Indie. Just the word implies a certain level of “cool” or “hip”—some mixture of DIY culture mixed with honesty and grit. Indie rock. Indie rap. Indie folk. Those sorts of terms describe some of the greatest musical artists out there—those that embody the air, the aura described above.

But those artists and bands that come to mind are usually in the mainstream—that is to say that you usually don’t think of Christians in the musical arts as indie artists. But they are out there. And it’s here we want to recognize them.

That’s because indie is really short for independent. And there are a lot of meaningful artists making music outside of Nashville and the world of record labels, sponsored tours and proper TV gigs. They’re slugging it out every night on their own gas money, touring through churches, bars and even homes to sell CDs one at a time. They do it for the love of music and the calling they feel inside versus the paycheck and notoriety that comes with some of the corporate love.

Our goal, then, with this particular blog is to shed some of the spotlight on these very artists. And if you normally don’t think of Christian music or Christian musicians when the word “indie” is mentioned, I hope that will change as we move forward together.

If you know of a great independent band or artist that deserves a mention, please feel free to let me know through comments here.

Until next time,
Matt Conner

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 9:30 am and is filed under The Independent Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.