Jonathan Gilley Feb 08, 2011
The first thing that the Bible reveals about anything – even before it tells us about God's love, justice or power – is that God is creative. “In the beginning, God created…” The next 55 verses go into great, poetic detail about the joy that God took in creating the universe. The rest of the Bible highlights it again and again – God is a Creative Artist preoccupied with beauty.
Living in Chicago, we have the privilege of sharing in this creative beauty through a wellspring of live music. Whether it’s at The Old Town School of Folk Music, SymphonyCenter, Schubas, The Cultural Center, The Jazz Showcase, or a neighborhood coffee shop, we can experience musicians, not just simply imitating creation, but imitating incarnation – making truth tangible.
All of which reminds us that Jesus is preoccupied with our spiritual beauty. He took our filth upon himself so that we could be spotless. He became ugly so that we could once ...
Benjamin Lynerd Jan 27, 2010
In the wider worlds of art, architecture, cuisine, and of course, music, “fusion” signifies the late-20th-century realization that culture is fluid. Techniques have never been fixed in space, but today, performing artists make conscious efforts to cross stylistic boundaries. Classical musicians, for instance, explore jazz and world music; rock artists draw upon the poetic freedom of folk and the rhythmic intrigue of funk. At their best, fusion experiments plumb the depths of multiple idioms, locate their common wells of inspiration, and produce sounds (or sights or tastes) that exceed the sum of the parts. That is why we call it fusion: it is not merely the coexistence of styles, but the wedding of sensibilities. Indeed, virtually any musical style we could think of (including those already mentioned) began as a felicitous fusion of various techniques.
It is sometimes hard for churches to embrace cultural fluidity, particularly when it comes to music. ...
