THE DRUM SET & POSTMODERNISM                                                                                                                            Promoting More than Just Rhythm and Spiritualism One fundamental error that many sincere people make regarding the drum set, and music in general, is that it merely communicates rhythm, melody, and harmony. For instance, other experts have acknowledged that it can change moods and emotions as well as have measurable physiological effects. However, rarely do people realize that music and drums communicate even more. Because it is inseparably linked with rock music, the drum set communicates the rock-n-roll philosophy of truth: postmodernism. Postmodernism Explained According to one expert: “Postmodernism assumes various forms. It is embodied in certain attitudes and expressions that touch the day-to-day lives of a broad diversity of people in contemporary society. Such expressions range from fashions to television and include such pervasive aspects of our culture as music and film. Postmodernism is likewise incarnated in a variety of cultural expressions, including architecture, art and literature. But postmodernism is above all an intellectual outlook.” 24 It is an intellectual movement that has found expression in architecture, art, television, film, theater—and of course music. Notice how intellectual ideas can be expressed through music. This demonstrates that music, along with the drum set, communicates a lot more than just rhythm, melody, and harmony; it also communicates ideas, philosophy, and theology. This fact must not be overlooked when making the choices regarding the type of music and musical instruments to be used in worship. The Postmodern “Truth” The error-filled philosophy of postmodernism is readily expressed by experts and proponents: “The postmodern worldview operates with a community-based understanding of truth. It affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent on the community in which we participate. Further, and far more radically, the postmodern worldview affirms that this relativity extends beyond our perceptions of truth to its essence: there is no absolute truth; rather, truth, is relative to the community in which we participate.” 25 “The conviction that each person is embedded in a particular human community leads toa corporate understanding of truth. Postmoderns believe that not only our specific beliefs
but also our understanding of truth is rooted in the community in which we participate. …
In this sense, then, postmodern truth is relative to the community in which a person
participates. And since there are many human communities, there are necessarily many
different truths. Most postmoderns make the leap of believing that this plurality of truths
can exist along side of one another. The postmodern consciousness entails a radical
kind of relativism and pluralism.”
26
“Scholars disagree among themselves as to what postmodernism involves, but they have
reached a consensus on one point: this phenomenon marks the end of a single,
universal worldview. The postmodern ethos resists unified, all-encompassing, and
universally valid explanations. It replaces these with a respect for difference and a
celebration of the local and particular at the expense of the universal.”
27
Six Postmodern Principles
We can summarize the postmodern philosophy and understanding of truth by stating that:
1. Truth is not “rooted” in the Bible, rather it’s “rooted ” in my community or culture.
2. Truth does not exist outside of my community or culture. Truth does not exist outside of
ourselves.
3. There is no such thing as an all-encompassing Truth, universally valid for everyone.
4. There are as many truths as there are peoples and cultures.
5. There are many truths, which exist along side of one another.
6. There is no absolute Truth.
This view of Truth is devastating for anyone who believes that the Bible is God’s revelation
to humankind.
Postmodernism and Rock Music
Again, remember that postmodernism is an intellectual movement that has found expression in
architecture, art, TV, film and movies. But note how this one author sees rock music.
“Film may have made postmodern popular culture possible, and television may have
disseminated that culture, but rock music is probably the most representative form of
postmodern culture … Rock music embodies a central hallmark of postmodernity: its
dual focus on the global and the local. … In the offerings of the big stars and the small-
town bands alike, rock reflects a plurality of styles borrowed from local and ethnic
musical forms.”
28
“The pop culture of our day reflects the centerless pluralism of postmodernity and gives
expression to the antirationalism of postmodernism. As evidenced in the clothes they
wear and the music they listen to, postmoderns are no longer convinced that their
world has a center. … They live in a world in which the distinction between truth andfiction has evaporated. Consequently, they have become collectors of experiences,
repositories of transitory, fleeting images produced and fostered by the diversity of
media forms endemic in postmodern society.”
