The relationship between the music industry and the church.
Over the decade’s music has been used as a form of celebration and also known to express yourself through. In this essay issue l will analyse the synchronization and the relationship between the music industry and the church as well as how music in the church is a melody of a form of worship. This is looked at from mass culture perspective, cultural identity, ethics and aesthetics.
Many people identify with groups for multiple purposes as we look more into the identity and culture of today l will also discuss the identity of the church and the platform they have through the sound of worship and their contribution towards society as well as the entertainment industry. So, what is cultural identity. It is the idea that a person’s sense of who they are and can be reinforced by a set of things that signify their relationship towards others their similarities towards others or their differences from others. It gives people rules, morals, behaviours, and stories through which to understand the world and It allows them to connect to traditions that are either past or future traditions. As with any new technology, this development created new industries, and endangered (or at least changed) old ones. Many theorists argued it permanently changed how we perceive and value the way people few arts such as music and how its represented through artists within church.
Church for many years has been traditional and connected people through either pain, joy and even purpose it has significantly changed over the years from hymns to now modern-day pop, rock and even rnb hip-hop. Tele-evangelists have entrepreneurially used business methods to enter the main stream entertainment by staging of light, sound, media, marketing, and showmanship emerging from some of the largest prosperity churches around the United States and across the globe, in many respects, was simply an encore performance of a long history of evangelicalism’s perpetual reinvention of old-time religion. One of the greatest examples of a church within the main stream era is a well-known mega church Hillsongs. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Hilsongs is well-known for their celebrity attendance and their top charting worship music and non-worship sounds. But it’s no ordinary church they present their welcome lounge with a merchandise stand selling t-shirts cd’s and books written by others within the church or by pastors of the church. More than 100,000 people are estimated to attend Hillsong church services every week, including Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Nick Jonas, and the Jenner sisters. According to the church, for every person attending in person three more watch online. (McKinney)The way that they connect with a mass of people and culturally position themselves to shift the value and ethics in today’s culture through media and technology changes the perception of how people traditionally see church and better yet Jesus through what they do.
Culturally they have well positioned to market this new sound both industrially and doctrinally. Industrially, these megachurches possessed the resources and entrepreneurial spirit to act as able partners with the expanding worship industry in the production, marketing, distribution, and tracking of new worship music. Doctrinally, the prosperity gospel offered a theological rationale for the optimism, force, and scale of arena rock worship, reasoning that music provided mechanistic and emotive tools for unleashing spiritual forces in the singer’s life. “Hillsong is just this massive, massive presence in Christian music,” says ethnomusicologist Tom Wagner, who wrote the book The Hillsong Movement Examined. “There’s nobody with as much influence as they have, and even as someone who doesn’t believe what they believe, it is absolutely incredible the work that they are doing. They’ve just kind of taken over.” Hillsong Worship released the live album Shout to the Lord, which peaked at #13 on the Billboard Top Contemporary Christian Artist Chart. The album’s reach was partially due to their partnership with publisher Integrity Music, which began distributing Hillsong products in the United States; Shout to the Lord’s title track is still sung in an estimated 30 million churches each week
Hillsong are the biggest band you’ve never listened to, but the people making these songs sung by millions of people each week aren’t living a rock-and-roll lifestyle by any means. This is all from one church and many connecting branches world-wide.
Have born-again Christians finally managed then to trade the image of bible-thumping culture warriors for the more palatable one of culturally savvy hipsters? The struggle for ‘legitimacy and the desire to escape the “subliterate” stigma’ continues to be an issue for evangelicals who navigate a ‘secular marketplace that they realize is wary of both evangelical faith and politics’ (Hendershot 54). Ultimately, making evangelical Christianity cool remains a challenge. It cannot be denied, however, that Christian music’s quest for popularity has succeeded to an astonishing degree—whether it manages to bind evangelical kids to their faith by presenting a hip version of Christian culture or by way of ‘infiltrating’ the mainstream without immediately self-identifying as evangelical Christians.
