I grew up (in order) on Motown, Pop, Hip-Hop, Dance, Madchester, Breakbeat, Jungle, House, Acid Jazz, Reggae, Rare groove, UK Garage, EDM, and RnB music. The council estate I come from has a strong pirate radio heritage, for a while it was the home of Flex FM, and many of us were/are DJ’s, and all the youth clubs had record decks. For a long time, a favourite genre on our estate was 2-step Garage. Even today this genre is enjoyed by both the younger generation and the older heads. I love this genre because of the combination of happy melodies alongside deep bass lines, and the bouncy two-step drum rhythm. When I hear this music, I’m home, I’m with my people, I’m with my culture.
When I visit churches, and the music there is either organ music, or folk music, or even a possible attempt at Coldplay style - I don’t feel I’m home, with my people, or with my culture. I feel like an outsider. And that’s OK, but if every week at church felt this way, it would be a problem. A problem that some cope with by assimilating to this peculiar church culture, leaving their own culture behind. Over time, this new culture starts to become normal to them, but they often know that their friends and family would find the culture very strange. When I say ‘strange,’ I don’t mean that it communicates the transcendence of God, I mean ‘othering;’ it makes people from other cultures feel like outsiders simply because of their cultural heritage.
So, for our church on our estate, I produce music that fits our culture. We sing RnB, Reggae, Pop, DnB, and of course 2-step Garage. You can listen to a couple of the 2-step Garage tracks below.
It wasn’t until I took a Sabbatical to the USA for 3 months, that I realised how much of an impact contextualised worship has had on my spirituality. I’d spent weeks at American churches worshipping to music styles that were quite alien to me, and then one day I put on headphones and listened to one of our contextualised songs, and immediately I had this sense of God adopting me, bringing me into his family, and being my Dad—and I worshipped him, dancing like a child with their Dad. You see on the one hand, the lyrics communicated to me who God was, but on the other hand, the style of music also communicated who God was in relation to me. The music told me that God comes down to our level, and makes his home with us, and makes us his family. So, contextualisation tells me that God’s my Dad!
Worshipping God with UK Garage music
Good article Duncan. I feel the same way when we sing hymns acapella. Context is important.