Tag: healing

There’s some kind of cold going around the Bay area. I’ve mostly avoided it, but I have been feeling run-down and congested for the past week. Today I was feeling run-down enough that I almost didn’t go to the weekly singing.

Because of the holiday, there weren’t a lot of singers — a dozen or so instead of the usual score or more, and only three singers in the bass section, one of whom was more congested than I was. Then one of the basses went to the tenor section. When there’s only one other person in the section, I find I have to really focus: no dropping out for a minute because my concentration flagged; no passing over the notes I’m too lazy to read the music carefully. And I have to make sure I sing carefully so I don’t blow my voice out before the end; which when I’m congested means breathing well and not tightening up when the congestion interferes with the singing.

At the end of the evening, I felt really good. The New Age folks talk about how singing is “healing,” meaning I think some sort of existential or spiritual healing. Some folks meditate and concentrate on their breath; some do yoga and pranayama breathing exercises; these and other spiritual practices involve breathing carefully and deeply. Aside from any purported spiritual effects, breathing deeply is also physically healing: you pump up your blood oxygen levels, and yes it can loosen congestion in your lungs.

So at the end of tonight’s singing, I felt energized and upbeat. No mysterious spiritual force at work here — that’s simply what often happens when you do a lot of deep breathing.

I wound up chatting with another newcomer this evening, and as usual I asked how he got interested in Sacred Harp singing. He told me he heard about it through iON, a sort of New-Age-y radio character, who said it has healing properties. (You can listen to what iON says about fasola singing by clicking on the mp3 file on the “Information Farm” blog.) He said, “That may sound a little strange….” “No,” I said, “I’m a minister, I do a lot with the healing properties of music.” Later, I made sure to ask him to come stand in the middle of hollow square when I led a song later that evening. He seemed to enjoy the experience.

It does seem to me that there can be a healing quality to the sound you hear in the middle of the hollow square; perhaps that is the unidentified something that some people find compelling about standing there and leading a lesson. Certainly, healing is mentioned in some of the songs in The Sacred Harp (e.g., 56b Villulia); and healing is definitely a feature of the Christian tradition, which is central to the spirituality of traditional Sacred Harp singing. But in the northern revival singings I have attended, I have rarely heard it articulated explicitly: that Sacred Harp singing might have healing properties.