One Seeker's Journey: Thoughts from an evening choir concert    
 Thoughts from an evening choir concert4 comments
10 Mar 2004 @ 21:56, by Craig Lang

This evening, Gwyn and I attended a choir concert put on by the Jamestown College choir. This was a program of mideival through 19th century Russian-German religious music, presented at our church in Minneapolis. This choir has got to be one of the best I've heard in a long time. The music, sung both in German and in English, triggered the imagination and gave me somewhat of a feel of being a 19th century Russo-German.

The Russian-Germans were a protestant group of economic and religious refugee/settlers from Germany, who set up a series of religious settlements in Russia in the 19th century. They developed a very fertile musical heritage that carries through to this day. It was carried to the USA in the late 19th and early 20th century, and is prominent in the Dakotas and the Canadian plains provinces. Alas, the group that remained in Russia apparently ended up coming to grief during the Stalin era, when many of them perished. To read the blerb about their history in the program, and then listen to the music the choir sang, gave me an eerie, often sad sense of history.

It was very intersting to attend this concert, in the context of having attended the SF/Fantasy convention a few days before. In both, I got a sense of being in another place and time. It was a similar sense, even though the places and times were very much different. And yet, as I mentioned in the previous article, on the MarsCon SF Convo, at times there was a rennaisance fair flavor to some of it. So in that sense, the feeling was familiar, although nowhere near identical.

What this concert did show to me once again, was the hauntingly beautiful power that music can have to transport us to another place and time - be it past, present or future.


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4 comments

11 Mar 2004 @ 21:04 by martha : And if you
ever have a chance to see the whirling dervishes, go for it.
It is so amazing in our world how many different experiences can transend us to another time. In the case of the dervishes though they had the ability to send most of the audiance into an altered state of consciousness.Thanks for sharing craig.  

12 Mar 2004 @ 11:33 by craiglang : Music as Meditation
I read an interesting little writeup some time in the distant past in one of my hypnosis journals, about how music can be thought of as one of the original means of achieving an altered state of consciousness. It can be thought of as humanity's oldest form of trance induction, and the world's oldest meditative cue.  

12 Mar 2004 @ 11:45 by vibrani : Dervishes
yes, they are a very interesting experience. Music, I agree, probably is one of the original means of achieving an altered state. I use it myself to get into trance or meditation and it works quickly. A couple of the pieces I use include Medicine Woman by Medwyn Goddall, or Constance Demby, and another great piece is called El Hadra, the Mystik Dance of the Sufis - goes on for about an hour - and it corresponds to the breath and heartbeat at the same time. Takes me deep. There are other albums I use, depending on what my intent it. Music helps in healing and it can also destroy, which also works in healing to break down stagnant energies and move them out, but sometimes it has negative effects on the body.  

12 Mar 2004 @ 16:14 by martha : whirling
When i saw the dervishes there was no music except the quiet sounds of their moccasins spinning on the floor and their gowns flowing out as they turned. The magic was in the energy they brought into the room through the whirling.
Yes music can quickly get me into an altered state and i make a point of not listening to music that disturbes me and brings my vibration down...like rap.  

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13 Feb 2004 @ 11:16: Adventures with the Mind-Machine PK(?)
22 Dec 2003 @ 11:44: The Experience of Polarity
2 Dec 2003 @ 06:39: Sense of Warning


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