Musicology Commons^™

(Special Section Introduction) Hymns Beyond The Congregation: Constructions Of Identity And Legacies Of Meaning, Erin G. Johnson-Williams, Philip Burnett

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

We offer here the first of two special sections on the theme of "Hymns Beyond the Congregation." Divided into the two sub-themes of “Hymns Beyond the Congregation: Constructions of Identity,” and “Hymns Beyond the Congregation: Legacies of Meaning,” our authors (based in institutions both in the USA and the UK) comprise both early career and senior scholars and come from a range of disciplinary backgrounds in American history, South African colonial history, political history, the history of mission education, and historical musicology. Together, these two special issues will pave the way for facilitating new dialogues between historians, musicologists and congregational …

Tracking The Harmonium From Christian Missionary Hymns To Sikh Kirtan, Gurminder Kaur Bhogal

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The harmonium is prominent in Sikh practices of devotional music known as kirtan and yet its significance has barely been addressed in Euro-American scholarship. Following on the heels of a recent ban against using the instrument at the holiest temple of the Sikhs, Harmandir Sahib (popularly known as the Golden Temple), this article explores how the ban seeks to discard this colonial instrument and return to playing traditional string instruments (tanti saz) associated with the courts (darbar) of the Sikh Gurus. This study is the first to examine primary missionary sources from the nineteenth and early …

Congregational Music As Phatic Communication: Affect, Atmosphere, And Relational Ways Of Listening And Being, Anna E. Nekola

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Much of the scholarship of congregational music focuses on participatory music in organized corporate worship. This article draws on theories of communication and affect to examine the secondary, background music that happens alongside other events in a worship service or in places other than the space of the sanctuary. Instead of understanding affects as an individual emotion, this article argues that music is made meaningful through a socio-cultural and relational affective process. This in turn enables one to understand how musics, particularly secondary non-participatory musics, work beyond language and representation in phatic ways that can engender powerful feelings of human …

Vatican Ii, Liberation Theology, And Vernacular Masses For The Family Of God In Central America, Bernard J. Gordillo

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) instituted reforms in the Catholic Church that included changes in language and music employed in the liturgy, inspiring a proliferation of sung vernacular masses throughout Latin America. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research undertaken in Nicaragua and the United States, this article examines three Central American vernacular masses—Misa típica panameña de San Miguelito (1967), Misa popular nicaragüense (1969), and Misa campesina nicaragüense (1975). Each mass emanated from communities founded as part of the transnational Familia de Dios (Family of God) movement, which established programs of religious education, leadership training, and community building among impoverished …

Sankyoku Magazine And The Invention Of The Shakuhachi As Religious Instrument In Early 20th-Century Japan, Matt Gillan

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The early 20^th century was a period in which understandings of music, religion, and the nation-state underwent rapid change in Japan. In this article I examine Japanese cultural discourse from the first decades of the 20^th century in which the shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute, was frequently portrayed as a religious instrument. In some cases, this discourse referenced pre-20^th century historical affiliations of the shakuhachi with the Fuke-sect, an organization that was loosely affiliated to Rinzai Zen Buddhism. But the article also explores how religio-musical discourse surrounding the shakuhachi intersected with developments in modern Japanese religious life, …

Higher Ground: Rev. Dr. William Barber Ii And The Political Content Of Prophetic Form, Braxton D. Shelley

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This essay argues that Rev. Dr. William J. Barber’s message on “Higher Ground,” a speech delivered at a massive 2014 protest rally, reveals his intentional problematization of distinctions between the sacred and the secular. As Barber’s articulation of what Ashon Crawley calls “Blackpentecostal breath” spill over the boundaries posited by conventional categories—they are too ecstatic to be ordinary speeches, and too political to be traditional sermons—these plural expressions identify themselves as sounds that come from another world. If both content and form are understood as thought, it becomes apparent that these prophetic utterances critique the oppression wrought by contemporary social …

“Beer & Hymns” And Community: Religious Identity And Participatory Sing-Alongs, Andrew Mall

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

As a series of loosely-organized events, “Beer & Hymns” started at the Greenbelt Festival in England in 2006 and migrated to the Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina in 2012. Local Beer & Hymns gatherings meet at bars, breweries, clubs, and pubs across the U.K., the U.S., and around the world. Most are not affiliated with a church or Christian denomination, instead relying on the energy of independent local organizers. Some attendees are regular churchgoers, other are not, but all find community in these sing-alongs—congregational singing, that is, outside of traditional congregational contexts. Beer & Hymns is exactly what it …

Warfare And Welcome: Practicality And Qur’Ānic Hierarchy In Ibāḍī Muslims’ Jurisprudential Rulings On Music, Bradford J. Garvey

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

While much ink has been spilled by musicologists on the legal standing of music in Islamic jurisprudential scholarship, few scholars have offered as comprehensive a view as Lois Ibsen Al-Faruqi. Thirty-five years after her major works on this issue, this article seeks to reassess her model of musical legitimacy within Muslim scholarship. Al-Faruqi places Qur’ānic recitation at the apex of a unidirectional continuum of sound art, with genres less similar to the recitation of the Qur’ān located progressively further away from it. Based on fieldwork in the Sultanate of Oman in 2015-17 and engaging with recent reinvigorations on the anthropological …

