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Articles 1 - 30 of 91
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Music And Spirituality: Theological Approaches, Empirical Methods, And Christian Worship, Chelle Stearns
Music And Spirituality: Theological Approaches, Empirical Methods, And Christian Worship, Chelle Stearns
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
A book review is presented for Music and Spirituality: Theological Approaches, Empirical Methods, and Christian Worship, edited by George Corbett and Sarah Moerman, by Chelle Stearns.
The Sound Of Vultures' Wings: The Tibetan Buddhist Chöd Ritual Practice Of The Female Buddha Machik Labdrön, Michael R. Sheehy
The Sound Of Vultures' Wings: The Tibetan Buddhist Chöd Ritual Practice Of The Female Buddha Machik Labdrön, Michael R. Sheehy
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
A book review is presented for The Sound of Vultures' Wings: The Tibetan Buddhist Chöd Ritual Practice of the Female Buddha Machik Labdrön, authored by Jeffrey W. Cupchik, by Michael R. Sheehy.
The Politics Of Musical Time: Expanding Songs And Shrinking Markets In Bengali Devotional Performance, Jaime Jones
The Politics Of Musical Time: Expanding Songs And Shrinking Markets In Bengali Devotional Performance, Jaime Jones
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
A book review is presented for The Politics of Musical Time: Expanding Songs and Shrinking Markets in Bengali Devotional Performance, authored by Eben Graves, by Jaime Jones.
Byzantine Theories Of Scale And Arab-Byzantine Chant Practices: A Comparative Analysis Proposing A New Resolution To The Theoretical System Of Chrysanthos Of Madytos, Rosy Azar
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
In 2015, Amine Beyhom published a book on Byzantine chant, in which he summarised all the existing theories, paying particular attention to the problematic reform of the Byzantine chant theory in 1881, and guiding the reader through the steps that led to that reform. Driven by the first ever comparison between Byzantine and Arabic modes that he had found in Mīkhāʾīl Mashāqa’s epistle, Beyhom first studied Chrysanthos of Madytos’ insight. He documented this research in detail and followed it with a practical comparison to demonstrate if theory is indeed applied or it acts only as prescriptive guide. He recorded and …
Timbre — A Transcendent Paradox?, Eugenia Siegel Conte
Timbre — A Transcendent Paradox?, Eugenia Siegel Conte
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
Timbre, as ethnomusicologist Cornelia Fales writes, is “paradoxical” precisely because it is one of the most exacting processes in which the human body may sense and comprehend the source of a sound even as that comprehended sound is impossible to describe outside of metaphor or comparison. As one of the more recognizable qualities of sound but the most difficult to describe, timbre allows us to consider physical/emotional (affective) experiences of sound as a key aspect of faith and meditation. In this article, I examine physical-affective intersections of faith and meditation that often are key to praxes of worship, and show …
Singing A Wide Heart: Timbre And Sung Prayer In Senegal’S Layène Community, Margaret L. Rowley
Singing A Wide Heart: Timbre And Sung Prayer In Senegal’S Layène Community, Margaret L. Rowley
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
Layène sung prayer (called sikkar) is embedded within the religious practices of the Layène community, a minority Sufi order in Dakar, Senegal. This article explores the functions of Layène sung prayer, focusing especially on its loud, vibrational timbre. Both men and women vocalists in call-and-response sing loudly, using wide vibrato and electronic amplification to ensure that the sikkar reaches the inhabitants—both human and non-human—in the surrounding community. This article demonstrates that the distinctive timbre of Layène sung prayer serves the spiritual functions of binding the community together in spiritual and social cohesion, increasing individual and collective generosity, and demarcating …
Live Wires: The Angelus Temple And The Timbre Of Power, Catherine Provenzano
Live Wires: The Angelus Temple And The Timbre Of Power, Catherine Provenzano
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
This article is a media history and contemporary case study of The Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, founded by Aimee Semple McPherson in 1923. My analysis of the Angelus insists upon the centrality of a hyperaudible paradigm of worship that uses media to maximize the legibility of a Christian message, and, more than this, imagines that media itself as a living soul in need of redemption. Many contemporary megachurches employ savvy applications of sound and sound transmission as instruments of belonging as well as action, and these rely on high-budget investments in church infrastructure, software and personnel. I argue that …
Performing "Manly" Worship Music: Gender And Timbre At Mars Hill Church, Maren Haynes Marchesini
Performing "Manly" Worship Music: Gender And Timbre At Mars Hill Church, Maren Haynes Marchesini
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
