Down under

This original piece of music seeks to extend theological aesthetics’ focus on literature and representational arts to the artform of “musicking”. The underlying research position is that music-making is an essential form of human meaning-making beyond or even underlying the duality of verbal communication. The specific research question underlying Down Under is interculturality: the importance of context, the permanency of one’s culture of origin when one’s life (and the world) mixes and changes. Inspired by the pervasiveness of Irish (some would call Celtic) spirituality as it intermingles with the Australian landscape, the song dialogues with and performs afresh what has been called “St Patrick’s breastplate.

While there is a growing volume of works about music in theology, there is very little research attempting to theologise through music. Through its specific symbolic processes and semiotic patterning of experience and understanding, music can exteriorise aspects of experience and conversion in ways that cannot be accessed solely through theoretical reasoning. Down Under performs intercultural reality of missionary life and adaptation.

The song was produced by Multi-Platinum Award Winning Producer Adrian Hannan at The Song Store, VIC; launched at The Cave Inn, Brisbane, while livestreamed to an international audience from across Australia, Asia, Europe, the USA, and Latin America; and released by Willow Publishing Party Ltd. In June 2022, it was published by Bloomsbury as an intrinsic part of conclusion of a book entitled Suspended God: Music and a Theology of Doubt, entitled "Coda: An Invitation to Autoethnography: Being an Irish Theologian”.

File size over 30 MB.