'The practice of being religious (praying, interacting with spiritual texts, worshipping, conducting oneself mindful of others) and of listening to music (as a regular discipline with emotional commitment, as a fan within a fan community) have much in common. They are life shaping practices(p.51)
'Personal Jesus, how popular music shapes our souls' goes beyond the notion of finding God inside lyrics of popular songs. It sets out to discover what is religious in them, how they incorporate myth and a worshipful transcendence and build community in their own right.
The authors are however mindful that there is a gulf between the worship of God and worship for it's own sake as in a telling quote from Bono '... music is worship... The smoke goes upwards to God... or something you replace with God.... Usually yourself'
The authors sound a note of alarm that music can relate to consumption, as indeed can religion.
In a chapter on 'the tingle factor' they speak about music's transcendent ability to transport one to a time and place in one's memory or beyond. I was taken back to the Boomtown Rats performance. Whist hardly in my top ten the band does contribute to the soundtrack of my life.
After a fairly raucous set Bob Geldorf went into 'I don't like mondays' an upbeat song which tells the chilling story of a 1979 school massacre. He left the words and music hanging and in a moment of almost complete silence I am sure I wasn't alone in reflecting on innumerable senseless murders over the last 30 plus years and silently weeping. You could have heard a pin drop.
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