Julian Davis Reid: There are three different prongs to what I do currently as an artist and theologian. The first prong is my work as a musician. I have a project called “Vocation,” an album that came out in October of last year. My band for that project is called Circle of Trust. We’re on tour now and will continue throughout the year.
That jazz album comprises vocals, bass, drums and me on piano. The album is all about the different roles that we’re called to play in our lives. And my hope is that the songs I’ve written and the songs I cover can help people hear God’s call on their lives, God’s call on their roles in their families, in their workplace, in the world writ large.
No. 2, I have this contemplative musical project called Notes of Rest, which is all about inviting the weary to experience God’s restfulness through Black music and the Bible. I’ve been doing that project for the last five years. I go to seminaries and churches and other community groups across the country and offer this experience around music and contemplative questions from Scripture that allow people to tap into a spirituality that promotes rest.
Oftentimes, Christian spirituality can promote restlessness, but there’s a restfulness that Jesus has invited us to have. Black music is a place that houses that, and so too is a contemplative engagement with Scripture. That’s been a really exciting project.
The last prong is this new grant that’s just getting underway. Lilly Endowment awarded $5 million to Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis for a project called Testify!, which is all about Black testimony through the arts and Black churches testifying to God’s goodness through artistic witness. I’ll be the artistic director for this project.
That will bring together different kinds of artists to create new works, to testify to God’s goodness. And these new works will happen over the next five years. And then, there’ll be other ways of connecting to testimony, getting people to give testimonies at conventions that we collect and put online.
I’m working with my good friend Nick Peterson, who’s the professor overseeing this project, on the groundwork for Testify! now. So Testify!, Notes of Rest and “Vocation” — those are the three things that really give me life right now.
F&L: What are the performances of “Vocation” like? How do you get people to meditate on the themes?
JDR: Throughout the show, I narrate every song. I’ll say what it’s for. So for instance, there’s this song called “Textures,” which is written for my wife, Carmen, and it’s about my vocation as a husband. I will say that, and then I’ll also say, “I dedicate this here to people who are experiencing that kind of love.” But I’ll also broaden it to say, “Maybe you’re not married or you’re not on the path to it, but you experience textures of love in other ways. How might you reflect on those textures as you listen to the song?”
So it’s a soft prompt; it’s the invitation to reflect. People consistently say afterward that it’s really helpful to have those small prompts, those small narrations before, because it gives new insight into what the songs offer and thus what they could be thinking about as they listen.
F&L: Who are some of the musicians who have taught you to be a performer in that way?
JDR: The first cat who comes to mind is Keyon Harrold. He’s a trumpeter, and he’s an amazing storyteller. He’s one of the best storytellers I’ve seen in the jazz world. In his shows, he’ll take long moments to tell a story. He doesn’t necessarily ask a question, but he does do a really good job of setting up a story that makes you think beyond just the notes that he’s playing. He’s one person I really appreciate.
Another artist who models this is Makoto Fujimura. He’s actually not a musician, but his visual art is so connected to his theological reflection. I’ve been really inspired by him over the years. So even though he’s not a performing artist in the way I am, the way that he theologically reflects on his practice and has inspired me to do the same with my music.
I’ve also done work with Isaiah Collier, who’s a meteoric saxophonist. He also is very intentional about saying to people, “These are songs that I’ve written for this reason, and enjoy the ride.”
F&L: How has jazz taught you about theology? And how has theology taught you about jazz?
JDR: Jazz has taught me to trust the Spirit. I think anybody who does music needs to trust, but jazz, because it’s such a naked form of following your impulses in the moment, really forced me to trust God on the bandstand, but then also off the bandstand. And that’s helped me see God as an artist who’s composing in the moment.
I would say the other thing about jazz informing theology is that the lifestyle of an artist who’s trying to figure things out, making things happen, is actually a lot more like Jesus’ public ministry than a brick-and-mortar pastor’s lifestyle, which is not to pooh-pooh that vocation. My mom’s been a pastor, I’ve been a pastor.
Most of the explicating that happens about Jesus comes from people who aren’t living lifestyles like Jesus, which isn’t to say they’re not living like Jesus in their character. I’m not saying that musicians are holier, but just think about how Jesus didn’t have a place to lay his head and how he was running logistics on the fly for his disciples: “Okay, so you’re going to go here. This is how you’re going to go eat. You need to go find somebody over here.”