29
This demonstrates the pervasive influence of postmodern ideas in the area rock music,
which is a product of the drum set. The principle is very clear: rock music communicates the
postmodern understanding of truth. The words could be communicating the most sublime truths
but the music itself preaches another gospel. The music teaches that there is no absolute truth;
there is no objective standard for judging whether something is right or wrong. This is the real
message that is being preached by using the drum set.
An Unavoidable Conclusion
It’s clear that rock music (and by implication the drum set) is designed to refute the biblical
understanding of truth. So to use rock music and the drum set to proclaim the everlasting
gospel would be nothing less than Babylonian-style worship, which in essence is truth mixed
with lies. While the words of a rock song might be very biblical, the music is directly
undermining that message by preaching postmodernism. The music says God’s Truth is a lie.
Postmodernism’s view of truth even provides the basis of the flawed ecumenical movement,
and it enlists rock music as the ideal ecumenical weapon in Satan’s arsenal against God’s end-
time church. There are several reasons why.
First, rock music draws together people who otherwise have contradictory views about God
and the world.
“Some rock, like the songs of Soft Cell, is overtly Christian; other rock, like Feederz’s
‘Jesus Entering from the Rear,’ is blasphemous; and still other rock, like the music of the
Police, is arguably Christian and atheistic all at once. There is Vedic rock, Zen rock,
Rastafarian rock, born- again rock, never-born rock … even Jewish rock. … Rock’s
pantheism happily accommodates the varieties of religious experience, careless of
whatever contradiction arises.”
30
Rock music is rhythmically related to many rhythms found in the world today. I first started
listening to and playing rock music, but then I moved into Latin, blues, and jazz.
“You can hear Soul and Latin music almost anywhere in Africa; you can hear African and
West Indian music on the radio at various times in most large cities in the United States;
you can sit in a bar in Ghana, Togo, or the Ivory Coast and hear music from Zaire and
Congo, from Nigeria, from South Africa, from Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Colombia, and the
United States; great drummers, aficionados, and scholars can trace the rhythms of
Latin dance halls of New York to Cuban and Brazilian cults and then to West Africa.”
31
The influence of rock music is universal. The title of the Fall 2001 special issue of Time
magazine is “Music Goes Global.”
“Globalization may be a fighting word in politics and business, but in the realm of music it
has a nice ring to it—and a funky beat, and a tantalizing groove. Today musicians andlisteners the world over are plugged into one another via the Internet, TV and ubiquitous
recordings. The result is a vast electronic bazaar through which South African kwaito
music can make pulses pound in Sweden, or Brazilian post-mambo can set feet dancing
in Tokyo. Cultures are borrowing the sounds of other cultures, creating vibrant hybrids
that are then instantly disseminated around the globe to begin the blending process all
over again. ‘Musically, to an unprecedented degree, the U.S. is part of the world and the
world is part of our experience,’ says Christopher John Farley, editor of this special
issue devoted to capturing the verve, color and variety of the global-music phenomenon.”
32
Stanley Grenz argues, “Rock music is probably the most representative form of postmodern
culture. … Rock music embodies a central hallmark of postmodernity: its dual focus on the
global and the local. … In the offerings of the big stars and the small-town bands alike, rock
reflects a plurality of styles borrowed from local and ethnic musical forms.”
33 Again, it’s
important to realize that in rock-n-roll’s rhythmic phenomenon, words mean very little, if anything
at all. Rock music is designed to be felt rather than heard. The rhythms generated by the drum
set are a very big part of this experience. Simply putting religious words to rock music does not
make it Christian.
“The we-are-the-world maxim is this: music is the universal language. For the
mainstream record industry in the U.S., however, music in languages other than English
often wasn’t considered universal; it was controversial. … Now tongues are coming
untied. Increasingly, world-beaters are collaborating and connecting with one another. …
Pop music and global music aren’t mutually exclusive categories. In the ’80s Paul Simon,
David Byrne and Peter Gabriel blended world beats. More recently, Sting scored a hit
with Algerian rai star Cheb Mami, … and Brittany Spears has made a habit of working
with Swedish songwriter Max Martin.
