What part is music playing in The Salvation Army of the new millennium? asks Dawn Volz.
Music, especially brass bands, has been an evangelical distinctive of The Salvation Army since 1877 when an unnamed cornet-playing convert was seconded to the front ranks of an Army march in South Stockton, England, ‘improving the singing and bringing crowds all along the line of the march’.

Founder William Booth, not an avowed music lover, knew its universal appeal. ‘Music is to the soul,’ he declared, ‘what wind is to the ship.’

For the Army’s first General, music had a twofold purpose-to attract the masses, and to give them a joyful means of worship. Some 120 years later, however, nothing sets a cat among the pigeons (or a violin among the tenor horns?) in Army circles as much as a discussion of our music sections’ contemporary relevance.

In 1993 Salvationist and ABC Radio religious commentator John Cleary didn’t mince words; his coffee-table book Salvo! declared that ‘over the decades Army music is increasingly becoming a highly refined and exquisitely tuned ghetto’; describing it more recently as ‘an internal high culture with little direct evangelical appeal’.

Bands and songster brigades, with all good intentions, became bastions of discipline, deportment and conformity, shunning ‘worldly’ contemporary music such as jazz, pop and rock’n’roll, and side-stepping the sexual, social and technological revolutions of the mid-to-late 20th century.

Some thought the writing was on the wall when The Musician, a fortnightly eight-page publication for both Australian territories, bowed out in 1995 due to dwindling readership and the perceived need for a broader-based Salvationist magazine.

Has music been given undue emphasis in corps programs? Was gender equality lost, with bands revolving around ‘secret men’s business’? Are traditional and contemporary corps musical groups mutually exclusive? Does Army music need revitalising?

On Fire put these questions and more to three leading Southern Territory musicians.

‘We struggle with the fact that the role of music in the Army is changing,’ Brian Hogg says, in his capacity as Melbourne Staff Songster leader, Eastern Victoria divisional creative ministries director and bandmaster and songster leader at Mooroolbark Corps (Vic.).

‘We used to have a very evangelical outlook; we’d hold open-air meetings to attract people and it was part of our heritage…now, except for hospitals and nursing homes, most of our music is “in-house”.

‘Evangelism is seen as being something quite different to what it was in the past,’ he adds. ‘I’m disappointed that our contemporary music tends to be very middle-of-the-road, very pop-oriented. For instance, where’s the Army group that’s doing country music, when it has such a large following these days?’

Staff bandsman Richard Squibb, Camberwell Corps bandmaster and a music teacher at Melbourne’s Presbyterian Ladies College, says brass bands still have a part to play.

‘Right now, brass bands seem to be picking up the pieces of leadership from a decade or two ago where performance was more important than the effectiveness of the band’s mission and ministry,’ he says.

‘Music has been used, and is still used today, to effectively aid worship++that’s the easy part. We need to be creative and more adventurous when it comes to the use of performing arts as an evangelistic tool.

‘At Camberwell our band is involved in street ministry every Sunday. We also play at the Camberwell market once a month, and we have made a lot of good contacts in the past six months.’

Army music is about much more than brass bands, of course. Just ask soloist and recording artist Sharon Raymond, leader of the Adelaide Congress Hall Songster Brigade and Soul Factor (previously known as the SA Divisional Singers).

Sharon says regarding band festivals that ‘unless a non-churched person was a complete band nut they just wouldn’t be there’.

Are music sections concentrating on ‘growing the saints’ rather than saving souls? Sharon says today bands and songsters have less of a focus on evangelism, recalling a musicians weekend at Auckland Congress Hall with composer Colonel Robert Redhead as guest speaker.

‘We watched the colonel weep as he declared the Army has lost its musical anointing through disobedience and lack of faith,’ she says.

‘We are still struggling with moving on from our traditional ways and instead of being relevant to the unchurched we have pandered to ourselves.’

Soul Factor, Sharon says, ‘are entering into community events, arts and musical festivals, and joining with secular groups to present concerts without compromising our message.

‘We sing entertaining music in styles and at a standard that appeals to the world and is accepted, regardless of its unashamedly gospel content.’

Sharon, Brian and Richard agree there’s been a ‘welcoming’ sea change as far as the inclusiveness of music sections and the relaxing of orders and regulations are concerned.

‘Do you have to believe before you belong, or do you belong so we can lead you to believing?’ asks Brian. He opens Mooroolbark band up to any musician at Christmas, inviting them to join in for their community carols services.

‘Our band goes from 10 to 40 overnight and the activity becomes the evangelical thing,’ he says.

Richard has welcomed three non-soldiers into Camberwell band, and Sharon says there are three non-uniformed members of Adelaide Congress Hall’s songsters.