Ten years ago, Mars Hill boasted fifteen campuses and 15,000 members. Amid mounting allegations of abuse and mismanagement leveled against founding pastor Mark Driscoll, the church famously collapsed, closing its doors at the end of 2014. Driscoll had built Mars Hill’s core brand around his opposition to the perceived feminization of the Christian mainstream, and appointing himself the “leader of a heterosexual male backlash” in the church and broader culture. While Driscoll’s muscular Christianity stands in a wide historical stream, Mars Hill long led the charge in establishing a youth-oriented, hipster brand of hypermasculine Calvinism. And while rhetoric and theology …
From The Heaviest, Dirtiest Depths To The Washy Ambient Clouds: Guitar Timbre In/As Schismogenesis In North American Christianity, Joshua K. Busman, Nathan Myrick
From The Heaviest, Dirtiest Depths To The Washy Ambient Clouds: Guitar Timbre In/As Schismogenesis In North American Christianity, Joshua K. Busman, Nathan Myrick
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
This essay argues that within the socio-cultural context of North American Christianity, the timbral qualities of electric guitar, with its long lineage as a site of cultural values conflict and identity negotiation, serves a theological function in the emerging and cohering sonority of digital worship. Using as comparative case studies the timbral qualities of delay and ambience as promoted and sold by Worship Tutorials as representing normative sonic values for these Christians, on the one hand, and the dialectic and schismatic deployment of distortion by the band My Epic on the other, we suggest that these timbral qualities become important …
Sounds Like 'Saudade': Eschatological Echoes In Brazilian 'Gospel' Music, Fernando Berwig Silva
Sounds Like 'Saudade': Eschatological Echoes In Brazilian 'Gospel' Music, Fernando Berwig Silva
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
This paper analyzes the song “Saudade” by the Brazilian gospel singer Stella Laura. In the song, I argue that Stella Laura uses Brazilian timbral markers from the Sertanejo and Gospel Brazilian music genres to articulate a unique perspective on eschatology, one that is based on the affective structure of the Lusophone word ‘saudade.’ Furthermore, I contend that the song, rooted in the Brazilian nostalgic sertanejo music tradition, leans on stylistic and timbral tools to communicate the idea of saudade from heaven. Beyond lyrics that feature theological notions of origin, identity, and nostalgia, Stella Laura’s song employs timbral, poetic, …
Introduction: The Power Of Timbre In Religion, Bo Kyung Blenda Im, Nathan Myrick
Introduction: The Power Of Timbre In Religion, Bo Kyung Blenda Im, Nathan Myrick
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
How might attending to timbre shift the boundaries of the experiences and practices that come under the analytical purview of religion? What timbral qualities render prayer efficacious and invite divine encounter? What cosmological claims and social relations are forwarded through sounds invoked in religious rituals and gatherings? How do marginalized voices and instruments shape worshipping communities? On the other hand, how are dominant identities and attendant structures reified through religiously marked timbre? Such questions about the character of sounds and their implications for religion animate this issue of the Yale Journal of Music & Religion.
Memory, Music, Manuscripts: The Ritual Dynamics Of Kōshiki In Japanese Sōtō Zen, Junko Oba
Memory, Music, Manuscripts: The Ritual Dynamics Of Kōshiki In Japanese Sōtō Zen, Junko Oba
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
A book review is presented for Memory, Music, Manuscripts: The Ritual Dynamics of Kōshiki in Japanese Sōtō Zen, authored by Michaela Mross, by Junko Oba.
"Kol Mekadesh Shevi'i": A Liturgical Melody Sung At Home, Naomi Cohn Zentner
"Kol Mekadesh Shevi'i": A Liturgical Melody Sung At Home, Naomi Cohn Zentner
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
This article draws upon the unusual characteristics, origins and prevalence of the melody to the poem "Kol mekadesh shevii" [He who sanctifies the Seventh day] and discusses how it came to be recognized in the past seventy years as a signifier of Ashkenazi pre-Holocaust musical and religious culture and in particular as a sonic marker of liturgical sound, although it was sung at home. The Kol mekadesh melody came over time to represent two vastly different symbolic positions. As a melody adopted from non-Jewish sources bringing new, sometimes controversial sounds into the synagogue, and as a typical synagogal …
Music And Temple Ritual In South India: Performing For Śiva, Rolf Groesbeck
Music And Temple Ritual In South India: Performing For Śiva, Rolf Groesbeck
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
A book review is presented for Music and Temple Ritual in South India: Performing for Śiva, authored by William Tallotte, by Rolf Groesbeck.
Faith By Aurality In China's Ethnic Borderland: Media, Mobility, And Christianity At The Margins, Gavin Douglas
Faith By Aurality In China's Ethnic Borderland: Media, Mobility, And Christianity At The Margins, Gavin Douglas
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
A book review is presented for Faith by Aurality in China's Ethnic Borderland: Media, Mobility, and Christianity at the Margins, authored by Ying Diao, by Gavin Douglas.
