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Meaning-Making in the
Contemporary
Congregational Song Genre
Daniel Thornton
Meaning-Making in the Contemporary
Congregational Song Genre
Daniel Thornton
Meaning-Making in
the Contemporary
Congregational Song
Genre
Daniel Thornton
Alphacrucis College
Parramatta, NSW, Australia
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
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Foreword
v
vi FOREWORD
as fact. This is a deeply objective, factual analysis. And that is what the
(sub)discipline of congregational music is crying out for. Sure, we have
seen this in more anthropological and sociological accounts, but this kind
of quantifiable musicology has been rare.
I write this Foreword in a fascinating time globally. Just today, in the
place where I live, churches were able to accept a limited number of wor-
shippers—but there was to be no ‘singing or chanting’. How interesting
that congregational singing has been singled out as a health risk. What
extra power has just been invested in the common activity of joining in
(any form of) corporate singing. In the weeks prior to this, here, and
around the world, churches have been delivering their liturgies, and the
music that accompanies them, virtually, in an online world that we all now
recognize as normal. But these external stimuli raise very real questions for
congregational music. What will congregational singing look like (and
sound like) in a post-COVID-19 world? What does it mean for churches
if they cannot sing out loud together? Does this environment actually
highlight the importance of high production values in recorded congrega-
tional song? How will people of faith adapt to a personal-only musical
experience? How do congregants connect to worship in an online envi-
ronment? What is achievable musically for congregants when left on their
own in their lounge rooms? And dare I say it, how relevant is music to the
contemporary post-COVID-19 church? Here Thornton’s volume takes
on even more significance. It tells us what is achievable. It documents
objectively what people do and don’t want to sing. And more than any-
thing, this volume documents in the most timely fashion, how online
communities built around contemporary congregational songs function
and grow. As Thornton notes, the volume gives us a “greater understand-
ing of this global genre, and its impact, through its texts, producers, and
participant-audiences”. This volume tells us exactly what the global con-
temporary congregational song genre sounds like, how songs are con-
structed, and why people engage with them the way they do. What could
be more timely than that!
This is a volume of great value, and we will be richer for it analytically
and practically.
But it is also a volume that should make us ask, ‘what now?’
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
xi
xii CONTENTS
Appendix A217
Bibliography219
Index233
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 The Magisteria-Ibiza Spectrum (Marsh and Roberts, 2013, 19;
excerpt from Personal Jesus by Clive Marsh and Vaughan
S. Roberts, copyright © 2012. Used by permission of Baker
Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group) 13
Fig. 8.1 D and D2 guitar fingering 135
Fig. 9.1 Key themes/words in CCS 155
Fig. 9.2 Four CCS lyric categories 160
Fig. 9.3 Weight of CCS song types 161
Fig. 9.4 Visual representation of Godhead and POV fraction 164
Fig. 11.1 10,000 Reasons: http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=DXDGE_lRI0E (Background picture) 186
xv
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Christians sing. Before instantly dismissing that statement as idealistic or
naïve, consider both the Scriptural imperative to do so for believers and
the worship practices that Christians have institutionalised over the last
2000 years. Whether one appeals to the Old Testament Scriptures, such as
Psalm 96:1 “Oh, sing to the Lord a new song! Sing to the Lord, all the
earth”, or the New Testament, “speaking to one another in psalms and
hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to
the Lord”, the edict is clear, Christians sing. They sing not only to God,
and to one another, but also to themselves. Some have observed in recent
times that (Western) Christians are singing less than they once did
(Goddard 2016). Undoubtedly, there are Christians who feel they cannot
sing or choose not to sing. Nevertheless, Christians throughout the ages
have expressed their faith through song, and particularly through com-
munal song, not just because it was a noble idea or an entertaining activity,
or because their surrounding culture celebrated communal singing, but
because it was a Christian mandate.
The content and style of Christian song and its accompaniment (if any)
have changed over time and across different cultures and traditions. The
bastion of certain styles of Christian song has lasted centuries, such as
Gregorian chants, the Eastern Orthodox musical traditions, or the hymns
of Watts or Wesley. At other times, musical style within the church has
been transient or localised. I still remember the first and only rap song that
made it into our church’s roster (for a short time) in the early 1990s:
“Jump To The Jam” (©1993 Paul Iannuzzelli).
When songs and styles have a long life, they also gain the opportunity
to be examined and analysed from various perspectives and disciplines over
multiple generations. However, an emerging music genre may be left
unexamined by scholars until it is quite well established or has made
enough of an impact somewhere on some group of people. Indeed, aca-
demia was slow to catch up with the emergence of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the
1950s, not least because it was not seen as ‘serious’ music, and thus not
deemed worthy of serious scholarship. However, by the 1980s, popular
music studies had emerged with seminal research from Simon Frith,
Richard Middleton, and Allan Moore, among others. Reflection necessar-
ily follows, rather than precedes, practice, but at what distance? At what
point does analysing the ‘seedling’ of a music genre produce viable insight
into the ‘tree’ which it may or may not become?
Contemporary congregational songs (CCS) now have some 50 years of
history, of evolution, and of worship practice in contemporary expressions
of Christianity. En masse, Christians sing contemporary congregational
songs. Their origins may have been in Pentecostal and charismatic circles;
it was what Pentecostal/charismatic Christians sang. This fastest growing
strain of Christianity over the last century now represents more than 500
million adherents worldwide (Pew Research Center 2011), but the genre
has had far wider implications. Hundreds of millions of Christians sing
contemporary congregational songs regardless of denominational, gener-
ational, lingual, or cultural differences. It is the examination and analysis
of this global genre of musical worship renewal that this volume undertakes.
perspective of the global genre. That being said, many international data
sources are also utilised, and as a scholar, composer, and worship leader, I
have travelled the globe and witnessed first-hand, diverse, localised, and
varied cultural expressions of CCS which inform and affirm my findings.
