Andy Crouch at the Festival of Faith and Music at Calvin

I was able to hear Andy Crouch this morning at Calvin's Festival of Faith and Music without buying a ticket for the whole conference because I am, by virtue of Chuck, a member of the "Calvin community." His piano-based lecture, ala Jeremy Begbee, was fantastic. I didn't know what his topic would be...just knew I wanted to hear him. I'm so glad I did. He talked about what makes for "excellence in popular culture." Using two pieces of pop culture, the black gospel song "Over My Head, I Hear Music in the Air," the blues piece "The Sun Come Up" and two Bach fugues, he demonstrated about 8 characteristics of excellence.
1) Excellence emerges from suffering,
2) the AAA--->B form of black music demonstrates that the best music requires patience, 3) Excellent popular music shows fidelity to forms that have come before,
4) It cannot give justice to the mystery of the world if it spells it all out so therefore indirection is crucial,
5) It condenses the complex truth but is not reductionistic,
6) It comes from facing moratality, fully present to our limits,
7) It isn't redundant but rather uses subtraction rather than addition, ) and
8)--this from Bach--"who is the musical equivalent of "our Sunday best" (a line from "The Sun Come Up"): Excellent popular culture explores infinite complexity based on the simplest building blocks. The greek word meaning "many splendered grace" describes this quality.
He ended by applying all this to the grand narrative of history with Jesus at its center.

I wish you could also have heard the music, how he got us to sing Af-Am style, his version of the blues and played Bach fugues. Wonderful!