{"id":71017,"date":"2017-10-27T17:02:24","date_gmt":"2017-10-28T00:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=71017"},"modified":"2026-02-27T14:55:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T22:55:25","slug":"welcome-to-music-by-peoples-temple","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=71017","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWelcome\u201d to Music by Peoples Temple"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I recently heard He\u2019s Able<\/em>, the album recorded in the early 1970s by the Peoples Temple choir, an objectively masterful piece of music, and truly beautiful subjectively. I was mainly struck by the opening song \u201cWelcome,\u201d which is performed by kids. It sounds more like a Sesame Street<\/em> song than a hymn. The best way I can put it is, it\u2019s like a ball of colorful candies held together by mud and clay, colorful and enticing only to those who can\u2019t see through it. I was inspired to transcribe the song and post it on a guitar music sharing site<\/a> on the net.<\/p>\n

If you listen to all the songs on the album, the songs these people sang, they\u2019re beautiful. I wish my parents\u2019 Pentecostal church would sing these songs. You really begin to see what inspired the Temple, what people who are motivated are capable of achieving, and what one motivated man is capable of destroying.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

I remember the first time I heard about Jim Jones.<\/p>\n

I was very young \u2013 I\u2019m 17 now \u2013 and my older brother and I were watching PBS because there was nothing else on. Some program was playing clips of the Jonestown tapes. I remember being so interested. As a kid who rarely went to church, hearing a religious leader speak in that context was extremely strange. I was probably 5 or 6, but it stuck with me, and in my teens, I started watching newer documentaries about Jonestown, and even older ones as well. It\u2019s a different age now. You can learn about pretty much anything that comes to your mind with the click of a few buttons. You can get an education you can\u2019t get in school, because \u2013 it\u2019s true \u2013 I wasn\u2019t taught anything about Jonestown in the classroom.<\/p>\n

Hearing the tapes now, though, it\u2019s much more chilling, especially the death tape. The crying, the way it gets quieter throughout. It\u2019s dark stuff that I didn\u2019t register when I was young.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always had an interest in the human psyche, the whole cognitive process, the things you can\u2019t scientifically measure. I guess that explains my morbid curiosity, the need to see just what humans are capable of. But I find that road of \u201cwhat\u201d leads most people down to \u201cwhy\u201d: why\u00a0do some of us commit atrocious acts, while others sit back (an atrocious act on its own) and while others allow themselves to be victims? The answer to the \u201cwhy\u201d is troubling. You either don\u2019t like the answer or you don\u2019t accept the answer. I\u2019m in the middle.<\/p>\n

The \u201cwhat\u201d is easier to summarise than the \u201cwhy.\u201d The \u201cwhat\u201d is that humans can go about as far as their imagination can when it comes to cruelty. The \u201cwhy\u201d is this:<\/p>\n

It is our nature. Even though we would like to think that we would never \u2013 could<\/em> never \u2013 hurt someone, we are merely vulnerable and ductile subjects of circumstance. And circumstance affects our behavior and perception more than ourselves. Each and\u00a0every\u00a0human being is capable of victimising, and being the victim\u00a0to, anyone, and for\u00a0any\u00a0motive at all. If you\u2019d like to learn more on that philosophy, listen to Alan Watts\u2019\u00a0Good vs. Evil is a Stupid Dichotomy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Jonestown, in Peoples Temple \u2013 as in the rest of life \u2013 there\u2019s good and bad only in hindsight. Other than that, there\u2019s just the reality we live in.<\/p>\n

(Ethan Sells is a 17-year-old high school student who lives in southwestern Ohio. He listens to Ween and classical music.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently heard He\u2019s Able, the album recorded in the early 1970s by the Peoples Temple choir, an objectively masterful piece of music, and truly beautiful subjectively. I was mainly struck by the opening song \u201cWelcome,\u201d which is performed by kids. It sounds more like a Sesame Street song than a hymn. The best way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":70254,"menu_order":20,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-71017","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71017"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134292,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71017\/revisions\/134292"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/70254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}