The Choir Room Podcast
This podcast exists to promote and encourage two long-time traditions in our society that seem to be dwindling…The Choir and Corporate Singing. We hope to revive the excitement and joy experienced with singing in a choir, as well as inform and educate the listener on all things singing, and all things choir related.
A weekly podcast featuring discussion and interviews with choir directors, choir members, and other guests representing church choirs, college and university choirs, community choirs, show and theatre choirs, composer of choir music, and other.
Segments include tips and instruction from skilled and professional disciplines within the choir community covering topics such as choir culture and community, choir directing, vocal training, ear training, sight reading, and more. A monthly virtual live audience episode allows the listener to engage with hosts and guests during instructional and Q&A segments via the live recording, chat, email, on various social media platforms.
A production of Metromusic & Arts, Inc.
- www.metromusic-arts.com
- thechoirroom@metromusic-arts.com
- mail@mmertomusic-arts.cm
The Choir Room Podcast
The Intricacies and Implications of Mixing Gospel Lyrics and Pop Music: A Discussion with The Team, Upcoming Metromusic & Arts Events, and more.
Metromusic & Arts has exciting things planned, and a forthcoming Choir Room theme song contest.
David and Elizabeth Norfrey come back once more to share the fascinating parallels between handbell choirs and vocal choirs, underlining the importance of each choir member for a harmonious performance.
Then, join an intriguing discussion on how the infusion of pop music lyrics can affect the integrity of sacred gospel music. We're turning the spotlight on these challenging questions, fueled by personal experiences and reflections. We'll also dissect the implications of changing the lyrics to popular secular music and infusing it into our worship services, and how the thirst for relevance can sometimes cast a shadow over the gospel itself.
Brace yourself for an enlightening conversation as we discuss the importance of balance in gospel presentation, ensuring the gospel's message is not overshadowed by the messenger. From exploring the concept of the body of Christ in connection with choir experience to delving into how the messenger can eclipse the message, this episode is packed with valuable insights. Tune in, and let's hit the high notes together!
Perpetuating and Promoting the Christian and Positive Idea Through the Medium of Music and Other Arts.
Welcome to the choir room, season 1, episode 24 of the Choir Room podcast.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the choir room.
Speaker 1:I'm Greg Thomas, your host, and I'll soon be joined by my co-hosts, Dorian Johnson.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the choir room, mietta Stansel-Farrar, and who we like to call the fourth wheel, coleman Smart. This podcast has a production of Metro Music and Arts, whose purpose is to perpetuate and promote the Christian and positive idea through the medium of music and other arts. This podcast exists to promote and encourage two longtime traditions in our society that seem to be dwindling away, and that is choir and corporate singing. We hope to revive the excitement and joy experience with singing in a choir, as well as inform and educate the listener on all things singing and all things choir. We encourage you to subscribe to the podcast by sending the word subscribe to the Choir Room at MetroMusic-Artscom, or you can subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and then do us a favor while you're there Leave us a five-star review, leave us your comments and share with a friend that you're in the Choir Room.
Speaker 4:Welcome to the Choir Room.
Speaker 1:We are now into the fall season and there's some things in the planning with Metro Music and Arts, and the Choir Room specifically, that we'd like to keep you informed about and have you participated Now. The first one is a monthly event that we've been working on for some time now. That's going to afford you an opportunity to come together for singing, connection and fellowship. It's going to be a very special time and you can look forward to getting more information about participation if you are subscribed to this podcast. Secondly, be on the lookout for the upcoming Choir Room theme song contest.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Choir Room. What I'm on the lookout.
Speaker 1:Now that's just part of it. You can hear the full version at the top of this podcast. Now, what started out as a regional call to just a few choirs to record the theme song, it has blossomed into somewhat of a national reach now that we're getting responses from people around the country and we're glad to report that we've got a couple of sponsors and donors who have made this somewhat of a contest, and so there will be prizes and gifts for the best recordings of the Choir Room theme song. If you want to stay in the know, you have to subscribe to the Choir Room at metromusic-artscom. And then, finally, if you like to sing and you like to learn and you like to have fun doing it, mark your calendars.
Speaker 1:From Monday, october 16th at 7 PM right here in the Choir Room, vocal coach and YouTube sensation and a dear friend of mine, tara Simon, with Tara Simon Studios, will be joining us again right here in the Choir Room with live demonstration, live evaluation and vocal tips for all of our Choir Room listeners. That's what's coming up in the next few weeks. Now let's hear another tip from David and Elizabeth Norfrey. David, talk to us about the parallels and the similarities that you've discovered between the Handbell Choir and the Vocal Choir.
