Thursday, March 01, 2012

The Psalmists As the Rock-'and-Roll Artists of Ancient Israel


I just picked up Brian Walsh's Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination. I've been listening to the music of Bruce Cockburn for the past 30 years. He is my favorite lyricist. He's brilliant! Creative. Listening to a Cockburn song you cannot predict where the line is going to go.

When Cockburn was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame one of the presenters was Bono. Walsh writes, after all the tributes but Bono's were given, that "it was, characteristically enough, Bono who offered the most apt description of Cockburn’s artistry. At the end of a list of superlatives, Bono summed it all up by calling Bruce Cockburn a “psalmist.” From Bono there is no higher praise than that." (Kindle Locations 322-324)

It's no higher praise because it was Bono who once referred to the biblical psalmists as "the rock-and-roll artists of ancient Israel." (Ib.)   (Bono has written an introduction to the book of Psalms for Selections from the Book of Psalms: Authorized King James Version (New York: Grove, 1999).
Walsh, Brian J. (2011-12-01). Kicking at the Darkness (Kindle Locations 5298-5299). Baker Book Group. Kindle Edition.