Secular music?

[Purplemango]

I honestly dont understand why music now labeled from secular to religious. The way I see it, God made music, and music is good. And as long as your faith is grounded, a mere song shouldnt shake your faith. Like I love listening to OFWGKTA because of the creativity in story telling and musicality, and I just love how it all just seems like a stream of conciousness if that makes any sense, and it helps make me appreciate God’s love more as it really puts into perspective how much he loves as even after the darkest thoughts we can spew out. lol idk, what do you guys think

 

[JimR-OCDS]

God gave us the gift of music and some receive the gift of being able to create music.

Most music is good, but some can be evil.

Is a rap song about a woman being raped with a flash light good?

Of course I don’t actually consider rap as music, but it’s still classified as music, nonetheless.

Jim

 

[LegoGE1947]

God gave us the gift of music and some receive the gift of being able to create music.

Most music is good, but some can be evil.

Is a rap song about a woman being raped with a flash light good?

Of course I don’t actually consider rap as music, but it’s still classified as music, nonetheless.

Jim

Or a rap song where every other word is a cuss word.

 

[MidnightSun12]

How many Catholics in today’s culture have seen their faith slowly dulled by the culture? How easy it now to become indifferent to issues like cohabitation and homosexual activity? This is because the media keeps pounding these issues like a drum and eventually that drum beat starts to have an effect.

There’s a reason why men like Stalin used propaganda to bolster their political support… because it worked. Satan also knows that propaganda works all too well and that’s why the media keeps promoting sexual immorality on television, in advertisements, in fashions, in music. If we continue to let this propaganda into our souls, then eventually it will have an effect whether we want it to or not.

For this reason, Catholics have no business listening/watching/reading any media that promotes anti-christian and/or sexually immoral content… We are already getting too much of that garbage in our daily lives just standing in line at a fast-food restaurant. Now, more then ever, our homes need to be a strong antidote to the culture and this can’t happen unless we cut off the pathways that satan is using to enter our homes.

 

[LegoGE1947]

How many Catholics in today’s culture have seen their faith slowly dulled by the culture? How easy it now to become indifferent to issues like cohabitation and homosexual activity? This is because the media keeps pounding these issues like a drum and eventually that drum beat starts to have an effect.

There’s a reason why men like Stalin used propaganda to bolster their political support… because it worked. Satan also knows that propaganda works all too well and that’s why the media keeps promoting sexual immorality on television, in advertisements, in fashions, in music. If we continue to let this propaganda into our souls, then eventually it will have an effect whether we want it to or not.

For this reason, Catholics have no business listening/watching/reading any media that promotes anti-christian and/or sexually immoral content… We are already getting too much of that garbage in our daily lives just standing in line at a fast-food restaurant. Now, more then ever, our homes need to be a strong antidote to the culture and this can’t happen unless we cut off the pathways that satan is using to enter our homes.

We saw another example of that “drumbeat” last week in Boston with the violence at the end of the Marathon. It seems to be getting easier and easier for people to inflict violence on one another.

 

[findingmyself08]

I agree with you…to a point.

I have been a music lover for most, if not all of my life. I’ve played piano and trombone for over 14 and 13 years, respectively. I still sing in my church’s choir. I was even a music major in college during my freshman year (I loved composing particularly). I’ve played in school bands from middle school through college. I also have a vast taste in music sensibilities: from piano (all periods: Bach, Chopin, Beethoven, Debussy, etc.) to rap (some, not all) to punk to rock to folk, etc.

I happen to agree with Peter Kreeft and C.S. Lewis that God may have created the world using music.

It may well be in music that the world was created, and that music is the original language. Spoken poetry is to music what prose is to poetry. Prose is ossified poetry and poetry is half of music." - p. 46, Peter Kreeft in Every Thing You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven

BUT that doesn’t mean that all music is good. As with everything else in the world, what we make of it and use it for is instrumental (get it, get it? Okay a little bit over the top).

For instance, it is good to have pride in your daughter or son for doing well in school, but it is not good to boast about your children’s achievements. It is okay and sometimes good to eat food and drink alcohol, but it is not good to become gluttonous and drunk.

The same can be said of music. Not everyone uses music in a good way. Others above have pointed out examples of music being used in a bad, harmful, and disrespectful way.

But I don’t think the difference is between secular and religious. I don’t think you mean that because many people, including yourself, would probably agree that Chopin or Beethoven make great music (as well as other musicians). They just might not agree with you on where such music should be used. For instance, I love to listen to Sara Bareilles or Mumford and Sons or Simon and Garfunkel, but that doesn’t mean I think their music should be played in church.

