Each business goes from an early experimentation interval to regulate its focus towards what makes essentially the most cash or might be most simply marketed to the most individuals. Innovators change into a part of the institution. The second decade of Christian music skilled that change in an enormous approach. America within the Seventies skilled many messy crises, from Watergate to Vietnam, however that messiness additionally invited individuals to problem tradition. The Nineteen Eighties was the Ronald Reagan period, identified for its social conservatism as many People sought higher paychecks and higher stability.
The cultural shift had large penalties. The primary era of individuals making modern Christian music have been largely former hippies nonetheless aiming to problem tradition with their music, simply in a Christian approach. The following era was much less taken with being countercultural and extra taken with making a residing in an enormous market the place saying difficult issues of their songs might imply dropping cash.
A associated downside, which musicians like Michael Card have highlighted, is that the common Christian’s familiarity with basic hymns and different conventional church music decreased. The extra musicians know older music kinds, the extra assets they will draw on to provide work that doesn’t sound like the present market. The longer modern Christian music has existed, the simpler it has change into to construct a musical training that solely covers latest music, and the more durable it turns into to make one thing totally different.
This doesn’t imply that each one Christian music turned bland within the Nineteen Eighties. Christian metallic bands like Stryper appeared, making sufficient cash to outlive by working between secular and Christian music markets. Within the Nineteen Nineties, musicians like dc Discuss launched Christian rap. However, as Wealthy Mullins preferred to remind individuals at his live shows, Christian music is an business producing leisure for cash. Up-and-coming industries take large dangers, however doing difficult issues (like Mullins’ musical about Francis of Assisi that units the story within the Civil Warfare) requires dangers that most individuals in a big business is not going to take.
Because the Nineteen Eighties continued, musicians who wished to write down about non secular themes with out relying an excessive amount of on Christian radio, like Canadian musician Bruce Cockburn, discovered methods to market themselves on mainstream radio. Many occasions they labored collectively: albums produced by T-Bone Burnett would possibly characteristic Cockburn alongside Sam Phillips, Mark Heard, or Michael Been (generally with his band The Name). Different musicians, just like the band Luxurious, carried out in small music festivals and church basement live shows, a form of Christian rock underground scene. Joseph M. Keegin describes how this underground rock scene even included punk bands with names like As I Lay Dying.
There was selection in small locations. Nonetheless, what the common listener heard on Christian radio or noticed on sale in Christian bookstores began to all sound the identical. The complaints that Christian music had gotten boring had arrived.
In fact, the Nineteen Eighties-Nineteen Nineties was some time in the past. Has Christian music advanced since then?
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