Essay - Ustom Writing Assignment Provided by Religion Sacred Music and Literature...

ustom writing assignment provided by religion

Sacred Music and Literature

Through-out time, mankind has sought words from God(s) and both found and recorded their answers with sacred words. These words have, since the advent of written language in each culture, made ***** way ********** sacred scriptures. Yet before there were scriptures, these ***** were recalled in sacred songs -- oral traditions of poets ***** musicians carried the words ***** God(s) to the people. So it is no surpr*****e that today sacred music continues to play a significant role in all ***** world's religions. This role ***** often in the past been much higher than it is *****day, of course, and it seems possible that as history cont*****ues to drift in***** literacy and science that the role ***** music ***** liturgy (which are ***** many ways essentially primitive, in the best sense of ***** word) will continue to be effaced. Nonetheless, at this moment in history we can look at the history and modernity ***** ***** great religions of the world ***** very clearly still see the po*****r of music at work. ***** ***** religion is intertwined with sacred literature, some*****s serving (merely?) as a vehicle to *****llow ***** literature to truly reach the people, as when a Jewish can*****r sings the scriptures, and sometimes as a vit*****l sacred supplement or even a focus of w*****ship, ********** with the Sikh Kirtan/Bhajans.

In most ***** ***** older religions it appears that music holds a centr*****l position. Music is tied into ritual and into the invocation of God(s) and spirits. Native *****s almost inevitably use music ***** drumming as part ***** any spiritual endeavor, and may attribute supernatural influences to ***** music not unlike the influences which later faiths attribute to prayers. Arthur Hall, of the Percussion Source Magazine, speaks ***** the ex*****tence of ***** music in native cultures ***** creat*****g a rhythmaculture which uses drums ***** percussion as central elements of expressions. He lists Asians, Native Americans and Isl*****ers, and Africans as people who have always had rhythmaculture. These "people[s] have evolved their ***** out of an intimate relationship with the earth they live on, ***** the animals they live *****. A lot ***** their rhythms, songs and dances have *****en modeled from the movements of ***** animals, the songs of the birds, ***** ***** community's dance for survival, such ***** the movements of harvesting, planting, and hunting." (Hall) Whereas in later culture music will be used to heighten the impact ***** repetitions of ancient *****, in many rythmacultures ***** is used as a w*****y to receive this divine revelation itself. While music certainly serves as part ***** an oral tradition and while traditional songs (sacred ***** otherwise) ***** p*****sed between generations, there is also a ***** large degree ***** which music has its most profound sacred use in the direct invocation of the God(s) and spirits. Dr. Karen McCarthy Brown has spent decades researching Vodou ***** its *****frican roots. She writes that in Africa and ***** ***** traditional cultures, "religious *****