What is the best way to communicate Christ to people of other cultures? We must first find ways to respect people who are different than ourselves yet, like us, are made in the image of the one true God. It is not our job to obliterate other cultures in the process of evangelism. Rather, we must seek to recover elements of their culture for the glory of God. Our challenge is to speak Christ in ways that people of other cultures, classes and traditions will understand and embrace. This task must not be taken lightly, but rather born out of a great sense of responsibility and Christ-centeredness. Aradhna is a musical group who uses bhajan-style music of Northern India as a form of worship which they have contextualized for delivery of the Christian message. Through this discussion of music and faith with Chris Hale and Pete Hicks one quickly recognizes how seriously they take this endeavor to express a Chris-centered message using indigenous forms. This interview gives great insight into how music becomes a bridge for speaking faith to others. It also speaks to the degree of study and devotion necessary in order to understand the social, cultural and spiritual aspects of a given people group; and, how one uses existing forms to communicate a new message--the message of the Gospel.

MH: Chris, are you fluent in Nepali and Hindi?

Chris: I was fluent in Nepali up to the age of 12 when my family lived in a Nepali village. Nepali and English were first languages for me. My vocabulary has diminished somewhat since then, and Nepali friends complain that I now speak it with an Indian accent. Learning Hindi was more of a struggle and I took my time doing so over the 10 years I lived in Lucknow, North India, playing guitar in a rock band and learning sitar at a music school in the 90's. I am fluent now but still working on some embarrassing gaps in vocabulary.

MH: How have you managed to keep fluent while living in the United States--and now Canada?

Chris: Strangely my confidence increased in the West and my language skills seemed to magically improve here. I cannot explain this.

MH: When native Hindi speakers hear you sing do they detect a bit of a Canadian accent?

Chris: No, there is no trace of accent in my Hindi, only my Nepali, and that's a Hindi accent!

MH: How about you Pete, do you speak or understand and any of the languages?

Pete: I actually only speak a horribly broken Hindi--get around town sort of Hindi. The few times I ventured out to speak Hindi, I was asked why I couldn't speak it like Chris. After the initial attempts and rebuffs I decided that I would let Chris do the talking. I can usually follow a conversation loosely by picking up certain words here and there.

MH: So how did Chris Hale and Peter Hicks come to know each other?

Pete: I was born in India and all through my childhood I hoped to have the chance to go back and experience it for myself. My father knew of Chris and his rock band, Olio, in India and had him over to dinner when I was a freshman in high school and had just learned to play the guitar. Chris told me to come out to India when I finished school to join his band. I don't think that he really thought it would happen, but four years later I sent him a letter and a few months after that I joined Olio in North India.

MH: Chris, you’re a Berklee College of Music grad. What did you study there?

Chris: Western Composition.

MH: Kevin Twit, of Indelible Grace, mentioned he knew you from Berklee College of Music. What was your relationship with him back in the day?

Chris: He was actually leaving Berklee when I was arriving. He was one of the leaders of a fledgling community of Christ-following musicians on campus that I soon joined.

MH: Have you heard any of the work he's been doing in realm of hymnody and with the Indelible Grace project?

Chris: I have their CD's and enjoy them very much, and also had the opportunity of meeting him and some of his friends at one of our concerts in an Indian neighborhood in London, England a few years ago.

MH: Pete, can you speak to your own musical training and upbringing?

Pete: I am a self-taught guitarist, or rather I gleaned what I know from the better musicians I met along the way. Within the first month of picking up a guitar, my brother and I formed a band and started writing songs, albeit rather painful compositions. I learned by playing and listening. I think my lack of formal training allows me some freedom from proper musical rules and some fun experiments, but often I feel the constrictions of learning on my own.

MH: Can you speak about your talented/musical wives--Miranda Stone (Chris' Wife) and Fiona Hicks (Pete's Wife).

Pete: Until she was ten years old, Fiona grew up in Bangladesh, Nepal, and India. Those early years implanted a deep love in her for South Asia. She finished school in England and then attended university in Birmingham, England majoring in music. By the time she finished with her degree, she realized that she didn't connect well with the western classical world and stopped playing her violin. The death of music
in her life was hard to bear. When we married, she began to bring out the violin again, and occasionally she would play with Aradhna. When she was introduced to Indian classical violin, she found the music connected with her heart. She is now a student of North Indian classical violinist Kala Ramnath and enjoying digging into ragas.

MH: And Miranda? She has a great web site and I love her music as well. Does she have plans to record another CD? I know she has been involved with various artistic endeavors.

