Music and Ritual

Religious rituals are often connected to the human life cycle and to human crises. Many people turn to music in times of crisis or trouble. Music provides a spiritual connection that allows its listeners to feel comfort or sympathy. Because of this, bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, or Nirvana, developed mass followings with religious connotations. Concerts became ritualistic, with fans worshipping their idols from their seats. This ritual began to extend into people's homes and daily lives. Fans hang up posters of their favorite artists up on their walls or write lyric quotes on their belongings. People are so obsessed with worshipping bands and music that we have even created The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where fanatics can go to worship and bond with some of their favorite musicians.


Laderman says, "Americans… have turned to music as a sacred source of religious life, discovering the rhythms and beats, lyrics and sentiments a valuable way to escape." Many individuals turn to music to escape the realities of their everyday lives. We choose to worship music because we are attracted to the lifestyle it presents.   We may never experience life on the road or the struggles that musicians go through, but by investing ourselves into their music we are connecting to an entirely different world.

The Sanctity of Concerts

            Music is an important and integral part of humanity. This form of artistic expression seems to connect deeply to us on many different levels, and has throughout recorded history. So much so that the way in which we regard music often takes on religious proportions. Often the act of listening to music is ritualistic in nature. According to Livingstone, through the use of chanting, rhythms and other mediums, ritual is “symbolic in the most profound sense, for it ‘brings together’ the mind, the body, and the emotions, and at the same time, binds us to a community of shared values” (99). Music acts similarly, using comparable methods of stimulation to achieve this end.

            This phenomenon can often be seen at concerts. While we can all simply whip out our iPod and listen to whatever we want, the ritualistic nature of concerts is something inherently attractive about the experience. By transforming our inhibitions and behaviors, concerts serve as a ritual space that changes our identities. Even further, it speaks to one of the most basic human desires of belonging and being an accepted part of a group or community. Knowing the lyrics and singing along with strangers is a very powerful tool of “belonging”. This is taken to another level at large music festivals, where masses of people flock to the festival areas, often sleeping in tents and creating temporary societies. For example, the original Woodstock music festival in 1969 drew hundreds of thousands of people. While it was a “music festival”, it really was about much more than just music. It represented the “hippy” culture of the time, and provided a space where a community could come together and in a way “worship” their beliefs. For individuals going to that event, it provided a unifying experience that defined who they were, in the same way that religion and ritual does. By joining together and singing ballads of peace and love, the festival turned into a sacred ritual space. This is how concerts, and music as a whole, become both religious and ritualistic.

Music as a Sacred Ritual

Livingstone describes rituals as an “agreed on and formalized pattern of ceremonial movements and verbal expressions carried out in a sacred context”. A ritual is therefore a routine action that acquires a sacred meaning for a group of people. It also acts as a mean of social communication and unity that brings a certain group of people together. Music, just like rituals, acts as a social communicator that establishes and maintains the identity of an individual within a certain group.
In some instances, music plays a guiding role in shaping identities during the rites of passage. Each transition; from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, is accompanied by a change of preference in the kind of music we listen to. As we grow up, our personality evolves along with the our music preference that is influenced by the subculture that we identify ourselves with. That’s the reason 13 year olds listen to One Direction and 50 year olds to U2. Music also underlines the meaning of a certain rite of passage. The difference in melody, form and sentiments expressed by music played at weddings and funerals symbolizes the happiness of the former, and the sadness of the latter. Ritual and music are related because they both shape the values and define the sacred that are expressed by a group of people.

Music and Ritual in Jewish Rites of Passage

     How does the music in Jewish rites of passage create its own sense of ritual? How does secular music also develop its own religious connotations and become incorporated into religious contexts?

     Judaism has four major rites of passage: the Bris (circumcision ceremony), the Bar Mitzvah (entrance into adulthood), Marriage, and Death. These rites of passage are a form of ritual for every Jew that separates sections of that person's life. These rituals are similar to any other religion, and they all use music in order to do authentic religious work. 

     These ceremonies incorporate both Jewish based along with pop culture based music to help with the rite of passage. In all of these cases, the central music during these ceremonies is prayer. In most Jewish ceremonies, these prayers are always the same, but are done slightly different depending on the synagogue. The prayers in these ceremonies are usually sung by a Cantor or a Rabbi (some have the congregation or the people doing the rite of passage joining in) with an organ usually playing for a beat, creating a unique situation as each person will sing the prayer differently. These rites of passages also have non-musical rituals such as the breaking of glass during the marriage ceremony, which serves as a way of connecting the community through similar actions.

     The reception after these rites of passage is where music has its largest effect. First off, by having receptions at different venues it creates a unique experience every time. In every Jewish reception, there are certain musical rituals that are always repeated. This begins with the prayer for the cutting of the Challah to the most recognized example, the Hora. The Hora involves the entire party (bringing them together as a community) and also recognizes the person (or people) who is undergoing the rite of passage by lifting him or her up in a chair. 

     Modern times are also created a situation where music has become even more prevalent in these rites of passages, especially at Bar Mitzvahs. As someone who attended an overwhelmingly Jewish Middle School where you would attend a Bar Mitzvah almost every weekend during the seventh grade, I observed the similarities of music at all the receptions. All of these receptions used the same pop music for the dancing part of the reception (every party had a dance floor). Even though the music was always the same, I would always flock to the dance floor and dance to my favorite beat. The space, along with the different DJs, created a different experience every time that gave me energy to do the same time every time. These dance floor routines was just like any concerts where the people knew when and where to perform certain actions. These actions make the audience "follow" the music just like during the prayer at the synagogue. 

     All of these rituals are cyclical and "appeal to the whole person weaving together bodily gesture, speech and the senses...and bind[ing] [them] to a community of shared values," while at same time creating a slightly different routine that make them want to participate in the ritual again (Livingstone, 99). This shared community applies to both the religious Jewish ceremony and the secular reception that copies many religious functions through its use of music. 

Blink-182 and The Ritual of the Teenage Years

In Sacred Matters, Gary Laderman asks, “How do the music and lyrics contribute to popular religious experiences that reimagine and reconstruct the world…, invigorate and reinvigorate social bonds, and stimulate and liberate the body first, and then the soul?”

The band Blink-182 provided the teenage soundtrack for much of the current generation of 18-22 year olds. It offered them an outlet that related to their feelings of angst, difference, and self-consciousness. In a world where no one seemed to understand their struggles, Blink-182 was an influence that was on their side. It “reimagined and reconstructed the world” for teenagers by writing music contrary to adulthood and all that was expected of them. It provided teenagers with a common interest and connection which “reinvigorated social bonds.” Listening at home or attending a concert facilitated connects between the listeners and the music and the listeners and each other, “stimulating and liberating the body first, and then the soul.” It is in this way that the music transcended time and space, and acted religiously in connecting people across the world.

The ritual of listening to Blink-182 or going to a concert provided the listeners with, as James Livingstone puts it, “a primary means of social communication and cohesion.” The music bonded listeners over shared feelings that were common in the teenage years. Even after those years have passed, fans of the band still feel a connection to the music as it brings them back to their adolescence. It even forms bonds with new friends who also loved the band and their music, much as religion does cross culturally and cross generationally.