Amerika at church

2007-11-4  -  It just doesn’t end, and keeps wrapping around itself.  The issues I’m looking into here just seem to keep coming up.

After the Cirkev Bratrska of Praha 6 morning service this Sunday, Emily and I lunched with some of the young adult crowd, just down Evropská Ulice at the Crocodile baguette shop.  After I finished my soup, and found an open space, I submitted to my music-scholar-ness… and asked the crowd what they thought about the music recording that had been played at “church” during the serving of communion.

Emily and I have talked about how it jars us somehow when Filip, the youthful sound guy in the congregation, plays US contemporary christian music recordings as background music during parts of services. The congregation’s body and worship life are already interestingly multicultural; because of the English proficiency of Czech members, the number of foreign folks who have become involved in the group, and the will of the leadership, there is simultaneous translation of the Czech-language Sunday service into English.  This particular situation is helped by the fact that the congregation doesn’t own it’s own meeting space; we rent and meet in the “kongressový sál” of a 1970s era hotel (the Krystal) which is equipped with headphone outlet boxes at each seat, and an isolated sound booth where the translator does their work.

In the midst of all this Czechness – and in the winter the oppressive indoor radiator heat never lets me forget where I am – it does surprise me to hear such an intensely “American” sound.

(I did some research on the song we heard this week.  Turns out it’s Paul Colman, and…he’s not from the US, but in part Australian/ British.  (He does live in Nashville now, though.)  It was a more standard, recording studio version of the tune behind this performance:

Everyone I have asked from the congregation (I’ve been poking around a bit on this in the past month or so) says that Filip chooses the music himself, apparently governing a lot of important worshipful moments in the communal meeting life of this congregation.  I wanted to know what the Czech folks thought about his choices–in part to help me decide what my personal and professional reactions are.

Around the lunch table the consensus seemed that the music was ok, if a little fast for the liturgical moment of communion … useful data for me, but on the whole a lukewarm engagement with my question.

My friend Irena got things going, responding to the admittedly-partly-present critique in my question: “It was great!”  Seeking support, she interrogated each person around the table, extracting from them a judgement of like/dislike that yielded an almost unanimous “yes” vote.

In reaction to this rally, I think, a few folks chimed in to get more context from me; what did I think about it, why do I ask?  I referred back to my introduction from Irena (she had introduced me as a professional musician who was writing a dissertation on Czech country) and my interest in how “Americanness” works in Czech music cultures.  I said it was jarring for me to hear familiar American sounds in the middle of the Czech-language worship service–maybe because I am so intent on this sort of threshold, the identification and location that attend such decisions about musical performance.

Taking the tack of language and comprehension (a frequent mode of explanation in bluegrass as well), Dalibor and a few others on his side of the table said that they understand the English words well and didn’t find them out of place or distracting–others said that they didn’t understand the words and weren’t disturbed by the style of music…so no big deal…right?

Typing this, though, I realize the root of it: I just don’t like that sort of music.  The mid-nineties-style painstakingly produced soft rock frame, the sculpted,  over-earnest vocals, the performance of faith.  How can this be bad?  It’s NOT, I guess…but I don’t like it, I don’t resonate with it.  This is complicated; I still can’t untangle my aesthetic and ethical concerns and the theological basis that I hope undergirds both.

This talk has given me pause.  A specific pause in which to think about how my personal responses are affecting how I do work on Americanness in Czech musical life.  In this particular case, I had a very different reaction then my Czech fellow-congregants.  This isn’t bad in itself; I’m concerned that my aesthetic response of distaste (“I don’t like CCM”) gave a covert strength to my “threshold-crossing” interculturality response.  (“Hey, it’s wierd that Czechs use this music in their church life.”)

