Music Ethnography - Fellowship Church

Introduction
For my music culture, I was curious to see how another church conducted their worship in another fashion than I was accustomed to, so I visited Fellowship Church of Grapevine, Texas. I normally attend the First Baptist Church of Richardson, but Fellowship has a Saturday night service that is more directed towards the younger generation and sparked my interest.

Methodology
My friend from high school, Preston Patridge, introduced me to this church. I graduated high school with him and he attends UNT, making it easy for us to get together to go to this unique church. In order to further analyze this music-culture, I used several sources. The main one I used was attending the actual worship at Fellowship Church. I took notes during, but I also participated in the worship. The second best source of information that I received was from a personal interview from Preston who attends this church regularly. I also went online to find the website to Fellowship’s main band called Ragamuffin Soul.

First of all, it needs to be known that this church is directed towards the younger church-going generation. This service was on Saturday night at 6:00 p.m. in Grapevine, Texas. Due to the focus on this contemporary audience, the atmosphere is much more laid back. This is necessary to know before fully explaining how this church functions.

Ideas About Music
Keeping in mind the modernity of this culture, the origin of the music that Fellowship Church offers in its worship services has a combination of other music cultures, including mainly current ones. Overall, it has a western style because of the similar instruments they use, including the usual guitars, drums, and singers. There were four singers in the front of the stage, one of them leading. They switch off leading the service week by week. To use an example as to how laid back the nature of the performance is, on my visit, the lead singer of this service that introduced the church had a little trouble with her words and admitted to jumbling up her words often and saying “stupid stuff”. It is just that casual and easy-going. The genre it can be most closely associated with is rock. However, the keyboard also adds some of the traditional style of church worship that has been used for a much longer. This “worship” that is mentioned is the intent of their music in this time and space. Granted, there are many forms of worship, but this type of music is used for worship. Worship transcends the act of singing any song or playing any instrument. It’s a personal time between the person worshipping and the God they are worshipping, not caring what others may thing of them but focusing solely on the One who matters. Worship is a very important aspect of this church and is therefore performed at every service, whether that may mean on Saturday night or early on a Sunday morning. It can be performed as often as desired. Normally, they play three to four songs per service at least.

Activities Involving Music
Their main band is called Ragamuffin and has their own album, which can be found on iTunes (Preston Patridge). They can also be found online at http://www.ragamuffinsoul.com/. The pastor also keeps a blog, in which one of the subcategories is music, which can be found at http://www.edyoungblog.com/music/. However, the church’s music capabilities are not limited to stage performances by professionals. Members of the church play on their own as a hobby, worshipping Him on their own or with a group of people. Worship includes more than just singing, though. Some may dance and jump up and down; others may raise their hands, or just simply clap to the beat. Any and all of these are gladly welcomed to the performance, but are acted upon only with the intent of praising. Seeing how comfortable people are there makes the atmosphere very welcoming for visitors of any sort, no matter what race, ethnicity or gender you may be. Fellowship Church does have a central region in Dallas, though. Its main campus is in Grapevine, Texas, but it also has other smaller locations located Plano, downtown Dallas, Fort Worth, and another out of the area located in Miami.

Repertoires of Music
Because of this intimate time of worship they create, they compose the music according to what they believe this generation will relate better to and enjoy more. Therefore, composing in the current day is important in order that they may take more meaning away with the words than they would be able to in the fashion of traditional church music. Much more emphasis is placed on the lyrics than many other types of music where entertainment is the main purpose.

Material Culture of Music
However, the band on stage is set up like that of a secular band. The singers are in the very front holding microphones, behind them was the keyboard on stage-right; then moving from right to left was the electric guitar, the bass guitar, and the drums in the left corner. The nature of this church allows the dress to be as casual as desired, but is all prompted by personal choice, performers and audience alike (Preston Patridge). To ensure that everyone has the chance to sing, even though they may not know the song, the lyrics are displayed on a couple, large projectors in the front so that everyone can sing along, if they so desire. This is especially the case at Fellowship Church because much of their music they compose themselves. At least for the Saturday night service that I attended, they did not have music books or, as they are normally known in church, hymnals available for the audience to look at because the use of the screens replaced the need to stand and hold a book while trying to worship.

Conclusion
Though this music culture may seem to have a very common style of today’s secular music that is used for the main purpose of entertainment, it really holds much deeper meaning to all the participants than it may seem to when initially seen, whether you’re engaged as a musician or as an attendant.