The Ancient and the Modern*

I can't believe I'm late. Sorry. I was supposed to post yesterday.

I have a hard time imagining David, the shepherd, walking along humming quietly to himself. I have a hard time imagining him with harp in hand plucking out a tune, much less playing before the king, soothing the king's troubled soul. For one thing, we don't have a copy of David's harp. We can reconstruct one based on imagined ideas of tuning or modes, but in reality there is no way to know what those songs sounded like at all. Which is too bad. I'd really like to hear some authentic praise.*

Not that what we sing isn't authentic praise. I like our contemporary gospel sound, whatever its guise. Despite my posturing, I have an honest respect for most all forms of spiritual-musical expression. (As well as many forms of less spiritual musical endeavours). But some of the music that touches me the most comes from African voices.

I had an experience last year where we had the privilege to travel to Ghana and worship at one of the local churches in the capital by the Bible school. I was scheduled to speak and had chosen as my text an excerpt from Psalm 1, "he shall be like a tree, planted by the rivers of water." As I was preparing notes, a melody formed in my mind around those words. Or I should say I started to craft what I perceived to be an African-influenced melody. Or maybe I should say instead that God gave me a tune to go with those words. It had the same first three notes as the chorus "There is Power, Power, Wonder Working Power" -- but the tune diverged considerably from the rhythmic and melodic thrust of that song.

In any event, during the service, just before speaking, I started singing this little song. I had asked the musicians and the choir to stay in place and help me, and to my everlasting pleasure, the musicians and choir actually started playing and singing this little song with me, with some slight rhythmic adjustments more suited to their style. After the service it was related to me by one of the missionaries that one the local guys asked either whether or how I knew that was a song they sang. I'm sure he didn't mean the words, but rather, the tune. Apparently it was similar enough to something they sang that they thought it was the same song.

I feel like I should close this post with some sort of pedagogical application (how in your life have you experienced composition, inspiration, etc.) or maybe offer some kind of philosophical musing on God's role in the inspiration of composition, but that's not where I'm at today. I'm just left with the simple fact that God is, and I delight in Him.



* Any similarity to titles of books on my shelf by the title of this post or another phrase in this post is purely coincidental and has no intentional overt or subtle added meaning.