Music, Dance, and Trance

Some questions raised by Wade's Chapter 4:
‘Music, Dance and Trance’

Ancestral religion has not entirely disappeared in modern humans.

• Military marching may reflect some ancient religious practices. (Faith Instinct, p. 79)

Shared information binds groups together.

• Humans have four modes of communication: dance, music, religion and language.
• Emotional information is shared by different, and probably older, forms than language.

Modes of communication could have evolved in this order:

• (1) dance
• (2) music
• (3) proto-religion based on ritual
• (4) language
• (5) religion based on shared beliefs about the supernatural.

In many cultures, dance and music seem to be inseparable.

• Among hunter gatherers, dance, music and religious ritual always accompany each other.
• Percussion is typical of religious rituals marking transitions from one state to another.
• Dance and music are also very social activities.
  
  

The origin of music is still mysterious.

• Sensitivity to music is a universal property of the human mind.
• Music’s role in ritual may explain why it is shared by all humans.
• Darwin suggested that music was a precursor of language, shaped by natural selection.

The context in which language evolved was probably influenced by dance, music and religion.

• Modern western religions tend to emphasize beliefs over rituals and emotional engagement.
• Language expresses beliefs in words, but chants and wordless songs suffice in rituals.
• Music speaks more strongly to the emotions than to the mind’s purely cognitive faculties.
  
  

Primitive peoples practice trance as a way to communicate with the supernatural.

• Physiologists don’t understand how the trance state is brought about, but observe that music (especially drumming) and strenuous dancing can lead people into trances.
• Trances were a central feature of ancient religions, and in a survey of almost 500 small-scale societies today, 90% had rites where regular trance states occurred.
• Trance always manifests itself, in one way or another, as a transcendence of one’s normal self.
• For early peoples, trances provided access to the gods, proving the supernatural world existed.
• Thus early people devised rites and ceremonies for contacting the gods through trance.
  

Spirituality, the brain, and the supernatural:

• Does the brain have a module dedicated to spiritual communication, accessed by trance?
• Or does trance distort the brain’s data-processing system, leading to unusual states of mind?

In any case, the essentials of religious behavior may be engraved in our genetic makeup:

• Commitment to the religious practices of one’s society.
• Enjoying group rituals and the sense of community they generate.
• Tending to believe in supernatural agents.