The Potential of a Sonic Turn: Toward an Acoustemology of the Post-Secular

National University of Singapore, Asia Research Institute, Feb 27-28, 2020

Whether through mantras, Quran recitation contests, or Christian congregational singing, sounds, bodies and texts depend on each other for the continued vitality of the sacred and the way it is experienced in Asia. However, texts have been given utmost priority in the field of Religious Studies for a series of historical and cultural reasons that have been summarized as a "scriptist bias" and "ocularcentrism". Ranking vision over other senses in Western cultures, at the expense of the auditory and other sensory realms, has produced a kind of "disciplinary deafness" in the study of religions. This conference aims to consider the importance of "a sonic turn" to bring forth understudied connections between bodies, sounds and media in the private and public life of religions in Asia. It welcomes toolbox approaches from multidisciplinary scholars who combine methods and perspectives from religious studies, history, ethnomusicology, anthropology, media studies, folklore and performance studies. Bodies of texts, which represent our common acceptation of the term corpus/corpora, will give way to a specific attention on "bodies of songs" (Hess 2015), "bodies of sounds" (Dodds and Cook 2013), the "skinscapes" of religious experience (Plate 2012), the sensory and embodied dimensions of the sacred (Csordas 1994, Meyer 2011), and the "entextualization" of the body through sacred sounds (Flood 2005). The role of sounds and embodied practices will also emerge as encompassing these intimate and affective dimensions, and reflecting broader questions on mediatization, and on the relationship between sounds, religions and power. In fact, the use of sound shapes the ways in which space is produced and perceived. Hence religious soundscapes, especially in urban and multicultural spaces, have been discussed as enveloping and claiming territorial authority, establishing boundaries, or awakening inter-religious tensions. An emerging literature on congregational singing as establishing community and the sense of belonging, and recent scholarship on the relationship between religious soundscapes and place-making are helpful in articulating the theoretical liaison between sound, people, places and identities. However, these conceptual frameworks, frequently based on urban, predominantly Christian, and North Atlantic contexts, often neglect intimate discourses, real experience and lived understandings of sound-and what sacred sound does to the people who are creating, listening, producing, and interpreting it. The focus on the sonic aspect of religion cannot be separated from movement and touch, as fundamental dimensions of the experience of the religious body. Sound, and the senses of the praying/playing/listening/dancing body, appear as an interconnected and fundamental point to start an innovative discussion on the politics and the aesthetics of religious experience. The ways in which performed and sounded religious experiences are produced, transmitted, reproduced, commodified and received is also inseparable from the technical and mediated ways in which these communicative acts take place. Therefore our discussion is necessarily embedded in the understanding of the relationship between religion and media. Sound and the sonic ritual body are articulated and understood in different religious mediatizations, as cultural expressions communicated by oral, textual, musical, danced, digital, and other vehicles. Whether conveyed by live performance, graphemes, televangelism, or social media, the sensorial field of religious chanting, preaching, mourning, ritual dancing, or singing, becomes a site for broader social negotiations, sectarian contestations and trans-territorial identity formations, ultimately unsettling and multiplying the discussion on religion, the senses and the media in Asia. Our discussion is interested in the various intersections between religious sounds, bodies, mediascapes and the reflection of power relationships, in order to understand contemporary issues that comprise but are not limited to:  Community-making and place-making processes;  Sound in ritual performance and the heritage discourse;  Multicultural soundscapes in the public sphere;  Sacred music, migration and diasporas;  Sonic contestations and the production of inequalities;  Religious sounds in new and changing mediascapes.

Religious Sounds Beyond the Global North: Senses, Media and Power, eds. Carola E. Lorea and Rosalind I.J. Hackett, 2024

The afterword centers on the following question: If it is the case that the forms of territoriality and belonging such as those discussed in the contributions to this volume are already constituted and well-known through discourse, why should one pay attention to the sonic? It is argued that the particular entanglement of the sonic with embodiment enables religious sounds to provide somatic evidence for religious ritual outcomes, experiences, cosmologies, and aspirations. Sonic materiality with its inbuilt multimodality also affords the bundling of the forms of territoriality and belonging that feature prominently in the book's contributions with religious traditions and practices, suffusing them with the same felt qualities at the level of felt-bodily motion and perception.

Sound and music play a vital role in many religious and spiritual practices around the world. However, they have not been studied considerably in the field of religion or in related disciplines thus far. This article begins to bridge this gap by drawing a preliminary cartography of the research field and proposing a transdisciplinary methodological basis for further studies. It includes a survey of the state of research and firmly locates the field within the secular study of religion rather than within phenomenological, theological or religious approaches. The key concepts “sound,” “music” and “religion” are introduced; and the manner in which common perceptions of these concepts have prevented us from noting some of the most interesting phenomena, especially in contemporary religiosity, is discussed. Finally, a spectrum of potential research perspectives that could be covered by future studies is proposed.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2022

Because of its material characteristics, the sonic poses a challenge to the influential paradigm of religion as mediation. This article makes a case for a neo-phenomenological analytic of atmospheres in order to do justice to the sonic in anthropological approaches to religion. Approaching the sonic as atmospheric half-things, I propose a different understanding of religious mediation from the one developed in contexts where images, objects, and technical media dominate. Based on research on the recitation of Urdu devotional poetry among Mauritian Muslims, it is suggested that sonic religion does not function as a stable in-between connecting humans and the divine. Instead, it operates through processes of resonant bundling, intertwining different strands of lived experience, including religious traditions.

