• Mashup Religion
  • Jonymac Studio
  • The West End Rhythm Kings

Otherwise Thinking

~ a blog by John McClure

Otherwise Thinking

Monthly Archives: October 2011

Tone of Voice and the Expression of Religious Desire

25 Tuesday Oct 2011

Posted by John McClure in Musings

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

desire for God, geno-song, performance, preaching voice, religious desire, sermon invention, sermon soundscape, sound of the sermon, the grain of the voice, tone of voice, vocal performance, voice

In Mashup Religion: Pop Music and Theological Invention, I argue that in vocal performance, the voice shapes the desire for God that is given expression in, under, and around the actual words spoken.

Popular culture theorist Peter Antelyes, when speaking about the music of Bessie Smith, used the intense closeness of the microphone as a metaphor to describe the graininess of her singing: “Bessie didn’t need a microphone because she was a microphone, or rather, she had swallowed it; and she would fill you up with her own ‘muscle.’”

Semiotician Roland Barthes calls this the “geno-song” which gives expression to the sheer material beauty or voluptuousness of the way the words are “bodied forth,” accentuating the shaping and uttering of sounds apart from their being communicable language in service to codes and conventions of proper speech and communication.


In the book (119-120) I go on the say that:

The grain of the voice invents the tone or tone of voice established by a theological composition. This tone of voice is pervasive and invents the shape of religious desire. … This desire takes many shapes defined by many tones of voice: persuasive, collegial, moralistic, wise, insightful, responsible, anxious, troubled, longing, hopeful, and so on, and contributes to the construction of a soundscape of religious desire that a theologian and audience inhabit and rely on.

The tone or grain of the work is pre- or extra-verbal. It expresses an intention: life lived within this religious soundscape, prior to, or in spite of the content of one’s words. It says such things tacitly as: “welcome to the intimate, exclusive soundscape of the wise mentor who desires for you to learn what she knows,” or “welcome to the loud, nagging soundscape of the angry parent who desires a more obedient child,” or “welcome to the inviting, interpersonal soundscape of persuasion and the desire for your conversion.”

As the sound of religious desire searching for language, the voicing of theology lies at a deeper, more interior level than words or ideas can express. As theologian Burton Cooper puts it: “Our love of God, our trust in God, our felt need of God, our loyalty to God, in other words our emotional relatedness to God, lie at a more fundamental level than our ideas about God.” Even without the words, the grain of the voice expresses a very particular religious intention, creating a soundscape that shapes the form of religious desire that exists between communicator and audience. The final sound of a theological performance, therefore, is a profound expression of religious intentionality, giving voice to the shape of the God-shaped hole between performer and audience as it reaches toward adequate words. When an audience hears the final mix, they tune in to the tone of the work, and hear beyond words the sonic shape that desire for God can take within the larger soundscape of their lives.

From “Air Guitar” to “Air Preaching”

05 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by John McClure in Musings

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Air Guitar, Air Preaching, figures of speech, Fred Craddock, learning to preach, preaching and performance, preaching gestures, rhetoric and preaching, teaching preaching, tropes

From time to time, I’ll be posting items on this blog taken from the blog for my new book, Mashup Religion: Pop Music and Theological Invention.  In the book, I suggest that those who compose theology at the interface between the academy and popular culture, whether creating blogs, engaged in religious education, advocacy, preaching, etc., could learn a great deal from those who make popular music. One element from popular music making that could easily migrate over into performance-based modes of popular theologizing, especially preaching, is the art of “covering” other artists work (riffs, hits, beats, rhythms, etc.), and then “styling” on those tropes until they become one’s own. There are many aspects of the larger process of “covering” the work of others, but one useful aspect is found in what is known as “air guitar.” Air guitar playing is the act of imitating the rhythms, notes, accents, movements, riffs, cadences, and overall style of another guitarist. For the actual guitarist, this is the beginning of the process of “living into” another artists unique style, absorbing much of it, and making it one’s own. Here’s a great short clip of Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page almost unconsciously engaging in air guitar to a classic riff by guitarist Link Wray.

JIMMY PAGE from “IT MIGHT GET LOUD”

 

This practice could easily migrate over into the way one learns to preach or compose theology in general. For instance, now that so many sermons are available in recorded form online, it is simple to listen to or watch preachers who are seasoned and have lots of great “riffs,” and then “air preach” their work, embodying gestures, attitudes, or facial expressions (if video is used), but more importantly, learning any number of stylistic “tropes” or figures of speech that could be used in sermons. Here is one I sometimes use in class by the renowned preacher Fred Craddock. Like Link Wray in the video clip above, Craddock’s style represents a now classic genre of preaching sometimes called “inductive preaching,” in which the preacher begins with the particulars of experience and moves slowly toward a large idea. One of Craddock’s favorite tropes for getting listeners on board experientially is to have them imagine a word or category of thought with him. It’s a simple trope, and I sometimes have students listen to him several times, then “air preach” with him, and finally “style on” his work by choosing another word or category (fear, hope, peace, etc.) and developing it in a similar way. Try it out. Here’s the sermon clip containing the trope used by Fred Craddock.

FRED CRADDOCK: SERMON CLIP

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 192 other subscribers

John McClure

Recent Posts

  • My Sermon Organization Method: Sermon Sequencing and the “Multi-Track Sermon”
  • Transcript: Jeremiah Wright’s 9/11 Sermon
  • Getting Sermon Feedback
  • Sermon Logic in a Hyperlink Generation
  • Multimedia Preaching
  • Humor and Preaching
  • Extemporaneous Preaching and the Art of Improvisation
  • Long-Range Preaching
  • The Frustrated Preacher
  • This Sabbatical: Trying On A Few (Old) Shoes

Categories

  • Connecting the Dots
  • improvisation
  • Musings
  • Views from the Street
  • Who is this?

Archives

  • July 2020
  • September 2016
  • July 2014
  • December 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011

Buy Speaking Together and With God

Speaking Together and With God: Liturgy and Communicative Ethics

Buy Under the Oak Tree

Under the Oak Tree

Buy Mashup Religion

Buy Otherwise Preaching

Buy Preaching Words

Buy Claiming Theology in the Pulpit

Buy The Four Codes of Preaching

Buy The Roundtable Pulpit

Buy Listening to Listeners: Homiletical Case Studies

Download Telling the Truth: Preaching about Sexual and Domestic Violence (free)

Buy Best Advice for Preaching

Buy New Proclamation: Year C; Advent Through Holy Week

Blogroll

  • I P Prospective
  • Leslie Rodríguez Photography Blog
  • Los Rodriguez Life
  • Mashup Religion
  • Ministry Matters
  • Peer Pressure is Forever
  • Rock and Theology

Websites

  • Academy of Homiletics
  • Captured by Leslie: Leslie Rodriguez Photography
  • Homiletic: A Journal of Religious Speech Communication
  • Otherwise Thinking facebook page

RSS Mashup Religion

  • Sherry Cothran’s “Strange Woman”: Popular Music as Parahomiletic
  • New Blog about Artists in my Recording Studio
  • Para-homiletics and video games
  • From "Air Guitar" to "Air Preaching"
  • Wound 3: The Wounding of “Spatial” Desire
  • II. The Second of Five Wounded Desires: The Wounding of Ethical Desire
  • I. The First of Five Wounds/Five Desires: the Wounding of Our Desire for God
  • Caveats
  • Join me in a theological mashup
  • Musicians Might Learn a Thing or Two from Theologians

Otherwise Thinking

  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Otherwise Thinking
    • Join 192 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Otherwise Thinking
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar