Introduction
Christians sing. Before instantly dismissing that statement as idealistic or naĂŻve, consider both the Scriptural imperative to do so for believers and the worship practices that Christians have institutionalised over the last 2000 years. Whether one appeals to the Old Testament Scriptures, such as Psalm 96:1 âOh, sing to the Lord a new song! Sing to the Lord, all the earthâ, or the New Testament, âspeaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lordâ, the edict is clear, Christians sing. They sing not only to God, and to one another, but also to themselves. Some have observed in recent times that (Western) Christians are singing less than they once did (Goddard 2016). Undoubtedly, there are Christians who feel they cannot sing or choose not to sing. Nevertheless, Christians throughout the ages have expressed their faith through song, and particularly through communal song, not just because it was a noble idea or an entertaining activity, or because their surrounding culture celebrated communal singing, but because it was a Christian mandate.
The content and style of Christian song and its accompaniment (if any) have changed over time and across different cultures and traditions. The bastion of certain styles of Christian song has lasted centuries, such as Gregorian chants, the Eastern Orthodox musical traditions, or the hymns of Watts or Wesley. At other times, musical style within the church has been transient or localised. I still remember the first and only rap song that made it into our churchâs roster (for a short time) in the early 1990s: âJump To The Jamâ (©1993 Paul Iannuzzelli).
When songs and styles have a long life, they also gain the opportunity to be examined and analysed from various perspectives and disciplines over multiple generations. However, an emerging music genre may be left unexamined by scholars until it is quite well established or has made enough of an impact somewhere on some group of people. Indeed, academia was slow to catch up with the emergence of Rock ânâ Roll in the 1950s, not least because it was not seen as âseriousâ music, and thus not deemed worthy of serious scholarship. However, by the 1980s, popular music studies had emerged with seminal research from Simon Frith, Richard Middleton, and Allan Moore, among others. Reflection necessarily follows, rather than precedes, practice, but at what distance? At what point does analysing the âseedlingâ of a music genre produce viable insight into the âtreeâ which it may or may not become?
Contemporary congregational songs (CCS) now have some 50 years of history, of evolution, and of worship practice in contemporary expressions of Christianity. En masse, Christians sing contemporary congregational songs. Their origins may have been in Pentecostal and charismatic circles; it was what Pentecostal/charismatic Christians sang. This fastest growing strain of Christianity over the last century now represents more than 500 million adherents worldwide (Pew Research Center 2011), but the genre has had far wider implications. Hundreds of millions of Christians sing contemporary congregational songs regardless of denominational, generational, lingual, or cultural differences. It is the examination and analysis of this global genre of musical worship renewal that this volume undertakes.
Key Questions and Findings
There is a growing body of scholarship that addresses contemporary worship and contemporary worship practices. Is there a need for another volume? A selection of existing scholarship will be discussed later in this chapter to establish the gap in the research, and where this volume fits in the field. Before that, however, this section provides a summary of why this book is needed and what it uniquely addresses. First, is the notion that contemporary congregational songs are a musically, lyrically, and extra-musically definable global music genre. Many definitions of contemporary musical worship have been offered, sometimes according to music style/(sub)genre, or where it fits in the historical timeline, or where its cultural roots lie. However, the definition of contemporary congregational songs that persists across the literature is a generic one: âpopular music with Christian lyricsâ. This research, however, demonstrates that the contemporary congregational song genre, in terms of the way in which it is measured by both Christian Copyright Licensing International and YouTube, exists as a global music genre and is definable to a high degree. The great majority of congregational music-making research is about a context, most often a specific Christian gathering or group (e.g., M. Ingalls 2018). However, this analysis of the most sung CCS provides us with a global picture of the singing (Western(ised)) church which is not bound to a specific church, denomination, or location, but wherever CCS are employed or experienced. Only two scholarly volumes in the last 15 years have attempted a study of the genre not bound to a specific context: Open Up the Doors: Music in the Modern Church (Evans 2006) and The Message in the Music: Studying Contemporary Praise and Worship (Walrath and Woods 2010). These are both excellent studies, besides now being a little dated. Each volume, however, only focuses on a single region: Evans on Australia and Walrath and Woods on the USA. No published volume to this point has taken multiple region data from Christian Copyright Licensing International reports to establish and analyse the global genre.
