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Show As a matter of faith took my seat amid hundreds of spectators and became incredibly anxious. The soft lights dimmed into a horrible darkness, and the musicians took the stage with a sort of malevolent glory. I shut my eyes to rid myself of distractions. The otherworldly music that poured from them entered my ears, but its affects grabbed many other senses – from the visions the sound conjured to feelings of dread and joy that crawled through my skin. It was beautiful and terrifying all at once. When the lights turned back on, I staggered out into the warm night. I was overwhelmed and exhausted, out of breath and my head was pounding. I was spiritually ravaged, but I felt more alive than I had in ages. I had encountered, through music, something well beyond my own self. For all its horror, this performance had also lifted me to a transcendent place. This wasn’t some half-baked acid trip at a funk show in a ratty pub. It was a concert in our very own Performance Hall, a world-class performance by our symphony and members of the Fry Street Quartet. It was a showing akin to being smacked by an ice-cream truck, not carrying ice cream but made from ice cream: wonderful and, certainly, life altering. I realized then the religious affect music truly has. It can take our individual selves to some other plane of understanding and existence. Plato believed that art, including music and architecture, served the purpose of crafting souls. It shapes our moral character and spiritual state more than anything else we experience. He felt it should inspire mankind toward greatness and nobility, to point humanity toward the good, or truth, so that we would strive for it. I’ve witnessed this in the large beautiful cathedrals of Germany, the Mormon temples here in Utah and the sculptures of ancient Egypt and Rome. With music, this is even more true. Whether it’s the possessing voodoo chants of the Caribbean Islands or the mix of elegance and chaos in classical music, religious music isn’t commercial, it’s spiritual. It’s about taking everyone in attendance on a journey beyond their individual selves so they understand and gain strength from divine presence and revere its beauty and humbling power. So why has this experience become so rare? People have musical devices with 100 gigabytes of sound at their fingertips, but it’s all dishwasher noise, nothing of importance. There’s plenty of what people call religious music too. I’ve fallen asleep on the sofa after a long night of bad pizza and worse zombie movies, only to wake up to the sound of informercials marketing bland pop rock as religious devotion – “300 of your favorite songs of faith, only $9.99.” The Reverend Rowland Hill once said, “The devil should not have all the best tunes.” The motive of this statement is disputable, but the result doesn’t seem to be. However his idea was taken, plenty of churches and faiths have adopted mindless pop music and stadium rock concerts as a method of selling salvation. Even in my youth, our school choir programs were just a way of meeting that cute girl at the other end of the room. The pop sells CDs but does it lift the listener or does it merely pander to them? Is there still music that achieves the transcendence of old hymns or classical pieces? I say there is, and the answer lies in a strange place: metal. I’m not talking about the lost-my-girlfriend radio junk that’s vomited from the speakers at Vans Warped Tour. I mean the stuff that gets banned in various countries. I mean the stuff that has, since 1969, terrified peace loving hippies and theocratic dictators alike. It isn’t played on many radio stations, except as a gimmick. There are some exceptions like WNYU or even our own Fusion HD3 USU radio station, which sometimes gives it the attention and respect it deserves. It is a music that isn’t designed to sell. It’s designed to terrify, mystify and humble. It reaches a receptive audience the same way “Beethoven’s 9th Symphony” does, through an otherworldly power, even if less nuanced than classical. Metal came about in decades where it seemed the mainstream population hid from reality with drugs, fashion and its own ego. Metal tore at this veil of delusion by putting a dark and menacing reality on display through its words and roaring sound. It evolved into a variety of forms that sometimes used complex yet violent rhythms, other times ripping fast guitar melodies to make its impact on the listener, not unlike the frenzied classical of Wagner or tribal chants. Many times it sounds like war music from another century. It doesn’t cover its eyes to life’s atrocities like pop, nor does it sit and mope about them like emo. It embraces them as real and part of a dynamic existence and looks to conquer them. Sometimes metal uses mythology, ancient religions and romantic literature as vehicles for its sonic narratives. It can be foreboding and heroic in the same stroke. It demands through its punishment that the listener look outside themselves and see a universe that must be understood and explored, not ignored. Not all metal is great. Some of it is even worse than the zombie noise from those infomercials and its recording style can turn people off. At its best though, it lies closely with the spirit of religious music of old, to transport listeners to another state of existence where they understand truth and even divine presence more clearly. It’s music that seeks transcendent reality, no matter how dark the lens it looks through. So this Halloween, I say ditch the “Monster Mash” and dust off some old CDs of Beethoven or some early Morbid Angel. Throw on your headphones and go for a long nighttime walk. It may take you where you’ve never been before. on Will Holloway is a senior majoring in philosophy. His column appears every other Wednesday. Comments can be left www.aggietownsquare. com or sent to will.r.h@ aggiemail.usu.edu Come Scotsman’s s ee wh Corner at is NEW in the Hub! 11:00 am-2:00 pm Tuesday-Thursday October 27th-29th ! Page 13 W Menu Items I Views&Opinion NEW Lo ok! NE Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009 Enter to win! Sponsored by: -Ipod -Junction Meal Card -Free Food -T shirts Salad Masters It's a green experience I’m Sorry, but ... Yellow Pages? What’s That? Finally, a Business Directory that treats you like you live the 21st Century. BigBlue-Biz.com USU’s Favorite Marketplace. |