The God Squad

Pop stars search for the spirit in the material world.

by Erik Davis

From Christian grunge to hip-hop prophecies to art-pop dharma, spiritual vibrations bombarded the musical universe in 1998. Take the Video Music Awards, normally the great carnal feast of MTV Babylon. Tibetan mala beads dangled from Courtney Love's mic stand, while Buddhist Boy Adam Yauch called for nonviolent reconciliation with Muslims. Pras wore a cross, Will Smith thanked God and the Backstreet Boys gave it up for Jesus Christ. But the biggest metaphysical blast came from Madonna, whose Ray of Light record thrums with the singer's newfound and very public obsessions with yoga, cabala and other forces divine. With a tilak smudged on her forehead, Madonna warbled through a trippy version of "Shanti/Ashtangi," a Sanskrit sloka derived from Vedic sutras millennia old, while Hindu lovelies in traditional garb danced before holy billboards of Krishna, Saraswati and baby Ganesh.

There is always something vaguely embarrassing about pop stars parading their inner lives on stage, and Madonna's performance seemed about equal parts heartfelt devotion and trendy appropriation. This is not to question the woman's sincerity: As she heads into her 40s, the material girl's exuberant narcissism may well have run up against the profundities of motherhood and the fact that extraordinary fame and money do not squelch suffering. It makes sense that she would want to dig for a spiritual touchstone -- not to mention purify whatever god-awful karma she's accumulated over the years. Mystical options such as yoga and pop cabala offer direct access to this deeper essence, without the pesky moral codes of conventional religion. Unfortunately, this search can easily degenerate into another American cult of the self, a cult that already enshrines celebrities as the closest thing mortals come to becoming realized beings.

Madonna is just the tip of the iceberg. Though pop music has always percolated with weird religious energies, we haven't found ourselves this far into the mystic since the time of George Harrison, Mahavishnu Orchestra and hirsute Jesus Freak bands. Indeed, as we enter 1999, the dividing line between the spirit and the entertainment industry is becoming increasingly tough to draw. "In India, the spiritual tradition permeates the popular culture just about to the saturation point," says David Life, whose New York City-based Jivamukti yoga studio has attracted everyone from Madonna to Sting to Def Jam's Russell Simmons. "I don't think it's bad to be reminded on a daily basis about the higher potential in life, even in such trivial things as the names of products or the verses in a song."

Life may be right, but it's important to recognize just how trivial things can become in the spiritual supermarket. For every Adam Yauch -- whose restrained public Buddhism has consisted of interviewing the Dalai Lama, organizing benefit gigs for Tibet and slipping dharma slogans such as "Every thought in the mind is a planted seed" into his still-bratty verbiage -- there are scores of individuals willing to exploit the confusion between star power and spiritual charisma. The recent CD A Gift of Love features megabucks healer Deepak Chopra and a passel of celebrity-seekers -- Demi Moore, Martin Sheen, Goldie Hawn and Madonna herself -- reading the least-challenging verses of 12th-century Persian poet Rumi over a slimy New Age soundtrack. It's atrocious to the point of hilarity.

Still, people are buying such trinkets, and they're doing it because they are fumbling about for meaning. As Alanis Morissette suggests in her video for "Thank U," in which city crowds pass by and occasionally touch the naked singer, pop stars sometimes serve as surrogate spiritual figures. "Instead of investing their hearts in a doctrine or an institution, people are working out their spirituality through popular culture," says Tom Beaudoin, a Catholic theology student and author of Virtual Faith, a book that digs up the loosely Christian themes that course through videos by Nirvana, R.E.M. and Soundgarden. Beaudoin argues that because pop culture is "our amniotic fluid," it has come to embody the spiritual ethos of a generation, one that is iconoclastic, irreverent and keenly attuned to pain.