Fans worship Christian rock

By Tim Gross
Sports Assignment EditorEven the most accomplished rock stars roll with Christian music.

Last March, U2 released "No Line on Horizon," the band's 23rd album in the last three decades.

The album's subtle, solemn track incorporates a melody written centuries before the Irish rock band's 1980 debut.

"White as Snow" recounts a soldier's dying thoughts in Afghanistan. The tune starts slow with piano chords and single notes. A guitar line and a slow heartbeat take over the rhythmic set up before Bono's voice kicks in with the melody.

As he sings the first lines, "Where I came from, there were no hills at all/The land was flat, the highway straight and wide," a familiarity rides along his sinuous voice.

"My brother and I would drive for hours/Like the years instead of days/Of faces as pale as the dirty snow."

The verse's melody came from "Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel," a Christian hymn written around 1100 A.D. by an unknown composer.

While music today continues to change and develop, Mark Huddle, professor of history, said old tunes still find their place in popular culture.

"We live in an age of sampling," he said. "Old music is always being deconstructed and used to create new forms."

Old melodies helps people relate to the pieces they listen to, Laura Peterson, a professor of visual and performing arts, said.

"I think across all music, if you can insert a tune that somebody knows, it's going to immediately make the music sound more familiar to them," she said.

Peterson said music sampling helped build up the rap genre, as rappers re-hashed and blended old melodies underneath new lyrics.

If an artist borrows an old melody, original lyrics could play a subconscious role in the new song's meaning, said Les Sabina, a doctor in music composition.

"If there's a text to it, like lyrics, and people know what the original text was, it would be maybe a further statement on what the idea was behind the original text to put new lyrics to the same melody," he said.

Huddle, who teaches a cultural studies course called "The Politics of Pop," said U2 has been known to apply deep meanings and underlying themes to its work. He said more bands have been applying, among other things, a religious context to popular music.

"I perceive a certain religiosity or spiritualism now in music that we might not have seen a decade ago," he said. "I don't know what it is that's driving that, but I see it."

Huddle said bands have been finding success after crossing over from the Christian genre to the mainstream. He said almost all mainstream country music stars started as Christian or Gospel singers.

Meanwhile, bands like The Welcome Wagon take old hymnal books and play the songs inside. Huddle said Christian and gospel music's influence continues to surprise people.

"People were struck by how gospel music percolated into the main stream," he said.

Sabina said Christian music's influence on contemporary music has been going on for centuries.

"I think it's very popular and very common throughout history," he said, citing the 18th-century composer, Johann Sebastian Bach, as a perfect example. Sabina said Bach took what he considered old church music and incorporated samples into contemporary pieces.

Peterson said the reverse has also happened throughout history as well, as Christian churches borrowed and applied contemporary music into hymns.

"It started very early in the rise of Catholic Mass," she said. "When they began to harmonize chants and write new music for the Church, some of what they took was from popular music."

The Church would use contemporary pieces in sequences because people knew the melodies already, Peterson said.

Peterson said Huddle's perceived spark in contemporary music's increasing spirituality could stem from the fear after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

"After 9/11, a lot of people turned to religion . it gave them comfort," she said.

Maybe U2 extended the religiosity in contemporary music with "White as Snow," but Sabina said good melodies transcend their historical and cultural context.

"I think if somebody grabs a good melody, it really doesn't matter what era it's from or what the intent of the melody was, whether it was sacred or secular to begin with," he said. "A
good melody is a good melody, and it will be re-used."
e-mail:grossts@sbu.edu