Secular Formations Of Sacred Music: Schleiermacher, Romanticism, And Devotional Media In Germany, Desmond Sheehan
Secular Formations Of Sacred Music: Schleiermacher, Romanticism, And Devotional Media In Germany, Desmond Sheehan
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
Theologians and musicologists alike have often disregarded the material and technical facets of devotional scenes such as the one meticulously described in Schleiermacher’s Christmas Eve Celebration: A Dialogue (1806). More recent musicologists have highlighted more concealed technologies that helped to facilitate Romantic aesthetic experiences – a form of methodological unmasking that at once denies and reclaims a Schillerian notion of disenchantment. This essay argues that both types of studies perpetuate secularization narratives that displace a Christian religiosity into public artforms and social practices in Romanticism, and secular modernity by extension. As a proposed alternative, a media history of sacred music …
The Vagina Dentata: A Case For Unlocking Mouths, Loosing Hips, And Spreading The Gospel Of Healing Women's Sexual Performance Anxiety, Alisha Lola Jones
The Vagina Dentata: A Case For Unlocking Mouths, Loosing Hips, And Spreading The Gospel Of Healing Women's Sexual Performance Anxiety, Alisha Lola Jones
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
This article explores how vagina dentata folklore—stories and imagery about a mythical "toothed vagina"—connects to the ways Black religious communities often cultivate silence around women’s sexual lives, particularly within the “Worth the Wait” and Word of Faith movements. Ignited by womanist religious ethnographer Monique Moultrie’s scholarship on sexual silence in these movement, I take seriously the musicological chasm by exploring how these ministries influence Black women’s sexual agency and moral decision-making through inequitable theological procedures and discourses. The vagina dentata metaphor emerges as a symbol of constrained appetites—respiratory (larynx), digestive (intestine, anus), and reproductive (uterus, vagina)—reflecting broader sociocultural and religious …
Note From The Editor, Jeffers Engelhardt
Note From The Editor, Jeffers Engelhardt
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
A note from Editor-in-Chief Jeffers Engelhardt about the journal issue Vol. 10, No. 1.
Musicology Of Religion: Theories, Methods And Directions, Sarah Moerman
Musicology Of Religion: Theories, Methods And Directions, Sarah Moerman
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
A book review is presented for Musicology of Religion: Theories, Methods and Directions, authored by Guy Beck, by Sarah Moerman.
Jewish Worship, Music, And Technology During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jeffrey A. Summit
Jewish Worship, Music, And Technology During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jeffrey A. Summit
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
This article examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Jewish worship and considers a range of worshippers’ reactions to livestreamed and Zoom prayer services. Focusing on the Jewish Emergent Network, innovative communities who are known for cultivating vibrant, participatory music in worship, leaders discuss the challenges of not being able to sing together online, the Jewish legal ramifications of using technology on the Sabbath and the on-going changes they believe could occur as virtual worship returns to in-person prayer. These leaders also discuss surprisingly positive developments in online prayer, as congregants deepened interpersonal relationships in discussion breakout rooms, discovered …
Sacred Recitation Of The Tibetan Yungdrung Bön Tradition: The Kharnatsang Collection Of Skad And The Arrangement Of The Three Heart Mantras, Christiane Strothmann
Sacred Recitation Of The Tibetan Yungdrung Bön Tradition: The Kharnatsang Collection Of Skad And The Arrangement Of The Three Heart Mantras, Christiane Strothmann
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
The digital age has long dawned in many of the Tibetan Monasteries in exile. Thus, the inclusion of internet platforms and the usage of digital communication technologies was naturally part of my ethnomusicological collaboration with the Tibetan Bön monastic chant leader and scholar Geshé Dawa Namgyal Kharnatsang on the sacred recitation of the Yungdrung Bön tradition of Menri Monastery in Dolanji, India. In this article I will offer insights into Kharnatsang’s and my motivation to develop a hybrid collaboration and discuss the role and impact of the digital technologies on the traditional chain of transmission. I will draw on two …
The Online Cathedral: A Case Study Analysis Of Egalitarian Music Outreach At Liverpool Cathedral For Mental Health And Spiritual Wellbeing During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Simone Krüger Bridge
The Online Cathedral: A Case Study Analysis Of Egalitarian Music Outreach At Liverpool Cathedral For Mental Health And Spiritual Wellbeing During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Simone Krüger Bridge
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
Liverpool Cathedral holds a special place in the story of English Cathedral music, notably because of the recent role played by choral music for outreach engagement and community participation. This article undertakes an in-depth case study investigation of Liverpool Cathedral’s music outreach portfolio, which moved online during the Covid-19 pandemic and was delivered variously via pre-recorded podcasts, zoom, and hybrid means, while examining its impact on mental health and spiritual wellbeing amidst the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The primary emphasis is placed on the participation in online music activities during the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting the strategies employed for …
