Sound Mixing: Living in the Difference

So far, my two favorite chapel speakers at Indiana Wesleyan this year have been:

Shane Claiborne, who spoke on February 8, and Jeremy Begbie, who spoke today. 

I didn't take down the title of his talk, but I'm pretty sure it was "Sound Mixing: Living in the Difference." He talked about our understanding of the triune God in terms of sound. He said that visual artists can get only so close, but there are limitations. We can't perceive two colors at once. Either the red covers the yellow or the yellow covers the red or they mix and we have a different something altogether - orange - but that color is only one color. With sound, the notes sound through each other, build onto each other, edify each other, and complement each other all at once. When we play a chord we hear three distinct sounds that equally fill the room and yet are one sound. In the physical realm, two objects can't occupy the same space at the same time, but when it comes to sound, two notes can, in essence, occupy the same space at the same time.

Mind = blown.

Then he went on to extend his metaphor using bitonality, and then also using a term that he may have come up with himself: bistylism; which indicates two different styles of music in harmony with each other. As an example he let us listen to a snippet of a track from an album called Simunye which combines the voices of I Fagiolini, a British choir founded in 1986 at Oxford, and the SDASA Chorale of Soweto in South Africa. According to the website for I Fagiolini, "Simunye is a Zulu word meaning ‘we are one’ and seemed a suitable name for this project developed by I Fagiolini and the SDASA Chorale of Soweto." I loved what I heard - a combination of sacred music "sounding through" and building upon traditional Zulu chants. So cool.

Here are some quotes:

"Music is alive with difference."

"What we hear doesn't occupy a bounded space."

"Notes can sound through each other. They can, in fact, occupy the same place at the same time."

"God frees us to be fully human."

"A sonic metaphor of a triune God."

Regarding our term "World Changers": "In Britain you would never use that kind of language. They'd all get worried about optimism and that sort of thing."

"We should strive for a world where cultures do not crush, overpower, or hide each other or merge into one, but sound through each other."

"We must leave room for the different, for the eccentric, for the wild card."

If the recording goes up on IWU's website I'll try to input the link.

After chapel ended I went up to the front and got the opportunity to meet him, shake his hand, and talk very briefly with him. He discovered that I'm an aspiring Shakespearean scholar and asked if I had ever been to Stratford. I told him sadly, no, but I had been to the Globe, though I hadn't seen a performance in either place. Then he asked about my ambitions after undergrad and I told him about my plans for a summer of graduate study at Oxford right after I graduate and he shook his head and said, "Ah. Excellent for you, I'm sure, but you see, I'm a Cambridge man." :)