Music and Defamiliarization

The subject matter of religion or faith invites many students, both religious and non-religious, into the classroom and academic discourse in a way that values their insider knowledges and experiences. At the same time, however, the articulation of faith and popular music recontextualizes those knowledges and experiences, and can serve as a catalyst for new knowledges. As one student notes in his essay, "[w]hen [this assignment] was mentioned in class the first thing that came to mind was your typical Sunday worship songs, so I was thrown off a little" (Robert).

Music has been used in the writing classroom at least since 1952, when Donald Frantz used classical music to begin a class discussion about "the chaos of life being made orderly and meaningful by music as by the arts generally" (108). Frantz uses music to make "the analogy of good music and good writing," and also includes an analysis of folk music, music that in 1952, according to Frantz, was just becoming respectable. Frantz explains to his students that "songs like those, songs made for the common people by anonymous singers from their own ranks, for more than a hundred years were considered unworthy of attention. [. . .] I ask next the class to consider these questions for writing: No matter what the musical worth of folk songs may be, what irrational factors probably contributed to form this attitude?" (109). Here, Frantz seems to be using music to encourage students to think about the constructed nature of belief, and to think critically about how cultural value is assigned.

In 1964's Stages of Composition, William Jones includes a section of essays on music designed to heighten students' awareness of "levels of diction" (viii). Some writers look at the connections between the composition of music and the composition of an essay (Bernstein and Strychacz), while others bring music into the classroom to expose students to other worlds (Sirc; Brown). Heather Aldridge and Diana Carlin perform a rhetorical analysis of rapper KRS-One to in part elucidate the shortcomings of rhetorical theory when it fails to take cultural differences into account.

My reasons for using music in the composition classroom are similar to those that have been described by other writers. Music, like film and literature, has the potential to make students aware of other worlds. Looking closely at lyrics also gives us the opportunity to think about the differences between what we see in a text and what we anticipate seeing. What, we can ask ourselves, are the social and cultural conditions that allow certain stories to circulate, and what does it mean that these stories sometimes seem to have so little in common with what we find when we examine a text ourselves? Finally, juxtaposing music and religion recontextualizes each subject, allowing us and our students to think about each category in new ways.

Living in a state with a white, non-Latino population of 88% (United), a state that has repeatedly tried to pass a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, in a city where both the Black History Museum and the single mosque have been vandalized, I am eager to expose students to worlds they may not have encountered before. Recently, for example, an anonymous letter was left for a student who was running for president of the student body. The note, handwritten with a marker, reads "To whom it may concern: [. . .] is a faggot who should be shot in the head. No Fags in ASBSU No Fags in the Arbiter I'll Fucking Kill his ass__." (Bekker).

Partially in response to this public discourse, and partially because the lyrics describe a polytheistic realm in which the gods are vindictive, the students listen to Hedwig and the Angry Inch's "Origin of Love." This representation of the divine, though perhaps not new to all of the students, is in marked contrast to mainstream expressions of faith and to the expressions of faith presented by the other songs. In addition to the song referencing a non-mainstream representation of faith, the video clip that accompanies the song presents the gender indeterminate figure of Hedwig. Hedwig was born a German boy; she underwent a sex-change operation to marry an American G.I. The operation, however, failed, so Hedwig ended up with no categorizable genitalia. In the clip the students see, Hedwig is performing in a dress; she wears a Farrah Fawcett wig, and sparkling blue eye-shadow covers her eyelids. Her 70s garb, her gender indeterminacy, and her subversive sexuality all work with and against her presentation of faith. Students are exposed not only to polytheism, but also to a number of other cultural constructs with which they may not be familiar.

In the basic writing classroom, we don't undertake a written analysis of these multiple representations, but students’ exposure to them does contribute to the conversation. The video provokes significant discussion about gender identity, with some students arguing that Hedwig herself represents a refreshing departure from over-rigid gender roles and others claiming that she is offensive.

Hedwig, in her outrageous attire, has clearly constructed a disruptive identity, an identity that either shocks, scandalizes, or pleases many of the students. These responses expose our values, and lead to discussions of what stories we tell ourselves that make the image of Hedwig represent what it does. What does Hedwig tell us about our views of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality? What does the class's varied responses to Hedwig tell us about those categories? What does it mean that we do not all share a common view of masculinity? What does it mean if the abstract concept of masculinity is in motion?

