RIMINI, ITALY, August 22 (CNA/EWTN News) .- Rock ‘n’ roll is innately religious and expresses a desire for the infinite, according to one of Ireland’s leading music journalists.
“This music is generated in the heart of man and is therefore fundamentally of the religious need, which is the fundamental original need of man; to know who made him, who he is, where he is bound,” said John Waters in an Aug. 21 interview with CNA.
Waters is the creator of a new exhibition entitled “Three chords and a longing for the truth; rock ‘n’ roll as a seeking for the infinite.” The display is proving to be hugely popular at the 33rd Rimini Meeting, an international gathering organized by the lay Catholic movement Communion and Liberation.
“The media always present rock ‘n’ roll simply as some kind of extravaganza of sensation and noise and stardom and narcissism and ego mania. But we are saying that within this shell of superficiality there is a hard core of fundamental content which is really the cry of man expressed in a modern idiom.”
Beyond the 800,000 visitors to this year’s Rimini Meeting, Waters wanted to offer his hi-tech, interactive exhibition to one person in particular – Pope Benedict XVI.
“When he was elected in 2005, all the hostile journalists dug back through all of his articles and speeches and tried to find things that would discredit him,” Waters said, recalling how the media finally unearthed a 1996 article in which Cardinal Ratzinger had opined, in the words of Waters, that “rock ‘n’ roll only appeals to the lower emotions of man and was therefore dangerous.”
Waters believes that Pope Benedict “is right in a certain sense,” that our modern culture only wants rock ‘n’ roll to be about “exaggerated sexuality, self-indulgence and narcissism.”
But he also wanted to show the pontiff a deeper reality.
“I wanted in a way to take the Pope by the elbow and lead him into this music and say, ‘come, there’s more, look at these artists, look at Bob Dylan, listen to what he is saying, listen to Leonard Cohen, listen to U2, see the sincerity of these people with the great questions that face man. And don’t be taken in by the exterior, by the noise, by the sensation, by the headlines.'” [Source]
Even as a headbanger myself you really have to do a pretty selective cherry-pick to say “Rock ‘n’ roll is innately religious and expresses a desire for the infinite.” More accurately this is true of the human person and it sees it’s expression in music as in other activities.
3 comments
Like St. Augustine pre-conversion, they look for their infinite happiness in limited, and in the case of the rock lifestyle, eventually vain and empty goods. You do hear a few songs really trying to ask what else is out there, but most acts seem a bit vacuous at the end of it all, even if they are musically gifted.
That’s not to say I don’t like some good rock. But I don’t ask rock to do what rock can’t.
We are made to yearn for God, so it is quite natural that this yearning shows up even in popular music. My mother often pointed out that any authentic LOVE SONG (in the original sense) could always be expressed as being sung to God – and there are plenty of examples of that in rock, just as there are in other forms of music.
That is not to say the form cannot be distorted or abused, as every other form of human act can be distorted or abused…. but that is inherent in the HUMAN act, not in the character of the music.
Indeed, one of my favourite GKC quotes is relevant here… it is the one which sprang to mind when I read that fine print on the first “Rush” album, “play at maximum volume for best results”:
I remember a debate in which I had praised militant music in ritual, and some one asked me if I could imagine Christ walking down the street before a brass band. I said I could imagine it with the greatest ease; for Christ definitely approved a natural noisiness at a great moment. When the street children shouted too loud, certain priggish disciples did begin to rebuke them in the name of good taste. He said: “If these were silent the very stones would cry out.” With these words He called up all the wealth of artistic creation that has been founded on this creed.
[GKC “The Tower” in Tremendous Trifles, quoting Lk 19:40; emphasis added]
Although I am sure the views of Mr. Waters are honest and sincere but the truth of the matter is that Rock and Roll music has always been about 2 big things SEX and REBELLION. The very name signifies a slang word for having sex in a moving car.