Music Speaks in Volumes - but "Worship" Speaks in Monotones.

This last week has been a bittersweet one for me with the official announcement that Showbread is showdead. But as I sat and watched the documentary they released of their 10 year anniversary show, there was something really confronting that stood out to me. In one section of the doco, as a whole lot of those waiting to be let into the show were interviewed.

Again and again they spoke of finding a sense of belonging in the music of Showbread, and an expression of Christian faith that resonated with them, that they couldn't find in the Church.

Which made me think, is "worship" music really just speaking in monotones, when their is such a range of expressive tones that could be embraced?
 

The Resurgence of Vinyl Records and the Rhythm of Life

Having been a collector of music on vinyl record for around 20 years now, it's a bit of a treat to be seeing a resurgence in its availability.

which kind of fits with McLuhan's tetrad concept of retrieval...where a previously obsolesced medium is brought back in a new way...

And whilst it's not a pure retrieval sense, because there's not a new medium that is retrieving the vinyl, perhaps it is a growing awareness in some of the ways the rapidly shifting media ecology is having unwanted impacts on our relationship with music.

M.E Monday #2

So today's M.E. Monday is proudly brought to you by Walter Ong:

The changes in today's sensorium as a whole have been too complex for our present powers of description, but regarding the fortunes of the word as such one fact is especially noteworthy: the new age into which we have entered has stepped up the oral and aural. Voice, muted by script and print, has come newly alive (The Presence of the Word, 1967).