Mysticism in Music

[Frownland]

What artists do you know who use mysticism in their music? Also, do you think that it's a good thing or not?

A lot of great artists derive their music from mystic sources, some of them can get a little preachy about whatever they believe in at times, but a great deal do not. I think that John Cage is a great example of the latter since he used ideas from Zen Buddhism and Indian Philosophy to start creating aleoteric (also known as indeterminate or chance) compositions in spirit of reflecting the chaos of the world about himself, as opposed to trying to draw an order from it.

Then we've got a lot of American free jazz artists who make extremely spiritual jazz music that draws on Christian interpretations of God such as Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, and Charles Gayle. I think that a lot of improvisation falls under the mystic category in some sense, because of how playing music in real-time really reveals your inner self, which a lot of people could interpret as expressing their souls or expressing God's presence in them.

There's also a lot of traditional folk music that fits into the category as well. Sufism has sparked a lot of great artists such as Master Musicians of Jajouka and Dhafer Youssef.

Mysticism in music is great as long as it ends up with great music and not gospel.