Thursday, October 24, 2013

Non-lexical Vocables in Worship: An Opinion


Have you heard of "whoa's" used in worship? There's a whole influx of modern worship songs that have this as a way to bridge between the lyrics. I know there's a whole theology of worship associated with non-lexical vocables (not proper words, almost onomatopoeia), and I agree that there is a way to worship God with these, but I personally think that "whoa", "oh", "yeah", "ooo" and other variants from the modern context of contemporary music have a greater difficulty finding its use in worshiping God.

Non-lexical vocables are usually derived from a culture's specific language. They usually have a cultural association attached to the "meaningless" syllables. Christian converts in these countries will very likely take these same syllables, recontextualize them in worship music, and in so doing attach new meaning to them. The entire process is culturally rich, serving the purpose of using the existing cultural vocabulary in the new context of worshiping God.

Here's why I think the contemporary appears less palatable: we usually associate "whoa", "oh" and "yeah" with mindless pop music. Sometimes, they're used to good effect (for example, a song that helps to rally people together), but most of the time, they sound like the lyricist ran out of creative juices and had 30s of air time to fill in the gaps in the song.

Maybe my opinion is a little biased because I firmly believe that if something is meaningless, it shouldn't be there to clutter up what is meaningful. I am a strong believer that any song used on Sunday morning to worship God should primarily be didactic: it should cause the believer to be reminded of an aspect of God that they find difficult to express into words.

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