# raucous and wild sacred music



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I'm bothered a bit by millionrainbows' thread's definition of sacred music as repetitive and relaxing, but as it is his thread he is evidently allowed to define "sacred music" however he wants, regardless of anything existing out there in the world. So I figure I'll just make my own thread.

In *THIS* thread, "sacred music" refers to music from any religious context and/or music with explicitly religious themes. That means Bach's _Mass in B minor_, that means Sufi music, that means Mahalia Jackson singing _Didn't it Rain_, that means Johnny Cash singing _Were You There_, that means the drumming of Korean shamans, that means Gregorian chant, that means the Gullah Singers singing _Walking that Road_, it means Grant Green playing _Just a Closer Walk With Thee_, it means Andy Statman playing the music of the Lubavitcher Chassidim....

In short, there are no limits here, other than the word "sacred." But since there is a thread dedicated to the theological proposition that all genuinely sacred music is repetitive and relaxing, I figure this one should especially emphasize the other aspects of sacred music. You can romantically conceive of them as the "dark sides" if you want, but to me they are just "other aspects."

In fact, since sacred music in the Western classical tradition has until very recently been the music of established, institutional religious traditions with literacy and rigid hierarchy and state coercion, and therefore carefully concerned not to excite people too much, it has not often been raucous or wild.

But outside of institutional religious traditions, where there is more freedom, there are more drums, more dancing, more shouting, more spirit possessions, more trances, more visions, more darkness perhaps (especially from the POV of the institutional traditions), but at the very least more fun as well. So I figure this should be in the non-classical section, so that we explicitly have more freedom and fun too.

So let us have our freedom and fun and religion too! Here's to the drumming and shouting for all the spirits, ancestors, and gods!


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I think it would be quite unnatural if religious music didn't get a bit "raucous" at times. I've mentioned this before, but I love it when certain Hindu movements get loud and wild when expressing the destructive powers of Shiva. It's just portraying the varying creative and destructive energies of the Universe. Sometimes a delicate tree blossoms, and sometimes a star goes supernova. All beautiful to me.

By the way, I think millionrain was focusing more on the deep meditative side of sacred music. It's all rather meditative, but some have more of an outward expression while others are focused more on the inward dive.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I have just finished listening to the sixth volume in the Music of Islam series, dedicated to the music of the Gnāwa, a Sufi brotherhood of Moroccans of black African descent (as contrasted to the Berber). The notes below are based on the liner notes.

The bass is provided by a deep barrel drum (the ṭbola) which can be repetitive sometimes (the same motif can repeat many times), although the beat changes often enough and is obviously intended to be exciting rather than relaxing. The beat is elaborated by some metallic clappers, and the main accompaniment, although it's hard to hear over the drums, to the singing is played on a lute-like instrument (a member of the guinbri family of instruments, called a sintīr or hajhūj) with a rectangular-ish body, very similar to an instrument discovered in an Egyptian tomb (in the British Museum today) from about 1000 BC! The songs can be shortened or extended to meet the needs of the dancers in their trances; these shortenings and extensions are evidently signaled by cadences, but I can't hear that. The music follows two pentatonic scales, both of which are used in some songs. The melodies span as much as two octaves and feature large leaps (contrasted to most Moroccan music which has stepwise melodies and a narrow range).

Like a lot of music outside the western tradition, the rhythm can be complex. The tempo and meter change frequently - one of the main rhythms "slides between 2/4 and 6/8" and is related to the popular Moroccan "cha'bī" rhythm; another stays in 4/4 but with a 6-against-4 cross-rhythm. In some sections the coexisting duple and triple meters are intended to evoke the sense of two worlds, the human and the supernatural, existing at the same time.

Some of the lyrics refer to Mohammad and Fatima, others to local Sufi saints, past masters of the Gnāwa brotherhood, the experience of abduction into slavery, the forgiveness of God, the transience of life ("This world doesn't last, God have mercy on the ancestors"), humanity's dependence on God, and a group of spirits known as the Gatekeepers of the Forest.

It really is a very nice hour of music, and the entire series is worth checking out if you can enjoy some really different stuff from time to time.


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

What about gospel?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Vesuvius said:


> I think it would be quite unnatural if religious music didn't get a bit "raucous" at times. I've mentioned this before, but I love it when certain Hindu movements get loud and wild when expressing the destructive powers of Shiva. It's just portraying the varying creative and destructive energies of the Universe. Sometimes a delicate tree blossoms, and sometimes a star goes supernova. All beautiful to me.
> 
> By the way, I think millionrain was focusing more on the deep meditative side of sacred music. It's all rather meditative, but some have more of an outward expression while others are focused more on the inward dive.


Yes, but he is not claiming that meditation is one "side" of sacred music or religion, but its very essence, with other sorts of religious experience and music explicitly condemned as non-sacred. As a long-time student of human religious diversity, I'm unwilling to accept his restriction (theologically motivated to boot) on the _actual_ religious traditions of the world and their musical expressions - hence this thread!

