Music – Feminism and Religion

From the Archives: A Movement Needs A Song by Esther Nelson

This was originally posted on December 29, 2016

I’m back in Las Cruces, New Mexico, spending the break between semesters in the spot where I plan to eventually retire. When I was here last summer (2016), I visited the Unitarian Universalist Church so decided to join the people gathered there on Christmas Day. Not many showed up—about twenty or so. The service was abbreviated. The emphasis was on singing Christmas carols from the hymnal. Unitarian Universalists, it appears, love to sing.

Inside the bulletin on a separate sheet of paper, Catherine Massey, the Director of Music, wrote an essay titled “Sunday Music Notes.” She asks, “How can music help us respond to the needs around us?” She listed several ways we can benefit from singing and chanting. One way is calming the self, enabling us to better cope with life’s struggles. Singing can also bring comfort to the sick and/or dying as well as to their families. She used her final paragraph to write about the necessity of music in social action movements.

…[S]inging has been an integral part of many social action movements, from the American Civil rights movement of the 1950s-60s to the anti-apartheid movement of South Africa. Ysaye Barnwell, member of the African American women’s a cappella group “Sweet Honey in the Rock,” has said that for a social justice movement to gain and maintain momentum, it needs songs to be sung by the people. She believes recent movements, such as Occupy Wallstreet, have had limited success because the people on the streets haven’t found their songs.

I am still grieving about the choices many American citizens made during the recent U.S. election. Although disheartened, I know I am not alone in my grief and outrage. I hope that decent people will push back against the misogyny, heteronormativity, racism, xenophobia, and just plain hatred that this new administration stands for and will, no doubt, perpetuate. We need music and songs to carry the “resistance” forward.

The Music of Creation: Exploring Verse and Vibration in the Bible by Janet Rudolph, Book Review by Carolyn Lee Boyd

“What if the teachings within the Bible were not dualistic, but taught of oneness, connection, and the flow of energy?” (9) In The Music of Creation: Exploring Verse and Vibration in the Bible, Janet Rudolph (whom FAR readers already know as a FAR co-weaver) explores the definitions and vibrational elements of the sounds of original Hebrew words in the Bible. This is her latest book. In this book, Janet creates retranslations that express the energy, flow, dynamism and movement of the verses. She also discusses ways for readers to experience the power and potential of the verses for themselves. As she notes, Hebrew is a “sacred language” so that “the words themselves carry a vibrational element that we, as human beings, find meaningful and compelling” (3). In doing so, her retranslations revive the energy of “nature and its cyclical wisdom” (4). These are remnants of the original teachings, bringing forth their fresh beauty, inspiration, and world perspective we so need now.

The Beat of Your Own Drum by Sophie Messager – Book Review by Judith Maeryam Wouk

Pick up a drum and start your unique journey with this sacred tool; there is no one right path. The drum can help women hear their inner voice, access their own wisdom, reclaim their power, and heal. The drum in its simplicity offers a direct link to our deepest selves.

That is the message of this profoundly personal saga, told through the stories of Sophie Messager and others. She recounts her own transition from scientist to birth doula to journey guide for women in life transition, through reiki and a diagnosis of ADHD, growing into her identity shift from outer- to inner-centered wisdom. Her personal practice now includes weekly drumming at dawn in a woodland with two friends and monthly drum circles.

PEOPLE GET READY by Esther Nelson

I recently attended an event in Salem, Virginia, put on by The Salem Choral Society titled “People Get Ready,” directed by S. Reed Carter IV. This popular group has sung on numerous occasions locally as well as performing at Carnegie Hall in New York City and the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. The choir (11 men and ~45 women) sang fourteen selections. The song arresting my attention was “People Get Ready.”

From Wikipedia: “‘People Get Ready’ is a 1965 single by the Impressions, the group’s best-known hit, reaching number three on the Billboard R&B chart. The gospel-influenced track was a Curtis Mayfield (1942–1999), American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. This particular composition displayed [his] growing sense of social and political awareness…. In 2021, Rolling Stone named this song the 122^nd greatest song of all time. Martin Luther King Jr. named the song the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights Movement and often used the song to get people marching or to calm and comfort them.”

No Day But Today by Beth Bartlett

Driving north on I-35 after having just left a powerful Somatic Experiencing® training session in which I relived significant moments of my heart transplantation, tears streamed down my face as I blasted the musical Rent at full volume on my car’s CD player.

♪There’s only us
There’s only this
Forget regret or life is yours to miss

No other road no other way
No day but today

There’s only now
There’s only here . . .
No other path
No other way
No day but today♪

The Motomami Theology: “Segundo chingarte, lo primero Dios.”* Part I

*“God comes first. Fuc*king you, a close second.”

