The Music

In 1992 music producer Quincy Jones in collaboration with composer and conductor Mervyn Warren drew a starry lineup of soloists and choir members from the gospel and secular music worlds to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Handel's "Messiah" by what else recording a new album. The resulting "Handel's Messiah: A Soulful Celebration" won Jones his 27th Grammy Award and has since been played, sung, danced and, even occasionally, staged.

Jone's recording articulates cultural appropriation at its most innocent. Jones not only blends European and African-American musical forms, he traces very specifically the evolution of African American music from its African origins through its European influences and appropriations, expanding the 18th-century text from religious story telling into social commentary, and spiritual celebration. Classical music lovers greeted the unusual project mostly with silence. At least one music critic, Ottavio Roca, then at The Washington Times, found it sacrilegious, "a bizarre specialty act that will barely last out the season," while a few others praised its postmodern appropriation of Handel's music. Mozart had done something similar, though still within the classical tradition, when his tribute to the genius of Handel updated the 1742 "Messiah" score, adding woodwind parts and new melodies to reflect the musical taste of his times.

A Soulful Celebration is not only historical commentary or emotional expression it is intelligently revolutionary. Composer and conductor Mervyn Warren illustrates his education and understanding of Handel's form throughout the album. His thorough treatment of each selection actually maintain a fair amount of the original compositional structures altering not the forms so much but the expressions as they mix together to create a new expression of a timeless message from a contemporary action. In the case of "And The Glory of the Lord", Warren re-interprets the ornate baroque sensibility of the original through a reggae musical structure, maintaining the same bounce and rhythmic playfulness. The Glory is still there only this time it seems the glory of the lord is in the hips.

The Jones/ Warren composition matches the lyrics of Handel's original music, word for word, allowing the performers opportunity to pour their individual experience into the performance of the work. This is not unlike the original composition structure of Resistive then Aria, Handel used, where the resistive prior to the aria gives the soloist opportunity to improvise in a since coloring the melody with their passion and expression which makes live performance so special.