Stephen Roberts titles himself a practical theologian. This is cause enough for serious interest. After all, there is something fresh and grand about an academic specialist who goes beyond the bookish aspects (the theory) and moves into the praxis (the practical). Going further than the mere theoretical can bring a good degree of credibility, and it certainly does for Dr. Roberts. As a person who is interested in the relationship between theology and music – he is also a saxophonist who plays regularly in the band Wonderbrass – Stephen, in this interview, shares a number of his insights about the nature and role of sound; its relation to theology but also to privilege and our current season of lockdown during Covid. The article referenced in the interview is “Listening to lockdown: sound theology in a time of crisis.”
[A link to the audio version of the interview is included at the bottom of the page.]
[Radix] Thank you ever so much for your willingness to share a little about your work and your thoughts.
[Roberts] My pleasure. This article seems to be capturing people’s attention and interest. It’s good to have the opportunity to get a feel for how people are responding to it and to develop further ideas from it.
[Radix] Maybe just tell us a little about yourself.
[Roberts] Well, I’m an Anglican priest, ordained in 1991, and I have worked in parish ministry and university chaplaincy, but increasingly in theological education. I worked in both an Anglican college in Cardiff and then at the University of Chichester. Lately I am working in the context of ministerial formation, and in vocation and theology that is connected to ministerial practice. This includes working with a whole range of undergraduates from different faiths, or none. Ultimately, I see myself primarily as a practical theologian, that is, doing theology that pays deep attention to human experience.
[Radix] I really appreciate the connection between the practical and the theoretical. Sometimes there can be a divide between the people who do the hands-on stuff, the practical, and the people who do the thinking, the theology. And a marriage between the practice and the theory, I think, would be especially useful.
[Roberts] Yes, absolutely. One of the things that I find profoundly moving about my work is engaging with people, particularly the one-on-one work, that draws on practical theology-type methodologies to really draw out people’s own experiences, helping them to connect their faith with their life experience. I find that hugely rewarding.
[Radix] Can you tell us a little about your interest in the field of sound studies?
[Roberts] Well, sound studies is actually a vast field that covers a lot of different approaches within ethnography, ethnomusicology, sociology, physics, acoustics, and more. It’s a wide-ranging discipline. But two of the ideas that I have found particularly useful are R. Murray Schafer’s work on soundscapes and then looking at the way soundscapes have changed over time. What drew me to his work was the very sudden change to the urban soundscape I was experiencing during the Covid-19 lockdown. In pre-lockdown I was hearing sound, but not really specific sounds. The typical sound is of traffic and just the general hubbub of noise. But suddenly I was hearing distinct sounds: the sound of tires on the tarmac as I cycled, or the sound of birds. And Schafer talks about the difference between a hi-fi soundscape, which is the sort of soundscape of the more rural environment, as compared to the lo-fi soundscape found in urban settings. The difference between hi-fi and lo-fi is that in lo-fi you don’t hear distinct sounds, because there’s too much sound. Providing a vocabulary to describe this shift that I was observing was something I found really helpful in Schafer’s work.
The other idea I found particularly helpful was acoustemology, which is bringing together acoustics and epistemology to talk about knowing through acoustics, knowing through sound, and knowing through hearing. The work of Steven Feld, an ethnomusicologist, deals with this, along with ethnography through sound. I found his work particularly appealing because as a practical theologian, one of the things that I’m really interested in is how we attend to human life and experience in all its richness and diversity.
What I was trying to do in my own work was use sound to attend to and examine the distinctive human experience of lockdown during Covid. And that’s where acoustemology comes in; that is, especially paying attention to the soundscapes and the distinctive qualities of sounds and what they might tell us about human experience in this particular time and context. But what I’m conscious of is that there is a whole world out there of different approaches to using sound to reflect on human life and experience in all sorts of different ways.
[Radix] Sounds very interesting in terms of incorporating the practical aspect of life – and touching on things that the average person wouldn’t think about. How does Walter Ong’s work with orality connect?
