Modern Psalms of Lament [art.hack]

I just went and saw Antje Duvekot at Club Passim in Cambridge, MA. Yes, it was at the vegetarian pizza place. Sigh. But she had a song that I particularly enjoyed, and thanks to the internet, you can enjoy it too. It's called Pearls:



It's a modern-day psalm of lament...and the first recipient of the art.hack tag!

Read on for more thoughts on it...



Antje opens each song with a story about it, and that song above she opened by saying she wasn't an organized-religion person, but she found a lot attractive in organized religion. So she wrote the song imagining if she was part of organized religion. It's refrain is rather haunting:

When you gonna come for me, Lord?
When you gonna come for me?
Cause I've been expecting you forever
Waiting here for you
Will you send a little grace?
It's the least that you could do
It's the least that you could do

Reminds me a bit of "How long, O Lord?" and "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" These are all psalms of lament to a God that is supposed to care for us and be involved. The Psalmists lament "Where is God?" in the midst of suffering.  I hear this reverberating through Antje's song, don't you?

This is an art.hack because it takes a genre of Judeo-Christian culture (psalm of lament) and contemporizes it for the folk-music culture.  It makes a framework more easily recognizable for people, even though she may not be consciously doing it.

What other contemporary psalms of lament are your favorites at the moment?