Can One Find Spirituality Within Music?

[ao_xk]

not in minimal techno anyway

I subscribe to this view.

[kdgh]

Cool subject... would like to give it a try, so here i go :

Spirituality are personal experiences that is caused by the senses we own and use day by day that (might) lead to an elevating mind(state) - (that is what i believe today)

So could music be spiritual? in my opinion : Yes.
Simply said : It hits your hearing sense, so that could evoke an spiritual experience.

Now the more tougher question : Which or what music and/or sound 'is' spiritual?

In my opinion every sound, composition of sounds and harmonies can evoke something spiritual.
Though not the same things will do to different persons.

Now i would like to bring in AK's story about his believing about vibrations.
I'm a supporter of this theory and i would like to add it to my little thought about spirituality in music.

The reason why music and sound in particular can be experienced as something spiritual is because it will resonates with the person that is experiencing this. Not everybody and everything has the same resonation frequencies.

When we resonate with the sound and or music we might experience that 'elevating' feeling. The inner happiness or intense sadness. Heavy nostalgia can even be created because of resonance of certain music/sound. It's the resonance of you... your mind, body and maybe even your soul!

Oliver Sacks a famous writer and neurologist even prove in a documentary that music does these things with the mind (though this could not be considered as something spiritual).

He made a test with a volunteer how music reacts on the brain.
The test was like this :

The volunteer listens to his least favorite music while he's going into a brain scanner. They're measuring his brain energy/activity and the results were that there wasn't happening a lot. Barely anything better said.

The next step was doing the same process only with music he really enjoyed. Guess what... more activity in the brain!

and the last step was playing his most favorite piece of music/sound and go through the scanner again.
Now guess again.... His brain was like exploding of activity. Even Oliver Sacks didn't expected THAT much activity in the brain.

Now this might not be spiritual in a direct way, but it could comprehend the personal experience of music and sound.


EDIT :

Link to the documentary : http://vimeo.com/5445261

[steevio]

good answer from Kdgh

slightly OT but i have just read a book by Oliver Sacks called Musicophilia, really really interesting, also a little scary, its about how the brain works with music, focussing on strange musical phenomena assoiciated with music therapy, aging, brain injuries, and abnormal perceptions such as auditory hallucinations etc.
might sound a bit heavy but i think every musician should read it, it really accentuates the potential and power of music way beyond what you thought was possible.

[Alert]

The chakras correspond with the seven main musical keys:

C = root chakra
D = sex chakra
E = solar plexus/power chakra
F = heart chakra
G = throat chakra
A = third eye/ajna chkra
B = crown chakra

[JonasEdenbrandt]

I think as with alot of things music becomes something spiritual as soon as it enters a context and especially when that context is social in a way. (this could be anything from somebody sending a track they made to a friend or people dancing at a party or a concert). When this happens music stops beeing just a physical occurence (preassure) and becomes communication which is the base for everything I would call spiritual.

I'd also like to question to you'r nihilistic philosophy (I also take alot if inspiration from nihilistic philosphy, especially questioning of morality). There is no universal clock. Linear time is only a way for us to percive a small part of the universe. There is no universal history for us to be insegnificant in.
I belive it's modern societys obsession with individuals that have given us the illusion of a single person beeing insignificant if you observe all of mankind and all of mankind to be insignificant if you observe the whole universe. Problem is that it's impossible to observe the whole universe without observing mankind. The universe is (as far as our perception can tell us) an infinitly complex system and like with all systems (echosystems, music, society) altering parts of it (almost always) have larger impacts on the system as a whole then you would have thougth.

In modern society music is seen as the product of one persons hard work. This illusion is so deeply rooted that even when serveral people were involved in the creative process of a song more often then not only one person is given credit for it. This is an incorrect and simplistic way of perciving music. Music is the product of... everything. It is the sum of all music that came before it, it is the sum of all the people that the composer comes in contact with, it is the sum of the composers perception of history, society and space. Music is everything we are and perhaps more.

In isolation everything is irrelevant. What does a single atom do? But most of all who are we to question it? As a part of a system everything is infinitly complex and important.

I belive I got a bit carried away and whent off topic.
TLDR (jump to 1:23)

[pastapiu]

Not at all! Thank you for your views on this. It's a very inspirational topic and really enjoyable to read. I wasn't really planning on writing something but previous writings got me inspired to think about the topic and maybe come back with an additon to this from my perspective.

[pastapiu]

I feel spirituality is the recognition that there is more between heaven and earth than that what we notice with our five senses. As suggested earlier I also believe that this is something that takes places on an interpersonal level. I think spirituality and spiritual connections can especially be made through music actually. It feels as if music makes us rely less on our communication as we know it but more on a higher, sixth sense kind of communication. Spirits can get entangled in the beauty or sadness of a song or piece of music. Although we usually do not feel each other’s presence from different sides of a room, we do recognize the (bodily and expressional) signs of someone who is completely on the same wavelength. I feel that music can function as the instrument that makes people express this wavelength and can hereby form a foundation for a spiritual as well as physical connection to be made.

I also feel that, as a DJ (I do not produce music myself, yet) or other sort of artist it is possible to reach out to the spiritual receptors of your audience and provide a ground for connection on a deeper level to occur. In Avatar the tribe connects through their ‘lifeline’, music is/maybe humanities lifeline.

I must say you can get carried away easily when pondering on this subject. I haven’t censured my text, it’s all pure thought. Hope it makes any sense haha.

[steevio]

7.83 Hz