Disclaimer: I know I’m dredging up a long dismissed argument from 10 years ago, and discussing it in all the same tone as people did back then, despite everyone having moved on. My core thesi…
I do realize that saying ‘singing as part of a larger communal experience’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting. But there’s such a thing as shit art, fascist art and soulless art as well. You can criticize even an AI picture beyond the fact that its bad or incompetently put together. If the worst most commercialized megachurches out there are where humanity goes to die, that makes them a cemetery of sorts. There’s a something to be said about turning a congregation - you know, a third space - into a grave.
i’ve done music in several other contexts. the white congregation and the ritual ingests art and spits out something else that is definitely not art.
I do realize that saying ‘singing as part of a larger communal experience’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting. But there’s such a thing as shit art, fascist art and soulless art as well. You can criticize even an AI picture beyond the fact that its bad or incompetently put together. If the worst most commercialized megachurches out there are where humanity goes to die, that makes them a cemetery of sorts. There’s a something to be said about turning a congregation - you know, a third space - into a grave.