Meeting Two Real Rock-Stars!

One of the benefits of being at Union is that EVERYONE comes through NYC, so we have a constant stream of absolutely astouding people as guests. Two of the folks who've come through in the past week are of great significance to the world of religion+music - and the world of music itself. In a very real sense, Alice Parker taught me how to sing. She, along with Robert Shaw, arranged many US American folk songs (from Appalachia to Spirituals) in stunning form. Whatever legitimate concerns one might have about cultural appropriation, the music is sublime, even if different from its original context. And it was in learning this music that I really began to hear my own voice as a source of music; and almost all of you know the result (I'm always singing something, even nonsense).

I-to Loh, UTS alum, was truly a delight to sing with and learn from. Over the past 35 years he as worked tirelessly to bring authenic Asian sounds - rather than Orientalist shams - to churches and hymnals. Evident in every statement he made and song he lead was the humility with which he approaches his task, as an ethnomusicologist, of searching and preserving the sounds of the people. Would that all of us could heed his advice and take respectful risks to learn how to sing in new idioms and voices, not to make them our own, but to truly appreciate their beauty AS not our own: "Just try it - but PLEASE don't add Western harmony!"