JW - Paintings and Music

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BibleSteve

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Many people have never seen the beautiful paintings, nor heard the beautiful music that Jehovah’s Witnesses produce to illustrate Bible accounts.

Here’s a small video sample: Click Here

I hope you enjoy it
 
Recently there has been a major effort to “expose” the Watchtower for purposely putting all kinds of satanic subliminal images in the Watchtower’s publications. Anonymous CDs full of magnified, twisted and redoubled images from the publications have been sent out to over a hundred persons (including myself) with intent to cause governmental investigations into the Watchtower for planning this major conspiracy. To me, this is total bunko! Personally, I am not into conspiracy theories in general, and this one seems to be the result of Christian fundamentalism or conspiracy theorists gone wacko. Why would the Watchtower intentionally do something that is exactly the opposite of their agenda to begin with? They are more afraid of Satan than most any other group in my opinion! Most Witnesses I know are afraid of objects being demonized, setting foot in a church, wearing crucifixes or anything else that might have some supposed satanic roots. It is like accusing the Mennonites of being secret satanists; it just doesn’t wash to a critical-minded person who is educated about the group. Here is the web page for your consideration. HERE is a discussion of that web page on the Jehovah’s-Witnesses.com discussion board.
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freeminds.org/history/subliminal.htm

So, is any of the music rock and roll?
 
I have found the vast majority of the art work in WTBTS publications to be amatuerish and the music from the Song Book to be banal, just an honest opinion.
 
BibleSteve said:
Many people have never seen the beautiful paintings, nor heard the beautiful music that Jehovah’s Witnesses produce to illustrate Bible accounts.

Here’s a small video sample: Click Here

I hope you enjoy it
Click to expand...
I’m sorry, Steve, but I didn’t enjoy it. I couldn’t stop laughing at how westernized Jesus looked and at that 1980’s hairstyle of his! Seems like the illustrators in NY don’t realize Jesus was a Jew.

Wow, what bad memories that brought back. Honestly, Steve, as beautiful as that music may seem to you now, immerse yourself in Bach for a month of so and you won’t be able to tolerate it.
 
SerenaHC said:
Honestly, Steve, as beautiful as that music may seem to you now, immerse yourself in Bach for a month of so and you won’t be able to tolerate it.
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By “it” I mean the Kingdom Melodies, not Bach! A good dose of Bach will change your life for good!
 
SerenaHC said:
By “it” I mean the Kingdom Melodies, not Bach! A good dose of Bach will change your life for good!
Click to expand...
Yerusalyim said:
I have found the vast majority of the art work in WTBTS publications to be amatuerish and the music from the Song Book to be banal, just an honest opinion.
Click to expand...
OY! The Music has no art no passion,the art is static and emotionless-3 things real art shouldn’t be without.total tripe!🙂
 
Bible Steve:

Why did the Witnesses stop using real music (as in a piano played by a person) at their meetings?

I used to play at both meetings and assemblies. Then the live music was eliminated and only recorded music was used.

When this happened, I was still an active Witness in good standing, BTW. But nobody ever offered an explanation for the change. And the change was implemented all over, not just in our congregation (so it had nothing to do with the quality of MY playing).

Do you know?

Ruth
 
Ruth,

My mother used to play at the KH. When they stopped, it was because many congregations were having difficulty finding someone who could play piano and were asking the society to print guitar chords for the songs, etc., so they could find someone who played guitar to lead the singing. The quick and easy solution was to just record the songs and, you guessed it, sell them on tape (later CDs) to the congregations.

I remember when they used to have LPs of the songs and they would play those whenever the piano player was absent. Often times, the records would skip while you were singing. So tacky!
 
I’ve never seen it in the states, but in an english speaking congregation near Stuttgart Germany (and the German language congregation as well) they had live music, including a friend of mine who played clarinet. It slightly improved the rather banal music…but not enough.
 
I remember showing people the art work at bethel, I was told to tell people that the artists put a lot of work into researching what they painted to make it as real as possible.

Ofcourse I don’t know if that is true. But as a jw I must say jw music and art work was NOT a major part of my life.

I always wounderd why we did not have more of our own music…and why kingdomhalls were so plain and without art work.

Jw’s don’t realy have there own gospel music artists, and kingdomhalls don’t have much artistic expression…just very plain.
 
When intellectual inquiry is repressed as it is with the JWs, creative exploration also comes to a halt.

The greatest Christian art is Catholic in origin.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
oh let’s be fair! as far as modern ILLUSTRATIONS go the JWs are not bad and some of the murals at Patterson or Wallkill are nice.
The music----well I remember the old fuschia songbooks when alot of the stuff was similar to more traditional protestant fare…I even remember seeing the one before that–it was green. But the brown big one that came out in the 80’s–bleh. Sounded like commercial jingles.
I even bought an old fuschia one on ebay. My childhood favorite was # 88-Keeping Integrity and we had the LPs too–I saved my allowance and bought them for home, on the last B side of the record was an assortment of Bethel singers–I loved the violin in #88.
In fact it was the words of the second verse and chorus that made me realize I had to leave JWs…
“I will not sit, with wicked men of lies. I hate the company, of those who truth despise. With evil men, take not away my life, my soul with those whose hands, are full of bribes and strife!—
But as for me, determined I shall be, to walk eternally–in my integrity!”
 
I’ve seen and heard them and they are both rather blah.

No, I don’t enjoy them.

But to each his own said the old lady when she kissed her cow.
 
BTW, Biblesteve, I hope you didn’t actually think people would faint in coils over them.
 
BibleSteve said:
Many people have never seen the beautiful paintings, nor heard the beautiful music that Jehovah’s Witnesses produce to illustrate Bible accounts.

Here’s a small video sample: Click Here

I hope you enjoy it
Click to expand...
the illustrations were very nice in my uneducated artistic opinion 🙂 I couldn’t hear the music because I have no speakers :o

Peace…

MW
 
you guys are harsh! JWs, as humans, love art and beauty as much as anyone does. I do however agree that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but come on give Steve a break! And I happen to think that some of the illustrations and pics in the Revelation Climax book are lovely—I especially like God’s woman with the silver white hair and the pic of the throne with the glassy sea and the symbolic elements. The colors are nice.
 
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