I’m not the only one with actively political agendas here, though.  Some ideas about genre and demographics surfaced when Emily remarked that we were all fairly young folks around the table, and that the CB congregation is much more diverse in age, and perhaps in musical taste, in their ability to worship effectively in response to different musics.  “But!” folks protested, CCM is not the only genre used for background liturgical music.  Although this summer and fall we have only noticed the CCM pieces, apparently Filip draws from an assortment of jazz, classical (“Mozart, etc.”) and other sounds as well.  Irena, glowingly aware of her power (in parts real and perceived) in the small congregation, proudly added that she always gives Filip enthusiastic feedback after a service that included CCM–and says nothing when he uses another sort of recording.

I feel like this is the same standstill I arrive at with bluegrassers.  Somehow these “American” materials and practices come to be just the right thing for many Czech situations.  And it’s hard to get Czech folks to talk about how that Americanness works.  I’ve begun to get some headway in teh bluegrass world on thsi subject, but I think it is harder for the Christian community here to grapple with the cultural as well as spiritual content that Anglo-U.S. Christianity brings here.  Said another way: maybe they don’t want to admit that there are practices that are incorporated into the Christian body here which aren’t as independent of culture/location as people consider them to be.  Hmm.

Skaggs (part 1)

(July 28, 2007)   Thinking over yesterday’s Skaggs show, i stick on one question: What did that performance provide for Czechs?

If I am thinking about the function, value of music, perhaps I must ask first — What did it do for me?

First, my attempt at a straightforward surface assessment:  I got to see a top level bluegrass performer and his sidemen – a fantastic fiddler, a hot guitar picker, a more than decent mandolinist with great singing, his picked harmony vocalists, and a venerable traditional banjoist.  (and a bassist….too much amplified until his electronics somehow fizzled in the last encore–it sounded better to me.)

I got to SEE Ricky Skaggs play.  The intangibles here are many, and they occurred to me during the show.  First of all: he “played with Bill Monroe.”  While this wasn’t mentioned by any of the audience that I could tell (or any of my friends here in CR) and is mixed with Skaggs’ country-stardom days…Skaggs himself focused on Monroe in the repertory he picked and in his talk about what bluegrass is.
[ aside: Skaggs  seemed to be channelling the Father of bluegrass in more than his imitation of the classic (seminal?) 1946-47 recordings with Flatt and Scruggs; his statements about "the music" simply used the third person where Monroe would have staked his personal claim on his musical progeny.  ]

I got to rub my ears against sounds coming through a channel of the Father himself – I was in the same airspace with a part of “REAL” bluegrass.  This proximity is important – as I circulated in the crowd greeting friends and bluegrass acquaintances on my own and with Zdenek Roh, I realize how impoverished my bluegrass experience is.  I’ve seen just a handful of the bluegrass superstars (an aging Ralph Stanley, a voiceless Tony Rice, Doc Watson over the crowds at Merlefest).  Rost’a Fischer quipped that this (the prximity to bluegrass stars?) must be what it is like all the time in America.  But I protested, saying this is my first time seeing Skaggs.   He was surprised that we were in the same boat, seeing Skaggs for the first time.

So we all got our initiation into whatever club it is that you enter after having been in The Presence. [see Piazza 's book for more on Skaggs and for a lot of the personal background I have on this musician]  We got closer to the heart of bluegrass.

Another intangible emerged in my mind as I watched Andy Leftwich, the fiddler.  Unlike the guys (guitar players, I assume) standing in front of me who hoisted their binoculars for every guitar solo, I  couldn’t zoom in on fret board finger-gymnastics, but I tried to soak in the virtuosic playing as it happened, sometimes shutting my eyes and just listening.  It didn’t sound ALL that hard to do what he was doing, but still  I didn’t grab onto anything specific.  What I did go home with was a desire to play more, to play faster, smoother, with more interesting ornamentation and substance, with variety and poise.  (amplified by my disappointment at seeing the videorecording of the recent July 20 Pisek show with Roll’s Boys…I was nervous, out of shape, not really making it happen…)

Today I harnessed that awakened musical desire to the repertory I need to work on for the upcoming performances with Petr Hruby and his Bells and Whistles (at the France EWOB the first week in August).  I roughed out several solos for the classic “Monroe-ovky” (“Monroe-lets” – a Czech way of attatching Monroe’s name to his classic bluegrass compositions/performances) on the setlist, practicing, repeating, working out interesting little ways to end the breaks.  I feel the practice now in the soreness of my shoulders, the tightness in my forearms that is increased by my typing.  I haven’t, as I stated earlier, practiced in a while.  But here I am, sore from a good hour of work.

