ABSTRACT
Music can be a powerful means of cultural sustainability: sound and songs have long told the story of the human condition. It is a key medium of oral tradition, providing a portable, dynamic medium for communicating and holding in memory enduring and compelling narratives that identify and sustain a culture over time and across place. Musical expression, like other cultural codes, reflects the values and behavioral norms of a given culture. Applying Peirce’s semiotics, Martinez (1998) and Bonnycastle (1997) suggest that people interpret those codes, reshaping, modifying, and transforming signs that are meaningful to them. Music is a cultural semiotic: songs and/or instruments are used to transmit spiritual messages1
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ritual music and African-American work songs, Jewish cantorial melodies in minor keys, or the consonant, thick harmonies of high church choral music are examples of the cultural “signposts” expressed through music that connect us to a given culture’s past and join communities of like-minded people with similar experiences, thereby sustaining their cultural identity through shared memory. Many religions use the cultural medium of sacred song to call people to prayer, to communicate important behaviors and norms, and to invite collective engagement at a deep emotional and psychic level through singing/chanting during services or rituals. Jewish traditions are steeped in music: our Sabbath services begin with an introductory set of songs/chants that have a meditative “calling together” or uplifting praise-like quality. The prayer service that follows juxtaposes rhythmic chant and silent sections. Rhythm, silence, and melody, essential, integral parts of music, represent particular stylistic devices that make each culture’s music identifiable. As Bowman (2004) noted, “[m]usic and identity (individual and collective, embodied and social) are joined at the hip” (pp. 43 and 45).