I know a lot of people here will object to some music from other traditions - such as conservative Western Christians objecting to music praising Sufi saints, or Traditionalists/Perennialists objecting to the music accompanying fits of spirit possession - as not "truly sacred" because their religious beliefs object to those religious beliefs, but I figure that at least some of us can enjoy the music anyway without having that kind of discussion, so rather than trying to figure out what is or is not true religion, let us enjoy ourselves here.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Serge said:


> What about gospel?


Of course! Share some, brother!

I mentioned Mahalia Jackson and the Gullah Singers in the OP, but there is a _lot_ more out there, including some interesting stuff in the "southern white gospel" traditions. What do you like?


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Oh, you mentioned that already. I must have overlooked, sorry.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

John P Kee/Vanessa Bell Armstrong- Sho' Nuff
This whole album kicks butt!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Sho' nuff!

Good stuff. I feel I'm not ready to explore modern gospel until I know the older stuff better, but eventually I definitely want to hear more of Vanessa Bell Armstrong and John P. Kee.

That's a good video to illustrate one important aspect of sacred music, IMO - its constant, ceaseless interaction with secular music. You can hear that funk and soul music has influenced that, such as in the riffs on the bass, but of course those traditions were influenced by earlier gospel music as well.

Perhaps it also illustrates that from a secular point of view religious music often goes on too long. Rather than developing new ideas, it goes over the same material. But of course, unlike the "art" music traditions, the point isn't to offer up material for conscious analysis, but to allow the worshippers to revel in their emotional experience, so it has to go on as long as the experience lasts. The best performers of sacred music in any tradition know how to work their audience up and up and up, how to hold them there as long as possible, but then to wind down when the audience is winding down as well. So there's a very strong element of interaction between the audience and the performer (and between the members of the audience, who generally cooperate in working each other up), which is much more carefully regulated in ordinary "art" music, where the audience are supposed to passively receive the production of the performers (perhaps analogously to how believers in traditional institutional religions aren't supposed to have direct, personal revelations but to passively receive the teachings of the religious professionals and experts).

Anyway, if you haven't already, maybe you want to check out "He did it all" by John P. Kee and his live choir in Atlanta. Definitely raucous and gloriously so - I definitely appreciate the brass:


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Serge said:


> Oh, you mentioned that already. I must have overlooked, sorry.


That's ok dude. Tell me what YOU like.

By the way, here's some of the Gullah music that I mentioned, and this just kiss my own butt (it's not long, make sure you listen to the end because the rhythm really gets fun):


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

something like this?

Mingus





Ayler





Rev. Dan Smith


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Shahram Nazeri - _Sufi Music of Iran._


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Me? I personally like what's probably the opposite of raucous and wild. I just wanted to say "gospel". My guys sound more like shamans, I think:


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Some who believed that religious music should be tidy and Victorian in its sensibilities found Messiaen's quite explicit linking of the sacred and the erotic/ecstatic in _Trois petites liturgies_ unnerving. For him, the religious experience was as much about that spiritual ecstasy as about the expected reverent calm (in this movement's middle and final sections).


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I'm really going to throw a monkey-wrench in here. This is a Cascadian Black Metal band, and they're strongly focused on a Pagan ideology of a spiritual re-connection with the Earth. This is really rapturous and cathartic… not for everyone.

Sadhaka - _Terma_





If you can make it through this whole album then you're a warrior.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I'm listening to volume nine now, the music of the "whirling dervishes." I've heard this in bits and pieces as I looked into the Mevlevi Order in the past - this is the Sufi order that was founded by Rumi, a wonderful poet that probably everyone can love. 

It's calmer and more restrained by an order of magnitude than most of the other music in the series. There is still a beat, and it sometimes accelerates, otherwise this could be (in terms of its calmness) traditional Christian music. 

To me, this is the music of spirituality in a tradition that is suspicious of spirituality. The Mevlevi had to make themselves nonthreatening to the political establishments, and to do that they had to carefully constrain their spiritual experiences to make them acceptable to the authorities, and that required calming down the music almost to something like minimalism. 

However, I don't want to overstate this - this is still a music of spiritual ecstasy, so it is not just a few notes repeated over and over. 

From another POV entirely, disregarding the instruments, the vocal parts are astoundingly similar to Greek Orthodox chant! Honestly, if you didn't know what they were saying, I don't think you'd be able to tell the difference. There must have been a LOT of mutual influence over the years.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Sorry, I forgot to post the image of volume nine:

View attachment 40728


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Currently listening to this, all music that I grew up singing in church, though not exactly the way Alan Jackson does it. (My voice is a little deeper, with more honey in it. [Does it need to be said that I'm joking?])

Not music designed to induce meditation.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

View attachment 48356


Not a peaceful moment!

I really enjoy drumming.


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