Binding and Loosing in Song: Conflict, Identity, and Canadian Mennonite Music

Abstract

T article presents a paired ethnographic case study on Canadian Mennonite musical practice and a set of theoretical reflections on the question: what do we, as ethnomusicologists, really mean by the words “conflict” and “identity”? What do these terms enable us to say about music in society? What do they occlude? I will argue that there are important continuities between our constructions of conflict and identity, while highlighting rhetorical problems identity presents that motivate my conflict-oriented ethnographic analysis.1 I will develop this analytic perspective by reading a worship service jointly held by three Canadian Mennonite congregations, suggesting that conflict relationships can produce (musical) identities and strengthen social networks. Mennonites are an Anabaptist (meaning “re-baptizers”) Christian group tracing its origins to radical dissent during the (German) Reformation. Most centrally, Mennonites believe in voluntary church membership signified by adult baptism. They practice a broad variety of music genres in church, but insiders might place Mennonite church music on a gamut beginning with so-called “traditional” Mennonite choral music (Dueck 2008) drawing on German Romantic choral music and nineteenth-century evangelical hymnody, and ending with Christian popular music shared with evangelical Protestants worldwide (Krehbiel 2005). The ethnographic work I present here focuses on three Mennonite churches in Edmonton, Alberta. These three congregations each occupied a different position on the Mennonite musical gamut, and each had a different Mennonite denominational background: First Mennonite Church, a historically General Conference congregation, practiced hymnody and Western art musics; Holyrood Mennonite Church, a historically Mennonite Church congregation, practiced a blend of hymnody and popular musics; and River West Christian Church, a Mennonite Brethren congregation, practiced mostly popular musics.

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