I went to Rosalía’s promotional concert for the Motomami album in Boston a month ago. I knew some songs from her 2018 album El Mal Querer (Bad Love), a musical masterpiece. That album made Rosalía a visible star in the constellation of musicians and composers in Hispano-American mainstream music. The album has a particular story that Wikipedia explains very well:

The album was written by Rosalía and co-produced with El Guincho on an initial low budget as an independent artist. Presented as experimental and conceptual, revolving around a toxic relationship, the album was inspired by the anonymous 13th-century Occitan novel Flamenca. Therefore, every song on the album is conceived as a chapter of the book. It served as the singer’s baccalaureate project, graduating from Catalonia College of Music with honors. [Read more here]

In El Mal Querer, Rosalía mixed electronics, contemporary dances and rhythms, and traditional flamenco sounds and movements in a beautiful musical and visual collage. Some musically conservative audiences characterized the album as the “profanation” of traditional flamenco music, but there’s no doubt that Rosalía brought the genre back to life and made it mainstream again.

From the Archives: Lessons from Candide by Barbara Ardinger

Moderator’s note: This marvelous FAR site has been running for 10 years and has had more than 3,600 posts in that time. There are so many treasures that have been posted in this decade that they tend to get lost in the archives. We have created this column so that we can all revisit some of these gems. Today’s blogpost was originally posted August 5, 2018. You can visit the original post here to see the comments.

Candide, ou l’Optimisme (in English, Candide, or Optimism) is a satirical, picaresque novel published in 1759 by François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, who was possibly the smartest author of the Age of Enlightenment…but he annoyed so many courtiers and public officials that he was forever traveling around Europe to get away from their threats of arrest and bodily harm. A picaresque novel is an adventure novel with a clever, tricky hero who somehow survives and makes us like him. Voltaire wrote his novel primarily to criticize the optimism of the German writer Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who said that because God is always benevolent, everything that happens is always for the best. This presumably includes the bloody Seven Years War (Protestant vs. Catholic, fought mostly in Germany and France) and the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which occurs both in Lisbon and in the novel. Even though Voltaire was accused of blasphemy and heresy, among his other sins and crimes, Candide was enormously popular throughout Europe, a popularity that continues to this day.

Sappho in a Locrian Mode by Carolyn Lee Boyd

The world Sappho envisions in her poetry is one with many lessons for us in the 21st century about how to live. While ancient Greek society, especially in later eras, was deeply misogynistic and women had few rights, Sappho’s words evoke a perspective in which goddesses, especially Aphrodite, are revered and the connection of worshippers to goddesses is intimate, art created by women is celebrated, women’s relationships are central to one’s well being, and love and sensuality are enjoyed.

But words only tell part of the story. Sappho’s poetry was meant to be sung, and while we can’t hear the songs she wrote, I think it is interesting to note that Anne Carson, in her 2003 translation “If Not, Winter” says that Sappho is credited with inventing the Locrian musical mode. A mode is a scale in which the progression of notes follows a set pattern of whole and half notes. We are all familiar with the major mode that makes music sound happy (Happy Birthday song) and the natural minor mode that we use for sad music (House of the Rising Sun). But there are many other modes, and the Locrian mode is one of them. (just a note: the Locrian mode is the same as the Greek Mixolydian mode and completely different from the modern Mixolydian mode, just to be confusing.)

Looking Again at The Magic Flute by Barbara Ardinger

I have just spent a week watching four productions of Mozart and Schikaneder’s 1791 opera. Four in a row! Now we all know that I adore musical theater more than almost anything else in the world. Operetta. Nelson and Jeanette. Fred and Ginger. Broadway musicals (but not the movies made from them that rewrote them completely). But opera?? Certainly not Italian opera seria. It’s just too loud. Besides, why isn’t La Boheme sung in French? Carmen in Spanish? Madame Butterfly in Japanese? Aida in Egyptian? Turandot in Chinese?

All right—yes, these are ridiculous questions. I’ve seen La Boheme and Turandot live. I’ve seen The Magic Flute live two or three times. Mozart is my favorite classical composer. Born in Salzburg (which was then part of the Holy Roman Empire and now is the site of an annual Mozart festival), he began composing at age five, and he and his sister Nannerl toured the courts of 18^th-century Europe and performed before Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. (BTW, while much of his story is told in the play and film Amadeus, Mozart was not murdered by Salieri. He died from a highly contagious miliary fever.)

Singing Is a Sacred Power by Carolyn Lee Boyd

A moss-soft ballad sung from a mountain top to the sunrise. A parent’s lullaby to soothe a newborn to sleep. Thousands of voices rising together to banish injustice from our planet. A single wavering melody infusing inspiration into a moment of despair. Whenever we open our mouths to sing, no matter how tuneful or discordant our song, we have instant access to a well of power to transform ourselves and others.

Over the years, I’ve been amazed at how often singing denotes spiritual power in myths and stories about goddesses and holy women from across the globe and throughout time. These are just a few examples from around the world. You may know others.