Out of all my unhappy childhood memories, the one that continues to haunt me relates to the classroom sing-along.

Australia’s Pentecostal and Evangelical faithful would love to see an ARIA award dedicated to the music that rings out of Melbourne’s suburban churches.

Although my grade one primary school teacher did her best to inspire joy in the classroom by encouraging her students to sing songs like, If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands, there were one or two ‘gloomy’ types such as myself who refused to join in.

It’s not that I was an unhappy child.

It’s just that institutionalised fun wasn’t my idea of having a good time.

It still isn’t.

I don’t find ‘funny hat’ days at work particularly fun, and I fail to the see the point in attending work-sponsored Karaoke nights.

If I am to sing and clap on cue I’d do it, as Frank Sinatra famously put it, My Way.

It was around the time the music video clip was emerging as a popular entertainment form in the late 70s when suburban misfits like myself saw our counter culture messiah in all his glory.

The image of Sid Vicious dressed like an unruly high school debutant spitting out My Way with his trademark punk snarl couldn’t have been more out of step with the benign stuff that the neighbours in respectable Mount Waverley where listening to at the time.

Punks like Vicious didn’t receive music awards.

Why should they?

They were nothing more than a bunch of substandard musicians behaving badly.

The best thing the mainstream music establishment could do was to ignore them.

To do otherwise would have landed them a swag of music awards and public recognition to boot.

Unfortunately the same can’t be said for today’s ‘happy-clappers’.

The fact that the American Grammy Awards dedicates an award to Contemporary/Pop Gospel music shows just how much influence the American religious right has on American popular culture.

Contemporary Pop Gospel (unlike authentic gospel) is the unofficial soundtrack to ultra conservative American life; just as the term ‘family values’ has become code for conservative Christian values in Australia.
Many conservative Christians have come to accept music as an effective means of spreading the gospel.

It’s a purist view of art that harks back to a time when Martin Luther recognised music as a valuable proselytising tool.

As he put it, “I would gladly see all arts, especially music, in the service of Him who has given and created them. Why should the devil have all the good music?”

Australia’s Pentecostal and Evangelical faithful would love to see an ARIA award dedicated to the music that rings out of Melbourne’s suburban mega-churches.

Imagine the rejoicing at the sight of one of their own accepting an ARIA to the woops and hoots of adoring teenage fans.

I may be wrong, but somehow I don’t think Australians care for the God that American musicians evoke in their acceptance speeches on award nights.

This God is as alien to most Australians as the music performed in Melbourne’s evangelical places of worship.

I find the Greek Orthodox liturgy far more soothing and comforting especially in time of loss and deep grief.

There have been artists throughout history who have declined awards for fear of unsettling their delicate relationship with their muse.

For such artists, awards are nothing more than a promotional tool used by the industry to shift merchandise.

As Jean-Paul Sartre said, “an artist must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.”

The remark was made after he declined his Nobel Prize in Literature.

Given that the America Christian right has been very successful in forming alliances with governments, influencing public policy, and infiltrating popular culture, it could be said that they are comfortable with doing business with political and artist institutions for the explicit purpose of promoting their narrow brand of values.

This is a dishonest practice that relies on political cunning and seduction.

Music is seductive.

The music of Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash, Bob Marley, and George Harrison has touched and moved millions, it still does.

But just because Cohen’s Hallelujah, Cash’s Personal Jesus, Marley’s Redemption Song, or George Harrison’s My sweet Lord touches a spiritual chord with Christians, doesn’t mean they have exclusive claim to the values expressed by these songs.

These values belong to all even non-Christian and, god forbid, atheists.

Politics can corrupt, where as genuine art enlightens.

Artists, by virtue of their creative independence can, if they choose, talk truth to the state.

We’ve seen this with the protests songs of the 60s, and with Australian hip hop artists who have come out of the migrant working class, underprivileged, and crime-ridden outer suburbs of Melbourne.

The Christian musician and producer, T Bone Burnett, once said “you can sing about the Light, or you can sing about what you see because of the Light. I prefer the latter.”

I too prefer songs that shed light on political corruption and injustices to songs that ring out of mega churches modelled on shopping centres.

These songs are nothing more than muzak- nursery rhymes that echo in the heads of inward looking individuals who march to the monotony of a single puritanical drumbeat.

In Australia, there are as many music genres, styles and musical interpretations as there are political views and opinions.

Let’s keep it this way by making sure that Christian fundamentalists are not rewarded for their ability to weasel their way into our political and artistic institutions for the sole purpose of imposing their brand of values on the rest of us.

No group whether political or musical should force anyone to sing and clap to a single tune.

It just wouldn’t make us happy.