Wednesday, 25 February 2009

The Lifespan of Praise & Worship Music

So recently, I've been working on adding some more stuff to my computer's library of praise & worship music for when I'm helping leading music at church and at camp, too. Needless to say, my archives have grown significantly since I've started keeping and looking for music a bit over a year ago when I started helping lead at InterVarsity at Hope College. I'm kind of proud of myself, but it also frightens me, because like any teacher, especially in the fine arts, I'm an unbelievable pack rat.

When Lifted Voice, the youth praise band at church, leads music on Sunday mornings for the congregation, we tend to mix styles a bit. We definitely tend to lean towards modern and more updated styles, but we usually throw in an old hymn, and often, a throwback song from the early 90s or even earlier. I've been adding those too my library too, because... well, that's what a library is, after all. But it has had me thinking a bit, too.

One of the songs Lifted Voice did probably back in November that I just uncovered in the living room was a song that I remember doing when I was in... 3rd grade? It was new then, but I can tell by praise and worship music standards, it's vintage. I looked it up on YouTube and it definitely sounded like it, too. I couldn't help but laugh a little bit. I even went all geeky on myself and listened to another song in the same key from one of the Hope Chapel CDs to just de-tox my ears and my brain, something that I think I'd rather use for a service anyway.

That little analysis, as it were, really made me marvel at how short of a lifespan a praise and worship song really has. The song I listened to after this vintage one was a modernization of an old hymn. One that's several centuries old, actually. Maybe this "step forward," the "progress" in church music, isn't so much progress after all.