This past weekend, Calvin hosted the eighth Festival of Faith and Music, a conference that "brings together musicians, critics, journalists, artists, and listeners for three days of discussing and celebrating insightful music that explores, in some significant way, issues of faith." It’s a place where PhD poets rub elbows with punk rockers and NPR music critics, as well as Calvin students who can get in, listen, and participate for free. To me, most people felt fervently thankful and humbled to be conversing about how culture has been influential in who they’ve become.
Among many workshops, this year included a talk by Boer-Bennink RD Austin Channing Brown about Beyonce’s Lemonade and its glorious and nuanced expression of black womanhood. Musician Julien Baker, younger than most college students, presented on the ethics of the punk and DIY communities, and their close parallels to qualities of early Christianity, as well as what the modern church may have to learn. The weekend felt studded with moments of tearful vulnerability, highlighting how convicting these subjects were to the presenters. It felt as if they had waited a long time to say what they meant and felt they had found the right ears here.
This may have been the last Festival. The Student Activities Office, which organizes the Festival, is being scaled back in keeping with the budget cuts that dealt such a huge blow to the Calvin arts community last year.
A week before the Festival, I was sitting on a friend's couch late at night, having a conversation with a new friend from GVSU who frequently comes to Calvin shows. She remarked on Calvin’s reputation as a hushed and reverent audience. Some artists are used to being half-ignored during their sets, and appreciate being listened to like a friend. However some feel scrutinized and pressured in a Calvin venue. She mentioned that Calvin audiences are too stoic, and frankly, too white. Half appreciative and half annoyed, she remarked, “It’s feels like a lecture. At some point, it’s disrespectful to sit back while they’re putting themselves out there. Give ‘em some love!”
Maybe Calvin’s typical audience posture works great for relaxing folky music with lots of literary content to digest. What about something that asks you not only to listen attentively, but to feel, and feel in a participatory way? Every genre asks for a different form of reciprocation or outward expression of attentiveness or presentness. And granted, some people naturally respond invisibly and only within themselves.
A few semesters ago, local rapper AB played a free show in the Ladies Literary Club. Twenty people came. Every way we participated—from standing, crowding the stage, waving arms back and worth, rapping along—was by his explicit direction. He felt weird. Someone joked we were busy listening intently to the words, but certainly we weren't quite being a charitable, appropriate audience for his art. How could we love him better?
To me, if art is going to make a connection, it requires candor. My favorite art is all about vulnerability, honesty, empathy, and compassion. That’s my currency of connection and meaning. How do we repay the favor?
The first night of the Festival, local R&B group Vox Vidorra opened for Jamila Woods. Throughout the set, their singer danced and twisted, beckoning the audience wordlessly to match her, to try to feel the music in the same way, and to show her. Maybe she just wanted to feel less alone, dancing up there. Eventually, enough of the audience budged to domino the rest.
The singer’s invitation felt similar to a church band telling me to put my hands together, a professor asking me to contribute to discussion, or a visual artist standing by their gallery piece and encouraging me to ask them questions. It’s awkward. It’s pulling teeth. And mostly, I don't think I have much to offer. When some asks "Can I get an Amen?" I'm not the one to affirm it.
The next day, Ken Heffner, the director of the Student Activities Office, asked me if I felt vulnerable dancing. Even though I love to get into things like that, I still had to say yes. I usually prefer to remain a removed voyeur. But in some situations there’s a vulnerability I feel obligated to give back. If an artist is singing their heart out about something personal, I want to affirm and reciprocate. I want to give myself and others permission to be silly and vulnerable back.
Plus, it's still entertainment. Dancing is fun for me. And it's so so important to remember to enjoy yourself, however you feel most pulled.
Vulnerability and empathy looks different in every context. When my childhood friend Luke opened for Julien Baker, giving back as an audience meant screaming the words to a hymn with him, raw-voiced. For Julien, it was just standing and listening quietly. David Bazan, whose lyrics are already heartbreaking and disarming, broke the fourth wall and fielded questions from the audience in between songs, and not just at the end, as is Calvin tradition. For Jamila Woods, I became possessed by 2000’s Beyoncé at the first notes of her cover of “Say My Name.” After all the concerts, at Ken's afterparty, expression for me was dancing to Lorde's single “Green Light”, in the same way she does, when other students, adults, and PhDs, all looked around for some company or reciprocation to validate that this was a time that it was okay to be silly, bodily, at first ironically, then fully. And afterwards, maybe we all felt a little friendlier because of it, having shown each other a more informal posture for a little while.
