This Sunday’s lectionary reading from the Epistles is 1 Corinthians 13:1–13, the famous “love” passage. Here are ten songs that set that text or are based on it. And there are many more besides!
1. “1 Corinthians 13:1–8,” chanted in Romanian by Maria Coman, 2023:
For a cover by the Good Shepherd Collective, featuring Jayne Sugg and Son of Cloud (Jonathan Seale) (his is one of my favorite male singing voices), see here. They add as an outro the refrain of Martin Smith’s “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever.”
The neo-soul/R&B album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), Hill’s solo debut, is one of the most widely acclaimed albums of the nineties. At an evening of jazz and spoken word hosted at the White House on May 19, 2009, by then president Barack Obama, upright bass player, singer, and composer Esperanza Spalding performed her gorgeous arrangement of Hill’s “Tell Him.” The object pronoun “him” used throughout has been interpreted by listening publics as either a romantic partner or God, and the ambiguity is probably intentional. As for me, I hear the song as religious, especially given the line “the love that was shown when our lives were spared,” which I take to be a reference to Christ’s saving sacrifice. [HT]
4. “1 Corinthians 13:8–11” (excerpt) from Uganda, 2021:
This video was uploaded by Bwire Isaac, the founder of Alpha Worship Connection, a registered nonprofit that trains and equips worship leaders in Uganda. It was filmed at one of his Discipleship Training Weeks, and features a pastor named Muwanguzi playing the adungu (bow harp). I believe the language is Luganda. [HT]
5. “Love (1 Corinthians 13)” by Joni Mitchell, from Wild Things Run Fast, 1982:
The song also appears, re-recorded and in new arrangement, on Mitchell’s Travelogue (2002). Hear her speak about how the apostle Paul’s words inspired her in this two-minute video.
9. “The Gift of Love” by Hal Hopson, 1972, performed by Koiné on Gesanbuch, 2008:
The music of this one is adapted from a traditional English folk tune.
10. “Kanoo” (Love) by Elfi Bohl, aka Mariyama Suso, from Suukuu Kutoo/ A New Song, 1999:
Bohl’s “Kanoo” is an original setting of 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 in the Mandinka language of West Africa, which she sings to a kora self-accompaniment. She wrote and recorded it while living in The Gambia. To learn more about Bohl and her kora songs, see my previous blog post from December.
EXHIBITION: Paula Rego: Secrets of Faith, Victoria Miro Venice, April 23–June 18, 2022: Portuguese-born British artist Paula Rego died last Wednesday, June 8, after a seven-decade career, and in the midst of four solo exhibitions of her work—including this one at Victoria Miro’s gallery in Venice, which explores her small but significant body of religious art. [HT: Jonathan Evens]
In 2002 Jorge Sampaio, then president of Portugal, commissioned Paula Rego to create eight pastel drawings based on episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary, to be installed permanently in the chapel of the presidential palace (Palácio de Belém) in Lisbon. Titled Nossa Senhora (Our Lady), the cycle comprises Annunciation; Nativity; Adoration; Purification at the Temple; Flight into Egypt; Lamentation; Pietà; and Assumption. Rego had such fun with the commission that she produced additional works on the subject, which she decided to keep for herself. It is these, along with her watercolor studies, that are currently on display in Venice. (The original eight pastels are not allowed to leave the chapel for which they were made.)
Paula Rego (Portuguese British, 1935–2022), The Flight to Egypt, 2002. Watercolor and ink on paper, 8 1/4 × 11 3/4 in. (21 × 29 cm).Paula Rego (Portuguese British, 1935–2022), Descent from the Cross, 2002. Pastel on paper mounted on aluminum, 29 1/2 × 28 3/8 in. (75 × 72 cm).
I learned about Rego’s Marian cycle a few years ago and became enthralled by it, though I’ve never seen it in person, and most of these supplemental works are new to me. It’s unique, in part because of Mary’s corporeality. In a 2003 interview with Richard Zimler, Rego said, “If there is anything new about these representations of the Virgin, it is the fact that they were done by a woman, which is very rare. . . . It always used to be men who painted the life of the Virgin, and now it is a woman. It offers a different point of view, because we identify more easily with her.”
While the president praised the cycle and Rego insisted that “these pictures were created with admiration and respect,” an open letter to Sampaio referred to it as an “outrage done to the vast majority of the Portuguese people,” an “outrage against their religious beliefs and an offence to the Virgin Mary.” In brief: “blasphemous and scandalous.” I can see why Rego’s larger oeuvre, with its often menacing and/or transgressive imagery (not least of which is her Abortion Series), would scandalize conservative viewers, but I am a bit confused by the outrage at Nossa Senhora, which to me seems very honoring. The objectors, it sounds like, are those who prefer Mary to be more ethereal and sedate; they don’t want to see her, for example, slouching or wincing or expressing astonishment, or awkwardly struggling to hold the weight of her son’s corpse. There will always be those who resist any kind of updating of religious art. If the scenes are restaged in an unfamiliar way or rendered in an unfamiliar style or introduce a new element or the figures don’t look like how we have always pictured them, then some will oppose them outright—which is a shame, because such art often invites us more deeply into the story, helping us to see it afresh.