Second, the specific context (e.g., a local church) or location (e.g., a conference or concert) where contemporary congregational songs have been typically studied provides an excellent understanding of those settings. Research of this type tends to be ethnographic. In order to provide a different, complementary, and potentially contrasting lens to understand Christiansâ broad engagement with the genre, this study utilises both unique primary sources and different methods. For example, Australiaâs National Church Life Survey (NCLS) on contemporary worship practices (2011) is a rich source of data, never before analysed for its insights into the CCS genre. The anonymous online survey designed and employed for this study is also unique, both in construction and in the data gathered. Finally, while YouTube has been a growing resource for exploring Christiansâ engagement with CCS, this study uses it as the primary text for that stage of the analysis. In summary, the different sources and contexts bring important, and previously unexplored, perspectives to the scholarly dialectic around CCS.
As identified above, some sections of this research rely on data from Australian sources, and indeed, may contain a subconsciously Australian perspective of the global genre. That being said, many international data sources are also utilised, and as a scholar, composer, and worship leader, I have travelled the globe and witnessed first-hand, diverse, localised, and varied cultural expressions of CCS which inform and affirm my findings. To whatever degree a uniquely Australian perspective may still colour this research, this study provides an important counterpoint to the extant congregational music-making scholarship. It is complementary to the ethnomusicological thick descriptions of particular contexts and local expressions of contemporary worship, or to the historical accounts of the genre, or to the theological or philosophical engagements with the genre, and whatever regional influences may have informed their authors.
Beyond the unique sources and methods, this research adopts a disciplinary approach that is rare in congregational music studies. The methodology of music semiology and its interdisciplinary partners will be discussed in depth later in this chapter. Here, however, I posit that the way in which this methodology builds on a musicological heritage means that the songs themselves are central to the analysis. This stands in stark contrast to much of the congregational music studies literature where little or no analysis is given of the actual music, but rather of the people who make it, or engage with it, or the environmental, ecclesial, cultural, theological, historical, or political contexts in which contemporary congregational songs occur. At the same time, this methodology does not ignore the production milieu at one end, nor the individual, subjective meaning-making at the other, which all contribute to an ongoing dialogical definition of the genre.
The Formation of a Genre
When does a music genre become a music genre? Can one composer alone create and define a new genre? If so, how many works do they need to compose that fit certain criteria before it is generally accepted as a genre? Can it be a genre if it is only defined by some musical/lyrical elements? These are questions addressed by genre theory. The notion of a music genre is at once obvious and enigmatic. As fans, we instinctively recognise music in those genres with which we are familiar, and when music is not of those genres. However, defining music genres in more positive and concrete terms can be challenging. This section engages with the work of five genre theory scholars to establish contemporary congregational songs as a music genre. Frow approaches the discussion from a literary orientation, stating:
[G]enres, are cultural forms, dynamic and historically fluid, ⊠guiding peopleâs behaviour; they are learned, and they are culturally specific; they are rooted in institutional infrastructures; they classify objects in ways that are sometimes precise, sometimes fuzzy, but always sharper at the core than at the edges; and they belong to a system of kinds, and are meaningful only in terms of the shifting differences between them. (Frow 2006, 128)
Importantly, this quote indicates that genre markers will be most evident towards the âcoreâ. It is, of course, unrealistic to analyse every contemporary congregational song ever written, or even every contemporary congregational song that Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) represents, which is now well over half a million. For this reason, a sample must be chosen for analysis. However, according to Frowâs definition, a random sample of CCS would not provide us with the clearest picture of the CCS genre. Rather, an analysis of a sample of songs at the core of the genre would provide the greatest insight. For the global CCS genre, core songs would be those that are sung by the most Christians, across the most countries and denominations around the world; a discussion to which I will return. This quote also affirms that the CCS genre definition derived from this research is subject to the âdynamic and historically fluidâ nature of genre definitions. It is only a snapshot of the genre at a moment in church and wider Western cultural history and at a specific point in the CCS scholarly discourse. Ultimately, the proposed CCS genre definition in this book needs to be in an ongoing state of contestation, re-examination, nuancing, and updating.
With a more specific focus on music genres, Lena and Peterson state that they are âsystems of orientations, expectations, and conventions that bind together an industry, performers, critics, and fans in making what they identify as a distinctive sort of musicâ (Lena and Peterson 2008, 69...