Big Country

Does this ever happen to you?

You become completely transfixed by a song? I was going to say enchanted but I don't like the overtones. I have been listening to a song over and over and over again this past week, "Big Country" by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. It's the best song I've heard in a long while. I've probably listened to it 20 times in the last week. Maybe more.

I had borrowed some Bela Fleck tunes from a friend and decided it was time to purge the borrowed music from my iPod and replace it with some correctly licensed music. I picked this song more from its "popularity" than anything else. But after the second or third listen it became something I needed to hear time and time again. A coworker of mine described the song as "uplifting." It didn't speak that way to me. It seems to me, rather, mournful. There's a lot going on, a little country, a little Irish, a little folksy Simon & Garfunkel, a little Pat Metheny, a little Branford Marsalis.

It took me a good long while to figure out the metrical structure of the tune. I won't spoil the surprise for those that may be interested.

On a completely unrelated note, who are the Christian musicians, singers, groups that you gravitate toward when needing to listen to music with a message? Or simply music with some pleasant complexity, a welcome respite from the I-IV-V-I?

Ann shared her fondness for Babbie Mason with me and I have been hooked.

I would like to see 20 or 30 "top 10 lists" from the greater N&N readership. I will start with my own. Feel free to argue with me.

1) Kirk Franklin
2) Mickey Mangun/PoA
3) Donnie McClurkin
4) IBC
5) Israel Houghton
6) Hezekiah Walker
7) Fred Hammond
8) Brooklyn Tabernacle
9) TD Jakes
10) Murrell Ewing