PODCAST EPISODE: “Past Hymns for the Present Moment,”Tokens, May 26, 2022: “Hymns are often sentimentalized in the American church, cast aside as merely retired songs with dated language, bearing no real appeal or relevance. But of course it may be that our old hymnals have some crucial things to say to us in our current cultural moment. This is the challenge I [Lee C. Camp] posed to Odessa Settles, Phil Madeira, and Leslie Jordan: find and perform some old hymns which might be both indicting and encouraging to the modern church, and to the world at large. Beautiful conversation and moving performances, taped at Nashville’s Sound Emporium.”
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POETRY UNBOUND EPISODES:
In each episode of this podcast from On Being Studio, host Pádraig Ó Tuama unpacks a contemporary poem in fifteen minutes. Here are two from season 5 (which just came to an end) that I particularly liked.
>> “Looking for The Gulf Motel” by Richard Blanco: “What happens when we remember?” Ó Tuama asks. “Why do we remember? Is it sweet or sad? Is it both? If you particularly associate warm memories, romantic memories, nostalgic memories with a place, and then that place is changed, does that mean that all those memories are gone?” In this poem from a collection of the same title (which I checked out from my local library at Ó Tuama’s recommendation, and it’s excellent!), Cuban American poet Richard Blanco, at age thirty-eight, reminisces about a family beach vacation from his childhood. Read the poem here.
If I were writing this poem, it would be called “Looking for The Blockade Runner,” as that’s the name of the Wrightsville Beach hotel in North Carolina that my family and I used to stay at for four days or so each summer. My little brother and I should still be running around on the waterfront lawn as our parents watch us from inside the giant window of the dining room, finishing up their breakfast. My dad should still be riding in a wave on a boogie board, teaching me technique. My mom should still be lounging at the pool in her black one-piece with sunglasses and a Vanity Fair, I feeling so grown up beside her sipping my virgin piña colada. My brother should still be exhilarated by the live hermit crabs at Wings, and I by the dried starfish and sand dollars. We should all still be walking back from the Oceanic, our bellies filled with she-crab soup and hush puppies and catch-of-the-day, down the shore at dusk.
>> “The change room” by Andy Jackson: A poet who’s interested in difference and embodiment, here Andy Jackson, who has severe spinal curvature due to Marfan syndrome, “is looking at the attention that he gets in his body and is refocusing it, extending it wider, looking at the deeper question of, what does it mean for any of us to be in a body, and how do we in bodies relate to others in bodies?” Read the poem here, from the collection Human Looking.
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CORITO VIDEOS: A corito (literally “short song”) is a type of Latino Christian worship song. Coritos have “fairly simple tunes, often with repetitive words, that the people sing by heart,” writes Justo L. González in ¡Alabádle!: Hispanic Christian Worship. “Most of them are anonymous, and pass by word of mouth from one congregation to another. For that reason, the tune or the words of a particular corito may vary significantly from one place to another. They are often sung to the accompaniment of clapping hands, tambourines, and other instruments.” To learn more about this genre, see the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship interview with Rosa Cándida Ramírez and Analisse Reyes and the entry in the Encyclopedia of Christianity in the Global South, vol. 2.
>> Joseph Espinozasings a corito medley consisting of “Cuando el pueblo del Señor” (When the People of the Lord), “No puede estar triste” (The Heart That Worships Christ Cannot Be Sad), “Ven, ven, Espiritu divino” (Come, Come, Holy Spirit), “Cantaré al Señor por siempre” (I Will Sing to the Lord Forever), and “El Poderoso de Israel” (The Mighty One of Israel). Aaron Barbosa is on keyboard, Fabian Chavez is on percussion, and Yosmel Montejo is on bass.
Federico Apecena provides the following translation. (The slashes indicate the number of times that line or passage is sung.)
//The heart that worships Jesus cannot be sad The heart that worships God cannot be sad//
//That’s why I sing, I sing hallelujah The heart that worships God cannot be sad//
//There’s victory, there’s victory, there’s victory in the blood of Jesus// The enemy will not be able to defeat our souls //Because there is victory, because there is victory, because there is victory in the blood of Jesus//
//That’s why I sing, I sing hallelujah The heart that worships God cannot be sad//
///Those that wait, that wait in Jesus/// //Like eagles, like eagles, their wings will open//
They will walk and will not get tired, they will run and will not stop //New life they will have, new life they will have, those that wait, that wait in Jesus//
//That’s why I sing, I sing hallelujah The heart that worships God cannot be sad//
Art & Theology 