Brian Schrag
Brian is an ethnomusicologist, community arts therapist, curriculum developer, missiologist, composer, and performer. He has degrees in Cognitive Science (ScB, Brown University), Missions and Ethnomusicology (M.A., Wheaton College), and Ethnomusicology (PhD, UCLA). Brian worked with his wife, Barb, as a linguist and ethnomusicologist in DR Congo and Cameroon in the early 1990s and 2000s, was SIL’s Ethnomusicology & Arts Coordinator from 2006-2019, and founded the Center for Excellence in World Arts (Dallas) in 2012. Brian’s core life project is promoting arts-energized, communication-focused appreciative inquiry for futures more like Heaven. His current spheres of engagement are transformational development in communities, Christian mission, and expressive arts therapies.
Contributions to Human Thought
First, Brian has explained how particular kinds of interaction between novel and known elements in human activity result in thriving traditions—the infrastructure dance (2005; 2013a; 2015). Second, he has formulated a flexible guide to engagement with any community that results in people drawing on their arts to improve their lives—Creating Local Arts Together (2013c; forthcoming, with Van Buren). Third, Brian presents a nuanced case for deep reengagement with representatives of longer traditions in the global context of rapid social change and culture endangerment (2015). Fourth, he has been a central figure in the formulation of a new academic discipline—ethnoarts. Ethnoarts has a journal (Global Forum on Arts and Christian Faith), defining literature (Krabill et al 2013; Schrag 2013c), an active community of practice (International Council of Ethnodologists; SIL Ethnomusicology and Arts), and clear distinctions from other disciplines. He’s also trying to get the entire field of ethnomusicology to embrace a multiartistic view of human expressivity, not viewed merely through the abstract lens of ‘music.’ Fifth, Brian is part of a growing movement of Christians integrating a rich, biblically-sound view of Heaven into the church’s conceptual and practical existence.
Missiology
Brian has an M.A. in Missions, published his first peer-reviewed article in Missiology, authored a missiologically-framed book on arts and mission (2013), and co-edited a ground breaking book on worship and mission (Krabil et al 2013). The latter, Worship and Mission for the Global Church, was named one of IBMR’s Fifteen Outstanding Books of 2013 for Mission Studies. Brian regularly participates in activities of the Evangelical Missiological Society, has spoken at IVCF’s Urbana Missions Conference, and advises the World Evangelical Alliance’s Mission Commission on arts-related issues. The WEA Mission Commission has adopted Brian’s Arts for a Better Future seminar as its primary means of integrating arts and mission, under William Taylor’s guidance. Brian is also on the board of the International Council for Ethnodoxologists (ICE) and has an entry on historical approaches to music in missions in Sanneh and McClymond’s The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Christianity (2016).
Huntington’s Disease
In 2008, a blood test showed that Brian has Huntington’s Disease (HD), an incurable hereditary brain disorder that results in loss of cognitive, emotional, and physical control. His current symptoms are minor but will increase unless God provides a cure. This knowledge of an intimate instance of broken creation gives Brian a sense of moderate urgency, and has led him to promote creativity-induced healing among communities affected by HD.
Selected Sites
• SIL.org/biography/brian-e-schrag
• DIU.edu/faculty/brian-schrag/
• BrianAtPlay.com
• HDBlues.org
• MakeLifeHD.org
For a whimsical, more personal biography, see www.brianatplay.com/brians-story
Contributions to Human Thought
First, Brian has explained how particular kinds of interaction between novel and known elements in human activity result in thriving traditions—the infrastructure dance (2005; 2013a; 2015). Second, he has formulated a flexible guide to engagement with any community that results in people drawing on their arts to improve their lives—Creating Local Arts Together (2013c; forthcoming, with Van Buren). Third, Brian presents a nuanced case for deep reengagement with representatives of longer traditions in the global context of rapid social change and culture endangerment (2015). Fourth, he has been a central figure in the formulation of a new academic discipline—ethnoarts. Ethnoarts has a journal (Global Forum on Arts and Christian Faith), defining literature (Krabill et al 2013; Schrag 2013c), an active community of practice (International Council of Ethnodologists; SIL Ethnomusicology and Arts), and clear distinctions from other disciplines. He’s also trying to get the entire field of ethnomusicology to embrace a multiartistic view of human expressivity, not viewed merely through the abstract lens of ‘music.’ Fifth, Brian is part of a growing movement of Christians integrating a rich, biblically-sound view of Heaven into the church’s conceptual and practical existence.
