, slipped into a little Coldplay there, now my white nerdiness is super obvious. I guess what I’m saying is that the dominant posture for white churches should be lament and repentance, with actions to match. Because we simply can’t divorce ourselves from our histories, we have to deal with them or the cycles will keep repeating themselves.
An added wrinkle to this is what does a congregation do when it is trying to do a better job of reflecting the community around them which is non-white even though the congregation itself is still mostly white. I think congregation often seek to include multi-cultural hymns when trying to reach out to their larger community – but does that make it better or worse?
Rebecca,
Yes, definitely that is a big question, and I wish I had included it somewhere in my post, because it seems to me that congregations that DO bother to include black, native american, spanish, etc. hymns are consciously doing it *because* they want to welcome and honor the few people in the congregation who aren’t white, or want to encourage the congregation to think more “diversely” or engage with other cultures. That’s why my old congregation did it, and that’s why my current parish does it. And that is certainly a laudable goal; I hope my post didn’t come across as condemning the sincere desire to raise awareness that there are other kinds of people, other kinds of music, besides one’s own.
But, I guess, I am more worried about the issues I raised above than I am impressed by good-will efforts to be diverse. So what to do? I am really actually not sure. I can’t picture myself saying, “OK, we’re only going to sing ‘white’ hymns from now on, because we look natural singing them. Go Tell it On the Mountain is OK, but Wade in the Water is not. Why? Uhhh…because the latter still ‘sounds black’”? That’s no good at all. Much of it, I guess, is my personal preference. There are some songs that just *sound* offensive to me. King of Glory is one of them; it *sounds* like we’re pretending to be Israelis. Ain’t Got Time to Die is an awesome song, but when white people sing it in dialect, they *sound* like they’re making fun of black people to me. And I don’t feel like any amount of education about the historical context of that song could make it sound like white people *weren’t* making fun of blacks when they sing it.
What do you think should be done? (I’m really asking; no sarcasm intended whatsoever.) I am really interested to learn how other congregations have handled this issue.
I feel that there are possibly a few different issues going on – the question of the appropriateness of white congregations singing spirituals rooted in the history of slavery and the civil rights movement maybe different than the general issue of singing ethnic music. Those songs may always lose too much when song by the powerful and the privileged- especially congregations or denominations that historically were on the wrong side of the abolition debate or civil rights movement- especially without communal confession and repentance of the sort that rarely happens.
But not all “ethnic” music has such a specific historical context. That doesn’t mean there are no problems with people of other cultures signing them – but I think the history of relations between the groups as well as the current status of the group whose song is being adopted matters. (one imagines in England there may still be issues with some congregations singing some Irish songs that would be unlikely to be noticed/relevant in the same way for American congregations even if they are of Irish or English decent.)
With regards to ethnic hymns in general I feel like Tim’s point below was part of what I was trying to get at. Why shouldn’t cultures other than western European countries be able to give music to the whole church? If your neighborhood has more Hispanic than white residents which culture is really the “outside” one. The US is becoming more and more multicultural – the church is going to need to find a way to reflect that or become even more isolated from the larger world. In many cases within more diverse neighborhoods the community at large has begun to influence the popular music that congregation members (especially younger ones if they congregation has younger members) why shouldn’t this be reflected in the hymns?
The congregation I participate in now sometimes invites members of the congregation or people in the community to share music from their tradition. This still has some of the problems of suggesting the music is – “other” but it makes it less so – since its rooted in the gifts of the congregation. The problem is this requires having at least a few non-white members to start with – plus it perhaps puts a burden on them to “teach” their tradition. Plus of course just because one is from a certain racial background that doesn’t mean you are an expert in that culture.
Of course their are still congregations in un-diverse areas or who are interested in music from all over the world. Should they avoid any music that they don’t have a direct connection to? Perhaps a great deal of the problem is western congregations have never really moved past the idea that they are the ones bringing Christianity to exotic foreign places and so can’t approach the gifts and talents of the larger world church in a respectfully manner. If we really treated Christians around the world as partners it wouldn’t be so awkward to pray/sing as they do – until then that awkwardness is going to be there.
These are great points, Rebecca. Thank you for sharing them!
