Recently at R&T I wrote about Robert Plant’s show in New York City, and made brief mention of what it was like (for me) to hear him sing so frequently of Jesus and various theological topics, which not only invite the audience to theological curiosity but take rock back to its “origins” in Christian concerns — and I write this without in any way suggesting that rock is limited to those concerns or that somehow Christianity is of the essence of rock music or culture. All that may be the case and yet we still have the provocative material before us: Plant singing of redemption, Satan, and Jesus. And what can it all mean? Only those rare persons who think neither music nor religion is of consequence will think these to be trivial questions.

Here is what I wrote about Plant on this topic: “What does one make of Plant singing so many songs that reference Jesus? There are quite a few in the set. To me, it felt like being witness to an ‘interreligious theology,’ like the mashup of Buddhism and Christianity, for example, of theologian Paul Knitter’s recent work. There was a new kind of religious possibility coming through… Only here, one had Plant’s rock culture crossing the Christian culture represented in the country-gospel tunes he reinterpreted.”

And I was recently brought back to such thoughts when I gratefully rediscovered Katell Keineg‘s song “There You Go.” (I made her 2006 performance of it a Somatica Divina here some time ago.)

Let me indulge an old form of rock capital by telling you that I saw Keineg at a small club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, almost ten years ago (thank you, E.), and ever after have tried

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