A popular Catholic expression, ‘He who sings, prays twice’ implies to many a devout worshipper that music plays a fundamental role in guiding and structuring worship. This seems to be fairly true across many religions, from hymns in Catholicism, to Dharmic bhajans and even shamanic ritual music. Music foregrounds tradition in many religions, and is associated with ancient preserved customs, but its use has also transmuted over modern day to become representative of a collective’s dedication and passion for their faith.
Music is prescient within various aspects of the Catholic and Christian faith. Some particular churches have placed prayer against scores so that every aspect of a service becomes musical, with many even hiring live bands to soundtrack key moments of a service, like receiving communion, saying the Lord’s prayer etc. The type of instrument employed also greatly varies. For example, many youth pastors choose to use a classic acoustic guitar to dispense wisdom to younger members of the congregation, while others choose more imposing instruments. Nicknamed the ‘king of instruments’, many Catholic services often employ the organ throughout the liturgy. Organs are highly versatile instruments, but are mostly known for their somber and resonant renditions of classic hymns, or even spontaneous musical pieces. These grandiose instruments can be found in places as small as common churches to towering cathedrals, like the Westminster Cathedral, which has a rotating list of professional organ players to command this crucial instrument.
However, drifting away from ancient Russian Orthodox choir and Gregorian chants, modern day Christians have cultivated music as a highly personal form of reflection and expression. For example, urban gospel has become a revolutionary genre, and was well-established by the 1980s. This specific genre is ‘pitched primarily to African-Americans’, and has roots in African-American spirituals. The genre takes influence from many other genres to reflect the diverse cultural pool from which it has developed e.g. pop, rap, hip-hop, and funk. This has led to services becoming much more high-spirited and less formal than previous typical services. Worship thus becomes an active celebration and festivity, and the music supports a more spontaneous version of faith e.g. call-and-response singing.
However, music floods many various faiths. Bhajan is an Indian term for ‘any devotional song with a religious theme or spiritual ideas’. Bhajans may populate any Dharmic religion – these are religions that have originated within the Indian subcontinent, such as Buddhism, Hinduism etc. These songs are often group events, with multiple lead singers and occasionally dancing. Evidently, music acts a core pillar of community both in and outside of a religious setting, with the performance of a bhajan occurring anywhere with ‘historical significance’ – from a riverbank to a temple. Bhajans are ultimately highly diverse as a form, and are, in the Hindu-Vedic tradition, viewed more as mechanisms for evoking emotion and acting as a ‘sacred, liminal experience of the primeval ultimate reality and supreme truth’. Music provides a shared identity for all members of a congregation to indulge in, and orchestrate community gatherings where food and drink are shared and people form bonds. They have a marked historical significance as they were used to organise communities in the ’19th and 20th century colonial era, when Indian workers were brought to distant lands such as Trinidad, Fiji and South Africa as cheap labor on plantations’.
Buddhism has had a complicated relationship with music, contrastingly. Early sources depict a certain distaste for it, while Mahayana (the largest branch of Buddhism) sources view it more positively. While Buddhists also make use of bhajans within their worship, their musical worship often involves ‘chanting or singing, accompanied by instruments’. Much like Catholics, these chants may often be traditional texts, like parittas or sutras. Chanting may be viewed as a way of practicing mental fortitude in preparation for silent meditation. Chanting may also be used for ‘ritualistic, apotropaic or other magical purposes’ outside of the devotional. One Buddhist musical tradition is Japanese-Buddhist shōmyō, which is used mainly within the Tendai and Shingon traditions (which are both known as being quite esoteric in nature). Within this tradition there are two styles: ‘ryokyoku (呂曲) and rikkyoku (律曲), described as difficult and easy to remember, respectively.’ This particular tradition was often passed down orally, and is just one of many varying styles within Buddhism.
Shamanic ritual music is incredibly diverse and globally widespread, with hotspots of religious and spiritual experimentation located in Siberia, the West and Korea and Tibet. A shamanic ritual performance, however, is not a musical one, despite music being employed by Shamans within them. This is because a certain emphasis is placed upon ‘incorporating the rhythms of nature and magically re-articulating them’ when using music in a ritual. Further, music cannot disrupt the main context of the ritual, which must lie firmly outside of entertainment purposes. Thus, music plays a more external role within shamanic rituals than any of our other examples.
Music is an incredibly diverse and impossibly unique tool when implemented within religion and spirituality. It would be impossible to capture the extent and effect of its use in either modern or ancient practices, but hopefully this article has provided an insight into how multifaceted music and instruments are to faith.