David L. Edwards and His Music
David inherited his love for music from his parents, who hailed from Appalachian southwest Virginia where music flows throughout work, worship, fun…all of life. Following his two great loves, spirituality and music, David has created songs with religious themes and songs that celebrate the sacredness of all life…a child’s wonder and delight, people gathered in prayer and working together for the good of the world, the suffering of people and the earth that calls us to respond in love, justice, and compassion, the delicate grandeur of the creation, the longings of the heart. This is the scope of David’s music.
In the early 1970s, while he was working at Boston Children’s Hospital Medical Center as an orderly, fulfilling two years of alternative service as a Conscientious Objector to the military, David began writing songs. Writing and performing became a second vocation as David then entered seminary and afterwards began serving as a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
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In the years since then, David has written folk songs, songs for children, hymns, spiritual songs, and settings of the Psalms and other scripture.
Due in large part to his wife Kaye’s influence out of her ministry on behalf of children, David has increasingly been interested in using music with and writing for children. In the 1990s, David taught in an artist-in-the-schools program in Amherst County, Virginia. He worked in a rural elementary school, using U.S. folk songs to teach singing, geography, history, and many things about life.
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Currently, David sings each week with the children who come to the Festival Center, a “center for community” in the central city of Lynchburg, Virginia, which he helped establish.
David is minister of the Church of the Covenant, a congregation of the United Church of Christ/Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), in Lynchburg. There he enjoys being the minister and part of a small community of people committed to their own spiritual growth and to various ministries in the city.
Music continues to be the language David uses to understand and express the sacred dimensions and experiences of life.