Smells and Bells

The Discipline of Devotion  By Calliope Mills  From Wiki Media Commons       When we think about religious devotion, we often picture moments of quiet reflection, prayer, or spiritual insight. But reading Women, the Recited Qur’an, and Islamic Music in Indonesia by Anne Rasmussen showed me that devotion also looks like repetition, muscle memory, and hours of disciplined practice; sometimes with sound being the cornerstone of it all. Figure 20 from Rasmussen's book        The women Rasmussen writes about aren’t just participating in their faith—they're embodying it through sound. From the precise articulation of Arabic letters to the melodic flow of Qur’anic recitation, every vocal detail matters. Pitch, tone, rhythm, breath—these elements are fine-tuned with the same care as a classical musician rehearsing a complex piece. And just like music, these sounds carry meaning far beyond the words themselves. They express reverence, emotion, an...

  Anne Rasmussen's Women, the Recited Qur'an, and Islamic Music in Indonesia Courtesy: University of California Press      Through reading Anne Rasmussen's Women, the Recited Qur'an, and Islamic Music in Indonesia I was really fascinated by the differences in Qur’an recitation cross-culturally. Learning about the significance of Indigenous Indonesian styles of music and Arabic poetry traditions was certainly eye-opening. The way that the Qur’an is used and honored by Muslim people are vast, complex, intimate yet public.       A very damaging misconception about Islam is that women are not allowed to participate in activities or express themselves in any way. While it is unfortunately true that many Muslim women are subject to abuse and control, this absolutely does not automatically apply to all Islamic communities. The Indonesian Islamic songs sung by women that we listened to in class, particularly Al-Quran, were inspiring, emotive and empoweri...

Anne Rasmusen’s exploration of music in Islam, as both a ritual service and as a distinct art form, are utterly fascinating to me. Music in general holds a place in my life that I can’t fathom the words to describe, an emotional catalyst that follows me – surprises me – makes me feel things in ways I’ve never felt before. I consider myself a visual artist, sketches and paintings have always been my domain, but they’ve never moved me to tears or forced a smile onto my face – music has the power to do that. The biological explanations of our taste in music are, as of now, not well understood. Some claim it has something to do with our appreciation for the beats of our loved ones hearts when we were carried in our early primate days. Some claim it’s an emergent property of our communal nature – beats and rhythms can coordinate us, bring us together, encode cultural information. To me, these explanations don’t suffice. I think there’s something deeper to music, something that mak...