Practice: relational

(July 25, 2007) I just ran up the stairs to type in what just struck me while practicing – yes, practicing, the fiddle. (I’ve been feeling out of shape…)

Last night at the U Supa jam, Eda asked me, after I played a break on a song led by Petr Hruby, if I ever practice fiddle. I said something like “not much” or “not as much as I should.” [what did I say?] While it really is true–I haven’t practiced that much in recent years on fiddle, or on any instrument. But my answer in this situation (where I am sure these folks all practice a LOT) my response created what seems to me now a clash: of my typical forced humility, the “off the cuff” brashness of youth, and a smug satisfaction with the stock of experience and privilege I enjoy in playing bluegrass.

Eda’s words earlier in the evening about my fiddling come back to me now. He asked how I started – and was surprised that I started in classical music – violinists here who move from classical to bluegrass don’t have–how did he say it? They don’t fiddle well. He might have been referring to what he noticed in my playing in another comment later about his attempts to play the fiddle; he can do the left hand, but the “smycec”, the bow is really hard. Maybe there is something in my right hand technique that Czech fiddlers don’t have.

This all gets me thinking about how I am situated, how my playing is socially networked. My facility to improvise, my knowledge of BG repertory, my ability and awareness all came from people early on in my life – Frau Kitz, David Fontana, Rick and Darl and the Rangers, and many more – even Bob Cantwell in the mix there for a while in my early Fescue days.

My playing is grounded in my own body, but is dependent on my connections to all sorts of people – this cloud of active witnesses now includes a heck of a lot of Czech folks. Jirka Kralik, Ivo Drbohlav, Rohlik, and a flood of others have shaped specific parts of me, my musicality – and not just in the huge general hospitality – I pick up little musical details, store them, and use them again.

*aside on borrowing from other instruments* Just last night I caught myself playing a mandolin riff, the typical caricature of Monroe style in staggering triplet stretching of the straight beat–on the fiddle. (and later doing it on Eda’s mandolin as well…)

Just now I was practicing a fiddle break for the song “Heart to heart” / “Is it true” in B, gambling that Petr Hruby or someone else is going to want to do it way up there in Monroe territory. I wanted to start the break on the two central strings with my 3rd on D (G#) and my 1st on A (B), making what seems to me a traditional-sounding double stop that I was chopping into vigorously: (rest, quarter, quarter, quarter – whole note ; descending from G# through G to F# on the last stroke)

I was getting frustrated with myself; I wasn’t consistently hitting the chord in tune. I figured out that I was placing the 3rd in relation to my 1st, but I still couldn’t get that B in tune every time. Then I instictively–or at least unconsciously–used a trick from playing baroque music – or at least from my lessons and previous playing: I dipped my bow over for a taste of the E string, and tuned my B against the fourth.

I can’t just DO this thing myself, placing my fingers and trusting that every time they hit the fingerboard they will sound in tune. I have to place myself in relation to others, to sounds, histories, and people.

I’m not sure what this particular moment of insight is going to lead me to do, but it is good to remember that I have a lot of support in the work I am doing — trying to write interpretively and analytically about CZ bluegrass while trying to document and record it. I have technical abilities and musical training – and there are a lot of folks whose part in my life is or will be significant – who shape and inform what I do. Can’t hurt to remember that now and again.

Back to practicing…