To whatever degree a uniquely Australian perspective may still colour this
research, this study provides an important counterpoint to the extant con-
gregational music-making scholarship. It is complementary to the ethno-
musicological thick descriptions of particular contexts and local expressions
of contemporary worship, or to the historical accounts of the genre, or to
the theological or philosophical engagements with the genre, and what-
ever regional influences may have informed their authors.
Beyond the unique sources and methods, this research adopts a disci-
plinary approach that is rare in congregational music studies. The method-
ology of music semiology and its interdisciplinary partners will be discussed
in depth later in this chapter. Here, however, I posit that the way in which
this methodology builds on a musicological heritage means that the songs
themselves are central to the analysis. This stands in stark contrast to much
of the congregational music studies literature where little or no analysis is
given of the actual music, but rather of the people who make it, or engage
with it, or the environmental, ecclesial, cultural, theological, historical, or
political contexts in which contemporary congregational songs occur. At
the same time, this methodology does not ignore the production milieu at
one end, nor the individual, subjective meaning-making at the other,
which all contribute to an ongoing dialogical definition of the genre.
[G]enres, are cultural forms, dynamic and historically fluid, … guiding peo-
ple’s behaviour; they are learned, and they are culturally specific; they are
rooted in institutional infrastructures; they classify objects in ways that are
sometimes precise, sometimes fuzzy, but always sharper at the core than at
the edges; and they belong to a system of kinds, and are meaningful only in
terms of the shifting differences between them. (Frow 2006, 128)
Importantly, this quote indicates that genre markers will be most evi-
dent towards the “core”. It is, of course, unrealistic to analyse every con-
temporary congregational song ever written, or even every contemporary
congregational song that Christian Copyright Licensing International
(CCLI) represents, which is now well over half a million. For this reason,
a sample must be chosen for analysis. However, according to Frow’s defi-
nition, a random sample of CCS would not provide us with the clearest
picture of the CCS genre. Rather, an analysis of a sample of songs at the
core of the genre would provide the greatest insight. For the global CCS
genre, core songs would be those that are sung by the most Christians,
across the most countries and denominations around the world; a discus-
sion to which I will return. This quote also affirms that the CCS genre
definition derived from this research is subject to the “dynamic and his-
torically fluid” nature of genre definitions. It is only a snapshot of the
genre at a moment in church and wider Western cultural history and at a
specific point in the CCS scholarly discourse. Ultimately, the proposed
CCS genre definition in this book needs to be in an ongoing state of con-
testation, re-examination, nuancing, and updating.
With a more specific focus on music genres, Lena and Peterson state
that they are “systems of orientations, expectations, and conventions that
bind together an industry, performers, critics, and fans in making what
they identify as a distinctive sort of music” (Lena and Peterson 2008,
698). The particular relationship, noted above, between music genres and
industry is a focus for Negus, who recognises the co-constitutive processes
of music genres shaping and being shaped by lived musical experience and
“formal organization by an entertainment industry” (Negus 1999, 4).
This link will be borne out in the coming chapters.
Approaching music genre theories initially from their “linguistic label
(a name)”, Marino, who builds on the work of Fabbri (1982) and Holt
(2007), suggests they are assigned to a “set of recognizable musical fea-
tures … carrying socio-cultural connotations” (Marino 2013, 7). From
this vantage point, he reviews approximately 100 genre names, dividing
6 D. THORNTON
them into six macro-classes: (1) Music (descriptive), (2) Aim (prescrip-
tive), (3) Lyrics (thematic), (4) Culture (aggregative), (5) Geography
(locative), and (6) Totem (i.e., object; symbolic) (ibid., 12). For Marino,
“Christian (rock)” (which would include CCS in his taxonomy) is classi-
fied under the “Lyric (thematic)” category, which also includes the ‘Love
song’ and Christmas carol. The concept that Christian music is only defin-
able through its lyrical content is supported by other authors (e.g., Price
1999). Marino, however, goes on to propose that Christian music is nei-
ther a proper genre, nor style, but more a ‘type’ or ‘area’ of music, which
he asserts is the equivalent of Shuker’s “metagenres” (2013), Holt’s
“abstract genres” (2007), and Fabbri’s “superordinate categories” (2014)
(ibid., 13). Such a position is not uncontested. Lena and Peterson, restrict-
ing themselves to music genres that operate in the commercial market-
place, see genres as potentially moving through four forms: Avant-garde,
Scene-based, Industry-based, and finally to a Traditionalist form (2008,
700). As contemporary Christian music (CCM), and thus its subgenre,
CCS, commenced as (Christian/church) ‘Scene-based’ expressions of
existing genres (rock/pop/folk) rather than as a substantially new musical
idiom, Lena and Peterson see CCM, and presumably CCS, as Scene-based
and Industry-based forms of a music genre, still too young to arrive at its
Traditionalist form (ibid., 710).
Christian music, for many scholars, seems to be one of the more abstract
and difficult music genres to qualify, beyond its lyrical content. However,
CCS are a special case of Christian music, not specifically dealt with by any
of the above-mentioned authors. A more detailed, concrete, and nuanced
definition of the CCS genre is not only possible but important to the dis-
course. I propose the following definition: Towards its centre, the CCS
genre can be defined as songs that are popular music oriented, written by
Christian worshippers, relatively easily replicable in vernacular contexts,
memorable, containing lyrics that are theologically resonant to their per-
formers (congregation), and are personally meaningful. Furthermore, I
posit that there are a large number of musical, lyrical, and extra-musical
features, which are consistent across the corpus, and thus define the genre.
The rest of this book is devoted to supporting, justifying, and extrapolat-
ing on these assertions.
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