Publishing and repertoire used to be ‘locked down’, with performances requiring official sanction. Music-making is far more discretionary now, and publishing and performance of Army music is reciprocated with non-Army bands.

Sharon is particularly vocal about the publishing of Army music: ‘It has very little appeal and the way it’s marketed++ordering upfront and sight-unseen++is ridiculous instead of “try before you buy”, which is how other publishing houses operate.’

Brian agrees. ‘So many other choral and instrumental publishers have examples on their web sites [to] download and listen to prior to purchase. I really don’t understand why the Army can’t do this.’

Another issue that sees feathers flying is ‘traditional and/or contemporary’ music-making. The Booths’ ‘taking it to the streets’ musical evangelism capitalised on popular culture, but innovations were few during the next 50 years.

Then, in the swinging ’60s the Army’s Joystrings burst onto the British pop scene, and Gowans-Larsson musicals such as Takeover Bid, Jesus Folk and Hosea! captivated audiences with their message.

Closer to home, in the ’70s Melbourne’s Salvo big band Solid Rock was described in rock music ‘Bible’ Rolling Stone as a highlight of the Sunbury (Vic.) pop festival.

Both the Joystrings and Solid Rock had to fend off flak from traditional Army ranks. But these days, Brian (a Solid Rock and MSB alumnus) says there is more harmony between traditional and contemporary bands.

‘It works best where there’s overlapping personnel between the two groups,’ he says.

Richard bears this out. As bandmaster and a worship band member he says both kinds of groups grapple with issues of relevance and self-indulgence.

‘Music can help accompany praise songs and prayer songs, but the music itself isn’t worship. The worship isn’t for us!’ he declares.

‘Music is a celebration of the whole corps family,’ Brian says, ‘and for me it should be neither contemporary or traditional; it should aid us in good worship.’

And it must be said no-one ‘makes a joyful noise unto the Lord’ quite like Army congregations blessed with bands, songsters and timbrelists, while smaller suburban and country corps catch the spirit often with the aid of a lone keyboard. (Richard points out that this demographic makes up the largest part of the Army and asks, ‘What are we doing to help resource them?’.)

With overhead screens enabling hands-free singing (barring gremlins and less than professional PowerPoint skills), Army congregations are not singing from the same songbook any more. Brian believes the theology of some of the songs we sing is open to question.

That said, first-time visitors to meetings must be nonplussed when we sing words such as ‘Wash me in the blood of the lamb and I shall be whiter than snow’.

As to the future, with the vast majority of Army musicians being ‘children of the regiment’, is graduating from junior band and singing company to the senior sections still a rite of passage for young Salvos?

‘I am the second-youngest in the ACH songsters,’ says Sharon (who admits to being 40-something), ‘and my children and their generation do not see themselves fitting into this.’

‘Too many young people, myself included, only went into uniform to join the band or songsters,’ Richard says candidly. ‘Nowadays kids seem to be more switched on spiritually. Teenagers will find their place and involvement in the church and it may not be in music.’

‘Young kids, while they happen to be involved in the creative arts, are much more missional than my generation,’ Brian adds, ‘and idealism seems to have a lot more collateral with kids these days.’

We thank God for our rich heritage of Salvation Army music. But with the Army in Australia losing ecclesiastical ground (minus 3.7% according to the last census), now is not the time to lose focus on the dual dynamics of music-making (soul-saving and worship)espoused by Booth.

How can the Army best face the music?

Sharon would like to see young people learning musical instruments at school (and not just brass learners) offered a weekly gig in local Army bands.

Brian says we should include ‘dance and drama, but it all comes back to the local level’-a sentiment Richard seconds.

‘Now more than ever the Army needs to have…a plan of attack to assist in the resurgence of the performing arts in our territory,’ he says, advocating an employed territorial creative ministries director and divisional and territorial creative arts camps.

It comes down to renewal, says Sharon, as ‘we need to recommit our future to God and trust his direction, whatever that may be’.

‘Friendship evangelism happens one-on-one,’ Brian says, ‘and there’s much more emphasis on the responsibility of corps members to be evangelical themselves and not say “If you join this musical group this is our evangelical unit and you’re off the hook”.’

Richard’s composition ‘Touching the Wave’ (played at that aforementioned brass concert) showed ‘Boundless Salvation’ can be just as soul-stirring and spine-tingling today as it was when first sung in 1893. Musicians or not, he stresses, ‘we are all part of the body of Christ and we all have our part to play.’

Dawn Volz is a staff writer and proofreader for Warcry, On Fire and Kidzone magazines in Australia.