[Roberts] Ong’s work on orality and literacy is interesting. His ideas on the loss of orality in modernity, for instance. I first came to Ong’s ideas through Stephen Webb’s excellent work on a theology of sound. What I found was that the main emphasis in those works is on speech and words and encountering words, and on concepts and ideas, whether through speech or through the written word and the distinction between those two cultures. But what I was really wanting to do was listen to sound more broadly, to get beyond always hearing sound in relation to words. This goes back a little bit to my work in theology and music. I first got into that, actually, writing about Lady Gaga, because I was just fascinated with the theological ideas being put out there in the public sphere in her work. Her work, particularly the Born This Way album, is full of theological ideas that she uses in support of an affirmation of diversity. But as I got deeper into exploring theology through music, I wanted to engage with it by getting beyond an emphasis on the words and lyrics and attending to the music and soundscape itself.
One of the things I talk about at the end of my article is that this kind of attention to the distinctness of sounds inspires me to listen more attentively to different voices. We often talk about “hearing voices” in a way that pays no attention to the actual sensory experience of hearing; for instance, in different theological conversations about the importance of hearing different voices and which voices are suppressed and so forth. But often in that process, we’re not really interested in the sound of the voice. It struck me that this is something really important in terms of hearing different voices – that we actually should be listening to the sound of the voice. There is so much that we can learn from the timbre, pitch, and distinctive sound of the voice. Perhaps this is a way of allowing us to attend more clearly to the embodied physical humanity that lies behind particular voices.
[Radix] Most intriguing. Especially the embodied aspect of sound, not to mention the sacramental. And maybe that touches on the Protestant focus on the written word. It seems there is, for many Protestants, a certain fear of the senses and an unwillingness to appreciate them in their fullness.
[Roberts] Yes. I’m glad you introduced that aspect of the sacramental. I don’t share that kind of suspicion of the senses. And I would really like to think about the sacramentality of sound and what we hear of God through sound. How can we hear and encounter God through sound? It is common for people to speak of the sacramentality of nature in terms of the visual, but it’s a bit different when it comes to thinking about the sacramentality of what we hear and of encountering God in that way.
One of the things that I found fascinating during lockdown was the work of June Boyce-Tillman. She is a professor of music, a composer, hymn writer, theologian, and leads the International Network for Music Spirituality and Wellbeing, of which I’m a part. Anyway, over ten years ago June started a project called Space for Peace in Winchester Cathedral. The project drew people from different faith communities, singing and chanting and bringing all their different traditions into that wonderfully complex acoustic space which allowed voices to resonate and be heard alongside one another. Then, during lockdown, she wanted to take something of that online. This resulted in some wonderful sessions. We had people from many countries and different faith traditions chanting different peace chants together. It was quite free and open, and very moving. One of the things June talks about is the difference in the acoustic space created by Zoom with all the open microphones. So you’d get this hum; and she talks about this “hum of the Internet” and how that hum almost became a sacramental thing, a sacramentality of sound.
This really resonated – to use another acoustic metaphor – with me. Speaking of another hum, there’s an album which came out last year by Moses Boyd, a fantastic young black British jazz musician. On the album there’s a song where he’s also talking. Part of that song includes an interview with an older-generation British jazz musician. They’re talking about the possibility of God, basically. They’re not using any kind of classic Christian theological language, but in talking about “something beyond us” they are reaching towards the possibility of something transcendent. And as the song comes to the end, I can’t really explain it, but there’s kind of a hum. What I thought about was the representation of the possibility of the divine … through a hum. This notion corresponds in some way to the “music of the spheres,” the idea that the moving planets generate this kind of a hum. This is all speaking to me, really, of the sacramentality of sound, and suggesting that sound speaks of God. In attending to sound, we hear something of God.
[Radix] Very cool. This brings to mind the complexity of liturgy and how it is so much more than words. The words are lovely, but there is something to the liturgy being spoken or sung aloud that transforms it into something greater. In your work you touched on the importance of ritual and the connection to sound. Does that connect?
[Roberts] Yes, absolutely. I think singing words involves the body directly, doesn’t it? Singing draws the body in more. One of my favorite images in the whole of liturgical study is Don Saliers’ notion of humanity at full stretch before God. For me, that encapsulates so much of what is or should be happening in good liturgy. And for me, good liturgy involves all the senses. But that notion of humanity at full stretch is given an added emphasis through song because in singing, the vocal cords are more involved in that activity. In a way, through singing, we are giving more of ourselves. One of the things that’s so hard about lockdown is the inability to sing together. But yes, I think that the range of sounds, attending to the sound, and attending to the ritual soundscape of liturgy is something very important.
