Progressive Rock, Religion, and Theology

by Frank Felice, James F. McGrath

Overview

Progressive Rock, Religion, and Theology examines progressive rock music’s engagement with theology and religion, which spans an array of artists and songs from its early days to the present. Co-written by a musician and a professor of religious studies, this book looks closely not only at lyrics but at the music itself and how the two together serve to foster the exploration of religious and spiritual themes from a wide array of angles. Each chapter covers a key song by ELP, Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Kansas, Rush, and Neal Morse as well as tracing the themes from those songs into other works by the same artist and the music of others. Readers will get to know music that is familiar to them through an academic lens, and will discover that its engagement with theological ideas, if not typically informed by study of academic theologians, is nonetheless at times both intellectually rigorous and profoundly insightful.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781978709515
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	10/11/2024
Series:	Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture
Pages:	190
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Frank Felice is associate professor of composition, theory and electronic music in the School of Music, Jordan College of Arts at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana.

James F. McGrath is the Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: ELP’s Tarkus: Religion and Politics in a Post-Apocalyptic Landscape

Chapter 2: Yes: Prophets of a Spiritual and Musical New Age

Chapter 3: Genesis’ Supper’s Ready: Messiahs and Metamorphoses

Chapter 4: Jethro Tull’s Songs about God: A Prog-phetic Condemnation of Idolatry

Chapter 5: Kerry Livgren’s Kansas: From Syncretism to Monotheism and Complexity to Simplicity

Chapter 6: Rush’s Freewill: Beyond Election to Choice as a Theological Anthem

Chapter 7: Neal Morse’s Similitude of a Dream: A Recasting of Pilgrim’s Progress

Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

Progressive Rock, Religion, and Theology weaves a web across the vast fields of its title, providing a roundabout synthesis of scholarship on classic and neo-Prog bands (profiling Yes, Genesis, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Jethro Tull, Kansas, and Neal Morse). Each chapter forms a prolegomenon to fans, listeners, researchers and scholars, letting the songs cast a light on religious and spiritual quests, provoking further discussion rather than attempting closure. A valuable addition to those studies of popular culture that take the metaphysics of music and musicians seriously, and those readers who think and feel in touch with the spiritual speculations of progressive rock.

Jennifer Rycenga

This well-researched study offers a fascinating view of selected “classics” of progressive rock and avers that this often-misunderstood genre moved far beyond the quasi-mystical, pseudo-science fiction of the late 1960s into large-scale works that are truly profound. The authors make a convincing case that the connections between prog rock and theology are surprising and strong. A great addition to the growing body of scholarly work on progressive rock, the book focuses on Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Kansas, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, as well are more recent music by Rush and the Neal Morse Band.

Christopher Gable

Artful academics meet art rock. Much like the music they analyze, Frank Felice and James F. McGrath’s scholarship is virtuosic, complex, and inventive. And also like the artists considered, their multidisciplinary approach, with its attention to music theory, poetics, and theology all at once, blurs genre boundaries. Deserves to be read with 2112––or equivalent, as tastes dictate––playing in the background.

Michael Gilmour