David Brooks wrote a column for the New York Times called “The Segmented Society,” which dealt with the loss of music as a cross-cultural force that countered fragmentation in society.  In it, he talks about the high school curriculum that Steven Van Zandt (of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band) has come up with to combat the fact that “most young musicians don’t know the roots and traditions of their music.  They don’t have broad vocabularies to draw on ….”

We see this in modern churches too, where “worship wars” have often erupted over musical styles, with worship leaders and church members circling the wagons around certain styles or certain strains of the larger musical heritage that goes back to the Psalms, the songs of Moses and Miriam, and into Genesis, received from our timeless God.

If you’re looking for some good food for thought, read Brooks’ column, and then think about how we can all develop an awareness and appreciation of music as a tie that binds, and how we can demonstrate this awareness and appreciation in our families, our churches, our concert halls, our schools and elsewhere.

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