By adapting and ‘Christianizing’ secular musical styles, Christian pop provided music for the converted, a safe and healthy alternative for the Christian youth, not a vehicle to ‘save lost souls’. Christian pop culture turned into ‘a cultural ghetto, frequently ridiculed and easily avoided’ (Powell, ‘Jesus’) that had little—if any—traction beyond its boundaries. This era shaped the image of Christian pop as second-rate, a ‘pale imitation of the real thing’. So, what is ethical from these statements. Christians that say in the bible not to be unevenly yokes with non-believers and those in the main stream being challenged with the number of followings church can bring through collaboration and synchronising the two eras and is it possible.
So, what is it about music and the church as well as the affect it has had on people? Another great example would be Kanye west himself. Known for his fashion statements and brash behaviour his transformation through doing Sunday service an event he put together himself. His value and taste in good music, wardrobe and style has influenced many people buying his products. Worth of the original work is defended, while allowing new work to be made. This is something l subjectively believe as Artistic worth. Where his new album Jesus is king seems to respect the ideals of the earlier work it’s drawing from such as melody, orchestration and the layout of his clothing line all come in to play and the things he has been through has made relatively good music and taste through it all. This also allows Companies like BMG and EMI identified American evangelicals as a profitable segment for the entertainment industry and noticed the monetary gain to be made with Christian pop music. Backed by these corporations, the production, distribution and marketing mechanisms for Christian pop improved drastically and could now match the mainstream market’s standards. No longer dependent on conservative, volatile Christian book stores, the music is now available at secular outlets and garners considerable crossover success with many artists generating sales in both the Christian and the mainstream market. This transformation and reframing of Christian pop music came along with hip appearances, subtle lyrics and a new openness towards non-believers. The rhetoric of the culture war gave way to subtle, more marketable terminology.
Overall the mass culture, cultural identity, ethics and aesthetics through the relationship between the music industry and the church can either leave good or bad tastes for people but the connection between the two are undeniable. Bring the music industry through a monetary gain and church shifting the cultures as well as their own to compete and stay relevant is something ethically for individual but the issue regarding how people perceive the two can be also evident and will always have a two-sided agenda and stigma from both sides.
Bibliography:
1: McKinney, Kelsey. “How Hillsong Church Conquered the Music Industry in God’s Name.” The FADER, The FADER, 11 Oct. 2018, www.thefader.com/2018/10/11/hillsong-church-worship-songs-music-industry. Accessed 6 Dec. 2019.
2: Reagan, Wen. “Bigger, Better, Louder: The Prosperity Gospel’s Impact on Contemporary Christian Worship.” Academia.Edu, 2019, www.academia.edu/8476777/Bigger_Better_Louder_The_Prosperity_Gospel_s_Impact_on_Contemporary_Christian_Worship. Accessed 6 Dec. 2019.
3: Hess, Patrick. “Christians in the Music Industry.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 30 Oct. 2014, www.huffpost.com/entry/christians-in-the-music-i_b_6069488. Accessed 6 Dec. 2019.
4: Ashbaugh, Julianne E. “The Relationship Between the Christian Music Industry and Church Worship Music.” Scholars Crossing, 2015, digitalcommons.liberty.edu/honors/501/. Accessed 6 Dec. 2019.
5: Carrick, Jamie. PLAYING THE MARKET: CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN MUSIC & THE THEORY OF RELIGIOUS ECONOMY. 2012.
6: Ashbaugh, Julianne.
7: Chapter Title: Making Christianity Cool Christian Pop Music’s Quest for Popularity.
8: https://www.facebook.com/themusicnetwork. “Hillsong UNITED: Crossing the Great Industry Divide.” The Music Network, 5 Apr. 2017, themusicnetwork.com/hillsong-united-crossing-the-great-industry-divide/. Accessed 6 Dec. 2019.