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Festival Highlights Faith and Contemporary Music

March 20, 2015

Calvin College

Musicians, critics, theologians and listeners from a variety of backgrounds will convene March 26-28 on the Calvin College campus for the biennial Festival of Faith and Music (FFM). 

Since 2003, FFM has challenged attendees to explore a conversation between faith and music, to consider the possibility that they can love God and love popular arts.

Ken Heffner, student activities director at Calvin College, says that FFM is done out of the theological and philosophical tradition of the college.

FFM is held, he says, as a way of engaging with an important part of life and trying to figure out how to understand it, appreciate it and how to critique it.

“Christ is renewing the whole creation, making all things new. That has shaped this college from the beginning and therefore shaped the kind of intellectual tradition that we have, so that all academic disciplines at Calvin are not just opportunities to get a job but are actually ways of loving God.

“And that lays perfect ground for something like the music festival because what we’re saying is, ‘this, too, matters,’” said Heffner.

This year’s keynote speakers include Lecrae, who is arguably the biggest name in the Christian hip hop world; James Mumford, a British writer, journalist and scholar, who writes regularly for the British and American press on a wide range of issues from food to faith, moral dilemmas to cultural oddities, and Barry Taylor, who writes and speaks about the intersections of life, faith and culture.

FFM also includes more than 30 workshops, including a track targeted to musicians that combines discussion and performance. The festival also offers three nights of live performances that span the musical spectrum:

  • Will Butler, a multi-instrumentalist and composer and core member of the indie rock band Arcade Fire. In 2014, he received an Academy Award nomination for his work on the original score of the film Her.
  • Tune-Yards, the music project of Smith College grad Merrill Garbus. The group creates highly danceable, world-influenced music that resists classification. Layering the ukulele over drum loops, with electric base help from Nate Brenner, they have gained a reputation as one of the most original and energizing live acts on tour.
  • Lecrae, a Christian rapper, songwriter, record producer and actor. His work has received five Grammy Award nominations. And, in 2014, his album Anomaly became the first album to top both the Billboard 200 and the Gospel music chart simultaneously.