I started a thread in the speak out with the same title, but maybe I should have started the thread here. I'm interested in hearing from musicians about what they think about the relationship between playing music and religion (specifically worship).

Do you see music making as a religious kind of act, whether as a direct expression of worship some higher power, or in a more figurative sense?

Do musicians who are not religious feel any kind of connection between music making and worship/religion?

Finally, there's a quote by Ingmar Bergmann where Bergmann says that Art lost a lot of it's creative drive the moment it separated itself from religion (or something to that effect). How do musicians feel about that?

Reid-

I was very glad to see your message on "Jazz and Religion." I think it touches on some very important issues for musicians, specifically those involved with improvisation. I wanted to relate some of my own ideas as far as the questions you posed.

I see the act of making music as very connected to my experience as a religious/spiritual person. The subject of prayer/worship is a complicated and layered one, but I think that in some basic way they both can allow us to see a deeper or wider reality than we are often able to experience. As a Jew, I feel very connected to the Jewish idea of the partnership between humans and the divine. The creation of music is a perfect example of this on many levels. A very basic illustration is the physical act of playing an instrument- we play the keys or breathe into the horn, but the sound itself is (in my opinion) at its core a divine creation. As we progress in ability, we learn to manipulate the sound to express our deepest selves, created in the divine image (according to Judaism).

Judaism certainly does not have a monopoly on these ideas- what I've read from other sources (Sufi, Buddhist, Christian and Hindu to name a few) confirms that the connection between religion and music is a deep one for many people.

I look forward to hearing what others have to say about this.

Hey Reid,

How are you?

As a Buddhist, I think my practice of Buddhism allows me to open my life and mind up to the unlimited possibilities that exist in any given moment.
Buddhism enhances my creative abilities.
Sometimes when I'm improvising, it feels almost magical. It may not sound that way to everyone :-) However, I sometimes feel so uplifted and spurred on by what is happening that I definitely feel a powerful spiritual vibration is taking place. It's hard to atriculate with words but I wish eveyone could find some way to experience it.

-Robin

I wanted to add something but my edit button didn't work.

One way people can experience it is by listening to music that evokes a spirtual reaction from them.
Some of John Coltrane's music affects me that way.
There is othe rmusic as well but I think people have heard music that brings that knid of reaction out of them.

-Robin

I've been worshipping with music for as long as I can remember. I've posted this before, but my first "gig" was when I was 11 years old, with my piano-playing sister in church. We sounded like Ornette Coleman because I didn't know how to transpose to Bb from the C part my sister was playing. I san in my Mom's church choir and played trumpet in church for almost 30 years.

Since then, I've written some 25 compositions as part of my "Hymn Cycle": ...for Julius Hemphill (I, II, II, & IV),...for Albert Ayler, ...for John Carter,...for King Sunny Ade,...for Louis Moholo,...; all based on the old Southern Baptist Hymn "Holy Manna".

A lot of my music I've tried to base on the quietness and silence of meditation, as well as the screaming oblivion of glossolalia and spiritual ecstasy, and every state in between.

I have lots to say about this in all my interviews, but here and now I will defer to others to join in.

Well, since no one seems to be joining in, I'd be interested in hearing more of your thoughts on the matter, Dennis.

Hey Robin,

I'm doing alright. Long time no talk. As a buddhist do you feel like you're playing is directed at something spiritual? That's an interesting question to me, because as a Christian, when I worship, my focus is usually on God. So the singing (and other acts of worship) are directed towards God. The intent is to worship. I'm interested in hearing what goes on from a buddhist perspective.

Jon M,

Hey thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm wondering if the way you worship with music corresponds with the way I'm worship. What are the differences, if any?

Let me add a bit, Reid. I went on a "pilgrimage" to India back about 11 years ago, and it is still affecting me. I am still learning from the time I was there.

One of the deepest things that was confirmed for me was what I suspected all along, even as a child...and this is one of the subjects I always try to broach in interviews...that the entity, the force we call God/The Supreme Being/The Infinite is always making Itself known in the ways we understand. Let me give a quick example: One of the most fascinating aspects of Hinduism is the god Ganesha, who is shown with an elephant's head. I always thought of him as a cool-looking, exotic image from a myth. But living in the spiritual atmosphere of India at the time I was there, I felt that God used His image as Ganesha to show the people in that part of the world just how gentle and benificent and powerful He truly is. Elephants are used in India in so many ways...what better way to manifest than to reveal Him/Her Self in the form of the mighty elephant?

What does this have to do with music and worship? After the trip to India, I realized that I don't have to be playing in a church - a Southern Baptist church to be specific - to worship, to play my devotional songs. It can be anywhere at any time.