[Radix] That phrase you used, “humanity at full stretch,” is so lovely; that idea that when we’re singing, we’re in a sense giving more of ourselves to God.
[Roberts] It’s a wonderful image. Yes. It encapsulates a lot for me. Again, it’s a kind of image that one might use metaphorically, but I think it’s a phrase that takes on so much more meaning if you think about the body actually being stretched during its involvement in worship. It’s quite a powerful image. And we can think about it in more than bodily terms, too.
[Radix] I think of how that connects to the idea of flourishing. I love the word because it’s not static. It’s not even an image. If you have a flourishing child, garden, or imagination, there’s a fullness that’s brought to it. Can you speak to anything more in terms of the flourishing aspect?
[Roberts] Flourishing is a word that I also love. I am reminded of Irenaeus’ famous statement about the glory of God being a human being fully alive. There’s a fullness to a life that is flourishing. And again, it’s something which involves all the senses. One of the things that I found personally during lockdown was the changing soundscape around me. The aural sense was suddenly alert. I was hearing differently and hearing more, and hearing in a richer way. But coinciding with that was a heightened visual sense. I mean, I saw the distinct colors of the trees and the leaves and so much more than I ever had before. So I think that sense of flourishing can be increased through attention to the senses. Recognizing flourishing as being something physical, I think, is really important. And again, that does connect with my interest in music, because one of the places that I often feel most fully alive is when I’m playing music with Wonderbrass. It’s something about the ability of music and sounding together in a way that encourages bodies to move and flourish in dancing. This response is a very physical thing. It’s obviously more than that, but I think it starts there.
[Radix] Right. The connection between sound and body language, but also the phrase “sounding together” that you mentioned previously is so interesting.
[Roberts] I think one of the most important things in music is learning to listen; to listen to the sound you’re making and to listen to the sound that others are making, so that you can coordinate in terms of time, pitch, and groove. It’s also about listening to distinct sounds, to the spaces between, and listening to the sound that is being made together. All this is sounding together. So yes, I think the art of listening is a really important art to develop in life. And it does contribute to humans flourishing in the image of God.
[Radix] What you are talking about seems quite connected with harmony. Harmony requires listening but it also requires a plurality: one needs the other. If we could think about our different experiences, our different voices, as it were, and about harmonizing better. Allowing for harmony requires listening to the other, because we’re not just making one singular sound. It’s coming from a plurality of places. We don’t want cacophony, obviously, but we do want to have harmony.
[Roberts] Yes, absolutely. A lot of good music uses dissonance, so we shouldn’t be afraid of dissonance. And sometimes the greatest experience of harmony comes when you’ve had a long period of dissonance, before it actually resolves. So perhaps listening to the dissonance might be something worth paying more attention to, as well as enlarging our vision of what counts as harmony in society. I mean, there are some forms of music that are much more dissonant than others. Maybe we need a political vision that actually allows for a bit more dissonance and doesn’t see that as an aberration in a society. But back to what I said earlier, about listening to the other: we need to actually listen to the voice. But not just what the voice is saying. Listening to the voice might allow us to hear what is being said as something that comes from a human life, from a human person and all that has formed that person, even when we profoundly disagree. I think that might be a way of getting beyond some of the very polarized conversations we tend to have both in the Church and in society.
[Radix] Appreciating the different sounds that contribute to a greater whole – and respecting the differences – might also go along with the biblical metaphor of the Body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you.” Further, in that metaphor there is respect for the different senses. In fact, each of those different senses make the Body better. Anyway, I am enjoying the potential of how different sounds contribute to the appreciation of a bigger whole.
[Roberts] Yeah, and of course the other thing is that people hear sounds differently. Some have, perhaps, a more heightened acoustic sense. Some people see things much more clearly than others. But you can’t enter into someone else’s experience of sight or taste or sound. And so that really does strengthen the point you’re making needing others sensing things from different angles and different perspectives.
[Radix] Beautifully stated. As a theologian, are there any parts of Scripture that stand out to you, especially in terms of sound?
