Interview:

I believe that the relationship between music and spirituality is slight, and at best, once removed. True spirituality is the acknowledgment that a person is more than the sum of his or her biological parts, that the quintessence of humanity is not measured in ounces. Most “spiritual” people believe that spirit needs to be nurtured and exercised, usually through some sort of meditation, but I have a hard time rectifying how the combinations of tones and lyrics have any spiritual significance on it’s own. The closest thing to a connection between music and spirituality is found in emotion. One’s spiritual life is very closely related to emotion, to the point of confusion between the two, which leads to some very perplexing conclusions when music, which carries very strong emotional messages, is introduced to the mix. Music is the nonverbal language of emotion, speaking very subtly to the listener’s psyche suggesting the feelings of the composer by manipulating sound waves and associations that reside in the subconscious. The reason that I don’t believe that music affects the spiritual plane is simply that music is a very physical thing that causes very physical reactions in very physical receptors.

“The closest thing to a connection between
music and spirituality is found in emotion.”
– Christopher Keene, guitarist and vocalist in Surrogate