This’ll be a little rushed, but here’s my two cents worth:

1) Christian indie music - It was in 2007 that I really began to discover Christian indie. I knew of a few artists previously (mosty just Sufjan and Danielson), but in 2007 I delved into the depths of all that is Christian indie. I’m a little behind the times, but it was in 2007 that I found out about Woven Hand, Rosie Thomas, Destroy Nate Allen, This Beautiful Mess, Aaron Strumpel, Ponoka, and zillions of others who are now mainstays in my life. If you don’t know those bands, check them out. And if you don’t know Christian indie, go scour the internet to find some great bands you’ll never hear on Christian radio. There is a lot of stuff out there now that puts secular music to shame.

2) Jazz Music - While delving into Christian indie in 2007, I also decided to broaden my musical horizons by exploring the word of jazz. I’d always liked jazz, but I never knew much about it until recently. So for a period of about 3 months, pretty much all I listened to was jazz. Jellyroll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Wynton Marsalis …the list of jazz greats stretches on forever. I watched documentaries on jazz. I read articles about jazz. And I came away really appreciating the music as probably the most American of art forms. It was great for me, growing up mostly on rock music, to go out into totally unknown territory.

3) Blues Music - Not only did I discover jazz for real in 2007, but this year I delved into blues. If I could pick two forms of music that define America, they’d be jazz and blues. I’d always written off blues music previously, because I’m not a huge fan of classic rock with all its blues influences, but there’s nothing like discovering the roots of the art form. I did the same thing with blues as I did with jazz. I turned off almost all other music and just listened to blues for a couple months, watched documentaries on the music, and surrounded myself with it. I came away with some musicians that will probably never leave my playlists. Some of my favorites were Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, and Skip James, guys who played a simple form of music with emotion and passion like no one else.

Maybe that was three cents’ worth.