hmm. I didn't know this about Ventura's essay -- which I was assigned by my tutor, in a history class on American Culture, apparently Ventura's book was all the rage in college campuses at that time and widely taught at Cornell where my tutor was doing his grad work in history dept. (I went to weird school where we had tutors and mentors).
The front page of that site introduces the essay, apparently put up for the enlightenment of the members of BaptistBoard.com, has an intro to the essay in which we learn that the roots of what we glorify, jazz (and perhpas rock'n'roll) and villify (southern evangelist theatrics and Baptist pentacostalism) arise from a common thread: voodoo, which melds a variety of African traditions with Irish pagan religion: <quote> This is a concise, authoritative essay on the history of Rock'n'Roll and its effect on American culture. Required reading in many university music history courses, it first appeared in the L. A. Weekly, and is included in an anthology of Ventura's essays, Shadow Dancing in the USA (St. Martins Press, 1985).
Ventura asserts that rock music in all its forms is incompatible with Christian doctrine, and that it was a necessary development to heal the "mind-body split," a wound inflicted upon American culture by the narrow, puritanical teachings of Protestant Christianity.
It reappeared in two parts in the Spring and Summer issues of Whole Earth Review (1987) with the following preface: With unexpected, compelling evidence, Michael Ventura asserts that rock music, TV evangelism theatrics, Baptist pentecostalism, jazz, and much else of our pop culture has its parenthood in voodoo.
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