Music Easter Monday: He is Risen!
Sharing the music that has inspired our family's home celebrations
Blessed Easter! The Lord has risen!
From the viewpoint of a Catholic parent trying to recover and pass on culture, celebrating Easter has challenges not posed by Christmas, and some of the challenges are more aggressive. Despite the commercialism, most of the world is still willing to admit Christmas might have something to do with the birth of Christ 2000 years ago, but when it comes to Easter, the holiday itself is either ignored (public school calendars call it “spring break”) or its religious meaning completely erased in favor of bunnies and chicks. Add to this that Easter is actually the primal and primary Christian feast, meaning its celebration should be greater than that of Christmas. Which means that it is difficult as a Catholic parent to communicate to the next generation just how significant and meaningful that Easter is.
There were some years where we banned not only the Easter bunny but all bunny rabbits just to emphasize that Jesus really is the center of this celebration. (The Easter Bunny is, after all, super random, and not connected in any way to Christ in the way Santa Claus is connected to St. Nicholas, so we fired the Big Bunny long ago: the Easter Angel brings presents to our children on Easter just as she brought presents to my husband’s family. Family lore tells us that his littlest sister explained this as, “The Easter bunny was run over by a truck so the Easter Angel brings us presents instead.”) We’ve allowed bunnies back as spring/nature participants now that our family is older.
What I have found is that if you do Lent right, Easter explains itself to the child. And if your work schedule allows you to participate fully in the Triduum liturgies, your children can experienced seventy two hours where you practically live at the Church, starting Holy Thursday with a long evening liturgy, going into the Night Watch, then returning to a barren and stripped sanctuary on Good Friday, solemn Stations, and then the earnest preparations of Holy Saturday—all to explode into joyous enthusiasm when the sun sets and Easter officially begins.
What we have discovered is that music at Easter is almost more important than Christmas music, and I’m pondering why this is so. There is a spiritual element to Easter which needs to be drawn out, and the below playlist helps us do that. I’ve analyzed some of the songs for this Easter Music Monday.
Music, being spiritual, seems like a needed component. Back in the 90s, I would cue up the CD player, but now that we have the glories of YouTube, we eventually compiled a playlist, which I shared yesterday. It only seems natural to do a Music Monday on some of these songs, which date from various eras of our lives, and which every Easter provide food for meditation on the great gift of Easter, as well as creating an atmosphere of joyful fun for the children. Easter must be fun as well as meaningful, for that is how children tend to experience meaning.
The Easter Song sung by Keith Green
In our home, it became customary for the first person to arise to cue up this song’s quiet murmuring piano intro to awake the rest of the house. This song is perfect because it softly builds in intensity. For so many years the children have stirred and then hurried downstairs to behold our model empty tomb, the statues uncovered, flowers on the table, and everything bright and festive for the Resurrection.
I remember my discovery of Keith Green during my college years and the long summer where I obsessively listened to the two volume CD collection of his work, The Ministry Years. He combined a Motown sound with passionate and almost anguished singing to the Lord over his vigorous piano playing: reputedly he became so one with the piano when singing that his producers found it necessary to record both vocals and keyboard simultaneously. His cover of Annie Herring’s song captures some of his earnest melody work. Its peaceful and beckoning introduction captures the artistry of the man who died in a plane crash at the peak of his career. May his soul rest in peace.
Let no one caught in sin remain
inside the lie of inward shame.
We fix our eyes upon the Cross
and run to Him Who showed great love and bled
For us.
Truly You bled
For us…Christ is Risen from the dead, trampling over Death by death
Come awake! Come awake! Come and rise up from the grave!
Once we discovered this song by Catholic artist Matt Maher, it quickly assumed the role of the Easter morning wake-up song. The lyrics combine strains of the Eastern Catholic liturgy to create this lyrical invitation to behold the Resurrection. This is one of his best songs, bringing together the beauty of the old with the new, the East with the West.
Blessed Messiah—my Redeemer!
You are the mighty King of Kings!
Blessed Messiah—my Redeemer!
