Een Ritual Studies Onderzoeksdesign. Ervaringen en perspectieven

Post, Phyllis; Faro, Laurie

doi:10.21827/5a2e425c0ad55

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“…Schneider, 2003: 217–219, 224–226). 4 We use the pairing ‘ritual-musical’ to emphasise our study of this appropriation as a social activity: a ritual practice consisting of a formalised and repeated (inter)action, in which sound is marked as an exceptionally significant medium (Grimes, 1990: 14; Post and Faro, 2017: 28; Wijnia, 2016: 45). Both bodily participation in a specific location, the activity of singing, and the hearing of music appear to be very powerful in evoking biographical memories (Baird et al, 2020: 323; Cuddy et al, 2017: 17; Fuchs, 2012: 19; Garrido and Davidson, 2019: 7–8, 32; Ianì, 2019: 1758–1759; Istvandity, 2018: 199; Mossière, 2013: 58; Pickering, 2018: 191; Stevens, 2015: 263, 265).…”

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confidence: 99%

A psalm is always a memory: Nostalgia and sacrality in contemporary ritual-musical appropriations of the psalms

2023

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This article discusses the role of biographical memory in three contemporary ritual-musical appropriations of the psalms in Dutch and Flemish contexts. We observe that, in performances of psalms, participants (intend to) either forget or recall different biographical memories. Nostalgic narratives of religious, cultural and individual change and continuity inform both the way that they interpret their experiences of these psalm performances, and their motivations for attempting to forget or recall particular memories related to the psalms. By using the notion of sacrality — that which is set apart, non-ordinary — we show that particular non-negotiable desires and non-ordinary experiences recur multiple times in these nostalgic narratives. Analysis of these desires and experiences leads us to conclude that contemplative experiences are desired by many, but experienced by only a few. We suggest the combination of Aleida Assmann’s theory of forgetting and remembering with the notions of nostalgia and sacrality as a way to successfully overcome the unproductive dichotomy between religious and cultural heritage.

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