Topic: John Coltrane’s Love Supreme: A Process Approach to (Popular) Music.

Presenters: Sam Coker

Arguably a dominant “religion” of contemporary culture is popular music: jazz, rock, metal, indie, rap, country, etc. People form identities and communities around it, and enjoy touches of transcendence while listening to it. It is, in a certain sense, the sacred scripture for many around the world: albeit sonic not textual. Recently Sam Coker, a recent graduate of Garrett-Evangelical seminary, with a Master of Divinity and a Master of Theological Studies, wrote a thesis on theology and popular music. His research interests include hermeneutics and the intersection of contemporary theology and music, which culminated in a master’s thesis entitled “Keeping Time: A Theological Reading of Temporality in Popular Music.” Building upon that MA thesis, he will explore the role of popular music in contemporary culture, in dialogue with Jay McDaniel, who was Sam’s professor of religious studies at Hendrix College. Using samples from jazz to metal music, they will discuss (1) how music works with a yearning for restoration with the divine reality and can, at times, embody that restoration in sonic form; (2) how music elicits a dual dialectic of the apophatic and cataphatic; and (3) how temporality itself, understood as a lived passage from present to past to future, is at the heart of all music.  

In developing his themes, he uses John Coltrane’s Love Supreme as one of his examples. Sam will introduce the themes and Jay will link with process thought. Sam currently lives in Chicago and splits his time between working in the chaplain’s office at a senior living facility and as a barista at a midsize coffee company. In his spare time, he listens to tons of music, goes to a lot of concerts, and collects vinyl records. He is excited to collaborate with Dr. Jay McDaniel, who was Sam’s professor of religious studies at Hendrix College.  

He is a certified candidate for ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church and one day hopes to pursue a doctoral degree in theology and ethics.

To further get acquainted with Sam Coker, see this link to his thesis: https://www.proquest.com/docview/2819964804. Or check out his metal article here:
https://www.openhorizons.org/metal-music-a-hunger-for-transgressive-spiritual-spaces.html.

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