Chris: One of the reasons Miranda has not yet put out another album, since “7 Deadly Sins,” is because she is as good at carpentry, photography, painting, illustration, and digging into the life and culture of India, as she is putting out incredible records. She is also finding that community life and letting music flow as part of community is very important to her. So at a festival called Nidus outside Toronto (nidusfestival.ca) we packed our van full of all the furniture in our house that she had built and set up a Japanese tea tent on the grounds and served free cups of tea, and a huge Indian vegetarian meal to hundreds of people over the weekend. She has a number of amazing new songs that are waiting to get recorded, so when she finishes building all the floor to ceiling furniture in all the rooms in our new home
in "Little India," Toronto, she may begin to devote time to them. Until then, check out her huge website (mirandastone.com) if you want a glimpse of the music, photography, furniture, paintings, and blogs on trips to India.

MH: Could the two of you speak to your faith backgrounds past and present.

Pete: I was raised in a fairly traditional evangelical home. We attended church on Sundays and sometimes Wednesdays, but beyond that my parents modeled for me a life of true devotion and commitment to Christ. They stressed the grace and forgiveness of Christ's life and teachings. The vitality of their faith has been a huge influence in my life. Now, Fiona and I are a part of to be living as the body of Christ with each other and in our community. We seek to know each other and push our often reluctant selves to be known. It is really helpful for us as we travel so much to be supported by our church family so personally.

Chris: As for me, I grew up attending a Nepali church on Saturdays and then later a boarding school chapel in India. My first deeper experience of the love, grace, and unconditional acceptance of Christ was in Amsterdam, Holland while volunteering at a shelter there in 1986-87. That experience altered the course of my life and set me on a mission to live in India when I finished college. Since then I have been on a steady diet of feeling distant from God, but probably being closer to him than I was when I was 18. This sense of distance is caused, I think, by the intensity of my interaction with people who do not believe the same things that I do about faith, salvation, and eternal life. When the people around your Thanksgiving table are no longer your family or church friends who all believe roughly the same thing you do--but are rather atheists, agnostics, Hindus and friends into Wicca--you end up spending the times you are alone with God, asking questions and expressing doubts, instead of just enjoying his love. Aradhna concerts have helped me immensely to just let go and worship. Believe it or not, I find the still points just before the first notes of a performance to be among the most intimate experiences I have of the presence and love of God.

MH: Have either of you undergone any formal theological training? What fuels the spiritual side for each of you?

Pete: Nothing formal. Fiona and I often laugh that much of our belief system and theology comes from C.S. Lewis. When I finish reading Perelandra (the 2nd book in Lewis' space trilogy) or The Great Divorce, for the thousandth time, I put the book down with a sense of wonder at the unimaginable magnificence of God and His ultimate creativity and insane plan of redemption through Christ. C.S. Lewis somehow captures a bit of the unknowable in his writing. Beyond that, a mainstay in my spiritual journey is community. I tend to go through phases of being reclusive and anti-social. When that happens, I spiritually begin to fade, but when I am engaged with my community, both at home and around the world, when I open my ears to hear the song of salvation through my friends and family and I allow my fellow journeymen to hold open my eyelids to see the beautiful tapestry that God weaves around us, that is when my spirit is alive. Each day I realize more how badly I need support.

Chris: I did get a masters degree from an Indian seminary--the Asian College of Cultural Studies. It took me five years to complete while playing in the rock band in India, called Olio. The reading I had to do has enabled me to talk the talk in church, and at seminars that we lead on the interface between Hindu and Christian worlds. Spiritual fuel is low right now, so it would be unfair to rattle off a bunch of books that I am reading, but Miranda is reading one right now called, The Word is Very Near You: A Guide to Praying with Scripture by Martin L Smith, which is causing a visible change in her whole manner and being, and she is excited about reading some of it to me. I did spend the last two years reading my New Testament in Hindi exclusively, and it was hard but has begun to give me insights into what it would have been like if Christ had walked the streets of Varanasi instead of Jerusalem 2000 years ago. It also inspired a few of the songs on Amrit Vani, like "Khat Khataao" and "Prabhu Hamare."

MH: Do you consider yourself a Christian band? A band of Christians? A Christ-influenced band?

Pete: That's a tricky question. I think the best way to describe us is as a Christ-centered band. Of course, we were born into the Christian culture, but around the world the word Christian carries with it connotations that have nothing to do with Christ. There are the obvious ones, like the Crusades, the Inquisition, Imperialism and then the more contemporary things like, free-sex, divorce, lawsuits, Hollywood, swimming pools, war and Capitalism. Though in our Christian world we do not claim most of these, the rest of the world has a hard time seeing the difference. It is easy to get into semantics with this, or to sound prudish or just trivially reactionary, but we believe that there is a difference between being Christian and following Christ. We want to be, and to be known as, disciples who long to sit at his feet.

