Making Jesus Famous

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monique M. Ingalls
Keyword(s):  
Recording Industry ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Worship Music ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Contemporary Worship ◽  
Church Congregations ◽  
Congregational Singing ◽  
Song Lyrics ◽  
Participatory Engagement

Chapter 1 examines the worship concert, a mass gathering marked by participatory engagement that differentiates it from a “mere” concert, as a lens to investigate the interplay between pop-rock performance conventions and evangelical congregational singing. It identifies the range of performative strategies whereby a contemporary worship-music concert crowd becomes authenticated as a concert congregation united in worship. Through musical style, song lyrics, and discourse about music-making, many of the activities associated with rock concerts are reframed as acts of worship. This reframing has musical and political consequences: understanding the concert gathering as worship shapes evangelical expectations of the “worship experience,” which in turn influences what evangelicals expect from worship music in their local church congregations. The desire to realize these ideals fuels the sale of worship-related music commodities produced by the Christian recording industry.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monique M. Ingalls
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Recording Industry ◽  
Christian Music ◽  
Worship Music ◽  
Contemporary Worship ◽  
Global Perspectives ◽  
Evangelical Churches ◽  
Congregational Worship ◽  
Congregational Music

The introduction sets out the book’s scope, argument, and goals; places the exploration in historical and cultural context; and frames the study in relationship to recent scholarship in ethnomusicology, evangelical studies, and congregational music studies. It first defines contemporary worship music from both North American and global perspectives and discusses that music’s relationship to closely related Christian popular-music genres. The chapter then situates the rise of contemporary worship music in relationship to several important social developments, including the widespread conflicts over music and worship in evangelical churches (the “worship wars”), the development of the Christian-music recording industry, the adoption of new technologies within congregational worship, and the influence of pentecostal-charismatic practices. Finally, in describing the book’s research methods, the introduction identifies several challenges the author faced in navigating distance and proximity in the field as a result of her own religious upbringing as an evangelical and her complex relationship to communities in her study.

Finding the Church’s Voice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monique M. Ingalls
Keyword(s):  
Performance Practice ◽  
Local Church ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Church Leader ◽  
Worship Music ◽  
Contemporary Worship ◽  
Congregation Members ◽  
Congregational Music ◽  
And Performance

Chapter 3 provides a detailed ethnographic portrait of music in a local church congregation in which contemporary worship music serves an important—and often strategic—means of positioning. Examining the choices of congregational music repertory, style, and performance practice at St. Bartholomew’s Church, an “evangelical Episcopal” church in Nashville, Tennessee, reveals how church leaders and congregation members use music to navigate the church’s relationship with other area churches, denominational traditions, and church networks. The church’s choice of worship songs and styles constitutes what one church leader referred to as the church’s unique “voice,” in other words, its identity and position relative to other congregations and within networks. Though the church’s voice is constructed in part from broadly circulating discourses and practices within contemporary worship music, the case study of St. Bartholomew’s shows that this song repertory is also subject to imaginative reinterpretation within local church contexts.

Singing the Congregation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monique M. Ingalls
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Local Churches ◽  
Congregational Studies ◽  
Worship Music ◽  
Contemporary Worship ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Congregational Music

Singing the Congregation examines how contemporary worship music shapes the way evangelical Christians understand worship and argues that participatory worship-music performances have brought into being new religious social constellations (“modes of congregating”). Through ethnographic investigation of five of these modes—concert, conference, church, public, and networked congregations—this book seeks to reinvigorate the analytic categories of “congregation” and “congregational music.” Drawing from theoretical models in ethnomusicology, congregational studies, and ecclesiology, Singing the Congregation reconceives the congregation as a fluid, contingent social constellation that is actively performed into being through communal practice—in this case, the musically structured participatory activity known as “worship.” By extension, “congregational music-making” is recast as a participatory religious musical practice capable of weaving together a religious community inside and outside local institutional churches. Congregational music-making is not only a means of expressing local concerns and constituting the local religious community; it is also a potent way to identify with far-flung individuals, institutions, and networks that this global religious community comprises. The unique congregations examined in each chapter include but extend far beyond local churches, revealing widespread conflicts over religious authority and far-ranging implications for how evangelicals position themselves relative to other groups in North America and beyond.

Place and Music: Local Opera in Shanghai, 1912–49

Huju ◽  
2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan P. J. Stock
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Concomitant Increase ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Recorded Sound ◽  
Radio Broadcasting ◽  
Spoken Drama ◽  
Historical Consideration

This chapter develops the historical consideration of Shanghai opera begun in Chapter 1, looking now at huju in mid-20th-century Shanghai. Other than the appearance of female performers, in the period from approximately 1920 to 1949, there was an expansion of troupes with a concomitant increase in specialization; the rise of new performance venues and media, most obviously recorded sound and radio broadcasting; the influence of other artistic forms, such as the spoken drama and film; and changing modes of musical learning. Distinctive schools of performance were created, several of which remain significant in terms of musical style today. Discussion of these factors is enclosed within an examination of musical place.

Worship Music on National and Global Stages

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monique M. Ingalls ◽  
Monique M. Ingalls
Keyword(s):  
Social Changes ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
Worship Music ◽  
Contemporary Worship ◽  
The World ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Congregational Music ◽  
The Way ◽  
A Performance

The book’s conclusion draws together the book’s themes by returning to a performance of the contemporary worship song discussed in the introduction. It highlights a source of continued conflict within evangelicalism: the tension between the worship music “mainstream” and its alternatives. It shows the mainstream to be an influential matrix that combines a specific understanding of music, worship, and congregating and sets itself forward as a model for the way these three activities should relate across geographical and cultural space. Understanding how evangelical congregations are sung into being matters for understanding how other religious social formations throughout the world constitute and understand themselves. Thus, remodeling and reinvigorating the analytic categories of “congregation” and “congregational music” may enhance their usefulness for scholars working on religious musical practices among religious groups facing similar social changes and pressures.

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