F&L: He was on tour.
JDR: Yes, this cat was on tour! So I can relate in a different way to how Jesus had to trust God, like, “How are we going to get across this stormy sea?”
That’s the way this cat’s thinking all the time. How are we going to deal with this issue? How are we going to deal with this flat tire? Where are we going to sleep? So I’ve learned a lot about the life of God incarnated in Christ by just living life as a musician.
For theology to jazz, something like the Tetragrammaton, what it means to not say the name of God, but to speak around the name of God to get to the name of God, to have that kind of holiness. That has helped me appreciate what can be ineffable in a wordless music setting and how there can be a gesture toward God made known in Jesus without saying it. I love that kind of freedom, that kind of capaciousness. And I’m thankful to have done theological work in seminary that made me more open to how God could show up in all kinds of spaces.
Jazz music, like hip hop or other kinds of Black music, has been seen as the devil’s music. People have all kinds of beliefs on the stage and all kinds of practices on and off the stage. But I’m thankful that my time in seminary at Candler and Emory really opened my eyes to a way in which you can see God working in all kinds of situations, in all kinds of places, all registers, all domains, all backgrounds. And if you’re attentive and compassionate, then you can see God and not be afraid in any situation. I try to approach every situation with a creativity grounded in hospitality, and that shows up on the bandstand.
F&L: How do you collaborate with other creatives who do not profess the same faith as you?
JDR: I’ve shared the stage with many kinds of people, and finding ways for us each to show up fully is a dance. I have principles, I have values, I share those, I make those known. And I then invite us to think together about what can happen within that.
I really come back to what Willie James Jennings says about how one of the great heists of modern Christianity and its formation in the world was Christians coming to see themselves as hosts instead of as guests. And that paradigm has been so helpful for me to try to think of myself more as a guest.
Dianne Stewart talks about how Black folk have always practiced poly-religiosity, that we’ve always had these multiple streams. These kinds of insights from the academy have been so helpful for explaining what’s already happening. Everybody is listening to all kinds of music, and they’re not necessarily questioning where it comes from, where these beats come from. So it’s been a joy to just be expansive, to feel grounded, but to feel open and capacious and try to find that common ground.
F&L: One of the things that you’ve said is that Black music teaches you about rest. What has led you to believing that?
JDR: It has been restful for me to play, to listen to my sound. And my sound emerges from the totality of my experiences, including the rich Black lineage of my family, but also the Black musics that run through the currents of Chicago and around this country. In that regard, I have found rest.
During the pandemic I felt a lot of angst vocationally. I didn’t understand how I could hold together my life of the mind from the academy, my life of the cloth, having been a pastor, and my life on the bandstand, being a musician. How do I hold these three lives together?
I was invited to think about, “What is the music saying?” And the music was inviting me to rest. I was playing restfully, even though I didn’t feel peace. And so I listened to my sound and let the sound actually tell me something from God.
Also, I saw how Black folk have made rest for us culturally within the music that we make, even when the music is speaking to all kinds of violence. One classic case is Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” That song’s incredibly polemical, but it feels so inviting and lush and calm and easy. It’s played at cookouts. It’s played all over the place. And people just kind of hop to it. But if you listen to it, it’s addressing violence.
There’s this other song called “Freeze Tag” by Terrace Martin and Robert Glasper on their album “Dinner Party.” It’s more recent, but it’s trading on the same logic. It’s such a calm, lush groove, but the song is all about police brutality. The song says, “Then they told me if I move, they going to shoot me dead.”
But I kid you not, if you listen to that song and you don’t pay attention to the lyrics, you wouldn’t know. And I find that kind of paradox so fascinating about how Black horror, the macabre of anti-Blackness, finds its way into music that is so calming and works against the dysregulation that we feel in our nervous system as a people. And that’s not just for us.
All kinds of folk listen to Marvin Gaye. All kinds of folk listen to Robert Glasper and Terrace Martin, Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston, the spirituals. All kinds of folk have found rest, they found relaxation, they have found calm, they found connection to God who brings rest. They found it through music that has spittle, that has moan, that has cracked Blues notes.
I see this as not only a Black project with it as pertaining to intramural Black care, but it’s also a way to think about the Black embrace of a country that’s not embraced us. I see Black music as a way that God has brought grace to this country.
