Review: Sacred Matters-Chapter 2 Music

"You better lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it, you better never let it go." These words from Eminem's hit song Lose Yourself echo through this chapter as Laderman explores the religious nature of music. Laderman goes so far as to say that music can be "a meaningful alternative to traditional religion...” He thinks of it this way due to its ability to "...generate moral perspectives, special communities, and life-altering transformations." He can reach such conclusions because he operates with a very thick description of music; including not just the sounds which we hear but the movement they generate in our bodies and the people with which we experience such events. Laderman explores the sacral qualities of raves, blues music, hip-hop, Elvis, rock and roll, and Grateful Dead concerts.

Music is a complex medium of communication. We use sounds without words or sounds with words mixed in them to express deep emotions often inaccessible through our common speech. Music forces us to recognize that communication involves more than just adequate understanding of thoughts being exchanged between people, but it involves a much more complex bodily experience. We experience communication through words, volume, tone, pitch, rhythm and rhyme. There is something primal about music where we let go of our inhibitions (sometimes through physical movement) and instead we feel the message being communicated, we combine our ability to feel and to think. It usually takes me a while to listen to the lyrics of a song. I like to feel the song first, and then after a while I listen to what is being said. This combination makes for an incredibly powerful tool of communication.

The more interesting aspect of music-as-religion to me is the investigation into the stories which shape the different musical traditions. Music is a creative expression of story; just like film in the last chapter we find our place in these stories. We identify with the struggles, experiences of love and loss, pronouncements of judgment, messages of peace, love, unity, respect and so on. As a Christian I identify with those musical expressions which tell God's story. Not just the hymns and songs which we sing in worship services, although they are a sacred resource for me, but songs which speak of justice for the oppressed, care for the poor, humility, mercy, faith, and the victory of love. Whether from my tradition or not I identify with music which expresses the themes of the story out of which I try to live my life, God’s story as revealed in the scriptures of the Christian faith.

My only question for Laderman in this chapter would be to question whether music can truly function as a religion in and of itself or whether it is merely a tool?  Is music the creative expression of meaning producing stories or does it somehow give meaning itself?