Chanting (as music)
 

I am mystically into chanting. It is such mysterious music..

Either in Rastafari chanting Nyabinghi drum and prayer, or now in the Orthodox Christian chants, I am in love with prayer as music. It is such a soothing spiritual meditation, and personally, I also chant and sing all my own prayers, following the melodies of the Tewahedo tradition to which I have been so indoctrinated.. it is truly beautiful music. also, perpahs the oldest continuous musical traditions are prayer, be it Christian or Buddhist or Hindu, chanting is ancient, it is the presrveation and perserverance of previous generations..

what chants/prayer do you like as music?

Rastafari Nyabinghi 'Burn Down Babylon' ( I-man can't live with out burning fyah on my hand drums, one of the most powerful gifts I was ever given musically or of any other kind was my first nyabinghi hand drum.. my elder sistren taught my the drum beats and the melodies, last groundation i-man helped to seal it up on the Akete drum)

Ethiopian Christian 'Yared's Hymn' entitled Tensa'e Emutan (Christ Rose)

Tewahedo Ethiopian Se'at (the horologium latin vespers)

Latin Vespers Book of the Hours

Byzantine/Greek Orthodox chant

Buddhist chant (some monks chanted this in the parking lot of a restraunt by my house around new years, it was so out of place it only enhances its mystical vibe)

Russian Orthodox Chant

Gregorian chants

Hindu chant

even those good ol negro spirituals Steal Away

all the sacred religious texts, the Bible, the Qu'ran, the Vedic writings and the various Gitas, the Buddhists texts, the fucking Qabbalah, all of these are old world chants, they are songs.

music is a powerful medium for spiritual energy, it brings a religious text or prayer into action, living, powerful.. its a shame that protestants have lost the tradition with their lame and terrible renditions of hymns ..

Oh gi ran ja ran ja ja ran....

I know you people have something more serious to discuss about chanting as music, I have tried this thread twice now with no luck..

I am sure we can have a musical discussion of chanting.

It is such intricate music, relying upon the first instrument, the human voice, which is also the most versatile. Further, it is a mystical kind of music..

Music has the ability to bring things to life, bring them into the present into the real. Music takes your feelings and makes them into a tangible experience.. they can move you beyond your comprehension or control..

Chanting as music is an interesting world-wide culture, I am sure some of you have an opinion or an experience with this kind of music..

fuck religion/prayer

thats fine, but that is not the point of this thread ;)

this is a discussion about the music, not the theology. chanting is the origination of music. without chanting there would be no music. some believe that chanting and singing is the origin of language itself in human beings, and that we used to sing like birds before we evolved our speech. I do not know of any other songs or musical traditions that are as ancient and yet continuous.

When I go to church on sunday we sing a song together that people have been singing for over 1600 years, based upon indigenous African melodies that are perhaps thousands of years old, preserved intact.. can you imagine some pop music lasting that long? Will they be singing elvis or Nirvana or Michael Jackson songs forever? I wonder..

thank you for adding some substance to this discussion!

I did not necessarily want to talk about the religiousity of chants as much as the music and sound of them.. yr feelings in regards to ambient minimalist sounds is EXACTLY the kind of thing I get from chanting or meditating with chanting either live or recorded going on.. I stumble into an Ethiopian church every sunday because there is a live performance of such satisfying music and singing through the Liturgical chanting that my very soul is as you said, 'put into a subconscious plain where things feel better."

but I am also fascinated by the continuity of chanting as music. It is ancient and yet modern, and appears to continue well into the future, despite the massive competition of radio and ipod and mass market media..

i mean, two hundred years ago people went to Church or the temple to hear some music because they didn't hear anything remotely musical anywhere else. The Church/Temple is the original concert/dancehall..

Chants are basically harmonic singing. Imagine listening to The Byrds or The Beach Boys without the music.

true, but why has chanting survived so long and continuously? What inspires people to sing a two-thousand year old song? Will the BeachBoys honestly last that long? Can you honestly imagine people picking up 'good vibrations' in the three thousands?

ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

I pretty much go to noisefanatics.com if I want to ask people about serious musical reccomendations. Though it's primarily a "harsh noise" board or whatever, there's lots of open minded people into lots of interesting stuff. If you make a topic for something like this over there, you'll actually get a lot of decent responses. Try it sometime. I wouldn't bother with this board for serious musical discussion anymore.

I love this board, though, just sayin'.

people still surprise me with their insight and taste on this board which I why I gave it try, and I am not necessarily dissappointed.. it was just something on my mind the other day while meditating to a chanting soundtrack.. I was curious what the SYG folks though of chanting music.. if anything I wanted to find the perspective of people who were not necessarily into chanting, or conversely to see what kinds of chants people from this side of the musical spectrum were familiar with or into..

I like some Gregorian chanting. There's lots of chanting in Zeuhl music (stuff like Koennjihyakkei and so on). Otherwise, I'm not too familiar with it yet.

gregorian chanting would be the common western experience for chanting unless yr a hippe leftover from the 60s (or yr parents were ones) and you have been exposed to Buddhist/Indian chanting..

well I suppose americans have at least sometimes heard

'native american' chants



I'd have to say that after Ethiopian chants, my favorite are these american indian chants, they touch my soul in an unexplainable way, but I suppose thats what music does.

you rang?