Missiology
Brian has an M.A. in Missions, published his first peer-reviewed article in Missiology, authored a missiologically-framed book on arts and mission (2013), and co-edited a ground breaking book on worship and mission (Krabil et al 2013). The latter, Worship and Mission for the Global Church, was named one of IBMR’s Fifteen Outstanding Books of 2013 for Mission Studies. Brian regularly participates in activities of the Evangelical Missiological Society, has spoken at IVCF’s Urbana Missions Conference, and advises the World Evangelical Alliance’s Mission Commission on arts-related issues. The WEA Mission Commission has adopted Brian’s Arts for a Better Future seminar as its primary means of integrating arts and mission, under William Taylor’s guidance. Brian is also on the board of the International Council for Ethnodoxologists (ICE) and has an entry on historical approaches to music in missions in Sanneh and McClymond’s The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Christianity (2016).
Huntington’s Disease
In 2008, a blood test showed that Brian has Huntington’s Disease (HD), an incurable hereditary brain disorder that results in loss of cognitive, emotional, and physical control. His current symptoms are minor but will increase unless God provides a cure. This knowledge of an intimate instance of broken creation gives Brian a sense of moderate urgency, and has led him to promote creativity-induced healing among communities affected by HD.
Selected Sites
• SIL.org/biography/brian-e-schrag
• DIU.edu/faculty/brian-schrag/
• BrianAtPlay.com
• HDBlues.org
• MakeLifeHD.org
For a whimsical, more personal biography, see www.brianatplay.com/brians-story
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Books by Brian Schrag
Flowing from ethnographic research with Ngiembɔɔn kingdoms of Central Cameroon spanning 15 years, Brian narrates the series of discoveries that culminate in a clear picture of the mechanisms underlying artistry’s capacity to invigorate. In the process, he demonstrates ethnographic analyses that account for any and all musical, dramatic, visual, verbal, and dance-related features. He also provides guidance and resources for teaching students how to research and describe communities and their arts.
Simply put, artists increase social energy when their actions resonate with shared thought- and life-ways. This vitality swells when artists can predict when, where, and how they enact particular artistic genres. Like an unmoving magnet encasing a spinning magnet (i.e. a dynamo) produces electrical energy, stable cultural features resonating with those more malleable results in social energy.
Brian’s treatise will change how scholars across disciplines understand and engage with arts as they exist anywhere in the world. This volume offers methods for improved research and scholarship, whose application results in communities living better lives.
1. Meet a Community and Its Arts. Explore artistic and social resources that exist in the community. Performing Step 1 allows you to build relationships, involve and understand the people, and to discover the hidden treasures of the community.
2. Specify Kingdom Goals. Discover the goals that the community wants to work toward. Performing Step 2 ensures that you are helping the community work toward aims that they have agreed on together.
3. Select Effects, Content, Genre, and Events. Choose an artistic genre that can help the community meet its goals, and activities that can result in purposeful creativity in this genre. Performing Step 3 reveals the mechanisms that relate certain kinds of artistic activity to its effects, so that the activities you perform have a high chance of succeeding.
4. Analyze an Event Containing the Chosen Genre. Describe the event and its genre(s) as a whole, and its artistic forms as arts and in relationship to broader cultural context. Performing Step 4 results in detailed knowledge of the art forms that is crucial to sparking creativity, improving what is produced, and integrating it into the community.
5. Spark Creativity. Implement activities the community has chosen to spark creativity within the genre they have chosen. Performing Step 5 actually produces new artistic works for events.