I don't know if I have anything to add (except, You're a Southern Baptist? I went to a Southern Baptist HS, just so you know), but thanks for sharing that.

Let us say I USED ta be Southern Baptist...my Mom is still Shiite Baptist :).

I guess I embrace all forms of God.

poetry of ---quincy troupe ---reciting his works
=======================
jazz is my religion
''''''''''''
'''''''''''''''''
================
charlie parker pray for us ---keroac live recording
======
doug -yeo -bass bone boston sym
playing almost in a trance like state
of linking up with THE CREATOR
===================
for a jew -it would be smelling the
ovens to come in the playing
of carmina burana
the piece about the goose is cooked
an obvious referenceto the jewish problem
of kletzmer riffs in
kenny gs music --
=============
hillbilly pentecosts
old drunks and liars and aldulterers
boogie guitarplayers
saved by the blood at 66 years
playing for jesus 'instada the
devil
=====================
catholic used to induce docility and meditative mood
=========
observe church behavior /////music
at ----------------------altar call
--------offering
===============
shamanism
=======
chanting /////dancing
kirtan /fasting
=========
get rite w G
do it today !!!!!!!!!

I'm not at all a religious guy but there are things in music -- and more in some music than others -- that affect me on very profound level that I could understand others' experiencing as some form of spiritual experience. For me, it's just a deeply human experience, having to do with things that exist on a species level. Obviously not all music gets me there. Most is entertainment. But when the real thing comes along, it's all the way there. Coltrane can do it, for sure. Several of Miles's bands at their best can do it. Abdullah Ibrahim's music often gets me there, as does Randy Weston's. William Parker and Hamid Drake can do it for me when they really lock in, especially live. Ornette sometimes. Mingus at his best.

Don Pullen's music often gives me that kind of lift, and, in fact, just did the other day, when I was really, seriously angry at some bureaucratic idiocy having to do with Bronwyn's health care that required my having to drive 37 miles for no rational reason to take care of something. I put "Sixth Sense" on in the truck (and by the way, dig Donald Harrison, of all cats, on that one!) and it altered my mood and interior experience altogether, and on a very deep level. Pullen was the real ting, man. A shame he's fading from jazz memory, it seems. He was awesome.

And truth be told, Dennis's music can often get me there, as well, and just did while listening to "Hymn For The Perfect Heart Of A Pearl," just last night.

Experiencing music, when I can do it without distraction, has become a kind of yoga or something in my life. A form concentration/contemplation/meditation. I don't assign any supernaturalness to the experience. To me, that it's a *natural* aspect of humanness, evolved of itself with the species, is more mysterious and powerful an explanation and subject of contemplation.

I do understand the experience, however, whatever explanations we offer for it.

The thing about music that gives me the spiritual connection is the suspension of time and place that occurs while playing it, and sometimes, listening to it. The "seperateness" of "real life", the artificial segmentation of perceptions and feelings that we ordinarily experience, fade into a beautiful unity, where to use the cliche, "everything IS everything". I'm no longer an isolated speck in a sea of faces, hearing the clock tick away in arbitray increments of perceptual regimentation, trapped in a world where I'm my world, you're yours, and that's that, I'm one with space and time, suspended in the eternal Eternal for as long as it lasts.

Having that experience firsthand is useful for dealing with the mundane procedures of everyday life, but those procedures inevitably take their toll, and renewal is needed. If I don't play for a week or so, I gradually start to become a VERY different person than I am when I do play regularly. Music is my connection to "The One(ness)". Some people can get that connection elsewhere, and more power to them - we all need it, and far be it from me to attempt to discredit or disparage whatever works for somebody else. But for me, it's music that puts me in that state of oneness with all things seen, unseen, known, unknown, otherwise, and etc.

I don't believe in "a" God - the article creates a seperation that I believe is artificial. But I DO believe in "God" (whether or not it's a "being" or a "concept", I don't know, and frankly, I don't care, not anymore), an all encompassing oneness that we are fated to experienence in parts and parcels most of the time. But music, good music, REAL music (whatever that is, and I believe you can find it anywhere - it's not genre-specific) is the one link I myself have found to that true oneness of existence. Ain't it funky now.

Pass the plate, y'all...

Gary and Jim - thank you both for so eloquently expressing your perspectives on this subject. I relate to what both of you said so much that I doubt I could have put it better myself. Gary, especially, in the way you attribute the phenomenon to people - we earthly subjects! - and give people the credit for choosing (or not) to know the joy we are able to experience in the music.