[Roberts] The one that stands out is Elijah and the still, small voice in 1 Kings 19:11-13. That was a profound acoustical event. It’s also notoriously difficult to translate. I remember my Hebrew teacher from undergraduate days translating the still small voice as “the sound of silence crushed.” However we translate it, I think that some sort of acoustic event is central to Elijah’s theophany. Another passage would go back to the creation where God spoke. God said. Creation comes into being by virtue of the sound of speech. God didn’t write a memo! And, again, we can see the importance of sound in relation to speech. That’s where Stephen Webb’s work is so important – relating all this to the spoken word and what it means to talk about this word in relation to the Word of God.
There is also a kind of paradoxical relationship between sound and silence. I’m thinking of Revelation 8:1 and the silence for half an hour. This is profound, really. And I think we can think about the spaces in between the sounds, the silence, and that’s indicative of the importance of sound in a way, too. Silence is an acoustic event. An encounter with God has an acoustic dimension in Scripture that is worth paying attention to.
[Radix] Because you are touching on breath, breathing, and silence I wonder if you might elaborate on the recent loss of your mom and the connection between Covid and privilege.
[Roberts] Well, my wife and I were called into the nursing home on the sixth of January and spent most of the last three days of my mother’s life sitting by her bed listening to her Covid-inspired breaths. Her breath was fast and quite intense and, you know, I’d just written all about breath and the absence of breath related to the pandemic and George Floyd’s words, “I can’t breathe.” I was thinking about what I hear in breath and in the absence of breath. Sitting with my mum deepened my reflections about the nature of breath. It made me think about what I hear in breath. And doing so made me conscious of the freedoms I have, and that others don’t. So I came to hear in my own breathing the sound of privilege.
What I heard in my mum’s breath was the integral relationship between breath and life. I knew that as soon as her breath stopped, her life was gone. And while the breath was there the life was there. It might not seem as if I’m saying anything particularly interesting or that obvious, but just to hear her breath so closely, so clearly, so intently, was quite a powerful experience. Life is a gift, but there is a fragility to life. And I hear both in the sound of breath. Now, whenever I breathe. I think more of the relationship between breath and spirit and about God’s gift of life.
[Radix] Would you please leave us with a final thought? Maybe something that you wish people would reflect more about?
[Roberts] Quite simply, attend to what you hear. Pay attention to the distinctiveness of the sounds and consider where God is in those sounds. Can you encounter God through the sacramentality of those sounds? Allow yourself to encounter God through what you hear. You might well learn something of God. And that might be the privilege of the gift of life. It might also be the gift of hearing other voices more clearly and with greater compassion. Being able to hear the suffering in another’s voice and having compassion— there is something so powerful in that.
[Radix] I so value your use of the word attend throughout this conversation. I think when it comes to hearing, it can be easy to think of it in a passive sense. But it’s not. We all have the ability, but need to be more desirous of attending to what we hear. If only we did it more! Because when we do, not only will we be able to experience God better, but also our fellow humans. That will allow us all to flourish.
[Roberts] Absolutely. Yes. That’s a wonderful way of putting it. As you were speaking, I was reminded of how in the Orthodox liturgy, the introduction to the readings is, “Wisdom; let us attend.” And really, that’s what I’m inviting people to do; to attend to what we see, smell, taste, and so forth. But particularly, I’m interested in attending to what we hear. It’s a hard task we’ve got; there’s a lot to listen to and it requires developing what the composer Pauline Oliveros calls “the art of deep listening.” So, let us attend. The physical practice of listening will inform and shape the spiritual art of listening. I think those two things are profoundly related, if not inseparable.
[Radix] Beautiful. Well, this has been an absolute privilege and a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, and your reflections. I really look forward to hearing what your future work will entail.
[Roberts] Yes. And thank you again for taking an interest in the work. I really appreciate that. God bless you.
*For those interested in looking at the authors and books that Dr. Roberts mentioned during this interview, here is a list:
Ashon T. Crawley (Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility)
Steven Feld
Pauline Oliveros (Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice)
Don Saliers (Liturgy and the Moral Self: Humanity at Full Stretch Before God)
R. Murray Schafer
Barbara Brown Taylor
Stephen H. Webb (The Divine Voice: Christian Proclamation and the Theology of Sound)
Also, for a taste of the band that Stephen plays in, Wonderbrass, here are some lovely links:
Lockdown version of Calvin Harris’ Not Alone
Santes Dwynwen Shuffle music video