Studying Congregational Music: Chapter 7
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 7, “Political Economy and Capital in Congregational Music Studies: Commodities, Worshipers, and Worship,” by Andrew Mall.
Studying Congregational Music: Introduction
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Introduction, “Interdisciplinarity and Epistemic Diversity in Congregational Music Studies,” by Andrew Mall, Jeffers Engelhardt, and Monique M. Ingalls.
Music Business, Ethics, and Christian Festivals: Progressive Christianity at Wild Goose Festival
Ethics and Christian Musicking, Routledge (2021). In this chapter, I consider the ways in which the business of music complicates the ethics and objectives of Christian music. I address some of the effects of yoking Christian music to the for-profit imperatives of entertainment conglomerates, but I quickly turn my attention to Christian festivals, which are unique places in which competing ethics find an equilibrium, albeit one that is always temporary and often uneasy.
“Lift Each Other Up”: Punk, Politics, and Secularization at Christian Festivals
Christian Punk, Bloomsbury (2020). This chapter focuses on the Chicago-based Christian Celtic-punk band Flatfoot 56, analyzing their performances in secular venues and at the Christian music festivals Cornerstone and AudioFeed. Arguing that Christianity and punk are inseparable to the band’s identity, the chapter analyzes their approach to religious communication in songs and from the stage. The chapter also addresses the evolution of Christian music festivals and the tensions around youth-focused niche forms of Christian music, such as punk.
Tuning in to Locality: Participatory Musicking at a Community Radio Station
The Routledge Companion to the Study of Local Musicking, Routledge (2018). This chapter examines how marketplace factors affect programming decisions made within radio stations at the macro level, and illustrates their local impacts through a case study of the Chicago Independent Radio Project (or CHIRP). I argue that stations like CHIRP facilitate public intimacy and personal relationships in local spaces and places via imagined communities that are more social than they are imaginary. Through participatory musicking, their staff, volunteers, and listeners help construct musical locality together.
“This is a chance to come together”: Subcultural Resistance and Community at Cornerstone Festival
Congregational Music-Making and Community in a Mediated Age, Ashgate (2015). Based on historical research and ethnographic fieldwork in 2009–2012, including two summers volunteering as festival staff, this chapter examines the ways in which Cornerstone’s imagined community was constructed, manifested, perpetuated, and mourned. This work participates in a growing literature on contemporary Christian congregational music practices and contributes to scholarship in ethnomusicology and popular music studies that address explicitly peripheral musical activities.
“We Can Be Renewed”: Resistance, Renewal, and Worship at the Anchor Fellowship
The Spirit of Praise, Penn State University Press (2015). Live music is integral to worship services, where aesthetics of charismatic worship and rock concerts often overlap. This chapter examines the ways in which the Anchor Fellowship’s theology, worship practices, and congregational music are co-constitutive. This work participates in a growing literature on contemporary Christian worship music practices and contributes to scholarship that addresses peripheral musical activities.
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