MUSIC AND SHAMANISM

The use of music and sound for therapeutic and transcendental purposes is a practice as ancient as humanity itself, which has been in use for thousands of years in shamanic cultures around the world, from Siberia to Africa to South America. Shamans played and play today, firm and repetitive rhythms, in order to enter an altered state of consciousness and undertake a journey with the mind to achieve wisdom or healing. Curiously, it has been proven that these rhythms, played on percussions, alter the sensory and motor activity of the brain in various of its areas.

Aboriginal Australians testify that the didgeridoo is a 40,000-year-old musical instrument. They entered into meditative states by playing this wind instrument – consisting of a longitudinally-carved branch of eucalyptus and naturally by termites – and employed its vibration to heal from sickness.

For Native Americans, music is ‘the breath of life’, an intrinsic part of its spiritual activity, a binding direct connection with the mystical forces of nature.

White Eagle, chief of the Ponca tribe, said that the note of our spirit resonates on a higher plane, and that the blows we receive from day to day serve to prove whether we are able to resonate in truth. To resonate in truth, added the Ponca chief, we must enter into harmony with the sound of God that we carry within us.