Review (PDF)

Enchanting Powers: Music In The World's Religions (Religions Of The World (Harvard))

The Confucian Sacrificial Ceremony, the Choctaw ball game, and the drum history of the Dagbamba, are some of the topics addressed in this collection of essays, which consider the intersection and interconnection of musics and religions in different world cultures.

Series: Religions of the World (Harvard)

Paperback: 329 pages

Publisher: Center for the Study of World Religions (March 25, 1997)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0945454120

ISBN-13: 978-0945454120

Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds

Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Best Sellers Rank: #1,663,958 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #45 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Sheet Music & Scores > Composers > Sullivan #237 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Sheet Music & Scores > Historical Period > Modern Popular #237 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Sheet Music & Scores > Forms & Genres > Musicals

This is a collection of papers that are related in some way to the topics of religion and music. I approached this book with several questions: What is the role of music in the religions of the world? What is the attitude of world religions towards music? However, very few essays in this book address these questions directly. In most similar books of edited papers, the introduction contains an overview of all the papers and how they fit together. Instead, Sullivan writes in his introduction a very philosophical piece on the meaning of music in general. A number of other essays are highly philosophical and rather hard to approach. Others are anthropological and highly descriptive, answering questions such as "What music is played during religious ceremonies of lesser known cultures and who plays the music? (Wakuenai-Hill; Choctaw-Levine; China-Pian)", or "Who was Major Jealous Divine, a reportedly musical pastor in early 20th century America?" (Harris), or "Where did the music of the Jewish people as an ethnic group originate?" (Shelemay). However, I found the 2 articles on music in Islam extremely illuminating, especially the one by Nasr, in which he lays out a typology of musical sounds in Islam from the religious, through the halal (permitted), to the contentious, to the haram (forbidden). Perhaps the questions I had in mind when I picked up this book are actually only interesting in an Islamic context. The other papers in the book are well written and will no doubt be of interest to someone, but they weren't what I was looking for.

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