A reflection inspired by Loyal Jones’ Faith and Meaning in the Southern Uplands

How can we best understand the people of the Southern Uplands, without our preconceptions and prejudices take over? Loyal Jones’ answer is to let the people of the region speak for themselves, through their writing, interviews and, not least, their music! Jones notes: “The words of songs always tell us the basic theology of the
people,”(p. 181) and “those who wish to understand religion in the mountains must listen carefully to the hymns for their layers of meaning and observe and talk with the singers, so as to perceive their feelings and sentiments.” (p. 200). I suspect that music is not only one place among others to find the real Southern Uplands, but maybe THE place to do so. Music, much more than sermons and writing, touches people’s minds and hearts, while also engaging their bodies (by movement, resonance, and other embodiments of song) (cf. the account in Jones, 193). This holistic engagement reveals multiple layers of meaning and gives insights into a people’s soul.

These points are driven home for me week after week at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic
Church here in Atlanta. The oldest African American Catholic parish in the city, OLL prides itself for its excellent music ministry featuring the best that African American Catholic music has to offer. The music combines an amazing sensitivity to the biblical texts it is based on (or the traditional texts of the Catholic liturgy respectively) with traditional African American rhythms and rhetorical figures. In this, the music inculturates theology. The African American experience is cross-fertilized with the Catholic experience and achieves one major feat: it makes room—creates a place—for the distinct African American culture within the still mainly Euro-centric Catholic Church.

Before the second Vatican Council (1962-65) enabled a more open approach to different cultural elements in the setting of the mass, African American Catholics often
had to choose between culturally sensitive and nourishing Sunday services and their Catholic denomination. It was not uncommon that African Americans would attend protestant services just for the music and the connection to their roots. A meaningful place for their religious experience was inextricably connected to music as place maker, music as integral part of their spiritual geography.

In the aftermath of the Council, the African American priest and composer Clarence
Joseph Rufus Rivers, quickly accompanied by a wide range of African American
composers such as Rawn Harbor, created culturally sensitive and meaningful
music that ever since has enriched the Catholic Church and made it a more
welcoming place of worship. This music encapsulates the history and theological
perspectives of African Americans and actualizes and inculturates both time and
time again.

The experience of the Southern Uplands is none of finding a place, where there was
none, but music plays the same role of communicating a culture, a theology more effectively than words alone could. And that is the great potential of the music: it provides an avenue into better understanding an appreciating a people and their cultural heritage. The Songs are always culturally particular, but at the same time they are hybrids of different influences that convey a complex history. But above all, music is universally accessible to human beings and thus a great teaching and appreciation tool.

My experience in the Bay Area and now at Our Lady of Lourdes led me to adopt African
American music and worship practices as my own primary form of worship. The power of the music is what drew me in, but it is also what intensified my interest in learning more about African American culture and history in general. After reading Loyal Jones’ book, another, more effective, and more appropriate way to learn about and appreciate the religiosity of the Southern Uplands is to listen to the music, both sacred and profane, originating from there and let it touch and inspire us (together with the stories and personalities of the musicians). In the study of American Religions–in the attempt to place American Religions–I am more and more convinced that we need to consider music as a (and in some cases even the primary) place where meaning resides and where appreciation and learning happens.