Temenos - Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion

The study of religion has been greatly enhanced in recent years by the new emphasis on lived religion and materiality (Meyer et al. 2011). It also impels us to consider how the aesthetic factors into the interpretation of religious worlds (Meyer 2009). Moreover, the shift in academic focus from beliefs and texts to practice and the sensorium has generated stimulating new questions about religious communication and mediation (Morgan 2009). Surprisingly, music and extramusical sound receive scant attention despite the significance of sound and hearing in our lives. Scholars of religion have been slow to engage the multidisciplinary boom in sound studies of the last few years (Keeling & Kun 2011). 2 In what follows I discuss some of the historical biases and methodological challenges related to studying religion from an acoustic and auditory perspective. I review the work of some authors who have overcome what Isaac Weiner calls our 'disciplinary deafness' (2009, 897) and made the 'sound of the sacred' a centerpiece of their research and publications. 3 In the course of the essay, I identify some of the topics that are arguably integral to the development of a more sonically aware religious studies, as well as areas that await more study. The undervaluation of sound in the academic study of religion is linked to the privileging of sight over sound in Western modernity, whereby the aural as a spiritual sense is diminished (Chidester 1992; Schmidt 2002). Furthermore, listening is held to be the most passive of the senses, and 1 My work on sound and music in religion has been greatly aided by a course I taught on this topic (spring 2011) and by the assistance of Jeremy Spiers. I also acknowledge the contributions of the 'Sound In/As Religion' symposium' that I organized at the 2010 World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) in Toronto. 2 On this topic, see the excellent blog, Sounding Out! <www.soundstudiesblog.com>. 3 Cf. Morgan 2012 on 'the look of the sacred'.

Cultural Anthropology, 2018

In this essay I make a case for an analytic of atmospheres as a way to understand the seemingly ineffable yet powerful effects of vocal sound on listeners in an Islamic setting. Focusing on the recitation of devotional poetry in honor of the Prophet Muhammad among Mauritian Muslims, I seek to bring together neo-phenomenological approaches to sonic atmospheres with recent anthropological research on the voice that seeks to overcome the opposition of discursive signification and sonic materiality. Detailed examination of sonic events shows that sonic atmospheres enact suggestions of movement that go beyond the metaphorical. Arguing against theories of sonic affect that take the sonic to be an asignifying material flux, I seek to demonstrate that vocal sound’s meaningfulness is internal to the processual nature of its material forms.

Abstract In many traditional cultures there are sophisticated rituals which make possible the expression of the sacred through music and sound. These traditional rituals and sacred ceremonies have their own discipline, local control and economies of organization. But increasingly this local control is being eclipsed by the control of the global media, the internet and the music industry. Today we can understand music and sacred sound as a commodity orchestrated by the flows of capital. Now various forms of sacred music and the chanting of Buddhist mantras can be disseminated through audio and video clips through the internet to destinations far from the traditional performance venues and sacred spaces. This expands the access to the sacred sounds from many cultural traditions, but at the same time, it often engages the listener at a merely individual level, isolating them from the deeper religious initiation and discipline and the wider religious community. I will approach this problem by touching upon the role of sacred sound in traditional culture. I will then examine the desire for the recovery of sacred sound and the way it sets the backdrop for the relationship between Nietzsche to Wagner. Finally, I wish to consider popular music and whether the consumption of music on an individual level can allow access to sacred sound. Humanity in the information age exists in a space of disconnection between older experiences of the sacred orchestrated by cultural traditions and new experiences of the sacred orchestrated by the flows of capital. And while the older sacred disciplines are increasingly in decline, we need to ask whether our information age opens new possibilities; whether our fragmented consumption of myths and sacred experiences can lead to new insights and reflections.

2016

A composition involving listening to the architectural spaces and morphological structures of churches, temples and mosques in Oxford set to researched sacred world musics and musics of peace and transcendentalism: 'A montage of architectural spaces of places of peace set to peaceful and researched sacred musics'. The spaces may include outdoor places near to the architectural sites themselves (e.g. pools, trees, people, walkways, bell towers) and the work will examine and utilise the structure of the spaces and the sounds occupying those spaces that interact with space. Aesthetics and sociology are inseparable. Music's most ancient function is locating its sacred spaces. 'Contemplative vision [is the] original source of true and balanced art'. Ritual and artistic expression are the cornerstones of civilization. My research seeks, through a social-scientific stance, cultural understanding through differing viewpoints, with a love of esoteric knowledge and understanding beyond surface depths through allegorical perspective shifts, exploring the past and modernity across cultures. In my work I will try to highlight different individual and social means of worship through music-making, while blending a coherent fabric with a researched compositional thread. There are sociological, spiritual and metaphysical dimensions in the nature of the work, and my interests also include the political and aesthetic.