Introduction
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Introduction This book provides alphabetical listings of artists associated with contemporary Christian music. For the first time anywhere, an attempt is being made to present such data as personnel lists and discographies for these artists, along with essays that provide biographical information and critical summaries of their work. The book is fairly ex- haustive in its treatment of performers associated with contemporary Christian music and, as such, provides a com- prehensive treatment of the phenomenon itself. They’re all here: the saints, the pilgrims, the pious, the outcasts, the hypocrites, the prophets, the heretics, and the martyrs;they’re all here in their earthly and spiritual glory. You’ll read about miracles and scandals, about incredible sacrifices and greedy exploitation. You can trace the early gospel influences on some of rock and roll’s biggest stars or explore the (sometimes temporary) midcareer detours of spiritual converts. You can find out what happened to a lot of folk now regarded as has-beens in the world at large, and you can also read about the incredible productivity of an impressive number of never-weres, folk who have labored in obscurity for decades, producing an impressive and occa- sionally brilliant body of little-known material. Rolling Stone magazine refers to contemporary Christian music as “a parallel universe.” That label rightly indicates that we are talking about a distinct world analogous to the realm of popular music in general. Thus, contemporary Christian music encompasses a wide variety of styles and genres. There is Christian rock, but there is also Christian country, Christian folk, Christian new wave, Christian punk, Christian death metal, Christian gangsta rap, and everything else imaginable. But one should not think that these styles simply mirror the general market or that the Christian artists are just creating Christian versions of whatever is hot in the world at large. In general, the Christian music world has an integrity of its own. Some artists are more creative and original than others, but the stylistic vari- eties tend to develop in a manner that is more parallel to the general market than simply reflective of it. In a few in- stances (a capella groups, third wave ska, rapcore) the Christian artists have even been in the forefront, with knowledgeable general market performers copping from them. Rolling Stone agrees: “The top Christian-pop artists aren’t any more derivative than, say, 30 artists randomly selected from Billboard’s Top 100 in a given week.” If there is one great misconception regarding contemporary Christian music—aside from the idea that it is limited to a particular style or is necessarily derivative—it may be that the music is definitively religious. The perception is understandable, but it does not hold true: the divide between what gets called Christian music and popular music in general is not drawn with regard to what is religious and what is secular. As it turns out, a great deal of contempo- rary Christian music is completely secular and, of course, a fair amount of general market popular music is at least 10 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN MUSIC tangentially religious. Christian music artists do not just sing about God and church and Jesus and the Bible. They also write and sing songs about romance and the day their dog died and how cool their new car is. In quite a few in- stances (perhaps about 25%), the material labeled contemporary Christian and that labeled general market would be indistinguishable—if the tapes got mixed up or sent to the wrong radio stations, no one would ever know the differ- ence. This, of course, begs the question as to why there should be a parallel universe in the first place. What Is Contemporary Christian Music? Joe Bob Briggs (America’s self-proclaimed Drive-In Movie Critic) once defined contemporary Christian music as “bad songs written about God by white people.” We’re going to adopt a somewhat broader definition in this book, which can be understood only in light of the phenomenon’s historical development. Contemporary Christian music came into existence as a recognizable entity during the Jesus movement revival of the late ’60s and early ’70s. Artists like Children of the Day, Andraé Crouch and the Disciples, Phil Keaggy, Love Song, Barry McGuire, Larry Norman, and 2nd Chapter of Acts began singing songs about Jesus that re- flected the character of that revival and of their own transformed lives. The music was called Jesus music back then and, critically, it is probably more appreciated now than at the time. The simplicity and, indeed, naiveté of the songs can be charming, and the zeal with which they are delivered is inspiring. One would be hard-pressed to find another instance in popular music in which the performers cared as much about what they were doing as these young Jesus freaks. Of course, the production standards were terrible and the native talent of the artists sometimes left something to be desired,...butthese people really did believe their records were going to change the world, and that is some- thing difficult to capture in a studio. And, for hundreds of thousands of people, their records did change the world—a fact seldom noticed in either musical or ecclesiastical histories. Contemporary Christian music, then, did not develop out of traditional or southern gospel. The Jesus music pio- neers were for the most part completely ignorant of those forms (Crouch is an obvious exception). Rather, it devel- oped out of rock and roll, as young musicians who were excited about Christ began writing faith songs in the only musical idiom available to them. But why did these Jesus music stars form their own network, separate from the popular music industry? I can think of three reasons: 1) there were simply too many of them. The revival produced hundreds of Jesus music bands. A few token Jesus songs made their way into the Top Forty, but DJs were prepared only to sample the onslaught, not to give it full control. This is understandable apart from any prejudice against Christianity. If, following James Brown’s “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud,” hundreds of African American art- ists had all begun recording songs about how wonderful it is to be black, mainstream radio stations would not have played very many of them—not because they were racist, but because in the general market, songs that celebrate the special interests of a particular subgroup are by definition exceptional. 2) For all its joy and festivity, the Jesus move- ment revival had a dark side, an apocalyptic spirit that encouraged isolationism and mistrust. The Jesus people didn’t want to sign contracts with unbelievers, lest they find themselves in the employ of the Antichrist. 3) Most of the music lacked widespread appeal apart from appreciation of its ideology. In this regard, the strength of Jesus music (and of much contemporary Christian music to follow) was also its weakness. Precisely because the music connected so well with its target audience, it failed to garner much appreciation from those on the outside. For those who were “into” Jesus, the Christian music from this period remains some of the greatest music of all time;but for those who weren’t, it just doesn’t do the trick. By the ’80s, the special-interest network that Jesus music had spawned had developed into a multimillion-dollar industry. Contemporary Christian music had its own magazines, radio stations, and award shows. The Jesus move- ment revival was over: some say it morphed into the Religious Right;others (including this author) contend that it was devoured (destroyed) by that aggressor. In any case, the world of Christian music was now less beleaguered. Big budgets and high production standards came into play, and artists like DeGarmo and Key, Amy Grant, Petra, and INTRODUCTION 11 Stryper came to define Christian music in radically different terms. The whole point, now, seemed to be that the music was just as good as anything the world could churn out and, indeed, could be appreciated on its own merits apart from any particular belief system. Often, these claims were true, and yet the music still did not get much air- play within the general market. Why not? The constant contention of the Christian artists was that this was due to a censorship born of ideological bigotry: Christian artists were persecuted for their faith by being blacklisted from gen- eral market radio stations and record racks. Many artists found they could not get past this impasse even when they recorded completely nonreligious songs (Grant is an obvious exception). It is certain that such censorship sometimes did (and still does) occur. Music industry personnel and station pro- grammers confirm (always off the record) that some radio stations had (and sometimes still have) unofficial policies against playing music by “any artist known to be a Christian.” I asked one such programmer the rationale for such a policy. The reply: “Christianity is not cool. If people hear a Christian singer on our station, they will think we’re not cool. It’s as simple as that.” Such an attitude goes a long way toward explaining the continued existence of con- temporary Christian music as a parallel universe, as an entity that needs to exist to grant a forum for artists who are otherwise denied participation in the music business for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of their work. But there is more to this censorship thing, and I think much (probably most) of the time, the bias is not against Christianity per se but, more legitimately, against any attempt to co-opt the music field for promotional purposes.