Description
This suite of sonic essays examines aspects of an American fundamentalist deliverance ministry. The ministry is predicated upon the unorthodox belief that Christians can be inhabited by demons. The evil spirits manifest themselves in the form of physical and mental illness, spiritual and emotional afflictions, addictions and phobias, delinquency, inappropriate dispositions and attitudes, the bad fruit of ancestral iniquities passed down from one generation to another, and the inhabitation of electronic equipment.

Deliverance is achieved chiefly through prayers – spoken aloud either in English or tongues (glossolalia) – that entreat the demon to depart. The vindictive and recalcitrant entity is heard to resist eviction and, through the mouth of its host, to remonstrate angrily with the deliverer with screams and invectives before being cast out. Each demon is summoned by name, which name represents a particular infirmity that it inflicts; for example, one called ‘Catatonic’ stupefies the victim.

The source material for the essays is derived from cassette-tape recordings of church meetings and radio interviews, and also protracted services of deliverance conducted in the home with many adults and children in attendance. Recordings of hymns, either sung by believers or played on a midi keyboard, often accompany the deliverance service. ‘O, the blood of Jesus’ (the sonorous backdrop to the End-Time Deliverance Ministry’s services) serves not only to promote an atmosphere of worship but also as a powerfully active agent in the process of dispossession; demons flee when they hear it, deliverers insist. The aim of the compositions is to clarify and intensify the essence of several recordings that explore the practice of deliverance.

Come on Out (Sealed Emotion)
The composition responds to the vicarious, heartfelt and unconditional absolution and expulsion of hurt received from others – human and demonic – exercised by a female African-American preacher. The background music is derived from a midi keyboard rendering (played on the End-Time Deliverance Ministry website) of the first two lines of the hymn ‘O, the Blood of Jesus’, which has been slowed down considerably. The melodic line is in retrograde contrapunctual motion: that is to say, it is arranged as a counterpoint that involves a backwards version of the extract being superimposed upon the forward movement of the same.

Lyric
I forgive every person who ever hurt me.
I forgive every word that blasphemed me, or my name’s sake.
And I command every curse of blasphemy to be broken …

Come on out! Come on out! Come on out!

… and cast from me, in Jesus’ name.

Come on out! Come on out! Come on out!

Every time someone said you wasn’t any good, or called you a ‘God forsake, you was ugly’,
or said anything about you that hurt your heart and caused you to cry:
I break that curse off of you, in the name of Jesus.
And I command it to loose you.

I command that self worth, as the enemy wants to trod down and cause you to be defeated:
Come on out! Come on out! Come on out!
I break every curse that defeats your self worth, in the mighty name of Jesus.
And I command it to loose you. Hallelujah!

I come against the spirit of rejection.
And I command it to loose you. Hallelujah!
And I command that to loose you.

Where you didn’t feel you belonged. You didn’t belong there.
Where your emotions were sealed.
And I command it to loose you. Hallelujah!

And I come again: sealed emotion that can’t give love and can’t receive love.

And I command it to loose you. Hallelujah!
Because of hurt in the past.

Come on out! Come on out! Come on out!

And I command that old ‘python’ spirit to loose you, in the name of Jesus.
And I command it to loose you. Hallelujah!

Take a breath, and let it go! I call it out:

Come on out! Come on out! Come on out!

Emotions that can’t love, receive love, and give love. Sealed emotion.
And I command it to loose you. Hallelujah!
I command that spirit to loose you.


Personnel: Anonymous deliverance ministers, preacher, and radio broadcasters, ‘demons’, and John Harvey.

Instrumentation: Adobe Audition CS6 and Apple MacBook Pro OS X 10.8.

Source: Samples derived from recordings on the open-access online archive of the End-Time Deliverance Ministry (accessed February 2012).