Rock and Roll and Hip Hop

My band has never really been “evangelistic”. We’re not even comfortable with the “Christian band” label. I just don’t think we’ve ever understood it. People can be Christians, but how can a band, or a song, or a movie, or anything else other than a person claim to be “christian”? I’ve always seen the term “Christian” as a noun, not an adjective. I personally find the line between the Christian and the Secular cultures as bogus. I see it as an attempt by Christians to be like the World but not like the World. The mentality really is, “oh we can have cool stuff too, but instead of having to use discernment, instead of having to separate the grain from the chaff, we can create a culture that does that for us”. I worked in a Christian bookstore for many many years. I know about these things.
That being said, on Saturday my band played a cultural outreach show in Lancaster City. The point of this show as for a local Brethren In Christ church plant to celebrate the cultural diversity of Lancaster City (right away this sounds alarming, but fear not! I can speak for the orthodoxy of this particular B.I.C. church. I too was wary before meeting the group who was doing the concert. The Anabaptist denominations are some of the most unorthodox and “liberal” denominations in the North East, sadly). It was an odd show to say the least. It opened w/ my group of musicians playing traditional Irish drinking songs. So there I was in the parking lot of a B.I.C. church plant singing about being a rambler and a gambler. After we finished, several “Christian Hip Hop” artists took the stage. This is where culture shock set in. Not because I’m unfamiliar with Hip Hop, but because of how evangelistic these artists were. I could easily say that probably half of the time these gentlemen were on stage was spent preaching an evangelical message. Some of those guys were rather good speakers too, I must say. What really threw me off though was how the crowd reacted to it. It was a free show so many people there were people from the city who no doubt heard the beats and found their way to the show. The crowd was actually receptive of the boldness of the artists. Something about the Hip Hop culture respects boldness in a way that the rock and roll culture doesn’t. After a few of these artists played, my band The Suburban Sound took the stage, followed by more evangelistic Hip Hop artists (I told you, this show was all about showing off the diversity of cultures in the city!).
I was thinking about it. I think it was easy for some of my “rocker” friends to see those hip hop artists and kind of roll their eyes at the constant preaching from stage. That was my first reaction as well. I almost felt embarrassed for them. In my mind, such antics are really unacceptable. I exist in a different reality though. There is a stark cultural difference between Hip Hop and Rock and Roll. If my band got up on stage in a club or bar and did what these guys were doing, I’d run the good risk of getting shot, or at best, beat to a pulp. The rock culture lends itself to the “personal relationship” path. I’ve discussed my faith and my band’s world views many times with audience members after shows, or with other bands in green rooms after shows. I would consider those moments to be some of the most important of my rock and roll career. Culturally speaking, this is the best approach for where we’re at and what we’re doing. The problem I had though is that I assumed that all artistic cultures should have the same approach. I was reminded on Saturday that there is a vast difference in culture within the arts and as Christians, we are to be sensitive and aware of that culture when engaging it. By the end of the show, I had to commend the Hip Hop artists for knowing their culture and how to reach it. They were far more aware of their culture than most in the rock world are.

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