Interview:

“Significance” is a loaded word when it comes to music, as “meanings” are myriad and very culturally-specific, if not idiosyncratic. I would re-phrase the question and ask: “what is the spiritual force or power of music?” Indeed, it is music’s power to inhabit and transform the human being that is its most spiritual quality. Music is not an object that can be put in a display case. In fact, music refuses to be framed. Music performs. It permeates a location with both auditory and physical vibration. It also has a powerful effect on memory. Music dwells in us in a literal sense. It invades the parameters of the body and takes root, almost systemically, even when we would rather have silence. It is why we refer to “haunting melodies”. Music, like spirits, is attributed with an agency of its own. Like a commanding performance, it can possess us. Music can also transport us. This is certainly true of music that is associated with different cultures, climates, places, and times. Music captures our imaginations, possessing us, and taking us to a different place. Music then is mobilizing. Not only does it affect the movement of our bodies and our sympathetic nervous system, but it can also move our imaginations into spaces that are not limited by geography. When such transport takes us beyond the self and into the transcendent, the spiritual significance of music is most realized.

“When [music] takes us beyond the self and into the transcendent, the spiritual significance of music is most realized.”
– Dr. Deborah Kapchan, author of “Traveling Spirit Masters: Moroccan Gnawa Trance And Music In The Global Marketplace”