The Voice Of Azerbaijan: Experiencing Recordings Of Hajibaba Huseynov And Post-Soviet Muslim Musical Identities, Polina Dessiatnitchenko
The Voice Of Azerbaijan: Experiencing Recordings Of Hajibaba Huseynov And Post-Soviet Muslim Musical Identities, Polina Dessiatnitchenko
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
Singer and poet Hajibaba Huseynov (1919–1993), revered by some as the “voice of Azerbaijan” is one of the most popular stars featured in recordings of classical devotional ghazal poetry. Curiously enough, video or audio recordings of his recitations seem to be especially moving, often becoming the focal point for audiences of musicians and poets at public live performances, private meetings, lessons, and virtual contexts. While fans of the ghazal genre are found at every turn, I limit my analysis to the subculture of poets, musicians, experts, and especially ardent fans of traditional Azerbaijani arts. Relying on ethnographic data gathered in …
Coltrane’S A Love Supreme: Mediations Of Immediacy In Jazz Ritual And Recitation, James R. W. Crockford
Coltrane’S A Love Supreme: Mediations Of Immediacy In Jazz Ritual And Recitation, James R. W. Crockford
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
This paper explores the ritualized performance ethic of John Coltrane’s later career, which is charged with a determined exploration of freedom and spiritual ascendance through participative and gestural immediacy. Conceiving of this music as a spiritual and political tool for embodied transformation, this paper traces this ethic at play in Coltrane’s iconic 1965 album A Love Supreme, identifying ways the work effects a mediation of immediacy. Through focus on the album’s closing “Psalm” recitation, its parallels in Coltrane’s other works, and their analogue in traditions of ecstatic liturgical and political oratory, this paper demonstrates the consistent priority Coltrane gives …
Sacred Recitation And Ritual In Digital Worlds, Anne K. Rasmussen
Sacred Recitation And Ritual In Digital Worlds, Anne K. Rasmussen
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
The digital has long been a focus of popular music studies and digitally based communications have complemented traditional fieldwork methodologies since the advent of the internet. It is high time we added the realms of religious musical practice to our roster of inquiries into the digital.
Buddhist Music As A Contested Site: The Transmission Of Teochew Buddhist Music Between China And Singapore, Jie Zhang
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
In the Chaozhou City Gazetteer of Buddhism & Chaozhou Kaiyuan Monastery Gazetteer published in 1992, the then Abbot of the Kaiyuan Monastery, Shi Huiyuan 释慧原 heavily condemned the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) monk Shi Kesheng 释可声 (date unknown) for "starting the sins among laities in the Chaozhou region who dared transgressing (the Buddhist doctrines) and became chant leaders in a flaming mouth ceremony.” Why was the Abbot so upset with a fellow monk back in history? What did Kesheng do, and what were the implications of him starting this "transgression"? This article investigates the history of the international traffic of Buddhist …
(Special Section, Hymns Beyond The Congregation Ii): Spiritual Concert-Fundraisers, Singing Conventions, And Cherokee Language Learning Academies: Vernacular Southern Hymnbooks In Noncongregational Settings, Jesse P. Karlsberg, Kaylina M. Crawley, Sara S. Hopkins
(Special Section, Hymns Beyond The Congregation Ii): Spiritual Concert-Fundraisers, Singing Conventions, And Cherokee Language Learning Academies: Vernacular Southern Hymnbooks In Noncongregational Settings, Jesse P. Karlsberg, Kaylina M. Crawley, Sara S. Hopkins
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
Noncongregational settings were integral to hymnody in the postbellum settler colonial context of the southern United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The incorporation of hymn singing into a wide range of noncongregational settings served Black, white, and Native populations in navigating unsettled racial dynamics during this period across the US South and its diasporas. This essay features three case studies examining hymn collections intended or repurposed for a range of noncongregational uses: spiritual collections connected with the performing ensembles of black institutions, a shape-note songbook that attempted to bridge singing convention and congregational contexts, and a …
Note From The Editor: Transitions In The Managing Editor Position, Jeffers Engelhardt
Note From The Editor: Transitions In The Managing Editor Position, Jeffers Engelhardt
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
Editor-in-Chief Jeffers Engelhardt announces a change in personnel within the Managing Editor position at the Yale Journal of Music & Religion.
Ethics And Christian Musicking, Kathryn M. Cooke
Ethics And Christian Musicking, Kathryn M. Cooke
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
A book review is presented for Ethics and Christian Musicking, a book edited by Nathan Myrick and Mark Porter, by Kathryn Minyoung Cooke.
Announcing Yale Journal Of Music & Religion Translations, Jeffers Engelhardt
Announcing Yale Journal Of Music & Religion Translations, Jeffers Engelhardt
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
A note from Editor-in-Chief Jeffers Engelhardt about a new initiative: Yale Journal of Music & Religion Translations.