Exploring The Spiritual In Popular Music

This book highlights how the diverse nature of spiritual practices are experienced and manifest through the medium of popular music. At first glance, chapters on Krishnacore, the Rave Church phenomenon and post-punk repertoire of Psychic TV may appear to have little in common; however, this book draws attention to some of the similarities of the nuances of spiritual expression that underpin the lived experience of popular music. As an interdisciplinary volume, the extensive introduction unpacks and clarifies terminology relating to the study of religion and popular music. The cross-disciplinary approach of the book makes it accessible and appealing to scholars of religious studies, cultural studies, popular music studies and theology. Unlike existing collections dealing with popular music and religion that focus on a specific genre, this innovative book offers a range of music and case studies, with chapters written by international contributors.

Through in-depth case studies, Religion and Popular Music explores encounters between music, fans and religion. The book examines several popular music artists - including Bob Dylan, Prince and Katy Perry - and looks at the way religion comes into play in their work and personas. Genres explored by contributing authors include country, folk, rock, metal and Electronic Dance Music. Case studies in the book originate from a variety of geographic and cultural contexts, focusing on topics such as nationalism and hard rock in Russia, fan culture in Argentina, and punk and Islam in Indonesia. Chapters engage with the central issue of how global music meets local audiences and practices, and considers how fans as well as religious groups react to the uses of religion in popular music. It also looks at how they make these interactions between popular music and religion components in their own identity, community and practice. Tapping into a vital and lively topic of teaching, research and wider cultural interest, and employing diverse methodologies across musicians, fans and religious groups, this book is an important contribution to the growing field of religion and popular music studies.

Celebrating the spirit of song In A Song to Sing, a Life to Live, Don and Emily Saliers help readers see the connections between Saturday night music and Sunday morning music by exploring the spiritual dimensions of music itself. They tell the stories of their own lives in music, and they share what they have learned and observed about the power of music in human life. They help us appreciate the joy of music and also how music carries us into places of sorrow, where we must go if we are to live with honesty about ourselves and compassion for others. This book is for churchgoers and spiritual seekers alike. Music is described in terms of spiritual practice; it has the power to embrace those who are deeply immersed in the life of Christian faith and speak to those who are spiritual but may question formal religion. The book explores a wide variety of musical traditions and offers an invitation to embrace a broader and deeper vision of the power of music and the spiritual dimensions of attentive listening. "This is a beautiful expression of music as many things--healer, gift, symbol of freedom and community, and agent of change" (Mary Chapin Carpenter).

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music is the first comprehensive analysis of the most important themes and concepts in this field. Drawing on contemporary research from religious studies, theology, sociology, ethnography, and cultural studies, the volume comprises thirty-one specifically commissioned essays from a team of international experts. The chapters explore the principal areas of inquiry and point to new directions for scholarship. Featuring chapters on methodology, key genres, religious traditions and popular music subcultures, this volume provides the essential reference point for anyone with an interest in religion and popular music as well as popular culture more broadly. Religious traditions covered include Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Paganism and occultism. Coverage of genres and religion ranges from heavy metal, rap and hip hop to country music and film and television music. Edited by Christopher Partridge and Marcus Moberg, this Handbook defines the research field and provides an accessible entry point for new researchers in the field.

Long-awaited biography of an African American avant-garde composer Alice Coltrane was a composer, improviser, guru, and widow of John Coltrane. Over the course of her musical life, she synthesized a wide range of musical genres including gospel, rhythm-and-blues, bebop, free jazz, Indian devotional song, and Western art music. Her childhood experiences playing for African-American congregations in Detroit, the ecstatic and avant-garde improvisations she performed on the bandstand with her husband John Coltrane, and her religious pilgrimages to India reveal themselves on more than twenty albums of original music for the Impulse and Warner Brothers labels. In the late 1970s Alice Coltrane became a swami, directing an alternative spiritual community in Southern California. Exploring her transformation from Alice McLeod, Detroit church pianist and bebopper, to guru Swami Turiya Sangitananda, Monument Eternal illuminates her music and, in turn, reveals the exceptional fluidity of American religious practices in the second half of the twentieth century. Most of all, this book celebrates the hybrid music of an exceptional, boundary-crossing African-American artist.

"Exceptionally illuminating and philosophically sophisticated." ---Ted Cohen, Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago "In this audacious and long-awaited book, Joel Rudinow takes seriously a range of interrelated issues that most music theorizing is embarrassed to tackle. People often ask me about music and spirituality. With Soul Music, I can finally recommend a book that offers genuine philosophical insight into the topic." ---Theodore Gracyk, Professor of Philosophy, Minnesota State University Moorhead The idea is as strange as it is commonplace---that the "soul" in soul music is more than just a name, that somehow the music truly taps into something essential rooted in the spiritual notion of the soul itself. Or is it strange? From the civil rights movement and beyond, soul music has played a key, indisputable role in moments of national healing. Of course, American popular music has long been embroiled in controversies over its spiritual purity (or lack thereof). But why? However easy it might seem to dismiss these ideas and debates as quaint and merely symbolic, they persist. In Soul Music: Tracking the Spiritual Roots of Pop from Plato to Motown, Joel Rudinow, a philosopher of music, takes these peculiar notions and exposes them to serious scrutiny. How, Rudinow asks, does music truly work upon the soul, individually and collectively? And what does it mean to say that music can be spiritually therapeutic or toxic? This illuminating, meditative exploration leads from the metaphysical idea of the soul to the legend of Robert Johnson to the philosophies of Plato and Leo Strauss to the history of race and racism in American popular culture to current clinical practices of music therapy. Joel Rudinow teaches in the Philosophy and Humanities Departments at Santa Rosa Junior College and is the coauthor of Invitation to Critical Thinking and the coeditor of Ethics and Values in the Information Age.

The flourishing of religious or spiritually-inspired music in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries remains largely unexplored. The engagement and tensions between modernism and tradition, and institutionalized religion and spirituality are inherent issues for many composers who have sought to invoke spirituality and Otherness through contemporary music. Contemporary Music and Spirituality provides a detailed exploration of the recent and current state of contemporary spiritual music in its religious, musical, cultural and conceptual-philosophical aspects. At the heart of the book are issues that consider the role of secularization, the claims of modernity concerning the status of art, and subjective responses such as faith and experience. The contributors provide a new critical lens through which it is possible to see the music and thought of Cage, Ligeti, Messiaen, Stockhausen as spiritual music. The book surrounds these composers with studies of and by other composers directly associated with the idea of spiritual music (Harvey, Gubaidulina, MacMillan, Pärt, Pott, and Tavener), and others (Adams, Birtwistle, Ton de Leeuw, Ferneyhough, Ustvolskaya, and Vivier) who have created original engagements with the idea of spirituality. Contemporary Music and Spirituality is essential reading for humanities scholars and students working in the areas of musicology, music theory, theology, religious studies, philosophy of culture, and the history of twentieth-century culture.