Religious students who are repelled by Hedwig (which is not to say that all religious students are so repelled) are also likely to find a point of identity with her. A textual analysis of the lyrics reveals that the song's writer, presumably Hedwig, believes, at least metaphorically, in angry and vindictive gods. An angry, vindictive God is a familiar figure to readers of the Old Testament, so students may well identify some of their own feelings in Hedwig's lyrics.

The rap music that we listen to—Nas, Missy Elliot, Jean Grae, and Big Boi—also potentially introduces new, unfamiliar views of the world to many of the students in the class. Most students are unaccustomed to thinking about rap and religion. Comparing mainstream representations of rap with song lyrics challenges our ideas about both rap music and religion.

An analysis of how these musicians talk about God suggests that the rappers' faith is strong. For example, in "Can You Hear Me?" Missy Elliot writes "I know you're in real good hands/with God but damn I miss you." In addressing a friend who is in heaven, Elliot presupposes the existence of that heaven, a presupposition that runs through all of the lyrics. For Elliot, in this song, the existence of heaven, and her friend's presence there, is a given.

Jean Grae, in "Take Me," writes "Yea, though through the valley/In the shadow of darkness/praying to God heartless/Take me, Wake me up, don't forsake me." In a manner similar to Elliot, Grae, by addressing God with the imperative "take me," presupposes the existence of that God and of his power. Later in the song Grae expresses doubt about the existence of God in the line "I've never seen God, so he's only a thesis." These lyrics, in the context of the entire song, indicate a complex and contradictory relationship to God, a relationship that some students may well be able to identify with. This identification then might bring Grae's world into the student's world.

This close reading of Grae's and Elliot's text also serves as a point of departure for a discussion of the differences between our experiences reading these texts and the mainstream, sensationalist representations of rap musicians as little more than wealthy gang members. How does a rapper's expression of devout faith in a traditional Christian God square with the public perception of rappers as urban gangsters? What other contradictions exist in the lyrics? As with Hedwig, we discuss how the mainstream idea of rappers is constructed. Who is speaking? Who benefits from the idea that rappers are criminals? Asking students to write close analyses of these lyrics provokes questions about the contradictions between hegemonic representations of a particular group and the beliefs that a close analysis of their lyrics might reveal.

Students are not only encouraged to think about mainstream representations differently, but also to recontextualize the way they think about religion and faith. As Larry Juchartz writes in his description of students' analysis of music videos, the students "have become empowered with a new kind of social literacy by having been offered a tool for the interrogation of visual stimuli" (607). The examination of music as it is articulated to belief provides students with a different lens with which to look at popular forms of music and at their faith, and provides an opportunity for them to make connections between various forms of rap and pop and religion that they might otherwise not have considered.

As Paul Fischer writes, "exercises using contemporary popular culture materials provide opportunities for learners to articulate their perceptions of everyday life which can catalyze new knowledge for themselves, their peers, and their teachers" (63). By exposing students to language about God out of the context in which they usually hear it, they create new knowledge based on new connections. This approach to text, in which students are asked to re-examine the familiar in the context of the new, models an approach to learning that they will encounter again and again while in college.

Sanford Tweedie makes a similar point when he writes about television: "our assignments should postulate the writing situation as an opportunity for students to envision themselves and their subject matter in ways they have not previously considered" (32). And, as Shelli B. Fowler writes, a "classroom with a simple electrical outlet can be transformed into a site where popular culture serves as an effective teaching tool, a 'bridge' between what students often perceive as distant and formal (analytical writing skills, for example) and what students perceive as their own familiar territory, an arena of personal expertise" (113).

Finally, making a similar point for a different purpose, Jeff Rice writes about a pedagogy of "whatever," in which students move away from a linear form of argument such as Toulmin's and instead toward a kind of sampling of texts in which students create new knowledge through juxtaposition and collage. Rice notes that one "can speculate as to what extent this type of writing promotes [. . .] a critical practice for how it synthesizes unlike material in order to construct an argument" (469). While I can't be sure of the extent of this synthesis, students often report in their reflective writing, as I note above, that this synthesis is indeed taking place. And, while the pedagogy I offer here in no way approaches Rice's scope, it does, in his words, challenge "conventional reading practices by cutting a detail from its original source and recontextualizing it within a different setting" (456). By looking at expressions of faith in a place where many students would not expect to find them, I hope to provide a physical and conceptual space in which they can make new knowledges.

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