Speaker 5:There are over seven octaves of handbells in existence and so we're rivaling almost the piano keyboard. And so where you can, with two hands and your brain tuned into the Holy Spirit, can cover all those 88 keys and lead us from one person's brain and body. But this is an instrument that takes more people, so you have to have at least usually nine or more. It's a different experience than a vocal choir, but it requires all the same kinds of listening and willingness to work together and no grandstand stars, because everybody's got to work together. So if you can imagine playing your melody of Amazing Grace or whatever, even to play the melody, you cannot do that with one person. So the melody of Amazing Grace has to cover several people's positions at the table. So even to play just the melody requires cooperation, it requires willingness, it requires listening, it requires and which note is more important which one gets a little more emphasis. Well, if the wrong person emphasizes, it sounds like we're emphasis on the wrong syllable.
Speaker 5:So it's just an amazing team building kind of experience and if everybody's willing it can be just an amazing experience and we'll see you next time, you know. But then you have challenges, like somebody leaves, the group, moves away, then you have to bring in a new person and you have to get them up to speed. You know, and it takes a while, it's a team, it's a team sport. We started sharing about this idea of the body of Christ, the church being the body of Christ, and and the idea out of first Corinthians 12, where we're in one body but we have many members, and so the bell choir was a perfect example of that, because if one person isn't there, you can't play in peace. So a lot of time, you know how often is everybody there, I mean honestly, right.
Speaker 5:So the director is almost always covering somebody's spot and that you can do. You can kind of cover one person spot and keep the group together. But if two people are missing you're kind of up a creek because you know you can't cover everything. I mean I would try to direct and they were on the other side of the table and I would have a few bells of the people that were missing. I'd have them in front of me and I was trying to cover, you know, and listen and everything. But it doesn't work. You have to have everybody. It's.
Speaker 5:It's not like a section where you know you have 10 altos and two are missing. Of course you notice it's important, but it's not important in the same way. It's like the fact that it's just not there anymore. So we would go out and we would do, we would share that and share how you know each member of the body is important. So we that became our kind of our kind of witness, or a tagline, you know, is that that we would always do that as part, and the way I would do it was I'd have somebody step out so I'd say, ok, let's, we're going to play them. Here's the melody. So we play it the way it was, and then we'd have a person step out here's the melody without that person, and of course people noticed something's missing. And then let's put two people step out, and of course you know, after a while it becomes, you know, kind of like a piano with, all you know, five broken keys where you can't you can't actually play the melody at all anyway. So it was. It was a great, great tool.
Speaker 2:I think different people in the choir have different roles, different purposes. Like some, somebody may be a fantastic site reader, but somebody may just have a really beautiful, strong voice but not be that strong a site reader but just be vocally strong. Somebody may be so faithful that they're just a model, example person, and so everybody, like you said, everybody's important. And you know, over the years I've seen that people have their, their different roles and, and this first, corinthians 12, is just so important, you know the hand can't say the thing I don't need. You. You know and and and even like it says the hidden parts are important to in the passage and you know. So sometimes, even like somebody who's the weakest singer may be like a prayer warrior, really powerful community glue, you know. So it's just a, it's a fascinating thing. You know just the unseen.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the. The hymn's amazing grace. This hymn has been translated into countless languages and by one biographers account and I cannot confirm this. But they actually said that this hymn is sung 10 million times annually and if we consider all of the different venues that this hymn is sung in, both in the church as well as in secular circles, it's quite possible that it is sung that many times. But as we consider this timeless hymn, we would be amiss if we didn't consider the testimony of its writer.
Speaker 3:Although he was born into a Christian home, john Newton lived a life of sin as a sailor and eventually even became a slave trader. Near drowning experience that he had as his ship was in danger when he was in his early twenties factored into his conversion and six years later he gave up the slave trade and would eventually join forces with William Wilberforce to end the English slave trade, which became a reality in 1807. He became a pastor and famously was a caretaker for William Cooper, whose hymns we have looked at previously and will look at in the future as well. But this hymn parallels the arc of what we hear in Titus, chapter 2, verses 11-13, which takes us from justification at conversion to sanctification through to glorification. This is what Titus 2, 11-13 says, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives. In the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession or a zealous for good works. And we see that same progression when we look at the arc of this hymn. We go from conversion to the sanctifying or progressive work that God does in each of our lives, through to glorification.
