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Music of localism and vocation

Music of localism and vocation

Last updated on: May 23, 2014 at 5:30 am by Gene Veith

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Music of localism and vocation 2014-05-22T21:47:34-04:00 Gene Veith

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Thanks to Hillsdale Professor Korey Maas for alerting me to Emily Dunbar, a Lutheran musician who sings about vocation and a sense of place. After the jump, what Dr. Maas says about her, along with a links to her music.

From the New Reformation Press blog:

Place, Vocation, and Horse-Shoes by Korey Maas

Popular music has long celebrated the “desperado,” the “rolling stone,” and the “rambling man,” but has never been especially keen to rejoice in notions of vocation informed by a sense of place or permanence. This is perhaps unsurprising given the strong association of vocation with Lutheranism, and—despite Lutheranism’s long and robust musical heritage—the relative scarcity of Lutherans among those today producing anything like “popular” music (the very much underrated Lyle Lovett being a notable exception here).

I was therefore thrilled recently to get my hands on an album highly recommended by an old friend, Emily Dunbar’s 2009 Catch It When You Can. (Full disclosure: I had the pleasure of getting to know the Dunbars when Emily’s husband Paul and I studied together at Concordia Seminary.) A little bit folk, a little bit country, all Americana, Dunbar’s songs are wonderful (in the many meanings of that term) evocations—and celebrations—of the everyday graces that inhere, for example, in the rootedness of place and family.

The celebration of place, for example, is especially strong in the opening track, “Barcelona,” in which earlier international travels are recounted only to be set against the refrain:

If I had to compare the Champs-Élysées and our town square,
If asked to contrast the present with the past,
If I had to choose between Barcelona and the three of you, Barcelona would lose.

Similarly in “One Cup of Coffee,” where are extolled the simple pleasures of a lazy Saturday morning at home with coffee and the morning paper (and horse-shoes).

Vacation in the Riviera—good gravy, I declare,
I would take it, take it if it came my way.
But I won’t sit and hold my breath;
That’s one sure way to catch my death,
And I’ve got music and horse-shoes to play.

The quirky but heartfelt “John Cusack” can acknowledge the real pleasures of marriage and family while still confessing the temptation to see greener grass in other pastures.

Sometimes I dream I meet John Cusack in an airplane,
And together we fly off, and I live off his fame.

By song’s end, though, the folly of such a temptation is recognized:

If I ever meet John Cusack in an airplane,
I might ask for his autograph, and tell him I loved Say Anything
But I’d step off the plane, and I’d get out my phone,
And tell my husband and kids, I’m on my way home.

Perhaps most impressively, though, it’s “Ohio” that paints a picture of one coming eventually to recognize and to embrace the fundamental goods of place, family, and vocation.

[Keep reading. . . .]

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A song about vocation--or is it?

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