In which I envy the music of other religions

In church yesterday we watched one of those videos from the '80's that, while having some great and worthwhile messages, hasn't aged particularly well. Sure, the hairstyles and clothes are kind of embarrassing now, but what really got to me was the music. It was, to use my voice teacher's term, "Je-zak" (Jesus + Muzak), the pop-ified style of music I've heard in countless Church videos and special musical numbers during meetings. It's usually accompanied by piano and sung with as much breathiness or pressed phonation as possible. While I certainly don't fault the folks who sing it, seeing as how most of them have no vocal training, sometimes I really envy the other religious denominations with their long-standing musical traditions and trained singers.

I actually wrote a paper this semester about music education in the LDS Church and was able to briefly mention the amount of singing that accompanies our worship (group singing in almost every type of meeting, both formal and informal) and the huge amount of discretion allowed to local leadership to determine how strictly to interpret the directions from Church headquarters on proper music in worship. Because of this discretion, in a given geographical cluster of wards (congregations) in a Stake (like a diocese) you might get a bishop in one ward who will only allow music or arrangements from the hymnbook right next to a ward like mine where my friend M played the "Meditation" from Thaïs in Sacrament meeting. (Which was awesome, BTW.)

But vocal music is especially thorny. Instrumental music from outside the Church you can often get away with much easier, since it doesn't have any words. Vocal music, on the other hand, has to have a text that is doctrinally accurate and in the language of the congregation (not that I mind), but that tends to eliminate a lot of the music from non-LDS composers. In addition, music in the Church needs to avoid drawing attention to the performers themselves and away from the service.

Thus, when you combine the guidelines on appropriate music with an untrained laity who typically volunteers to do solo singing you tend to hear a lot of Je-zak in LDS Sunday meetings. No wonder I'm treated like such a freak when I visit my home ward.