More accurately, La Peuples de la Mer, is a song I got for a penny from Amazon. It was being sung in french or latin, and the tune was unmistakable. Amazing Grace. Hey those latin dudes stole Newton's tune. Well, not actually. Actually it took several decades for Newtons famous words of grace and forgiveness to find and latch onto The People of the Sea, or New Britain, an ode to the Celtic sailors who came across the ocean to Britain.
Now that our current contemporary music movement is 40 years old, I often run into the purist who says we are losing something when words are on a screen without four part harmonies. I have nothing against hymnals but the visual music and words are of fairly recent invention. Most of Old Covenant and Christian History has tunes being borrowed or written to fit a song and the mood hoped for.
We have been singing from an old Maranatha song book, no music, from the 70s, and it is amazing how many of those songs we all know, how many tunes we picked up. Music is new and ancient, passed down and dreamed up, linked and intertwined in so many ways that almost every musical genre has crossover characteristics. It is also the power of the emotions that carries transforming and uplifting grace or sorrow or joy.
I am a musical amateur, but thankful that we live in a digital age when music is so available, so reproducible, so accessible, so transportable. I hope those who create it can make a living from it, but you never know where a tune is going to end up in Kingdom reality.
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