Music and Religion/Philosophy

Music and Religion/Philosophy

I have grown up in a Christian family for most of my life. I remember going to my church on Sundays. my parents would drop my siblings and I off at kids church on the second floor and go off to their grown up service. We would go up to the second floor in an elevator. When it arrived on the second floor, the doors would open to reveal a green floored hallway and the sound of a Christian band's music blaring through the speakers. A short walk down the hallway lead to many rooms, the one on the right was almost as big as a gym and the source of the music and the location of the kids church. The large, carpeted room did not have the lights on but colorful spot lights moving around. When church started, we always began with the worship. Most of the songs we sang went with motions. One of my favorite songs was “Jesus is my superhero”. I loved the motion where we put our arms up and swerved them around like we were superman. I also loved the video animation of the superhero flying through the sky. My favorite of all the songs were the ones that went highest. From the age of eight I had been doing singing lessons and became completely obsessed singing high notes. I usually ended up singing a higher harmony to whatever the main song was because my low notes had not developed. A few years after my family started going to this church, I sang “O Holy Night” in front of the entire church as a part of the Christmas church service. It was one of my very first big performances. Before this I had pretty much only done competitions. A few years after this, I competed in a Christian music competition. I had the opportunity to listen to a lot of music as I searched for the perfect song for myself. When I moved to South Carolina for college, I needed to find a new church. All of the churches I visited had different music and ways of playing the music, which was really cool. The first church I visited sang hymns, but they them with soul and more instruments than the piano. The other church I visited sang hymns with just the piano. At the church I attend now, they write their own music and have a band, a DJ, and, sometimes, a choir.