Almost exactly ten years ago, I had just moved to Georgia, and I was sitting in Javamonkey cafe in Decatur, writing my PhD dissertation, and noticed that Amy Ray of the famous indie-folk group Indigo Girls had just walked in. She was obviously recognized by many of the locals, but was left alone. A few days earlier, I had been working at home and saw out the window a woman across the street hauling guitars to a small storage trailer hitched to a van. I soon found out that neighbor was none other than Michelle Malone, a rising star in the indie-rock-folk circuit.

Last night those neighborhood memories came back to me, when my wife and I saw Michelle Malone and the Indigo Girls live in a sold-out show at the elegant Music Hall in Tarrytown. Both bands write inordinately singable, memorizable, emotionally involving songs with a depth of heart, feminist punch, political savvy, and importantly, guitarish prowess. Not to mention vocal gifts that are among the most exquisite of their generation of women rock artists, or any rock-folk musicians whatsoever today. The result is beautiful, moving, rousing song after beautiful, moving, rousing song, whether the more earnest and socially conscious folk style of the Indigo Girls or the more gritty lost-and-foundness, and sometimes sexually provocative jammy blues rock of Michelle Malone. And both bands share out some exposed entrails of Christianity regularly in their music. Their songs seem to reflect and speak to those who find that they must deal with Christianity in their lives, for better and worse, and who cannot find institutional church life making sense in their lives. (As is well known, one of the Indigo Girls, Emily Saliers, is the daughter of Emory University theologian Don Saliers. The two wrote a book together a few years ago, A Song to Sing, A Life to Live: Reflections on Music as Spiritual Practice (Jossey-Bass, 2006).)

I have seen Michelle Malone in concert at least a dozen times, and am going to see her again this coming Wednesday in New York City. I had never seen the Indigo Girls live before. One of the remarkable things about seeing both of them is just how many verses, choruses, or entire songs the audience will enthusiastically sing along with them — and how distinctively female those gladsome and strong voices are. I had the feeling last night, as many hundreds of women, who were easily the majority in the audience, belted out song after song with the Indigo Girls, especially from their first several albums, that this is music that is genuinely a part of many women’s salvation — in the various ways that salvation might be defined.

While in Atlanta, and in the years since, I have met many women for whom the music of Michelle Malone, Amy Ray, and Emily Saliers has been an essential traveling companion. The advocacy of all three women for lesbian and gay political (and spiritual) equality is also an essential part of their musical and theological importance, and of their meaning for many fans. The Christianity one often finds “in” their music, is of the “secular Christian” sort that I have tried to discuss at various points on this blog. I have embedded one video from each that give some sense of the kinds of Christian themes that circulate through their music. I have also put in one of them performing together the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses.” It is not too much to posit that between them and their fans, new secular theologies get fostered.

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

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