--- In [email protected], "Richard J. Williams" <richard@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> > > > Well I for one really like Bruce Cockburn's music
> > > > and never would even have known about it had not
> > > > turq posted some of it so I'm grateful to him for
> > > > that.
> > > >
> > > Bruce Cockburn is a great song writer and player but
> > > it's another case of cognitive dissonance that Barry
> > > likes his music, since everyone knows Cockburn is a
> > > devout Catholic. Many of Cockburn's songs refer to
> > > his Christian beliefs. Go figure.
> > >
> turquoise:
> > Willy, if you're going to be a troll, at least
> > be an accurate one. Bruce is Christian (Church
> > of England),
> >
> Oh, that's make a BIG difference. LoL!
>
> So, we agree about the cognitive dissonance.
>
> Avowed atheists like you and Curtis take the soul out
> of soul music - almost all of your music heroes were
> and are devout believers in the soul of man.
Interesting point. Here is something else:
"Most scholars of the blues believe it was born in the Mississippi Delta
shortly before 1900. The blues had its roots in other forms of black music that
included African rhythms, field hollers, jump-ups, spirituals, and church
music, but it became a distinct form by the turn of the century. It grew out of
the hard lives of poor black workers and sharecroppers. J. C. Handy, who would
popularize the blues,
pointed out, "The blues did not come from books. Suffering and hard luck were
the midwives that birthed these songs. The blues were conceived in aching
hearts." Many bluesmen found their songs by working on prison road crews and
work gangs. Sidney Bechet, one of the great jazz musicians, first heard the
blues sung by a prisoner
in a jailhouse. "The way he sang it was more than just a man. He was like every
man that's been done wrong. Inside of him he's got the memory of all the wrong
that's been done to all my people. When the blues is good that kind of memory
grow up inside it."
Bechet considered the blues to be the secular side of black music. "The blues,
like spirituals, were prayers. One was praying to God and the other was praying
to man. They were both the same thing in a way; they were both my people's way
of praying to be themselves, praying to be let alone so they could be human."
People sang the blues at work and at home, on chain gangs and in dance halls,
walking along a road, riding a mule or a train. The lyrics were about sex and
lust, love found and love lost, going away and coming home, driving mules and
riding horses, working on the farm and on the levee. By the time of the First
World War, the blues had become part of America's music, made popular by men
and women like W.C. Handy and Bessie Smith. During the 1930s and'40s, the blues
spread northward with the migration of many blacks from the South and entered
into the repertoire of big-band jazz. In the later 1940s and early '50s, Muddy
Waters, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, and B.B.
King continued the tradition. In the early 1960s, the bluesmen were
"discovered" by young white American and European musicians from The Rolling
Stones to Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan."
-- Richard Wormser
>
> Go figure.
>
> "Raised as an agnostic, early in his career he became a
> devout Christian. Many of his albums from the 1970s
> refer to his Christian belief, which in turn informs the
> concerns for human rights and environmentalism expressed
> on his 1980s albums. His references to Christianity in
> his music include the Grail imagery of 20th-century
> Christian poet Charles Williams and the ideas of
> theologian Harvey Cox...."
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Cockburn
>
> > but not terribly active any more.
> >
> > He was never devout, and to his credit only a
> > couple of his songs are overtly Christian,
> > although his spiritual beliefs certainly "leak
> > through" into his music. So, in the past, has
> > his interest in Taoism and Zen, so I guess
> > you'd have to call him an ecumenical songwriter. :-)
> >
> > Here's one of the Zen songs:
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35YMW_hpp6Y
> >
> > And here's what he thinks of *some* of his
> > fellow Christians, and the things they do, say,
> > and believe:
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GUiGz_6Y7g
> >
>