Knowing that some other people think somewhat similarly to myself gives me the kind of comfort that I believe most people find in religion or other forms of spirituality - namely, the comfort of community, and perhaps a sense of greater purpose (greater, that is, than some other mundane parts of our existence). That must be why I lurk around here so often and feel I *must* post when I feel something very strongly like this connecting with me. It's sweet!

Reid wrote:
---
Jon M,

Hey thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm wondering if the way you worship with music corresponds with the way I'm worship. What are the differences, if any?
---

I'm not so clear on the question, but as I understand it it's about the differences between "musical worship" and "religious worship". It's an important question. Jewish prayer, as you said about Christian prayer, is often directed to God. Other times, it's the reciting of verses from the Torah that may, for example, be instructions for rituals or quotes when Moses addressed the Israelites.

Prayer in Judaism is highly structured and specific, and often deals with the fulfilling of commandments. So in that sense playing music doesn't fit into the Jewish mode of prayer. But at the same time the motivation or feeling behind prayer is the praise of God, which in Judaism is sometimes done in less formal ways through singing and dancing. A great example of this is Hassidic wordless songs ("Nigunim"), often sung and danced to at Shabbat and other festive meals. This for me has been extremely powerful, when a room full of people seem to get swept up in a melody and it keeps going and going!

There's a lot more to say on this, but this type of singing is very similiar to my experience of playing music and getting caught up in it and "losing myself." In both cases I feel like my conscious mind takes a back seat to something much larger and more powerful. I'm always going for that, and I'm very lucky when it happens!


On another note, I'm not sure what the following verse is getting at (from the Quincy Troupe poem in djpens' message from 03-16). Any thoughts would be appreciated.
===================
for a jew -it would be smelling the
ovens to come in the playing
of carmina burana
the piece about the goose is cooked
an obvious referenceto the jewish problem
of kletzmer riffs in
kenny gs music --
=============

I meant the difference between worshiping from a Jewish perspective versus a Christian one.

I've never heard of Hassidic "wordless" songs. I'd be interested in hearing more about that.

jon m
playing the carmina
and thinking back on what washappening in germany
mind set --medievalism
teutonic knights etc
whet that piece was authored by carl orf
the jews were the goose
cooking is obvious reference
feeling very jewish
and understanding the message of this piece
in cultural context
--------just read the text of the piece
watch lily 's film a few times
with the nite marches
and torches
--------------------
maybe its a stretch of imagination
---------
but when you hear a bunch of blonde germans singing this
stuff -
---------if you have one drop of jewish blood
your skin crawls
----------------
i felt like carmina is a vast propaganda piece
and fits the nazi mindset
and preparation for the
ultimatesolution

<i felt like carmina is a vast propaganda piece
and fits the nazi mindset
and preparation for the
ultimatesolution >

imo and to my ears it still is...

horno
the piece seems ''popular''
especially used is chorus for sound bites
i never thought of it this way
until doing it --the erie song//segment
about goose cooked --
well nobody else seemed to think much about it
but i gotta compare it to
---proud to be an amerikkkan -----
======================================
religion //music go hand in hand
preacher and organ player both eat the pizza
after church
--------------------------
and audi --that was an affectionate name for
hitler by his closest friends
so i dont get naming a car audi
--------
anyway politicians use music
-------
budget cuts have reducded military bands
and the electronic bugle replaces live for funerals
----
thanks for your reply sometimes it seems that
nobody gives a s/////////

<anyway politicians use music > you said a mouthful!

They also arrest poets, musicians, students, and teachers in the first "go round".

Operation Liberty Shield...

(I'm responding to message 16)

djpens-

Thanks for your thoughts on the poem-much appreciated. However I still don't get the Kenny G. klezmer reference.

hey jon it was sorta joke
---i dont think the g plays much kletz
but it may be guilt by association ---
you got it on some level
like the lox is good or not quite
as good as last week
good jazz is as elusive as
a good bagel
but we eat them anyway
-------------the kindness amongst jews
in the midst of immense crulety and persecution
is something i see in the eyes
of diamond carrying ortho in black suit
the survival of daniel
amidst lions --
--------
yes i know you have diamonds
-------
the truly free ------ express themselves
oourselves ----
in art music so many ways
=======
quincy troups reciting -
jazz is my religion
and kerouac ---reciting about charlie parker
----------
and sitting next to ferlingetti
when ginsberg was chanting
--------------
dogs howl
and so are we !!!!!!!
---------------------------------------
the kenng g klez i mean klex uh kletz
well ----ok imagine g doing bird riffs
when a kletz riff comes in there
---------
it would be as hip as something out of riverdance
happy st pattys day -----
--------
brain not working
bombs on the brain
sorry

So a conversation about religion and music has come down to bagels, lox, and diamonds.

man does not live by bagels alone