Hi, and welcome to the Narollah.com website!
My name is Matt, and for a long time I have had an interest or involvement in Christian music (well, pretty much for the last 25 years or more). This site is a long overdue extension of my interests and involvement in something that still remains a burning passion in my life.
So, here’s a bit about me – a brief background to my involvement in the “Christian Music Industry” (for want of a better term) over the past couple of decades:-
In 1981 I started working at Rhema Records in Sydney Australia, and from there became involved in promoting concerts with such artists as Chubbs & The Weightwatchers, Idea, Avion, Family, Tom Howard, Larry Norman and more recently Paul Colman & The Paul Colman Trio.
For a number of years I also worked with David Smallbone, and assisted on many artist tours at the time including Leon Patillo, David Meece, Randy Stonehill, Larry Norman amongst others. Of course, that was well before the career of David’s daughter Rebecca took off (Rebecca was only in primary school at the time, but you may know her now as one of Christian music’s top selling artists, Rebecca St James).
As you can see from the photo on the left, I didn’t quite make it that far as an artist. I tried, but there was something about artistic integrity and marketing potential. I dunno. Probably the fact this gig was at an airline call centre had something to do with it… Maybe someday someone will recognise me for the incredible talent I possess…
Anyhow, during those years I also did a stint on radio, with the “Horizon” radio program running 3 hours a week on Sydney’s first community radio station, 2NBC-fm. The program ran for 4 years, and was the first fully Christian Music program to run on Sydney’s airwaves.
We played thousands of songs, gave away concert tickets, interviewed artists, and generally had heaps of fun in the process. Although, I must admit, one of the highlights was being sponsored by Domino’s and getting free pizzas every week…
Don’t laugh at the photo – it was the eighties, man!
To get a bit serious and summarise why I am doing this site, I am still a firm believer in Christian Music, but have my reservations on the whole pendulum swing towards the attitude that “worship” is pretty much the primary essence of Christian Music.
Although “worship” music sells extremely well amongst Christians (so much so that we seem to have developed a “hit parade” mentality towards worship music), I think that there tends to be far too much emphasis on this form of musical expression over and above other valid musical art forms. We seem to “come into this place” so many times that we have forgotten the broken world outside .
Don’t get me wrong, there are some great and powerful expressions of adoration and worship that have been written over the years, but from a musical and artistic point of view, we seem to be only able to paint pictures of stained glass windows and ignore the pain that is just beyond the glass outside.
The harvest is plentiful but the workers seem to be few… we just sing about how good the crop is this year from our vantage point overlooking the fields, all the while wondering why no one is out there getting their hands dirty.
I must admit that it is a bit of a bugbear of mine, but I don’t mind being a little controversial in my postings. If it promotes discussion and questioning, I think that is a good thing. I will discuss some of these issues in more detail in other posts on this site.
I guess at the end of the day, my reason for this site is firstly to validate the artforms of Christian artists who may be outside the whole mainstream Christian “Worship” scene, and to try and encourage those artists and muso’s to keep at it. I hope you enjoy the journey!
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