6. Improve New Works. Evaluate results of the sparking activities and make them better. Performing Step 6 makes sure that the new artistry exhibits the aesthetic qualities, produces the impacts, and communicates the intended messages at a level of quality appropriate to its purposes.
7. Integrate and Celebrate for Continuity. Plan and implement ways that this new kind of creativity can continue into the future. Identify more contexts where the new and old arts can be displayed and performed. Performing Step 7 makes it more likely that a community will keep making its arts in ways that produce good effects long into the future.
Articles by Brian Schrag
In this reflection, I tell part of our family’s HD story in terms of the evolving roles of those wanting to improve Mom’s life. Informed by research in arts therapies, neurocognition, and my experiences as a community arts consultant, I recommend ways that therapists and families touched by any disease can enrich strugglers’ quality of life, and suggest potentially fruitful lines of research flowing from collaborations between harder and softer sciences.
Flowing from ethnographic research with Ngiembɔɔn kingdoms of Central Cameroon spanning 15 years, Brian narrates the series of discoveries that culminate in a clear picture of the mechanisms underlying artistry’s capacity to invigorate. In the process, he demonstrates ethnographic analyses that account for any and all musical, dramatic, visual, verbal, and dance-related features. He also provides guidance and resources for teaching students how to research and describe communities and their arts.
Simply put, artists increase social energy when their actions resonate with shared thought- and life-ways. This vitality swells when artists can predict when, where, and how they enact particular artistic genres. Like an unmoving magnet encasing a spinning magnet (i.e. a dynamo) produces electrical energy, stable cultural features resonating with those more malleable results in social energy.
Brian’s treatise will change how scholars across disciplines understand and engage with arts as they exist anywhere in the world. This volume offers methods for improved research and scholarship, whose application results in communities living better lives.
1. Meet a Community and Its Arts. Explore artistic and social resources that exist in the community. Performing Step 1 allows you to build relationships, involve and understand the people, and to discover the hidden treasures of the community.
2. Specify Kingdom Goals. Discover the goals that the community wants to work toward. Performing Step 2 ensures that you are helping the community work toward aims that they have agreed on together.
3. Select Effects, Content, Genre, and Events. Choose an artistic genre that can help the community meet its goals, and activities that can result in purposeful creativity in this genre. Performing Step 3 reveals the mechanisms that relate certain kinds of artistic activity to its effects, so that the activities you perform have a high chance of succeeding.
4. Analyze an Event Containing the Chosen Genre. Describe the event and its genre(s) as a whole, and its artistic forms as arts and in relationship to broader cultural context. Performing Step 4 results in detailed knowledge of the art forms that is crucial to sparking creativity, improving what is produced, and integrating it into the community.
5. Spark Creativity. Implement activities the community has chosen to spark creativity within the genre they have chosen. Performing Step 5 actually produces new artistic works for events.
6. Improve New Works. Evaluate results of the sparking activities and make them better. Performing Step 6 makes sure that the new artistry exhibits the aesthetic qualities, produces the impacts, and communicates the intended messages at a level of quality appropriate to its purposes.
7. Integrate and Celebrate for Continuity. Plan and implement ways that this new kind of creativity can continue into the future. Identify more contexts where the new and old arts can be displayed and performed. Performing Step 7 makes it more likely that a community will keep making its arts in ways that produce good effects long into the future.
In this reflection, I tell part of our family’s HD story in terms of the evolving roles of those wanting to improve Mom’s life. Informed by research in arts therapies, neurocognition, and my experiences as a community arts consultant, I recommend ways that therapists and families touched by any disease can enrich strugglers’ quality of life, and suggest potentially fruitful lines of research flowing from collaborations between harder and softer sciences.
Schrag, Brian. 2003. “What Right Have We to Interfere? Rigor, Integrity, and Grace in the Context of Criticism.” Presented at the Global Consultation on Music and Missions, Fort Worth, Texas
Usage rights & constraints: CC BY-ND (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0)