Ethnomusicology Day One

Part of Clove Island from above

We've got an ethnomusicologist here on Clove Island for a week to teach us about ethnomusicology and facilitating the creation of truly local worship music. Some of you who have heard me talk about the importance of heart worship are totally tracking at this point, but for those of you who are a little confused, here's a quick explanation--

Ethnomusicology: the study of music indigenous to individual cultures.
Ethnodoxology: applied ethnomusicology-- using what we know of the indigenous music culture to create indigenous worship music.

There's this idea that music is a universal language. To borrow a quote from our visiting ethnomusicologist, "music isn't a universal language but it is a universal phenomenon." That is to say that, while two people listening to the same song may get different things out of it based on their cultural background, every culture has some form of indigenous music.

Music here is an important thing. All of the various wedding ceremonies have specific music that they use. Religious ceremonies have their own type of music. There are types of music that it seems impossible to just listen to-- you have to dance a little to it. A house near mine has lately become a music hub, blasting local tunes (or, like yesterday, just one tune repeated 20 million times) and it influences me... mostly giving me a desire to throw things in their general direction... but it impacts me. Ha. It's not my heart music, not something that I identify with emotionally except to sigh in frustration over, yet one of my English students recently identified that style of music as their favorite.

It just proves that music is not universally understood or appreciated.

In fact, during the afternoon session today, we were preparing with a few islander brothers and sisters to write some songs in the local language and style. Part of the process involved writing down as many indigenous/locally popular styles of music as possible and then discussing each to determine if they could be used to sing truth about our Creator.

And the worship wars of Clove Island began.

Actually, I'm kidding. They didn't all agree on a few of the styles and how one could adapt them for worship purposes, but nobody walked out in anger over not getting their way in the discussion. And it amazed me how many of the islanders quickly admitted that any style of music could be used for communicating Truth.

Because He's in the process of redeeming all people to Himself... how could He not redeem all music and arts?

If you're interested in listening to a sample song click here

(no promises on thoughts from days 2 and 3... it's a busy week. But maybe...)