Speaker 3:We see conversion depicted in the first two verses, where we're told amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. When we think of the grace of God, it cannot be truly amazing unless we realize how undeserving of it we are. We are all wretches. All mankind is unworthy of anything but God's condemnation. And yet the one who was lost was found, the one who was blind was made to see, and that same grace that taught us to fear God is the same grace that relieved our fears, as the salvation that only comes through Christ was made known to us and applied to our lives effectively by the Holy Spirit, and we know that once we start living the Christian life, we are not promised an easy life.
Speaker 3:We're told in verses three and four of the many dangers and toils and snares that we face as Christians. But the grace of God has not only kept us but promised us to bring us to the expected end that God has for us. And it's not an expected end that we are not aware of, for God's Word tells us that God is conforming us to the image of his Son and that until he brings us to that place, he will preserve his people. Then, finally, in verses five and six, we are reminded of the fact that we all must face death, and verse five says yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail and mortal life shall cease, I shall possess within the veil a life of joy and peace. For the Christian, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. To be absent from the body is to enter in to the blessedness of our Lord and Savior.
Speaker 3:And then, in verse six, we are pointed to the eternal state when we and millions of others and billions of others will be around the throne worshiping God and listen to the poency of this last verse.
Speaker 3:When we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun. The amazing grace of God will take eternity for us to praise, and the 10,000 year, the 10,000th year that we praise him for his grace, will be just the beginning of the praise that he is worthy of. We're reminded of that great grace Ephesians two, eight through nine which tells us for by grace, you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. We can boast of nothing but the grace of our God, and we thank him for his amazing grace, shown in bringing us to himself by the finished work of Christ, of making us more like Christ each and every day, and of the blessed hope and the promise that we will indeed spend all of eternity with him, when we either die and go home to be with him, or when Christ returns triumphantly. Let us praise God's amazing grace.
Speaker 6:Did you just teach me a new verse to Amazing Grace a second ago?
Speaker 5:Because there was one that I don't think I'd ever heard before.
Speaker 6:Oh, really, maybe the third one or something, I don't know, not through many dangers. No, I've heard that one, it was before that there's also.
Speaker 3:The Lord has promised good to me as word. My hope secures. You know that one. And then there's yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail and my life shall cease. Never heard that one before. I shall possess within the veil a life of joy and peace. Wow.
Speaker 6:Well, I've got my redback hymnal right here. I'm going to pull it out and see if that's in there. You think I'm lying?
Speaker 1:Check and see if you were cheating?
Speaker 6:I'll see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got cheated. Now you won't find it in every hymnal, but typically in the Methodist and or the Presbyterian hymnal.
Speaker 6:Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:And typically not in the Baptist hymnal yeah, the Trinity hymnal, revised edition.
Speaker 1:Yep, so, coleman is it in there?
Speaker 6:Oh, no, no, no, we don't have that.
Speaker 3:So you should add it.
Speaker 6:You should add it. Yeah, this is a closed cannon. Okay, exactly.
Speaker 1:It's something to your team Right. Tell them you're going to do it on Sunday.
Speaker 6:Yeah, and they're going to be like what?
Speaker 4:So here we are again this evening with our CRQ, and the CRQ is this what is your opinion about the church choir changing the lyrics to a popular pop song and singing them in church? My short answer Negative, negative. And I can say that because I tried that and it fell flat.
Speaker 4:And I do mean flat. I regret it to this very day Back in the 90s, when I don't know if any of you even know this, but in the 90s it was somewhat of a popular thing to take some of the pop songs and incorporate them in some of our gospel music.
Speaker 1:And so gospel has done some really tragic stuff over the years.
Speaker 4:And that is the very word I use today because of it. And in it did that you not necessarily with a Sunday morning type setting. We did that for our special things like choir anniversaries. So we would do something special, like I remember remember the time Michael Jackson remember the time while actually I can't remember his name, bell, he actually wrote that Well, he was a part of the creative process of that we took that song and made it our marching song. You're marching song now and you're probably thinking, well, what exactly is a marching song? Well, the marching song was the choir, the host choir, the honorees of the evening, with marching that night and sing a song. And it was a big thing, the big thing that we would do. And I changed, I didn't think it through and I let someone talk me into changing some of the lyrics to that song. Yeah, it just just man in the mirror.
Speaker 3:No, no, remember the time.