“A Gentle, Angry People”: Music In A Quaker Nonviolent Direct-Action Campaign To Power Local Green Jobs, Benjamin A. Safran

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

While the use of spiritual music in non-violent resistance is noted by such scholars as Thomas Turino (2008), one not might expect music to play a large role in a Quaker-led non-violent direct action campaign. Even though Quakerism is known for its historical animosity toward music, I argue that Quakerism's historic values have in fact fostered a robust musical culture within Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) and shaped its ability to function effectively as a "rebel" non-violent direct action group. Music is used to summon courage and unity within scary actions. The “gentle” Quaker aesthetic may meanwhile partially mask or …

The Acoustics Of Justice: Music And Myth In Afro-Brazilian Congado, Genevieve E. Dempsey

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

For the Afro-Brazilian musicians of popular Catholicism, or Congadeiros, who live precariously on the urban and rural margins of Brazil, ritual undergirds their struggles for subsistence, spiritual fulfillment, and racial equality. When Congadeiros create ritual, they enter into a tradition begun in the seventeenth century in Brazil by their enslaved African and Afro-descendant ancestors who intoned songs of redemption. In keeping with their ancestors’ evocations of dignity during slavery, worshipers in the present day embed multiple kinds of vested interests within ritual festivity to achieve racial equality. This article explores Congado, the ceremonies of these disenfranchised musicians, to …

Crossing Paths: Musical And Ritual Interactivity Between The Ḥamadsha And Gnawa In Sidi Ali, Morocco, Christopher J. Witulski

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The processions occurring in Moroccan pilgrimages--such as those in Sidi Ali, a small town situated in the mountains outside of Meknes and Fez--are important sites that instigate an aesthetic negotiation within nearby possession ceremonies. The many musical groups that punctuate the cacophonous atmosphere during the annual pilgrimage are affiliated with a many of the country’s diverse mystical brotherhoods, including the gnawa, ḥamadsha, and ʿīsāwa. Through a detailed ethnographic description of processions and rituals from two of these groups, this article outlines ways in which musical tastes flow between the different events, informing the aesthetics of both outdoor …

War Of The Worlds: Music And Cosmological Battles In The Balinese Cremation Procession, Michael B. Bakan

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Abstract

This article explores processional action as a form of cosmological intervention in Hindu-Balinese cremation processions, focusing on the multiple and intersecting functions of a particular type of Balinese instrumental music ensemble: the gamelan beleganjur. It explores the alternately “enlivening and protective aspects” (DeVale 1990, 62) that underlie the use of beleganjur music in the ngaben, or cremation ritual, showing how beleganjur’s sonic power and rhythmic drive serve to combat malevolent spirit beings, strengthen and inspire processional participants in their efforts to meet challenging ritual obligations, and grant courage to the souls of deceased individuals embarking on their …

Tarian Perdamaian: Enacting Alternative Hindu/Christian Identity Discourses Through "Secular" Balinese Performing Arts, Dustin D. Wiebe

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article examines the nature of interreligious relations between Protestants of the Bali Church and Hindus as enacted through dramatic forms of Balinese music and dance. Particular attention is paid to the influence of mass tourism as a contributing factor in this process. Since the early twentieth century these arts have formed a central component of a pan-Balinese identity discourse known as" kebalian." The first Balinese converted to Christianity during the 1930s and were subsequently excommunicated from their ancestral villages for refusing to participate in local customary practices (including the ritualistic use of gamelan music). For this reason, Balinese …

Psalms, Islam, And Music: Dialogues And Divergence About David In Christian-Muslim Encounters Of The Seventeenth Century, David R. M. Irving

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

David (Daud) is revered in the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam variously as a king, prophet, and musician, providing the inspiration for what can be called the “Davidic tradition,” expressed in text, sound, ideology, and image. The scriptures associated with David are central to this tradition: within Judaism and Christianity they are the Psalms, human praises or entreaties to God; within Islam, the Zabūr is revered as a divine prophecy revealed to the prophet Daud, according to the Qurʾān. David’s musicianship and the identity of his instruments are understood differently in Jewish-Christian and Islamic traditions, and are interpreted …

Buddhism As Performing Art: Visualizing Music In The Tibetan Sacred Ritual Music Liturgies, Jeffrey W. Cupchik

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The eleventh-century Tibetan female ascetic, Machik Labdrön (1055-1153), developed a Vajrayāna (Tantric) Buddhist meditation method called Chöd (Tib. gCod, Eng. “to cut”) and associated ritual practices as a means of eliminating “self-grasping,” which is defined as the mistaken instinct of regarding one’s “self” and all phenomena as intrinsically, or independently, existent. Her musical-meditation method became renowned across Central Asia during her lifetime, and Chödritual practices and liturgies have been transmitted from teacher to disciple in unbroken lineages until today. The ritual is now well known globally, with Tibetan Lamas, nuns, and empowered exponents teaching widely, across a transnational …