Not rock and roll, to be sure, but well worth a serious listen: This is Sheila Chandra’s “Nada Brahma” from her album Nada Brahma (Sound is Divine).

It may be true that “pop” music that designates itself in “religious” terms has a higher bar to clear in terms of expectations. For myself, Sheila Chandra’s music, this song included, opens oscillating transepts of contemplation. I am always glad I spent time in this music’s company.

What music is most likely to persuade you that “sound is divine”?

There is a style of theology that wants to persuade us that music is most suitable when it fosters the right ideas about reality, including ultimate reality. Such an approach, however, is too didactic, and too selfish about clarity, which it wants to own verbally. That is what Chandra’s music reminds me. I think that the spiritual or theological significance of music resides in what it allows a person or group to exceed and to accede: that is, what music allows a person or group to exceed regarding what is too small for them about their life or world, and what it allows a person or group to accede to regarding power for more life.

Sometimes, in my experience, music allows the words themselves to leap the guardrail of words, as I find with Chandra’s song “Ever So Lonely”:

Music can be a way to have faith in this world, to trust in the powers of life, to be converted to hope. More than ever, I am convinced that the form of musical experience is a useful way to talk about music’s theological content.

Tommy Beaudoin, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

2 Comments »

1. 

   Thanks Tom. Couldn’t agree more – but theology being “selfish about clarity” is a great way of describing it. I also think, (affirmed once again by listening to this song – very moving), that the human voice in song has something of a special kind of power or presence to access the depths (of god? of ourselves? or both?) Chandra’s definitely provokes something in me…

   Comment by Maeve Heaney — January 31, 2013 @ 11:28 am

2. 

   In short, praise and worship music is offering its listeners compelling theological content, but that content is intimately bound up with the “materiality” of the music itself.

   Comment by Sophie Jackson — February 5, 2013 @ 9:25 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree