As I prepare to retire from church music, I’ve decided to make Music Notes a bit broader for the next few weeks. Rather than writing about specific pieces, I thought I’d reflect on what I’ve learned. Writing about music has been a challenge. Writing about music is no substitute for the real McCoy. Imagine someone who’s never heard music before. This seems odd. Would you introduce music to a music-less society by reading to them a music theory textbook? This is how the church evangelizes. In essence, we read music theory textbooks to those who have never directly experienced music. And we expect them to understand this esoteric abstraction, an ineffable, life-changing joy we call music, simply because we talk about it.

The only simple way to introduce music is to bring your harmonica to the indigenous lands and “evangelize.” Play a tune and sing a song, joyfully. Call it whatever you want – music, a ditty, a jam session. Maybe, the savage beast would pause. Maybe they would be calmed and tame. Maybe they would be uplifted and transformed by your music-making. A direct connection to the indescribable will have been made, simply by demonstrating music to the music-less. What do we do for the hopeless, the listless, the loveless, the lifeless? Invite them to a lifeless worship service and expect them to be transformed?

Preaching is hard, in much the same way as teaching music is hard. How can the passion of music be transferred in words? Do I bop you over the head with a music theory text, or do I lull you with a sweet, gentle, or awe-inspiring tune, laced with passion and verve? It’s walking the walk. Talking the talk. It’s not talking about walking. It’s demonstrative. It’s directly shown.

The Beatles played in smokey dive bars seven nights a week for many years, before they made a penny. Why? They were teenage kids hopelessly in love with music. Martha Stewart loved baking. Do you think when she was learning, she took one look at her brownies and said, “This is going to turn me into a famous billionaire tycoon.” Is a brownie the secret to wild success? Hardly. She simply loved baking and demonstrated her passion for it on TV and in books. Follow her path, and you’ll fail.  

What’s love got to do with it, Tina Turner? It’s not a secondhand emotion, but a delicate primacy. When I reverse engineer my music career, the only thing that makes sense is that love created and sustained. I practiced incessantly only because I loved music. And now, love leads me elsewhere. I love writing. Demonstration through a different medium.

Putting love into words is like saying music theory is music. That’s like saying the Bible is God. Demonstrating the difference between theory and reality is all I can do. It’s like taking my harmonica into “the world” of music-less people and playing a ditty for them, really introducing them to music, not in theory or in rhetoric, but with truth unspoken.  

I loved what I did here. But now: “My beloved spake, and said unto me, rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.” And away I go, demonstrating love. If it’s a secondhand emotion, it’s noise. It’s time to get your harmonica out and play a simple, joyful tune for “the heathens.” It’s a matter of priority to love first in all that I do and in all that I say. What can I say in theory, when all I can do is practice love and show it? Soli Deo Gloria!