Human Voice as a Spiritual Experience
One of the biggest reasons I have committed my life to music is because, for me, music is spiritual. In particular, the human voice carries a significant power to promote spiritual experiences through triggering emotional responses. When listening to someone sing, have you ever felt the hairs rise on your arms, the back of your neck or a tingling rise up your spine? The opportunity to connect with another person so deeply as to elicit a response like that is precious. This level of connection is rare. The rarity, and the power of this kind of connection is why I seek to both find and create it. Over the course of my life, I have discovered that there is a sensitivity required to experience this level of connection from another's voice and I that the performer is also required to share this vulnerability. In Anne Rasmussen's Women, and Islamic Music in Indonesia she discusses how expert Qur'an reciters use ornamentation and the "breaking" of the voice stylistica...