The danger of avoiding “ethnic” music is that it also still enacts a logic of cultural separation and possession. Jazz itself embodies the freedom to borrow, inflect, alter, and redeploy a wide variety of traditions (including classical music). However, I’m with you in being uncomfortable. I had trouble not laughing to myself when my white church sang “Were you there when they crucified my Lord” on Good Friday (a black spiritual that both identifies black suffering with Christ and thus implies that the white masters were there as well, in a different role). It’s not good to want to laugh on Good Friday.
However, trying to stabilize these practices by appeal to “context” seems counterproductive and might itself be a white (masculine, heterosexual?) reaction as this “context” prevents unwanted or unwarranted “mixing” and establishes a kind of hegemonic control over cultural (re)production.
More than any prescription, I think these awkward moments could be used to discuss what it means to be white churches, what talk of “diversity” generally means (wanting non-white people to join but not at the leadership level), etc. At the end of the day, the motivations, intentions, and repercussions of white churches singing “non-white” music seem so heterogenous that I think the best approach would be to see if the root of the problem can be brought up and then have the church prayerfully ask what it means to live within the continuing legacy of this racist power, especially as white churches were often instrumental in deploying this racial power (and all have certainly benefited from it as well). Perhaps even white people butchering a good spiritual will help draw attention to what white people are so privileged to forget (their whiteness), and God can use that to open up some new conversations for the church.
Tim, YES, totally with you on how “appeal to “context” seems counterproductive and might itself be a white (masculine, heterosexual?) reaction as this “context” prevents unwanted or unwarranted “mixing” and establishes a kind of hegemonic control over cultural (re)production.” I hadn’t thought of that before; that is really insightful.
Thanks for your comment and ideas of how to deal with the “awkward moments.” Do you have any experience trying to work this kind of thing out in white churches?
Sonja,
Thanks. And thanks again for your post. I don’t have much experience with this–my wife and I have picked a few fights at our church over these issues, trying to raise awareness, but nothing really happened. I think every white church “wishes” it were more diverse (that’s what I hear) but few actually engage it as a priority and I’m not sure how to help them see that it should be. I guess playing the gadfly until you stir up enough momentum might be helpful (if you have the patience for it–I think we’re just going to look for a different church). People, especially here in the South (NC), are habituated to thinking that they have already or don’t need to be involved in issues of “race” and so generally something has to drastically shift for them to see the need for the conversation.
[...] want to follow-up on Sonja’s excellent and thought-provoking discussion of the singing of “ethnic” hymns in white [...]
[...] rich and insightful posts written by Sonja and Katie, two of my friends over at Women In Theology: http://witheology.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/ethnic-hymns-in-white-churches/ and http://witheology.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/ethnic-hymns-in-white-churches-take-two/. I [...]
[...] going on around theology blogs lately about “Ethnic hymns in white churches.” Sonja got us started, But you could also play out this issue about hymns in a totally different way by abstracting it [...]
Interesting conversation. In defense of singing music from diverse cultures (in authentic renditions, not dialects as first mentioned,) I asked one of my choir members who is of Cuban descent how he felt when the Anglo community he sings with attempts at singing hymns of Spanish origin. His reply was, “I finally get to pray to God in my own tongue.” This is an older gentleman who is well educated and assimilated into the Anglo society he now finds himself. What a gift that is to our people!
I also think that it allows us to experience God in other ways and expressions. I have come across a quote that is supposedly attributed to Paul Simon. I don’t question the source, other than I can’t confirm it authoritatively. It goes something like this: “When we sing to God in another’s tongue, we experience God in a new and different way, for no one’s mother tongue can fully express their full knowledge of God.”
[...] very cool post via the Feministe blog, and it reminded me of the reason why I wrote a while back on “‘Ethnic’ Hymns in White Churches.” (See Katie’s awesome Part 2.) Many people–I was surprised how many, [...]
[...] feminist theologies, and even in terms of white congregations singing cultural hymns (see posts by Sonja and Katie of WIT). Recognizing the challenges of power dynamics of white people participating in [...]
[...] feminist theologies, and even in terms of white congregations singing cultural hymns (see posts by Sonja and Katie of WIT). Recognizing the challenges of power dynamics of white people participating [...]