Making Music Spiritual or Making Spiritual Music

I read the other day made a comment about music being a good source of spiritual motivation and growth. I agreed. Then they commented that it was Reggae music that first did the trick for them.

Huh? Music that has become so connected with the use of marijuana? A way, without using the drug, to get connected spiritually?

That started me thinking. Needless to say I thought of Bob Marley. I found myself thinking, "Yeah, he is one of the great spiritual musicians of the past 40 years." Hear it in "Redemption Song."

Next I remembered Hank Williams III on American Routes the other week talking about his grandfather as one who was deeply in touch with the spiritual. Not exactly one of the great spiritual icons, either. But Hank III was right. You can hear it in "I Saw the Light."

What is it that makes music spiritual? Or what is it that makes spiritual music? That may be a better way of talking about it. So I thought of some people who have made spiritual music:

• John Coltrane
• Bob Marley
• Hank Williams, Sr.
• Johann Sebastian Bach
• Enya
• John Newton
• Charlotte Elliot

There is something in all of their performances, all of their singing, all of their compositions that cries out. Sometimes it is crying out in pain. Sometimes it is in joy. Sometimes it is just the incredible way one note follows in front of the previous and leads into grace of some sort.

It happens when playing some music for those of us lucky enough to be able to do that. You can get in a zone and the music flows through the instrument. You realize when it is over that it was unique.

It isn't just with words. In fact some of the greatest spiritual music is instrumental. You are moved by it and you don't know why. It is mystery.

For me it often comes back to that simple word- mystery. It is beyond me. It is "spirit" or "soul" or "grace." I know it when I hear it, even in music that may not be my favorite style. I can tell it by the way my inner being is touched by something far greater than myself.

Thank God for music. What a sad life and world it would be without it.