Hip-hop has almost always prioritised the knowledge, experience and artistic expressions of the poor and disenfranchised, he says. Read more

Deng says that the inspiration for the new album Revelation came from a supernatural experience she encountered. Read more

The Toofan story started in Togo in 2005 when the two football- and music-loving adolescents hired out a small studio with little more than a microphone and a computer to record their first hit, "Eperviers." Continue reading

In an interview with the UK, Sunday Times 76-year-old star said he was "humbled" by the experience. Read more

It is odd to imagine a celebrity icon millionaire presumably so close to the heart of rock and roll speaking so wistfully of thwarted ambition, as if he once had a dream and is now resigned to the reigning system that forbids its fulfilment because these are the rules, so to speak.

What's to stop the lead singer of the Rolling Stones from auditioning for a role in a play somewhere remote or funding a production of "King Lear," casting himself, and putting it on Youtube?

And who are "they" exactly?

Are "they" real or an abstraction, a phantom, a dagger of the mind?

Housed within our sacred traditions, we find many a healing mantra of redirection for this neurosis: The true jihad is the inner jihad.

Consider whether the light in you is not darkness.

Everything seen by the eyes is burning.

But the one I hear in my head when I get to worrying over who might not be on my side comes as a tune: "There is no them."

It's a sneakily straightforward four-word phrase that could easily be a bit of graffiti, harmless-seeming enough, but if we apply it to the partisan divide relentlessly asserted by a split screen in a 24-hour news cycle, it's about as countercultural as it gets.

Bring "There is no them" to bear upon the concept of international borders or, say, the difference between an American soldier and an Afghan civilian, or a police officer and a black human being suddenly decreed a suspect, and you might upset someone.

Express this article of faith out loud in certain contexts and you might even discover a degree of aggression projected upon yourself. As is the case with so many other lyrical one-liners

• "We get to carry each other";
• "What you thought was freedom was just greed";
• "Can't you see what love has done?";
• "Dream up the world you want to live in."

"There is no them" arises in my mind unbidden out of the everlasting opus of U2, those four alarmingly thoughtful Irishman who have banded together to create, record and perform music for over 40 years.

What to do with U2?

They are admittedly millionaires.

From the very beginning, there have been those who find them insufferable, as if their earnestness is an embarrassment to us all. What's that about?

Well, Jagger's observation might prove helpful here.

We like to know where to put people.

The placeholders are mind-numbingly familiar.

Keep religion out of politics (or vice versa).

Are you an artist or an activist?

Sacred or secular?

These divisions doubtless serve someone's marketing scheme quite well, but we know - our hearts and minds tell us - that it does not really work this way.

We love what we love.

One revelation speaks to another.

Our alleged boundaries dissolve upon contact with the way our consciousness really operates.

I know this feelingly.

As a native of Nashville, I would like to pretend that the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and the beloved community that fostered him entered my radar through my judicious study of civil rights history and culture.

This would be a lie.

It was MTV and U2's decision to craft and promote what proved to be a radio hit called "Pride (In the Name of Love)," commemorating King as one more pioneer of human seriousness (one more in the name of love) along a trajectory of individuals who chose to give their lives as gifts to others, an international parade of conscience.

At 14, I still loved Duran Duran, but now I would stand in a grocery aisle reading Rolling Stone and learning about Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy as Bono name-dropped them in an interview.

Something new was getting through by way of this Irish arts collective.

My own country was coming alive to me.

In time, U2 would turn me on to Leonard Peltier and Desmond Tutu and Edna O'Brien and, in no small way, the fact of the rest of the world.

They are indeed ageing rock stars.

But they are also a mass media movement of thoughtfulness, artfulness, candour and curation. Continue reading

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta will step on the world's biggest stage as Lady Gaga, the Catholic schoolgirl turned chart-topper. Along with the electropop and theatricality, she will deliver an overt, yet often unnoticed, faith.

In an American context where the media equates religion with social conservatism, Lady Gaga represents a welcome, non-fundamentalist Christianity.

She is the closest pop culture version, in values if not tone, to her fellow Catholic, Pope Francis. She champions Christian values not of exclusion and discrimination but of empowerment, grace and self-acceptance.

Lady Gaga's most unapologetic hit is also one of the most culturally influential contributions to the theology of human sexuality. "Born This Way" is the hymn for LGBT Christians that is sorely missing from your average church hymnal.

I'm beautiful in my way
‘Cause God makes no mistakes
I'm on the right track, baby
I was born this way

Her faith and values shine through not just in "Born This Way," but throughout her discography.

She wears no poker face about her love of God and affirmation of all people bearing the image of God.

Her theology might best be summed up in the chorus of "Hair:" "I just wanna be myself / And I want you to love me for who I am … this is my prayer."

Her prayer is the same as countless progressive Christians who recoil at the hypocritical judgment of fundamentalism yet still seek to follow Jesus.

She prays to an affirming God with expansive love, not a narrow-minded magician in the sky who damns non believers to eternal conscious torment.

Lady Gaga's faith confounds a popular narrative of religion in America.

She is considered both a practicing Christian and a passionate advocate for progressive values. She simply doesn't fit in the controlling narrative, endorsed by both the secular left and the religious right, that relegates religion be the sole domain of social conservatism. Continue reading

• Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons writes at the intersection of faith, public policy and pop culture. He completed his master of divinity degree in 2016 at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he led a chapel service on the "Gospel According to Lady Gaga."

As a young man, Ray had wanted to be a priest. He said he thought he had a strong moral conviction, but it was also the way they dressed - all the incense and the ceremony and the spectacle of it. Continue reading

He wasn't. But I was and so was most of the rapt, standing-room-only crowd that crammed the Greek Theatre at University of California, Berkeley, for the second of three sold-out Mumford & Sons concerts in late May.

This is what I had come for — not just a concert, but a shared experience with a congregation of strangers (and a few friends).

"Love, it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free," Marcus Mumford and his bandmates — Ben Lovett, Winston Marshall and Ted Dwane — sang. "There is a design, an alignment, a cry of my heart to see, the beauty of love as it was made to be."

More biblical allusions, declarations of spiritual yearning and what felt like prayers of the heart followed during the 90-minute show and the remaining two concerts.

I was not surprised. As a longtime fan, it was what I had expected to hear. Since their debut in 2009, Mumford & Sons has achieved monumental success, both critically and commercially, particularly among a subset of diehard fans I'd describe as the spiritual-but-not-religious.

It's a modifier that could be (and has been) applied to the band members themselves. Frontman and lyricist Mumford, 26, who was born in Anaheim, Calif., is the son of John and Eleanor Mumford, founders of the evangelical, charismatic Vineyard Churches in the United Kingdom and Ireland. He is a pastor's kid, reared in the church where his musical vocation first took root.

Recently, in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine where he was asked about his religious predilections, Mumford declined to affix the "Christian" label to himself, causing a lot of handwringing from some evangelical fans who thought he was "one of ours."

His spiritual life is a "work in progress," Mumford said, adding that he has never doubted the existence of God and that his pastoring parents aren't lamenting the condition of his soul. Continue reading

Sources

• Cathleen Falsani in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Global Cool

Cathleen Falsani is the faith and values columnist for The Orange County Register.