Greetings from a new member....excuse me for putting a music related topic on this forum, hopefully it'll become clear as I go on.

I'm a musician/researcher based in England and I'm looking for information regarding the connections between the music of the African Diasporas and of the ancient civilisations....as well as looking at music froma holistic/spiritual worldview, as I'm aware the musicians of ancient Egypt, Sumer et al did. I intend to incorporate this into my own artistic development as well as to deviseeducational programs to get this information out there to the community.

In particular, I'm intrigued by the devlopments of African American music from the 60's and 70's, where we find jazz people like John and Alice Coltrane, Yusef Lateef Sun Raandothers embracing traditional African/Eastern musical genres andspiritual philosophiesin their work.....then going even deeper to begin to talk about the connections between music and the galaxy, in the case of Ra and Trane, with Ra incorporating electric keyboards in a trail blazing (so called) "sci fi" way.....then we get the Mothership connection in the 70's and X Clan coming along in the 90's and even up to people like Erykah Badu.

I hope you follow my drift here....if anyone here could assist me by offering more info, viewpoints, or bring this post I've made to the attention of anyone whom you think could help further my study, PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE, I'd very much appreciate it.

I look forward to your reply, thanks in advance.

Imani

Feelings and emtoions constitute a very important part of spirituality. Whether it is to convey these feelings to follow beings or to communicate with the Creator or to arouse these emotions within yourself.

Among the obvious channels in which this communication is carried out is the use of beautiful words in beautiful sounds which turns out to be a very effective means of achieving this, not necessarily the one and only means. Hence the connection between spirituality and music.

However music can also be used to provoke other ''spiritually deemed as'' vile attributes such as sexual lust, passion, anger, greed, hatred, pride, love for the world etc.

Point is not every musician knows exactly what he is doing and just because someone is enjoying a particual music it doesn;t mean it is benefiting him spiritually it could be destroying him at that very moment.

Greetings Flow.....thanks for your thoughtful reply......I agree entirely at the last paragraph in particular.....a lot of the slackness/bling oriented music that is out there is more about sensual gratification ALONE and while a lot of people might enjoy it, ultimately it doesn't nourish you at the deepest level.

Brought to mind when I heard the scholar Wayne B.Chandler speak in my hometown (Bradford) last year (he wrote a very interestingexcellent book, ANCIENT FUTURE)....he referred to a Japanese guy, surname of Emoto, who has showed the effect certain types of music have on water molecules in our bodies.....basically, he showed visuals showing how words of anger, hate etc create very distorted mmolecular structures in our bodies, whilst the converse was true of songs that dealt with Love, Inner Peace, etc.....



Imani