MH: How do you see your music being used?

Pete: We hope that it will find its way into many diverse groups and help to break down barriers between communities that feel that there is little in common between them. That it can be a starting point for a conversation, or a friendship. Just as Christ came to earth to speak our language, walk with us, to make the Father known to us, we hope that this music will resonate in the hearts of Indians and Westerners around the world and draw them closer to Christ. We hope people just put on their earphones and get lost in the music and in adoration of God.

MH: The music of Aradhna is definitely reverent and worshipful. Is this the kind of music that would be used in a worship service in India? If not, what style of music is used in church worship in India?

Chris: In India there is a difference between churches in the major cities and churches in villages. In the cities you often find the use of English in the service, even to the point where the Indian pastor preaches the sermon in English, while another translates into the local language. Needless to say, the worship is also heavily influenced by the West with guitar, drum set and even organ winning over tabla and sitar by a long shot. Moving into the poorer urban and village congregations you still find the use of small two-octave casio keyboards more common than Indian instruments with the exception of folk rhythm instruments like the dholak. But attend a Pentecostal church, the fastest growing by far in India, and whether you are in the village or in the city, you will hear all kinds of songs from "This is the day that the Lord has made" rocked out with the dholak drum and sung in Hindi, to traditional Indian devotional songs accompanied by disco rhythms on the
Casio. Anything goes, as a long as its anointed.

MH: Traditional Hindi worship music seems so removed--in a western sense--from what is typified as worship or praise music in the United States. People have a preconceived notion of how Psalms and Scriptures should be adapted musically. Certainly some have been able to break the mold and break through to western audiences. How do we get Western ears acclimated to these "new" sounds?

Pete: Our experience, as well as my own personal experience as a non-Hindi speaking westerner, is that many are hungry for a new sound. I have to say that I am often very surprised at the positive response among the different age groups and demographics that we play in. A couple of years ago we were in Oxford, Mississippi doing some concerts on the campus of Ole Miss. On Sunday morning we were taken to the oldest church building in Oxford. There was still a ladder to the upper balcony where slaves used to sit for the services. As we sang the opening hymns, I looked around the room and guessed that the median age of the congregation must have been around 60 and thought, "there is no way we will connect here." However, the conversations I had at the end of the service, the encouragement, and the clear enjoyment we found in their eyes blew me away. On the other end of the spectrum, recently we were at the University of Arkansas, invited by the campus Christian fraternity to play their big yearly event. About 500, mainly American, college students came out to the concert. Again, the response was fantastic. It is happening all around us, and it is not only with Aradhna, but the world is becoming a smaller place and
music from all around the world is reaching westerners.

MH: Your new release, Amrit Vani, seems very accessible musically. As far as musical style are all the tracks on the new album bhajan (devotional songs sung in Hindi)? Or are there other song styles present as well? Definitely on Amrit Vani you have broadened the range of instruments used as well as expanded vocals to include choirs and some singing in English. What music are you listening to or drawing from for inspiration? Do you listen to other Indian artists who perform bhajan style?

Pete: The way Chris and I have worked over the years is that he brings the Indian element while I rely mainly on my western roots for compositions. Chris would sing a melody to me and I would interpret in the way my western musical experience allowed. Often this led to him saying something like, “you can't use that chord, it is completely outside the raga.” And I would reply, “but just listen to it, you really can't argue with how good it sounds.” And that is really what makes what we do work, the two copletely different approaches. I am a big fan of artists like Paul Simon, Bruce Cockburn, Springsteen, and M Ward, all very folk artists. I find that their styles and lyrics are a great help to me in my spiritual life.

Mini Review

Amrit Vani (2007)
Chris Hale - vocals, sitar
Pete Hicks - guitar
Fiona Hicks - violin
Travis McAfee - bass
Toronto Volunteer Choir,
Albion Road Behta Darya Choir,
Nahari Choir
Plus many other guest musicians

Aradhna’s latest CD holds true to their Christian faith while capturing the beauty of Northern Indian music forms. Influences of Hindi culture weigh heavy into this release from Chris Hale ís study of the Hindi New Testament, to the cover artwork by Jyoti Sahi (the “Salit Madonna”) to the writings of Christian monks, poets, theologians, and musicians of India. On this, their fourth release, Aradhna expands the instrumentation and brings in choirs on many of the numbers. Songs vary from very meditative tracks like
“Yeshu Raja” to praise and worship tracks like title track “Amrit Vani” to borderline rock tracks like “Man Mera.”

This article copyright ©2008 Matthew Edward Hundley. Used with permission.

First Published: Critique Magazine
Also Published: Global Gospel Sounds eZine