Sacred pop tunes?

I was between podcasts while doing dishes the other day when I suddenly heard a surprising sound that stopped me in my scrubbing. It was the voice of my wife, filling the top floor, and she was singing Taylor Swift. That was unusual enough, as Katie is not quite a fan. But what struck me as even stranger was, Why on earth was she singing Taylor Swift while she was supposed to be practicing music for the High Holidays at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center? Did she pick up a wedding gig while she was practicing up there in our office? Did the bride insist, as brides do, on a Tay Sway tune for one of the big dances with hubby or daddy?

In fact, Taylor Swift’s “Marjorie” will be part of this year’s Yom Kippur services at the Hebrew Center. My ears perked up yet more when I heard her singing through bars of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World.” I don’t remember songs like these at the Hillel services in college! Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, are High Holy Days. Can pop music really do justice to the “high and holy”?

I have been fascinated by sacred music ever since I sang my first Latin Mass as a high school student in Longmeadow. I was not brought up with religion. My first personal encounter with religion, as it turned out, was in the public school choir. I tasted the first intimations of religious ecstasy in the heavenly harmony of the great choral works of the West. I fell in love with sacred music, and pursued my love to New England Conservatory, where I studied the sacred music of all continents, and their secular offshoots. More pertinent to the present discussion, I played klezmer in Hankus Netsky’s group, and learned a bit of the art of intoning piyyutim, zmirot, and niggunim. I had enough under my belt that I impressed Rabbi Heller at the Chabad of Bushwick. I’ll never forget him looking dazed in the café adjacent to the Chabad, near closing time, scanning for the source of the music playing. “What am I listening to?” he started tapping his foot.

“Michael Jackson,” I told him.

“Ah, so this is Michael Jackson.”

“You’ve never listened to him before?”

“I’ve listened to Shlomo Carlebach before!”

As I became more “spiritual,” I encountered many more spiritual people of all stars and stripes who isolated themselves, or have been isolated, from anything but “sacred music.” I was told by several people, on numerous occasions, that I had to choose between my musical path and my spiritual path. I considered it. There are, after all, many people who believe that certain music is too profane to be sacred. According to Sufi mystic and musician Hazrat Inayat Khan, “Certain music can distract from the sacred atmosphere and take away the purity of the moment, thus it is essential to choose music that resonates with the divine.”

Essential indeed. Hence Rabbi Broitman, head of her flock, has chosen not just the traditional songs of the liturgy, but also the contemporary songs which matter to her community. And this is not simply a matter of fitting a secularly square peg into a religiously round hole. According to our friend Khan, “Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life, bringing peace, abolishing strife.” Crossing ecumenical lines, Rastaman Bob Marley concurs: “One good thing about music: When it hits you, you feel no pain.”

I can tell you, of all the people I know who do not identify as religious, most nonetheless do claim a religion when pressed: Music. Religious or not, one thing upon which we humans tend to agree is that love is the highest virtue, potentially the very engine at the heart of this thing we call “everything,” and music is its greatest accelerant.

When angels observe the human world from their elevated distance, they surely note that in spite of our human sphere’s chaotic dimples — those warmongering, hateful hiccups — upon its surface may be found the most polished, even lustrous, occasional expanse of peace. They zoom in, tickled to see that human peace tends to look like us, bouncing a tempo; dancing in lines, circles, and squares; holding hands, possibly grinding, likely twerking; clapping hands and shouting things like “Yea!” and “Woo!”

According to Leonard Cohen, King David was familiar with the secret chord. He might therefore have a compelling authority in matters of sacred music. His advice to us, and all generations, might therefore be heeded, as strange as the advice sounds. When we approach the locus of the sacred mystery, we ought to: Shout; blast trumpets; use lutes and harps, or their modern equivalents (which can nowadays be plugged in and amplified to impolite volumes); play strings and pipes (which likewise can now be synthesized with very loud machines); bang drums and “loud clashing cymbals”; and we are advised to dance.

The King had a knack for doing so naked; I’m sure our angel friends got a kick out of that.

These are merely suggestions, of course. That said, I think we’ve all, religious or not, heeded some, if not all, of King David’s advice, at least once in our lives. Likely more. Some of us even do it for a living. People like Shlomo Carlebach. And, yes, people like Taylor Swift. And, here on the Vineyard, people like my wife. And me! The music and dancing part … not the naked part.