Commodification and mediaization of religious music

What happens when the sound (music) of religious ritual is turned into a media product, circulating within a media system, and (often) transformed into a commodity?

Conversely: how is mediated music incorporated into religious practices?

Are meanings, effects, functions of religious music thereby transformed? Does the religious system itself change? What is the impact on the music system?

What questions must be answered in order to describe such transformations completely? For instance: what is mediated and what is not mediated? How are media products circulated? What is the difference between various kinds of media (media products, broadcasts, podcasts, etc.)? What is the radius of circulation? Who buys them and how are they used? How are intellectual property rights resolved? Who profits?) Is it possible to participate in a religious ritual mediated via the web? How does such a phenomenon change the concept of ritual, and the role of sound within it? How would you design a research project investigating the commodification and mediaization of religious music?

Please think about these questions for discussion in class, and add other questions that may occur to you as well, below.

Also try to find:

• scholarly articles or web sites discussing this topic
• web sites distributing mediated religious sound

We'll examine and analyze instances of the latter in class, so please try to locate examples, including their links below.

Reading assignment

To ease your burden as we move into the final two weeks of the course, I'm requiring only one article. Please read at least one of the following (your preference); treat the other as optional:

Muslim Devotional, by Regula Qureshi

Sound Engineering in a Tamil Village, by Paul Greene

Scholarly articles or web sites discussing this topic

Find discussions of this topic in jstor, or on the web...

Web sites exemplifying this topic

Locate instances of mediated religious music on the web. Can you find examples of web-mediated religious worship?

Research questions pertaining to this topic

What research questions become pertinent? How would you design a research study centered upon commodification and mediaization of religious music?