Speaker 1:Oh, remember the time.
Speaker 4:I was remember Weird right, I'm trying to.
Speaker 1:You have to have been to enough anniversaries and special events where there are processionals to even understand why that? Was why the attempt.
Speaker 4:And it was more musical than it was lyrical it was. It was just a lot of music involved in a few lyrics. That would it just negative it just. And I never did it. I never did it again and I had to learn as time went on that when you do things like that you don't realize what you're doing. You could be messing with the integrity of gospel music when you start to do things like that. So you have to be very, very, very careful, even with hymns. I've seen people change lyrics to hymns to fit. If you have to do things like that, then perhaps use another song, find the selection that will best fit and suit whatever the occasion or the moment may call for, because you know I doing things like that for me, for me it just messes with the integrity a lot of time. So what say you?
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's a definite no.
Speaker 1:I agree with me.
Speaker 1:There's no way that you can think that changing the lyrics to a popular pop song and bringing it to a worship service is going to minister to the hearts of the people or touch the heart of God, especially when you consider the fact that this is a popular pop song and everybody who listens to pop music is going to recognize it.
Speaker 1:And so there's no way that we can convince ourselves that superimposing the name of God or Jesus over that content is going to change the meaning of the song. That song is going to sound like and mean what it always meant to the listener when they first heard it. Now they'll definitely receive some level of entertainment out of it, but that doesn't minister. And then, finally, my concern is that if the choir director is going to continue to try to grab that which is considered unholy or ungodly and try to graft it into the church experience, it doesn't compel many women to want to come to the house of God because it starts to look, feel, sound, smell like what they're already doing. And so if the church house sounds like the clubhouse, why leave the clubhouse.
Speaker 6:So I think that more often than not, when churches do try to do something like this, it tends to be more corny or cringy than they anticipated it being, and it's a little embarrassing, yeah, cheesy, and so I think that ends up hurting you more than it helps you. Second, when you sing a song from a pop artist or any kind of artist like that kind of like what you were just saying, greg, it's almost like an endorsement of that in a way, because, you're right, people are thinking about that the whole time. And then, lastly, there are so many songs out there in Christendom that you could choose from that, communicate the same message and probably do it in a more clear, concise and God-centered way, like it was written for the purpose of, you know, accomplishing that goal. So I don't think that we have to go there because we have so many options, but I mean one thought that I do have that's not completely negative about it is I've seen some churches do some special things on on a day like Father's Day, for instance, I've heard a church that I once was at for a while do a special song that was like a tribute to dad's.
Speaker 6:That was actually an inspirational song and it wasn't meant for worship, it was like an inspirational moment and the thing and it was not like one of those really questionable morality like artists kind of situations. So I've seen that kind of thing work and accomplish a purpose outside of the confines of worship and trying to encounter God. You know what I mean. So I can see that kind of working, but if you're trying to use it in a worship set or something like that, I'm gonna err on the side of no as well.
Speaker 1:Well, because it, because it doesn't minister Doing ministry, and then it's another thing just be singing a song, like you said. You know that example.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. Well, I probably to the surprise of no one here immediately said no, but but then I thought, really really quickly, because there are hymns that are to the music it's true of classical music that aren't so a Christian. So take a hymn like be still my soul. That's typically sung to the tune of Sibelius's in land, yeah right. There are other tunes that were written by by Composers who weren't Christians that are used. I think the key here is lyrics to songs that have already been written.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and we're living in this age of technology where we've got recordings, yes, modern day ones, right, and so these were just pieces of music upon which these lyrics were placed. So it's what's in the lyrics that are the focus, and people may know that particular tune, but I have a Qbq what's the question behind the question? Because what is the motive when we are doing that? Yeah, when you're taking Popular music, secular music, and changing the lyrics to adapt them to a church setting and the apostle Paul Admonishes the Corinthians for relying upon worldly wisdom, bringing the world's thoughts, the world's ideas, all of those things, into the church. And I would say that the motive often for doing that is Relevancy. It's to make oneself seem relevant, to make oneself seem like we know where certain people are. But ultimately, church is for the church right.
Speaker 3:Church is for the church.
Speaker 1:That's good that right there. That's really good. And on that note of this week's CRQ, thanks to Horia, mia and Coleman and to our listeners. Be reminded of the announcements made earlier in this podcast and remember if ever we put the messenger before the message, we have failed to present an unblemished gospel. I'm Greg Thomas. Join us again next week right here in the choir room. You.