“Lyrics are important, but they don’t have to matter. Even when Bob Dylan, arguably
America’s finest lyricist, mumbles through a number, the poetry of his words comes out
in the phrasing. “How does it feel?” Dylan famously asked on Like a Rolling Stone. We
may not have known exactly what he meant, but we knew how it felt. Today’s musicians
have taken that lesson to heart. Thom Yorke of the British band Radiohead wrote some
songs for his album Kid A by cutting up lyric sheets and pulling lines out of a top hat. …
Many of today’s global musicians move back and forth from their native tongues to
English, on the same album, sometimes on the same song. … Listening to music in an
unfamiliar tongue can be more thrilling than listening to a song whose lyrics are instantly
intelligible. Because if you can connect with another person beyond lyrics, beyond
language, then you have engaged in a kind of telepathy. You have managed to escape
the mundane realm of ordinary communication and entered a place where souls
communicate directly.”
34
Clearly, words have little to do with a person’s attraction to rock music. Christians don’t
realize, sometimes by choice, that the rhythms of rock music powered by the drum set are
driving their spirit and not the Christian words—even if they sing along. But how can Christians
claim a “blessing” with music preaching spiritualism and the false postmodern gospel?
Revelation 13:12-14 and 19:20 teaches that the False Prophet brings down fire from heavento deceive God’s people into receiving the Mark of the Beast. Fire in the Bible is often a symbol
of the Holy Spirit,
35 however the Holy Spirit does not deceive people into receiving the Mark of
the Beast. This means that this fire could represent the power of spiritualism.
Rock music is a “spiritual” music, and it’s uniting the world and the Christian Church. The
Charismatic movement has crept into nearly every denomination and “praise music and praise
bands” masquerading as Christian music are preparing people for some of the greatest
deceptions that will ever be experienced.
Implications for the Drum Set
As has been shown, the origin of the drum set can not be separated from jazz and rock
music. Rock music communicates the postmodern gospel, and is therefore an unacceptable
form of music for praising God. Since the drum set can only be used to play jazz, rock, and
their related hybrids, then the drum set is automatically ruled out as well. The real message
being preached by the drum set is clear: Relativism and pluralism are today’s truth, because
the Bible cannot settle issues of right and wrong. Morality and ethics are based on personal
tastes, preferences, intuitions, and feelings instead of God’s Word.
A Destiny with Deceit
The power of the music in Daniel 3 led many in Babylon to bow down to the image. This is a
universal setting that is paralleled in Revelation 13, which concerns the image to the beast and
the mark of the beast. Could it be that the kind of music for which drums are used will be a
causative factor in setting the stage for the worship of the beast and its image?
“No country in the world is unaffected by the way in which the twentieth century mass
media … have created a universal pop aesthetic. … Popular music is recognized as a
powerful, unifying force. It is seen as a significant component in the process of global
integration and the struggle for planetary order.”
36
“Could it be that by fostering a homogenized global musical style—a style that is
increasingly visible in the Christian music culture—the stage is being set for a global,
religious identity response? A response that will allow people of all nations, all religious
backgrounds to say ‘Yes, this is my music, this is who I am: this is my music for being
happy and religious and I am part of it; I am right at home now.’ ”
37
________________________________
24. Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co., 1996),
38, emphasis supplied
25. Ibid, 8, emphasis supplied.
26. Ibid, 14, emphasis supplied.
27. Ibid, 11-12, emphasis supplied.
28. Grenz, 36.
29. Ibid, 37-38.
30. Robert Pattison, The Triumph of Vulgarity: Rock Music in the Mirror of Romanticism, p. 174.
31. John Miller Chernoff, African Rhythm and African Sensibility (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979) p.29.
(emphasis supplied).
32. Time magazine, Music Goes Global, Fall 2001, p.1 (emphasis supplied).
33. Grenz, 36.34. Time, 6-7.
35. See Rev 4:5; Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost.
36. Wolfgang H.M. Stefani, “Endnotes: Music as Ecumenical Force,” JATS 5/1 (1994): 219.
37. Ibid, 221-222.