I’m back in Las Cruces, New Mexico, spending the break between semesters in the spot where I plan to eventually retire. When I was here last summer (2016), I visited the Unitarian Universalist Church so decided to join the people gathered there on Christmas Day. Not many showed up—about twenty or so. The service was abbreviated. The emphasis was on singing Christmas carols from the hymnal. Unitarian Universalists, it appears, love to sing.
Inside the bulletin on a separate sheet of paper, Catherine Massey, the Director of Music, wrote an essay titled “Sunday Music Notes.” She asks, “How can music help us respond to the needs around us?” She listed several ways we can benefit from singing and chanting. One way is calming the self, enabling us to better cope with life’s struggles. Singing can also bring comfort to the sick and/or dying as well as to their families. She used her final paragraph to write about the necessity of music in social action movements.
…[S]inging has been an integral part of many social action movements, from the American Civil rights movement of the 1950s-60s to the anti-apartheid movement of South Africa. Ysaye Barnwell, member of the African American women’s a cappella group “Sweet Honey in the Rock,” has said that for a social justice movement to gain and maintain momentum, it needs songs to be sung by the people. She believes recent movements, such as Occupy Wallstreet, have had limited success because the people on the streets haven’t found their songs.
I am still grieving about the choices many American citizens made during the recent U.S. election. Although disheartened, I know I am not alone in my grief and outrage. I hope that decent people will push back against the misogyny, heteronormativity, racism, xenophobia, and just plain hatred that this new administration stands for and will, no doubt, perpetuate. We need music and songs to carry the “resistance” forward. Continue reading “A Movement Needs A Song by Esther Nelson”
Feminism and Religion 