‘With all praise to your exalted frequencies, consider me your friend’: listening, technology and musicking in the Church of Scientology

Abstract

This article discusses musicking in the Church of Scientology, and how it can be used to understand the organisation and its relationship to society. The article begins by discussing the essential place of listening in Scientological practice, noting that it is one of several ‘technologies’ that institutionalise the charisma of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. It next demonstrates how Hubbard's hagiography influences how the church produces music today. This leads to a consideration of the ‘whole track sound’ of Scientology and uses the album Hymn of Asia (2000) to discuss how Scientological concepts are embedded sonically and lyrically into the church's recorded music outputs. The final section discusses the importance of communication in Scientology's musical thought, using interviews drawn from my fieldwork in Los Angeles to highlight the benefits and limits of music as a medium of (religious) communication.