Many years ago, when my life was more about music than about books, I met a girl — name truly forgotten — who had written a children’s musical that she hoped I could help her get published. Despite the fact that I worked in the broadest sectors of the Christian music industry, my interest lay more in breaking new territory for contemporary Christian music, not in the choral music product market.
But then I listened to the tape she gave me.
Without any formal musical training, this girl had conceived an entire cantata for children — theme unfortunately forgotten also — that was truly awesome.
I made an exception and got to work on collecting contact names for choral publishing companies I was already in working relationship with, and some expressed interest in pursuing this talented young woman further.
Provided she was willing to relocate to Nashville.
This is the part of the story that amazed me, and one which I fought tooth and nail at the time. “What good does it do,” I asked, “If everyone in the industry is waking up in the same town, driving on the same freeways, shopping at the same malls, walking in the same parks, going to the same churches, and dare I say listening to the same music? Isn’t this going to lead to music that all sounds the same?”
Nobody listened. In the end she decided it was too big a move that was not guaranteed to offer sure returns. Your loss. My loss. Kids who would have learned and performed her musical; their loss. Don’t know what happened to her.
The other night we were listening to overseas radio stations online. Norway. The Netherlands. England (but not the BBC which is geo-blocked in Canada). The one thing we noticed was the decisive absence of the telltale Nashville influence. The American guitar-based country sound — that permeates rock and other genres here whether we admit or not — was replaced by the Euro music sound of keyboards. It was a nice change.
The more southern U.S. the sound — apologies, Third Day — the less I like it. In a shrinking world, we still get to hear too little of what is a staple musical diet for audiences in Europe. Geo-blocking of internet radio and YouTube music videos is not helping. I’d like to know how much of that blocking is European-driven, and how much of it originates with the American offices of multi-national record companies.
The Christian internet of which I am a part is no different. Justin Taylor or Kevin DeYoung writes something and Tim Challies and Zach Nielsen link to it, and then all the Challies wannabes link to it on their blogs. Sixty gazillion Christian blogs all carrying the one story of the day and the same blog referrer advertisement for the $1.99 eBook download of the day.
Yes, people exist on the fringes, and bloggers like this one who try “marching to the beat of a different drummer,” but ultimately, we witness the homogenization of creativity and the homogenization of thought on a daily basis; people striving to carve out an individual identity, but essentially all waking up in the same town, driving on the same roads, eating in the same restaurants, and playing the same four chords. So to speak.
Well, first he sets the stage:

The next time you’re in a Christian bookstore — if you can still find one — walk by the music department and check out the variety of CDs in the contemporary section. While music labels have severely cut budgets and curtailed new artist development, new titles and new bands arrive each month and — partially thanks to social media that is part of the technological wave undermining those very music departments — find their way to an audience.
I say that I only connected those dots recently. Part of that was the realization that I was also a passionate evangelist for a soft drink. I don’t know if you can buy Brio in the U.S.; heck, I’m not even sure if it reaches all of Canada. I tasted it for the first time more than two decades ago at an Italian restaurant in east Toronto. It’s sort of similar to Coke or Pepsi, maybe a bit more bitter. It goes great with pasta, lasagna, or pizza. Non-alcoholic. As you can see, we’ve purchased it over the years in a variety of formats.



Years ago I was traveling with my daughter, Jenna. When I realized she and I weren’t seated together, I asked the fellow sitting next to her to swap seats with me. Surely he’ll understand, I thought. He didn’t. I was left separated from my 12 year old on a long transatlantic flight.



