"Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who make its laws"
The 17th century quote came from the pen of the Scottish writer and politician, Andrew Fletcher.
Fletcher's remark is indicative of the apparent power of music to affect emotions, mindsets, choices and ultimately, culture. "Music is a universal language that we all understand. By appealing to our emotions, it has the ability to break down complex issues into things we can all relate to like love, friendship, fear, or loss. In this way music expands our horizons and opens our minds to new ideas. In the hand of a skillful artist, music is wielded like a mighty weapon to win philosophical and cultural battles on mankind's social landscape" (Christina Nuñez).
It is easy to understand why many teenagers and young adults have musicians as their role models (for some reason, models are called 'idols').
More than the charisma and the personality of these artists, it is the music that appeals to the young demographic. The music is merely the bait. Unfortunately, some baits lead to a snare. Music is a prophet, it prepares the way to a man’s soul and makes him captive to values and ideologies of the artist.
When you want to determine the moral temperature of society, check its music. Bad music makes bad people. Bad music makes people greedy, and promiscous; insecure and depressed. Bad music is the trumpet for society’s vices. Good music on the other hand is everything bad music is not and leads to everything bad music doesn’t.
There is broad categorization of music into several genres: popular music (rap, rock, reggae...); art music; religious music, and so on.
Personally, I rather that music be categorized into good or bad music.
Good music to be any musical composition that promotes and advocates right thinking and living.
With this narrow but efficacious categorization, I find many "gospel" or "christian" songs to be bad songs.
First, nearly all "christian" songs are vertical in composition - speaking about God; his glory and beauty. This is very good but it is not enough. We need to have horizontal songs that speak constructively about human interaction in their social space - songs against injustice, and laziness; bad governance and unpatriotic citizenry.
The playlist of a young christian in Nigeria is probably 40 percent sermons and 59 percent vertical songs from Mercy Chinwo, Dunsin Oyekan, Nathaniel Bassey...
I always wonder why we don’t often sing about the family, and parenting, and living right, and all sort of social issues?
This was Fletcher's primal idea as he remarked that famous quote.
But more importantly, many "christian" songs are bad songs because they neither lead us to think right nor act right.
At the very least, a song that is theologically incorrect doesn't lead us to think right about God. It is a bad song. Regardless of how sentimental it is. Christianity is not sentimentalism.
A song that is not functionally useful is a bad song. I mean, an artist sings a song and that song doesn't fill a missing gap or respond relevantly to any problem. It is a bad song.
A song that actuates deceptive philosophies like self-preservation and self-focus is a bad song. Why should I listen to a song that encourages me to harm my enemies before they harm me? This is unbiblical philosophy of Robert Greene
God is a God of good music. Songs make up about 15 percent of the bible (mostly the Psalms and Song of songs). The night before Jesus died, he had the last supper with his best friends and as they ended the evening meal, they reflected on a song:
After singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. - Matthew 26:30
God approves and instructs for both the vertical and horizontal use of music. Every good and perfect gift (including good music) comes from above. Our God desires good music. Our world needs good music.
We need artists who will sing songs that are theological, functional, and yet emotional.
Are you a gifted singer or song composer? We need you to sing good vertical songs, but even more, good horizontal songs.
