Monday, March 13, 2006
ROCKIN' MONKS
I've been a proponent of Christian rock since I first heard it. Not that I think it belongs in church, but for other occasions I would sure rather see young people listening to Christian rock with the right message than listening to the secular stuff.
A group of Greek Orthodox monks goes one step further by creating the music and marketing it. Called The Free Monks, they have a ministry to youth that targets the media and the music style that Greek teenagers listen to, and it seems to be working:
Citing new threats to the Greek ethnos, Fr. Nektarios blasts priests for their complacency, accusing them of being more interested in collecting their paychecks (priests and bishops are state employees) than in defending the Church and the nation.
But his message to youth is even stronger. The Free Monks' songs are not just about the redeeming power of God's love or the importance of Christian values. Lyrics speak of Satan disguised as western culture, of the brainwashing of Greeks by multinational corporations, of the dangers of electronic surveillance, of a global conspiracy to steal away souls. Whether young people are internalizing the message or not, they are buying the albums. Although the media frenzy has died down since Free Monks' debut in 2000, the group has remained a fixture on the Greek pop scene.
You can hear samples of their music at that link.
Much of their website is written in Greek, but the homepage is in English, and you can see from it that they are catching the attention of the news media. Elsewhere in the website I tried unsuccessfully to get the music to play. Perhaps they are better at making music than they are at making websites.
In any case, NPR ran a segment on them last night, and they sang in English. The message is Christian, the music is exotic and upbeat, and the teenagers are tuning in.
