RRRRAAAARRRRR!!!!!!!!!!

they just ran a story on FNC about a school in NJ that has banned the chorus from singing religious music. particularly for the holidays. so what's left to sing? The school board obviously has no clue about musical literature or concert preparation. Of course it's because someone's worried about offending kids who don't want to sing about Jesus. (sigh) for a long time most of the music written was for church. It's hard to sing quality music and NOT have something with religious overtones. I've been trying to think of a good analogy..... oh, got it. It would be like telling someone to teach American lit, but leave out the religious writers.... okay so we'll just leave out the first few years. I really can't think of anything else that relied so heavily on the church for so long. teach Art, but don't ever talk about the Madonna? How many people have used that as a subject? DaVinci.... only the Mona Lisa, forget the Last Supper. A thoughtful choral director will try to include other material. I remember one season in college a bunch of people got offended because we sang some Budhist lit, or was it Hindu? anyhoo, it wasn't Judeo-Christian and I thought there was going to be a riot amongst the chorus members. Then we get into what's left once we take out all religious choral music. Um, anyone want to explain the symbolism of the dying swan to jr. high and high school kids, think that would offend anyone? (side rambling to illustrate my point...... I sang in a chamber chorus in college, the first semester was focused on renaissance music because we always went to sing at some festival in kansas city. let's just say that most of the text was about having fun. lots of drinking and dying swans. towards the end of the day, about the sixth time we'd sung everything the announcer just introduced every tune with. "this one's about sex too!" yay!) I'm no music scholar really though I play one on this blog right now. Let's just say that to come down with this decision at this late date is very unkind to the poor chorus director who's going to have to redo their program, they've probably been working on this music for a month now and to have to discard some of it has got to be harsh. (for lola, I guess there's always "What do you do with a drunken sailor"!)

UPDATE: so I didn't read the article first..... I was going with how it was presented on TV which is very different. seems it's a new thing for the BAND. who cares if there aren't any words involved we all know them anyway and they're probably offensive.