Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This is an excellent book - informative, well written and very interesting. The lyrics of civility are inoffensive words of popular songs that embrace Biblical tradition, enabling the listener the choice of meaning. The work is thorough and exhibits the author's vast knowledge of music. The progression of music with Biblical images through this century is quite revealing. In the beginning of the century it was quite natural for popular music to be based on religious themes. Then during rock and roll, which Dr. Bielen reminds us was the greatest upheaval in popular music history, religious images became more vague. In fact, some songs totally rejected Christian tradition and made light of people who believed in it.
Dr. Bielen reminds us that as the decade of the 60s came to a close, young Americans began to look outside traditional religious orders for meaning in life. Spiritual gurus were adopted by popular musicians. In the early 70s there were songs that spoke of an individual being significant to a person, instead of God. Then, by the mid 70s contemporary Christian music began to emerge. Stevie Wonder had quite a few songs with powerful Biblical messages. Dr. Bielen wrote a chapter following the path of Dylan through the 80s after his born-again experience. The popular music of the 90s has personal religion as a common thread.
Dr. Bielen gives numerous examples of particular artists in addition to Dylan, and covers his subject completely. Dr. Bielen was at Woodstock, owns several thousand albums and is well qualified to speak about the subject of popular music. He teaches the subject at Bowling Green State University.
I recommend this book to any one interested in music. And if you are not interested in music, this is a good place to start to learn about it.
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This book is the first comprehensive scholarly study of religious images in popular music. Examining bestsellers from 1906 to 1971, the work explores the role religious images have in the secularization of American culture. Popular music lyrics that express an adherence to a sacred order are couched in inoffensive, content-less language. These lyrics of civility reflect and shape the increasing secularization of American culture in the twentieth century. The analysis focuses primarily on the way these lyrics reduce the meaning of the terms and theology of the Biblical faith. The aesthetic of civility carries over into theology, the narratives, and the accompanying instrumental arrangements of songsthat adhere to the Biblical sacred order. On the other hand, lyrics that reject the Biblical tradition use content-filled, offensive language. The result is that displaced adherents withdraw from the Biblical tradition and turn to alternative cultural religions, or idols of attraction, including popular music, that offer meaning to fill a void in the individual. The secularization of American society, therefore, is not a withdrawal from the idea of religion itself.The analysis focuses on the two dominant themes in songs that include religious images: prayer and heaven. The author explores the songs of the two world wars, the hit parade era, therhythm and blues and doo-wop of the 1950s, the new folk singer movement, soul music and rock music of the 1960s, and the revival rock of the early 1970s. The work demonstrates thecapacity of one form of popular culture to separate adherents from a subculture through diluting the meaning of the language of the subculture's elemental thought.
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