Sound, Music, and the Study of Religion

The study of religion has been greatly enhanced in recent years by the new emphasis on lived religion and materiality (Meyer et al. 2011). It also impels us to consider how the aesthetic factors into the interpretation of religious worlds (Meyer 2009). Moreover, the shift in academic focus from beliefs and texts to practice and the sensorium has generated stimulating new questions about religious communication and mediation (Morgan 2009). Surprisingly, music and extramusical sound receive scant attention despite the significance of sound and hearing in our lives. Scholars of religion have been slow to engage the multidisciplinary boom in sound studies of the last few years (Keeling & Kun 2011).2 In what follows I discuss some of the historical biases and methodological challenges related to studying religion from an acoustic and auditory perspective. I review the work of some authors who have overcome what Isaac Weiner calls our ‘disciplinary deafness’ (2009, 897) and made the ‘sound of the sacred’ a centerpiece of their research and publications.3 In the course of the essay, I identify some of the topics that are arguably integral to the development of a more sonically aware religious studies, as well as areas that await more study. The undervaluation of sound in the academic study of religion is linked to the privileging of sight over sound in Western modernity, whereby the aural as a spiritual sense is diminished (Chidester 1992; Schmidt 2002). Furthermore, listening is held to be the most passive of the senses, and