I think the difference you should contemplate is between good music (that is good musicality, good rhythm, good lyrics, etc.) and bad music (bad musicality, bad rhythm, bad lyrics).

 

[Lisa1967]

I listen primarily to Christian music now but I used to listen a lot to classic rock and love ballads. I didn’t listen to songs with profanity, but I heard a lot of songs about love addiction, the “I can’t live without romantic love” thing. I would start feeling bad about myself if I didn’t have a boyfriend. I decided those songs weren’t of God and stopped listening to them.

I also listened to songs like Imagine (there’s no Heaven) and I decided they weren’t of God either.

I do listen to classical music though.

 

[Purplemango]

I do agree with many points here as they are very true, but I don’t think there’s such a thing as bad music. Listening to music about rape or extreme ignorance shouldn’t meant you are for rape and extreme ignorance. Cuz at the end of the day, if you look at a song from a objective standpoint, it won’t be judged by the content, but by the quality. Like how well the message is conveyed you know? Some dude once said that art disturbs the comforted and comforts the disturbed, I think this is exactly what happens here. Hearing songs that are extremely ignorant helps me always be aware of how much healing the world still needs. From a musical standpoint, I think what OFWGKTA is doing is musically changing up the game. I only get excited cuz I personally want experiment in this direction as well with hip hip and make beautiful praises to god in that outshine musically anything that out there. Another good example of music that is very spiritually convicting but not religious is Kendrick Lamar’s good kid maad city. This is a beautiful eyeopener to not only Kendrick’s spiritual struggles but also to the corruption and sadness of gang violence. Lol idk if that makes any sens but yeah

 

[findingmyself08]

Okay, one of your arguments is stopping me from agreeing with you. It involves what you said here:

Listening to music about rape or extreme ignorance shouldn’t meant you are for rape and extreme ignorance. Cuz at the end of the day, if you look at a song from a objective standpoint, it won’t be judged by the content, but by the quality. Like how well the message is conveyed you know? Some dude once said that art disturbs the comforted and comforts the disturbed, I think this is exactly what happens here.

Let me break down the quote, section by section.

Listening to music about rape or extreme ignorance shouldn’t meant you are for rape and extreme ignorance.

Agreed and I don’t think anyone would disagree with you. If someone were listening to the music because they advocate rape, our warning sirens would be going off. That is not normal or even okay behavior.

Cuz at the end of the day, if you look at a song from a objective standpoint, it won’t be judged by the content, but by the quality.

Sure, but what do you mean by content and quality? Do you mean do you look at the music (the notes themselves) by itself, the lyrics by themselves, or at the song as a whole - lyrics, music, and all? Because I could look at a piece and say, “The music is fantastic, but the lyrics don’t make sense.” That doesn’t mean the whole song is bad, but that the lyrics that are set to the music are bad. You can say the same thing about the music itself, “This music doesn’t fit these lyrics - it’s really happy and the lyrics are depressing.” That doesn’t mean the lyrics are bad, but that the music is not good - either in how it’s laid out or how it is executed.

I guess my point is that people do judge songs by their content (both what notes are played and what topics are in the lyrics) as well as their quality (the music is well-executed and is well-written and the lyrics are sensical).

But really, music is very subjective. Some people love country. Others hate it with a passion. Some could sit through symphony after symphony glued to their seat while others couldn’t stay awake five minutes into it.

Like how well the message is conveyed you know?

Okay, so this puts a standard to what you mean by quality. Quality = how well message is conveyed. This makes sense with what I said above. A song can be good if it’s executed well. If not, it’s not that the song is bad, but that the person singing or playing it may have not done the song “justice”.

But what kind of message is a song about rape trying to convey? Particularly if the song talks about raping someone for the fun of it. Is it trying to convey rape is okay?

Because I could see making the case if the song is talking about how someone has overcome rape (a very sad, stirring song, I’d imagine). But I could never see a song that condones rape being considered a great song even with fantastic, orchestral music to go with the lyrics.

Some dude once said that art disturbs the comforted and comforts the disturbed, I think this is exactly what happens here.

This “dude” apparently understands that art is also subjective. If art were objective, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Objective means free of any bias or prejudice caused by personal feelings. According to the definition of objective, that means being disturbed or comforted by art is a subjective feeling. Otherwise, we would agree that all art is one or the other: good or bad. But we don’t. And it is not that way in music either.