My Lord Messiah came down to me!
This song by Degarmo and Key is covered by an indie band from my college years Spiritsong, and doesn’t deserve its current obscurity. I’m not able to find the name of this singer: the video lists it as Mary Ella Seibert, but given that the band changed members each time someone graduated, I’m fairly certain this song was sung by Shawnda Drager who was at Franciscan when I was a freshman. All the other versions of this song feature male vocalists, but I feel her performance as a woman brings something bright and unexpected to the song. It’s always the third up on our list: I wish I could find a more clear version but I’m mainly happy this version exists at all!
The gates and doors were barred: all the windows fastened down.
I spent the night in sleeplessness and rose at every sound,
Half in hopeless sorrow: half in fear the day
Would find the soldiers breaking in to drag us all away.
The great Don Francisco specialized in making the Biblical figures come alive through telling their stories. He wrote unforgettable and sometimes humorous songs about Jehosophat, Balaam, the Good Thief, and more, but his masterpiece was surely this song about Peter on Easter morning. A fan intercut it with scenes from Jesus of Nazareth in this video, but it’s amazing on its own. If you just want the song without a video, here’s another version.
Your voice is over the water,
Your voice is over the sea:
Your voice is mighty in power and wisdom and love and charity.
The other songs on this list are uplifting but still calming: this song brings the party. We usually play it after Mass, and one of my Easter memories is speeding down the road with my oldest son with the windows down and blasting this song to the neighborhood. Josh Blakesley is a Catholic singer with jazz New Orleans roots and he called this song a tribute to his upbringing, and I once heard him perform it at Abbeyfest. Such a great song.
Listen here to what I say—Alleluia!
The Lord His people He will save—Alleluia!
Gathering all His people round—Alleluia!
Saving them from awful fate—Alleluia!
One of the passions of my life has been my love for the Jewish people. I love their stories, their music, their paradoxes, and their connection to Christ. When a Jew discovers their Messiah in Christ, it’s so amazing to me. In high school, my friends discovered this Messianic Jewish band (niche within a niche within a niche) and we all became huge fans and even learned Jewish dancing so we could dance to their songs: I’ve seen them in concert several times, collected their albums, and remain a diehard lover of Lamb. To my joy, my own teens, who normally roll their eyes at my 80s music choices (they begrudgingly admit a few songs from the Imperials are ok, and I’ve seen a few pop up on their Spotify lists), agree with me that Lamb is simply the best. This may prove I am right, or just prove that they are my children with the same misbegotten sense of musical taste that I have. At any rate, listening to Lamb throughout Lent has become our family tradition, but we can’t listen to any of their songs that contain the “A Word” (Some of my children have become convinced it’s a minor sin to say Alleluia during Lent). So it’s only natural that we boot up this song on Easter morning, and it still delights me to see my daughters dancing to it. We have several other favorites on this list as well.
May the soul of Rick “Levil” Coghill, one of the two members of Lamb, who died in 2021, rest in peace. May his memory be for a blessing.
Lastly, this one is just for fun. The late great Carman was a Christian comedian and rapper who produced playful sendups with Christian themes. This piece came at the height of the Rocky movies in 1985: Rocky IV had just been released, so all the comic references were recognizable. Carman re-imagines the Resurrection as the ultimate boxing championship with lots of tongue in cheek but ends it in sincerity. Since my children are fans of Rocky, I played it once for my children on Easter, and it was an instant hit. This fan video comes with art including some Catholic images, which I think adds to the fun and corniness.
The rest of the Easter list includes some of our favorite Christian songs, all on the upbeat side: I hope you enjoy them!
One interesting quality of the Easter celebration is that it’s normative: it’s Easter Monday and most of us are back to work already. We celebrate Easter every Sunday. Easter is how we are meant to live our lives. Christmas is a disruption in history—Christ’s birth reset the human calendar. His Resurrection is how we live now. We need to keep the celebration going each day of our lives.
May the music of Easter live on it your heart as you go about your day. He is risen: we are an Easter people, and alleluia is our song, so sing!