Music and religion: Taboo or just getting started?
I thought this was really cool. I actually know one of them…
LOS ANGELES
12 August 2007 (BWNS)
From www.bahai.org
Be cool. Be religious. Yes, you can watch MTV and still have morals.
Some music professionals in Los Angeles – all of them Baha’is and all knee-deep or more in the entertainment industry – have come out with what one recording artist terms a “straight-up Baha’i album.”
The group calls itself the Dawnbreaker Collective, the album is named “Arise,” and the music is, well, cool.
Rap, rock, funk, R&B, spoken-word – all are represented.
“Come talk with Me, speak heavenly, remember Me, O son of Spirit,” sings Tara Ellis on one of the hip-hop tracks. She has recorded with rap star Eve and with Will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas fame, and is unapologetic about her current contribution to a religious record.
“This was an incredible project to part of,” she says. “It’s different to the stuff that most of us do because this is a straight-up Baha’i album. It’s us being Baha’is and doing what we love. …
“It’s the sound of our times but in a good way.”
Benny Cassette – he’s a hip-hopper and producer who has worked with Mos Def, Willie Nelson, Eve, and Akon, and is slated to release a solo album on Universal Records – says the idea is to talk religion with young people in a language they understand.
He and the other artists – 17 of them altogether – wanted to “create something that Baha’i kids can listen to as easily as they listen to some of the other popular music out there.”
“You know,” he says, “they look up to the people they see on MTV and things. So what we are trying to do with this album is show them that there are people who work with the MTVs of the world but still hold to our values – which they can do, too.”
Hundreds of Web messages from the U.S. and around the world suggest that Benny and company are on the right track.
“I just discovered your music,” writes a woman named Sandra from Cameroon. “Really, I didn’t imagine rap could be so inspiring.”
From Dorina in Germany: “I like this special new style of performing Baha’i themes. Do you know what important work you are doing?”
Part of the album’s new style is the way sacred scripture is used….
You can read more here
The discussion I wanted to get going is this: Does music help people come closer to God and if so, why do some denominations of different faiths ban it?
