WORSHIP THEME PLAYLISTS

Drew Collins, Music Director

Announcing a new way to augment your worship experience and personal spiritual development: Worship Theme Playlists! Using Spotify, you can listen to music supporting each month’s worship theme. Each month’s playlist will be curated to represent a mix of hymns, classical, pop/rock, Broadway, choral, easy listening instrumentals, jazz, opera, a cappella, music for kids, and other genres. Listen on a walk, at work, or wherever and whenever you listen to music. You probably won’t connect with everything, so just skip what you don’t care for. Here are a few highlights from the playlist for May’s worship theme, “Creativity.”

From Our Hymnal

“I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free” is Nina Simone’s contribution to both the jazz and civil rights repertories, and is in our hymnal (#151). Here it is in its original form, from her album “Silk & Soul.” Two other original recordings of familiar songs from our hymnals are on the list: Sweet Honey in the Rock’s original rendering of “We Are...” (#1052) and Osibisa’s original recording of “Woyaya” (#1020). Several other hymns are on the list as well.

Inspired By Eastern Religions

Gary Wright’s inspiration for the quintessential 1970s pop song, “Dream Weaver,” was the book Autobiography of a Yogi , about Paramahansa Yogananda and given to him by George Harrison. Yogananda’s poem “God! God! God!” referenced “the idea of the mind weaving dreams.” The expression “Dream Weaver” was popularized by another former Beatle, John Lennon. Lennon’s own “Across the Universe” was influenced by his interest in Transcendental Meditation and includes the mantra “Jai guru deva om” (Victory to God divine). The third verse is about meditation, but the first two verses are about the creative process itself. Three Dog Night’s “Shambala” evokes a mythical Buddhist utopia where all citizens have achieved enlightenment.

Best With Headphones

There are a few selections for audiophiles with a good pair of headphones. Debussy’s piano solo, La cathédrale engloutie (“The Sunken Cathedral”) from Préludes, Book 1 depicts an ancient Breton myth in which a cathedral, submerged off the coast of the Island of Ys, rises from the sea on clear mornings. Sounds of priests chanting, bells chiming, and an organ can be heard from across the sea. There are other Debussy tracks on the playlist as well—his Impressionist style excites the imagination. FUS Children’s and Youth Choirs director Heather Thorpe recommended Eric Whitacre’s “Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine,” a modern madrigal-opera for a cappella choir telling the story of Da Vinci’s quest for flight.

Songs About Songwriting

Like Rossini claiming, “Give me a laundry list and I will set it to music,” Paul Simon once boasted to Art Garfunkel that he could write a song about anything. Garfunkel had studied to be an architect and issued Frank Lloyd Wright as a challenge to Simon. Simon responded with the song “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright.” It started out as a creative exercise but turned into a deep cut favorite of Simon & Garfunkel fans. Simon makes this month’s playlist twice more, including “Song About the Moon,” in which he gives advice to young songwriters. In “Songs Out of Clay,” Al Stewart likens songwriting to sculpting.