Among many workshops, this year included a talk by Boer-Bennink RD Austin Channing Brown about Beyonce’s Lemonade and its glorious and nuanced expression of black womanhood. Musician Julien Baker, younger than most college students, presented on the ethics of the punk and DIY communities, and their close parallels to qualities of early Christianity, as well as what the modern church may have to learn. The weekend felt studded with moments of tearful vulnerability, highlighting how convicting these subjects were to the presenters. It felt as if they had waited a long time to say what they meant and felt they had found the right ears here.
This may have been the last Festival. The Student Activities Office, which organizes the Festival, is being scaled back in keeping with the budget cuts that dealt such a huge blow to the Calvin arts community last year.
A week before the Festival, I was sitting on a friend's couch late at night, having a conversation with a new friend from GVSU who frequently comes to Calvin shows. She remarked on Calvin’s reputation as a hushed and reverent audience. Some artists are used to being half-ignored during their sets, and appreciate being listened to like a friend. However some feel scrutinized and pressured in a Calvin venue. She mentioned that Calvin audiences are too stoic, and frankly, too white. Half appreciative and half annoyed, she remarked, “It’s feels like a lecture. At some point, it’s disrespectful to sit back while they’re putting themselves out there. Give ‘em some love!”
Maybe Calvin’s typical audience posture works great for relaxing folky music with lots of literary content to digest. What about something that asks you not only to listen attentively, but to feel, and feel in a participatory way? Every genre asks for a different form of reciprocation or outward expression of attentiveness or presentness. And granted, some people naturally respond invisibly and only within themselves.
A few semesters ago, local rapper AB played a free show in the Ladies Literary Club. Twenty people came. Every way we participated—from standing, crowding the stage, waving arms back and worth, rapping along—was by his explicit direction. He felt weird. Someone joked we were busy listening intently to the words, but certainly we weren't quite being a charitable, appropriate audience for his art. How could we love him better?
To me, if art is going to make a connection, it requires candor. My favorite art is all about vulnerability, honesty, empathy, and compassion. That’s my currency of connection and meaning. How do we repay the favor?
The first night of the Festival, local R&B group Vox Vidorra opened for Jamila Woods. Throughout the set, their singer danced and twisted, beckoning the audience wordlessly to match her, to try to feel the music in the same way, and to show her. Maybe she just wanted to feel less alone, dancing up there. Eventually, enough of the audience budged to domino the rest.
The singer’s invitation felt similar to a church band telling me to put my hands together, a professor asking me to contribute to discussion, or a visual artist standing by their gallery piece and encouraging me to ask them questions. It’s awkward. It’s pulling teeth. And mostly, I don't think I have much to offer. When some asks "Can I get an Amen?" I'm not the one to affirm it.
The next day, Ken Heffner, the director of the Student Activities Office, asked me if I felt vulnerable dancing. Even though I love to get into things like that, I still had to say yes. I usually prefer to remain a removed voyeur. But in some situations there’s a vulnerability I feel obligated to give back. If an artist is singing their heart out about something personal, I want to affirm and reciprocate. I want to give myself and others permission to be silly and vulnerable back.
Plus, it's still entertainment. Dancing is fun for me. And it's so so important to remember to enjoy yourself, however you feel most pulled.
Vulnerability and empathy looks different in every context. When my childhood friend Luke opened for Julien Baker, giving back as an audience meant screaming the words to a hymn with him, raw-voiced. For Julien, it was just standing and listening quietly. David Bazan, whose lyrics are already heartbreaking and disarming, broke the fourth wall and fielded questions from the audience in between songs, and not just at the end, as is Calvin tradition. For Jamila Woods, I became possessed by 2000’s Beyoncé at the first notes of her cover of “Say My Name.” After all the concerts, at Ken's afterparty, expression for me was dancing to Lorde's single “Green Light”, in the same way she does, when other students, adults, and PhDs, all looked around for some company or reciprocation to validate that this was a time that it was okay to be silly, bodily, at first ironically, then fully. And afterwards, maybe we all felt a little friendlier because of it, having shown each other a more informal posture for a little while.