Ah. I watched that first few minutes.
That Mass–several guitar players, the music itself, the singing style. . .I have seen and indeed
participated in myself over 30 years ago as a teen, and the format/style has been the same for nearly 40 years in many if not most Catholic Churches.
Now --before you get out the flame throwers --some people absolutely** love** this music. Not all of them are ‘oldies’ like me (50) who grew up at a time when this was ‘new’ music.
IMO – so please don’t think I’m stating this as dogma – there are some people, perhaps many people, who like a musical style which contains elements of ‘folk’, ‘pop’, ‘glory and praise’, ‘gospel’, a music style which is often felt to be more ‘intimate’, more ‘simple’, more ‘down-to-earth’ etc.
The 60s (I was very young but I did live through them) introduced Peter, Paul, and Mary for example in the ‘folk’ style that had, admittedly, been around 20-30 years or so (think Arlo, father of Woody, Guthrie) which had evolved from Appalachian and other roots. Kum-ba-yah is part of this strain. Very ‘granola’, very ‘back to nature’, often ‘countercultura’, often praised for being so simple it is ‘deep’ etc. That’s why you can find people born 30 years after this was among the POP sensations (60s) who are still drawn to the style. As somebody who lived through pre- and post Vatican 2 (and all the ‘secular’ goings on including 1968, Martin Luther King, even very ‘young’ memories of Kennedy’s assassination) and with a sister 5 years my senior, believe me I heard everything from the Stones to Dylan to the Beatles to PPM and then some in the 60s.
The music we began to have in the very late 60s and 70s in our churches could have been–and indeed was–played on the radio, as ‘entertainment’, as totally ‘secular’ music. Simon and Garfunkle? Anne Murray? The Beatles? We would go from playing the records (and the 8 track tapes, LOL) at home or in our cars and walk into church where we would hear them, over amped, again, all through Mass.
The people writing some of the Church music of the time that was not lifted directly from the top 40 radio were often ‘respected’ musicians (Weston Priory, St. Louis Jesuits et. al.) but they were hampered in their creativity because they attempted to adjust themselves to something already there. They basically were writing not for the Church but for the genre that they were told was ‘expected’, that "the congregation wanted.’ Not surprising that the 60s style then really did not change. Many (not all) musicians writing for the Church are still writing 60s folk tunes,
not ‘contemporary’ music at all. That is one reason why the Church to many a viewer seems to be ‘stuck in the 60s’.
Most of the ‘acts’ (secular) of the 60s either changed and adapted as music itself ‘changed’ in the 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond. Those who did not sound, in their reunion ‘concerts’ for the PBS crowds, as ‘dated’ as the vast majority of the “church music” we hear today.
Sure, many of the songs we sing were written in the 80s and 90s. But they have the same ‘folk’ ideas (simple words that are ‘deep’) and any musical changes are still decades old.
Ever hear Barry Manilow? Compare Barry’s songs (themselves arguably ‘folk’ or ballad in style) and his use of the ‘key change’ to indicate the ‘climax’ of the song’s message, with most of Haugen-Haas of the 80s and 90s. Lifted almost directly.
Now for those who like the style, fine. But this is not the only style of “Church music” that exists (anymore than the knee-jerk reaction of “Neither is slow organ music!” the ‘only style’ either).
For centuries we have had music that develops. In the last 40 decades, the vast majority of music has not developed’; it has stood firmly in the 60s. Time for a change. We keep good music–many of our hymns are centuries old, some less than 100 years–and we have had some hymns even of this troubling 40 years which deserve to be classic. Keep them. . .but let music–true sacred Church music–out of its 60s prison and into the 21st century. Let it develop naturally as it always had until the last generation; don’t keep it in an eternal time warp.
