Oliver Anthony And The Power Of Music
Father Josiah Trenham has a Vid up on Oliver Anthony.
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Father Josiah Trenham has a Vid up on Oliver Anthony.
Oliver Anthony And The Power Of Music
Father Josiah Trenham has a Vid up on Oliver Anthony.
He seeks to show by Anthony’s hit song, “Rich Men North Of Richmond,” the power of music. [Clip]
[“I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day / Overtime hours for bullshit pay / So I can sit out here and waste my life away / Drag back home and drown my troubles away.”]
Don’t hear much “music,” do you?
More like monotone lyrics pitched to some gittar strumming. [Clip]
[“Let me just explain a little about the lyrics and why I think this has been such a popular song with such a deep resonance in our culture. The rich men north of Richmond is a reference to Washington DC politicians. DC is about a hundred miles north of Richmond Virginia, and Oliver Anthony is a Virginian. So he’s making a reference to this power center, the professional political class.”]
Fr Josiah says Anthony’s critique of the political class is a “moving” message, because that’s what music does.” [Clip]
[“The song is moving people because that’s what music does, that’s what music is, extremely potent, this is the mindset of The Church.”]
Not quite.
It’s the words that the Church puts to music—not the music itself–that’s the “mindset of The Church.”
Did King David succeed in driving out the evil spirit of Saul by music itself? [Clip]
[“Scripture itself, even more important than these classical sources I’ve been reading to you, Scripture itself is very clear about the power of music. Think if you would of the role of King David and his harp in the life of King Saul. King Saul, who had resisted the inspiration of God and was pursuing his own willfulness and sins, began to be terrorized by an unclean spirit. And he could only be brought to himself and have the influence of the demonic suppressed that he could function if David was playing his harp. When David was playing his harp he literally soothed and calmed the soul of King Saul and drove away the power of the demonic.”]
Well, it worked at first…
…but soon after, Saul threw a javelin at David on three separate times to slay him while he played away.
It didn’t work.
Only when the prophet Elisha attaches “words of prophecy” to a harp does the music work. [Clip]
[“The mindset of the Church is that music is and it has an important role to play in men’s salvation, and promoting positive change, in aiding sanctification, in strengthening virtue, or it has a tremendous negative role depending upon the music itself.”]
If anything is negative, it’s Oliver Anthony’s lyrics put to a strum. [Clip]
[“Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds / Young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground / ‘Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down.”]
The song only makes men angrier, inflaming their frustrations.
In Church—without the Psalms, without the poetics of Patristic dogma, without the confessions of our Holy Faith…
…music by itself is simply ‘sounds of silence’ bereft of salvific meaning.
The words—not the medium—is the message. [Clip]
[“Let us who mystically represent the cherubim / And who chant the thrice holy hymn to the life-creating Trinity / Now lay aside all earthly cares.”]
Ahh…
Salvation, change, sanctification, virtue, evasion of vice, all comes to us in the Holy Hymns of The Orthodox Church.
Thank you Brother Nathanael for this wonderful speech.
But what about the Jews? They promote this AND Gangsta Rap. What’s to be done?
Please provide the name of the Orthodox hymn you posted or an online link to where it could be found. Thanks.
Never mind. i found it on the uTube post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=7ZtCqshryHg