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Less lecture, More music!

In his TED lecture Alain de Botton recommends audience response and music to meet the emotional needs of secularists, instead of just lecturing. What music stirs you? Can it be repurposed to celebrate the wonderous real world and/or gird us to face its challenges without the poison of theism?

I get chills every time I hear Bernice Johnson Reagon and The Freedom Singers in this White House Performance. I wish we could use this not just for Occupy but adapt it for our fight for Atheist rights.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Natalie A Sera on January 19, 2012 at 7:30pm

My music is all the gorgeous instrumental music of the Renaissance, particularly the stuff for viols. But then, I'm prejudiced -- I play the viol (viola da gamba). If you want to know what that is, google it. And listen to some of the music -- to me it was the epitome of pure harmonic elegance and beauty, and no one will ever achieve that again! :-)

Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on January 19, 2012 at 10:06pm

All sorts of music can stir me, from Praetorius and Bach and Handel through Brahms and Rachmaninoff to Prokofiev and Shostakovich. For more modern times, there's the Beatles, Joni Mitchell the jazz ensemble, Oregon, and the choral music of Eric Whitacre and that mentions but a scant few. I'm lucky enough to live in Cleveland and have an instrument like The Cleveland Orchestra to further that enjoyment as well as introduce me to works I've never heard before.

At some level or other, I suspect that everyone has music like that.

Permalink Reply by Steph S. on January 20, 2012 at 9:12am

This song is great! They are a great band!
This song has always held meaning for me.

Permalink Reply by Steph S. on January 20, 2012 at 10:06am

http://canterburyatheists.blogspot.com/2009/04/background-to-dear-g...

Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on January 20, 2012 at 12:15pm

With all this talk about music that moves us, I have to throw the following in:

The composer is Eric Whitacre, the words by the late Mexican poet Octavio Paz. The work is "Water Night," performed by the BYU Singers under the direction of Ronald Straheli. I first heard this perhaps 10 years ago when, after hearing my daughter's high school a Capella ensemble perform Whitacre's work, "Sleep," I was moved to research into his work and found the recording that includes this performance. Ten years later, I still find this to be one of the single most moving pieces of choral music I have EVER heard.

Certainly, there is other very special music out there, more than anyone could ever fully catalog ... but this to me is something very, very special.

Permalink Reply by sk8eycat on January 20, 2012 at 1:01pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K16fG1sDagU

Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on January 20, 2012 at 1:38pm

Ray Stevens, eh? ALLLLLLLLLLLLLL RIGHTY, then!

Permalink Reply by sk8eycat on January 20, 2012 at 3:40pm

Seriously, I love ballet and chamber music the most...really anything but C&W and the vocal parts of opera. Oh, I'm not fond of rap, hip-hop, and stuff like that, either.

And I have a Parrot-Head hat in a closet someplace, too. I LOVE "Kick it In, Second Wind." Been there, felt that.

Chorus:
So won'tcha kick it in now second wind
We got two more hours to go
Losin' any more hope of scorin' any more dope
And we still gotta do another show

We didn't do dope when I was in HOI, but the rest of it IS just how we felt in the middle of the second show on a 3-show day. By the third show we were so tired we got silly.

Permalink Reply by Chris Breman on January 21, 2012 at 1:06am