Music gives me a deeper spiritual connection .....

Twenty-two years later, I find that music has given me a deeper spiritual connection with my religion and the messages within my religion. I say this because I have not always such deep ties to music within my religion until now.

I grew up as a Jehovah's witness as a child due to my grandmother. She raised me therefore, I had to participate and attend Kingdom Hall meetings on Sundays with her. I can honestly say that a Jehovah's witness praise and worship experience is a complete 180 compared to my new southern baptist church beliefs. The musical aspects in a Jehovah witness church service, rests largely on tape and Cd instrumental song recordings than on a full out band that you would normally find in my baptist church. Because of the lack of instrumental presence within the Jehovah witnesses approach to song and worship, it leads me to believe that they define their religious ties to God based solely on the word of the Bible and excerpts of religious text. Whereas, the traditional southern (African American) Baptist Church uses the music as a tool for further insight into knowing and believing the word of God. For instance, most Sunday sermons in my church last less than 20 minutes while the music and singing may take up the remaining time for service.

In this case, there is no right or wrong concerning a religion's ties to their beliefs based on their music performance rituals but, their maybe a line drawn concerning the sole belief in their music over believing their and understanding their religion. What I mean by this is that if at my church we were using or exploiting the music as a means to skip, shorten, or take away from what the Bible says then that would be wrong. However, we are only using the music as a form of expression or almost as a portal in order to hold direct personal conversations with God and to make a spiritual connection with the powers that be.

There are so many religions in the world that use music to express and address things spiritually. For some, there are different songs for prayers, rituals, and religious ceremonies. From my academic experiences, the majority of religious songs simply give praise to a higher being for protection, peace, and health. This often leads to the question: are we even that different after all or are we one confused human race chasing after the same things through different colored, geographically bound lenses? A person known as Black Elk once said, "The world always works in circles and everything tries to be round."