Wednesday 9 September 2009

Beginning to Talk about Music

William Goldstein Master Class Improvisation Piano and Chinese Violin
This is one of the videos in a series highlighted by my friend Graham Fitch.

Backtracking about twenty years, a book came out that was called Drawing on the right side of the Brain by Betty Edwards.Convinced it must be of the devil, my friends advised me to keep away from it. Hmmmm those were the days! But what this highlights is the territory being covered by Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks.
The reason I bring this up is that until I was baptized in the Spirit I did not know I was a musician, even though I'd been playing the classical guitar for 3 years. As soon as I'd had this experience and a month later according to scripture started praying in other languages, a deluge of musicality started to manifest. I wrote praise songs. Some are in different songbooks. OK I'm not Graham Kendrick or Matt Redman, but I am in Songs of Fellowship UK book. The Bible makes it clear this is normal, as though music is in all of us. It just needs unlocking. Why else would St Paul write "Be filled with the Spirit and sing new songs?" This actually happened to a whole generation of us in the 70s. Nowadays people have got lazy and just let Darlene Zchech do it all, (and earn the millions commission!!)
I say all this, because I recognize immediately what William Goldstein is doing. In the secular world this seems astonishing...and OK...he does have technical flair....but you know what all over the world in hundreds of thousands of churches the same thing is now happening every Sunday. Such that when a Chris Moyles actually bothers stumbling upon it...he comments. And rightly so. Where do you think Whitney Houston, Mavis Staples, half of Motown, Elvis Presley and everyone learned their stuff? Well it flaming well wasn't school!!! It was church. School is for the left-brain...or has been since the Enlightenment. But if you want to learn where things really happen, you'd best tiptoe down to your local believer's tinpot shack. I mean come on!!!use your brain you secular guys...what's keeping Christians in a tin pot shack chapel? It AIN'T THE ARCHITECTURE!!!!

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