A Biography through Song

WASP: White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. On the surface, this term, usually a pejorative, fairly well describes me. I am white, descended from immigrants from the British Isles, and my family on both sides has been protestant as far back as anyone now alive knows. To make maters worse I had the misfortune of being born with both an X and an Y chromosome, genetically predestining me to belong to one of the last remaining groups of true villains out there, white males. However, this term WASP, as with slurs in general, obscures more than it uncovers. Reality complicates stereotype.
Culturally and ethnically I know most about my fathers side of the family tree. As recently as my granddad’s generation the family was dirt-poor subsistence farmers from the remote regions of Alabama. Essentially “white niggers” the McWhirters fought on the “wrong” side in the war from the southern viewpoint. I recall also finding a reference to my great-grandmother’s side of the family, Beasely, in an exhibit about southerners in the Union army in a civil war memorial site in Georgia. Ironically this was a source of embarrassment for some later generations, who, steeped in the racist mindset of post-reconstruction Alabama, didn’t talk very loudly about their family’s involvement in the Union army. In my own time this heritage has been generally (though sometimes ambiguously) celebrated. My great-grandmother was mostly proud of it but a little reserved, later generations are far less reserved.
Growing up I was exposed to a lot of bluegrass, Appalachian and folk music, and have come to find these genres are a part of my culture and cultural self-perception. Songs about sharecroppers, coal miners, racial tensions and the people, good and bad, of the south were made a little more poignant knowing that my granddad more or less lived in the world of these songs. A lot of songs that have since become well known and popularized are ones that my great-grandmother, my granddad and great-aunts and uncles grew up with. For example, a few years ago I was playing the song “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” (a.k.a. In the Pines; brought to the MTV generation via Nirvana’s “Unplugged in New York” album) on my guitar. When I had finished the song my granddad remarked, “where’d you learn that song, Daniel? That song’s older than me.” I have grown up hearing, singing and playing such songs not merely as interesting relics or just “good music,” but as living stories, things that I myself am caught up in however distantly. Coal mining and lynching, wayfaring stranger’s traveling through a weary land; I’m mixed up in it all, and often see myself and the present facing me as a continuation of this past.
Songs are also an apt marker of my involvement in the church. Both my mother and father are musically inclined and have been involved in leading worship for the entirety of my existence. When I moved out and began college I quickly found myself also involved in leading worship. It has surprised me, since I have never felt called to music ministry and consider myself very much a dilettante in this area. Retrospecting, perhaps it is not that surprising—my mother and father before me valued music, hymns and instruments and that has rubbed of on me. As I have developed as a worship leader I find myself gravitating to the songs and melodies of my cultural history—“I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger”, “In the morning when I die, give me Jesus”, “Come thou fount of every blessing”, “What wondrous love is this, O my soul?” These are the words I have learned to worship in and the melodies my soul resonates with—Spirituals, Appalachian and Southern hymnody. Several themes from these traditions have become important to me, most significantly the theme of homelessness and an often sorrowful longing for God and/or Jesus. Similarly, many of these songs reflect a humility that continues to challenge me, a sense of awe at the grace of God:

what wondrous love is this / O my soul, O my soul, / what wondrous love is this, O my soul? / What wondrous love is this / that caused the Lord of bliss / to bear the dreadful cross for my soul?”

You done showed us how,
we’se a’ tryin’,
Master you done showed us how,
even when you’se dyin’ Jus’
seem like we can’t do right,
look how we treated you,
Our eyes was blind, we couldn’t see,
we didn’t know it was you.

I am American. Often people in my situation—whose ancestors immigrated so far back no one can remember, and whose genealogy is sprinkled with Scottish, Irish, Swedish, Polish, and even a little African blood—often such people believe they have no culture, no ethnicity. “I’m a melting pot,” they say. However, this culture—this emerging, American culture—is as rich and poor, as admirable and dubious, and as high and low as any culture in history. There are heroes and villains, winners and losers, saints and sinners in my past, as the songs of my culture reflect. Ultimately we are all poor and wayfaring strangers traveling through a world of woe, but as we struggle to follow Christ we have a hope. Never a trite hope, four our past and present are serious and often tragic, but a hope in Christ.