Music and Religion/Philosophy

While we’re together in class, the bulk of our discussions will involve cultures that are probably not the main personal touch-point for most of you in our class. So for a few of our blog posts, we’ll take the light of observation and shine it back on our own, personal cultures. Just as we’ve spent some time discussing how music and religion are interconnected in various Native American cultures, for your next blog post you should shine that light back on your own culture to explore connections between religion and music in your own backyard, so to speak.

When we discuss the connection between music and religion in any given culture, we tend to cover two basic areas—use and aesthetics. For instance, many Native American groups use a good amount of music in their religious ceremonies and teaching. Song creation is attributed to the Deities, and performers will sometimes sing the part of those Deities (Yeibichai) in their ceremonies. Too, their songs are a most important means of transmitting religious ideas from generation to generation. More deeply, the general aesthetics of their music—what they find to be beautiful and meaningful—includes stylistic traits that can be traced back to significant religious ideals, such as  cyclic forms, use of vocables and animal sounds, and the pervading “natural” vocal timbres.

Your job for this blog post is to look at how music and religion are connected in your own world, including aspects of both use and aesthetics. A few questions you might ask yourself to get started: How is music actually used in religion in your experience? And what is the purpose of that use? What sort of performing styles are expected, and are there any rules that should be followed? Do the prevailing religions of your surroundings have an influence on what is found aesthetically pleasing in music? Is there any way in which the values of those religions are inherent in the way music is built or experienced?

Yes, I know, these are pretty huge ideas. I don’t really expect you to explore every corner of this topic, but I do expect you to think about it at length before you start typing. I also realize that many of you have been linked to more than one religion over the course of your life or have led a mostly-secular existence. That’s ok. You can define both “culture” and “religion” as broadly or as narrowly as you need to—that’s why the title of this post includes “and Philosophy.” Take the topic and run with it, and see what happens. And yes, I know that several of you have already touched on the Music/Religion or Philosophy link in your Global Music Autobiography blog entry. What I’m looking for here is not necessarily an evaluation of your personal experiences (although some of that is ok, too) but more of a general evaluation of music issues concerning religion/philosophy within your culture.

This particular blog is due by 11:59 on Thursday, January 9, and you should shoot for somewhere between 400 and 500 words. Using various media (videos, pictures, audio files) to actually show some of the concepts you discuss is a valuable way to help your classmates understand your thoughts.

[After folks have posted their blogs on this topic, everyone should, as is the habit of this class, read at least five of their classmates’ posts and comment on them. Once you’ve done that, post a comment on this blog entry with your name and the name of your five chosen classmates.]

I don’t want to write too much of my own thoughts here, lest I steal some student’s thunder, but I will say just a bit. My personal history is one of many Christian denominations—at various points of my life I’ve been involved in Methodist, Baptist,  Evangelical, Presbyterian, Catholic, and Episcopal communities. I’ve also had the good  fortune of visiting a significant cross-section of other Christian denominations, as well as attending a few Islamic prayers and Jewish bar mitzvahs and weddings. I’m at least passingly familiar with the tenets of Buddhism and, to a lesser degree, Hinduism. My current spiritual home, though, is the Episcopal Church of the Advent in downtown Spartanburg, where I’m heavily involved in the music program.

One of the hallmarks of Episcopal and Anglican worship (same basic church on opposite sides of the Atlantic) is communal hymn singing, which serves as a mechanism for teaching, community, and worship. Here is one of my favorite hymns that I discovered shortly after joining the Episcopal Church, “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God.” It’s a teaching hymn that references all sorts of different saints from the past, but in a child-like way. For instance, the “shepherdess on the green” is Joan of Arc. The entire text, in case you have trouble understanding the words on the video, runs:

1 I sing a song of the saints of God,
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
and one was a shepherdess on the green:
they were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

2 They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
and God’s love made them strong;
and they followed the right, for Jesus’ sake,
the whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
and one was slain by a fierce wild beast:
and there’s not any reason, no, not the least,
why I shouldn’t be one too.

3 They lived not only in ages past;
there are hundreds of thousands still;
the world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus’ will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;
for the saints of God are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.

I also just love the idea that you can meet all of those “saints” at tea. Such a delightfully Anglican concept.