Praying through guitar

This man pictured here can pray through his guitar like hardly anyone else...In the league of the Edge doing likewise (Bono said "Put El Salvador through the amp and see what comes out"... It was "Bullet the Blue Sky");

... in the stream of Frank Zappa, professed skeptic, who prayed one of the most aching and beatiful guitar solos ever captured in "Watermelon in Easter Hay"...

...Consider Steve Hackett's yearning "Spectral Mornings." Pray it sometime..

How about the classic example, and granddady of them all: John Coltrane praying Psalms through his sax.

Though "worship is not music," music at its best and heart is heartfelt worship and thus inevitably prayer...

There is something unique and enGodded about music. In fact, Leonard Sweet's summary of physics and string theory is: "The universe is at base, music" and " A rock is frozen music."

Let the rocks cry out.

To hear some examples and samples of modern rock rocks crying out , see our loaded (and leaded) "reviews" page. Try on Sigur Ros for size.


By the way, searching ITunes for the Zappa and Hackett solos will ony produce 4th rate imitations or alternate versions..you may have to buy the originals...or settle for short samples here and here to get the prayer vibe...source CDs: "Joe's Garage Act 2," and "Spectral Mornings" (The Zappa number is a 9-minute instrumental ; widely recognized as one of the most emotional guitar solos ever..Unfortunately, in the original it is bookended by the narrator's four-letter words..so be warned. It is emotional partly becasue in the story/opera in which it appears, "Joe" is living in a time when music is outlawed, so he "dreams" this evocative piece of music, longing for his dreams to come true).

By the way, too: if you struggle with non-Christians praying through music, visit me over here for some exercise.

Oh, if you don't yet know of the man pictured here, you need to. He is Michael Pritzl, frontman for The Violet Burning. He is equally at home praying in bars and churches. In fact, the photo is of him leading worship at our Sunday gathering a couple of years ago ( I had to pinch myself, huh, Skib?)

Michael moved seamlessly that morning, and without a breath, from his music to preaching (photo below), as he is so ungnostic as to realize "it's all the same" (also a VB lyric reference). Guitar or pulpit; it's all prayer.

Every one of their CDs is different; here's my amazon.com review of one of them), but they are all the stuff of prayer.

As are you.