that kid at the 0:20 mark is like "screw this, I could be riding my bike right now. But no, I'm here listening to a Lawrence Welk wannabe in this creepy house that looks like the set of a David Lynch movie."
2011 Yearbook: Singing Praise to Jehovah
by pirata 27 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
"In addition, an effort was made to assign each syllable of each word to a single note, rather than to place more than one syllable on a note."
They accomplished the goal of not sounding like spiritual music. There are very few songs that contain any melisma, that is, where a single word or syllable is extended over a passage of multiple notes. It is a very common feature in chants and hymns, because it is a powerful method of conveying emotions. Extending a word over an upward moving series of notes conveys happiness or heavenward motion. Obviously, spiritual sounding music which would convey feelings of happiness or heavenward movement is not appropriate in a Kingdom Hall. The few surviving melismas in this songbook are just two notes. And the only one that I can think of off the top of my head is "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" with a few lines like the opening "When" being across two eighth notes... and that's not much of an example.
Instead, Watchtower almost exclusively uses syllabic style. One syllable = one note. Instead of sounding spiritual, it all sounds very patriotic with a marching, purposeful, "let's get this over with", type of delivery... at least in the Kingdom Hall versions. I found it interesting that the recordings are the same basic melodies, but in a very different style. Instead of the piano music driving a syllabic delivery, as at your local KH, the recordings use orchestrated music with vocal arrangements that stray from the notation of the written songbook. The vocals are harmonized with sopranos, tenors, mezzos, altos, baritones, and basses with melodies that are not in the songbook that the average JW is holding... and that has a very "spiritual" hymn-like sound.
I can't help but feel that it's all a part of the guilt that the GB wants everysheeple to feel. Why don't we sound as good as the records? Why don't I enjoy the music? It's because the GB doesn't want you to sound good or enjoy the music.
Editted to add: I think I'm giving too much credit for actual harmonizing in the recordings. In the few songs I listened to, the music sounded very "corrected". I think they used very few singers and layered the voices to sound like a larger group. Some of the passages when it was, say, just the baritones, it sounded like a group of clones with nearly identical vocal texture. I think their "choir" was a relatively small group that was recorded, pitch-corrected, and layered. There won't be any live performances to match those mp3s.
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cantleave
Everything in JW world is highly sanitised and dumbed down, to remove emotion from music like the WTS is just a continuation of lobotomizing process that occurs to the sheeple during every meeting, assembly and convention.
The Governing Body wants adoration from brain dead, emotionless zombies.
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snowbird
LOL.
When I was at my most zealous stage as a JW, I used to rush home from the night meeting to catch the closing hymn of Billy Graham's Crusade - JUST AS I AM.
http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/j/u/justasam.htm
Beautiful song!
Syl
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brotherdan
SYL!!!! Apostate!
:-)
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edmond dantes
"Time to say goodbye" that would be a good song for them to sing.
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
Instead of Sinatra's "My Way," there should be "The Governing Body's Way," reworded to reflect the feelings of an empty life under the tyrannic dictates of some old farts in Brooklyn.
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edmond dantes
"I want to break free " by Queen that would make the Kingdom Charts.
