- The Oxford Handbook of Music and World Christianities
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Music, Convert, and Subject in the North Sumatran Mission Field
- Mission Music as a Mode of Intercultural Transmission, Charisma, and Memory in Northern Australia
- Coexistence of Causal and Cultural Expressions of Musical Values among the Sabaot of Kenya
- Indigenous Innovations on Music and Christianity at Ratana Pa
- Music as Shared Space in Mennonite Development Work in Chad
- Are Western Christian Bhajans “Reverse” Mission Music?
- Drums in the Experience of Black Catholicism in Minas Gerais, Brazil
- Chant as the Articulation of Christian Aramean Spirithood
- The Politics of Pronunciation among German-Speaking Mennonites in Northern Mexico
- Hidden Histories of Religious Music in a South African Coloured Community
- Music and Religiosity among African American Fundamentalist Christians
- Songs of Oru Olai and the Praxis of Alternative Dalit Christian Modernities in India
- The Renaissance of the Corsican Confraternities and Their Musical Negotiations
- Local Music Making and the Liturgical Renovation in Minas Gerais
- The Survival Story of Syriac Chants among the St. Thomas Christians in South India
- Russian Church Music, Conundrums of Style, and the Politics of Preservation in the Emigre Diaspora of New York
- Parading Protestantisms and the Flute Bands of Postconflict Northern Ireland
- Everyday Musical Ethnicity and Roma (Gypsies) in Hungarian Pentecostalism
- Transnational Connections, Musical Meaning, and the 1990s “British Invasion” of North American Evangelical Worship Music
- Negotiations of Faith and Space in Memphis Music
- Tropes of Continuity and Disjuncture in the Globalization of Gospel Music
- Mainline Protestantism and Contemporary versus Traditional Worship Music
- Negotiating the Tensions of U.S. Worship Music in the Marketplace
- Contingency and the Symbolic Experience of Christian Extreme Metal
- Palestinian Christmas Songs for Peace and Justice in Sacred Place and Politicized Space
- The Diffusion of Gregorian Chant in Southern Italy and the Masses for St. Michael: To Barbara Haggh and to the Memory of Michel Huglo
- Performing Pannkotis Identity in Haiti
- Christianity and Korean Traditional Music
- Congregational Singing, Orthodox Christianity, and the Making of Ecumenicity
- Afterward: Sound, Soteriology, Return, and Revival in the Global History of Christian Musics
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter explores the Syriac chant traditions among the group of South Indian churches, collectively referred to here as the “St. Thomas Christians.” These churches, which encompass a variety of denominational communities in Kerala, trace their origins to the apostolic and Chaldean/East Syriac sources of West Asian Christianity, later articulating also with the Antiochene liturgy and Orthodox Christianity in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They have defended their linkages with the Syriac liturgical and musical traditions against the incursions of foreign Catholic and Anglican missionaries, and later a wider variety of Catholic and Protestant movements within India. The chapter suggests that they accomplished this, in part, by only selectively accepting musical, liturgical, and theological elements that arrived with each of these missions. But more recently they have accomplished this by retaining Syriac chant melodies even as churches began to sing in vernacular languages such as Malayalam.
Keywords: India, South India, Kerala, St. Thomas Christians, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, oktoēchos, Syriac chant, liturgy
Joseph Palackal is the founder and president of the Christian Musicological Society of India. He earned a doctorate in Ethnomusicology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has contributed articles on Christian music in India to several international publications, including The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. He is principal vocalist for over forty releases in five languages, including Sanskrit and Syriac. He made his debut in New York in the off-Broadway show Nunsense. Currently, he is completing his book on the Syriac chants in South India.
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- The Oxford Handbook of Music and World Christianities
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Music, Convert, and Subject in the North Sumatran Mission Field
- Mission Music as a Mode of Intercultural Transmission, Charisma, and Memory in Northern Australia
- Coexistence of Causal and Cultural Expressions of Musical Values among the Sabaot of Kenya
- Indigenous Innovations on Music and Christianity at Ratana Pa
- Music as Shared Space in Mennonite Development Work in Chad
- Are Western Christian Bhajans “Reverse” Mission Music?
- Drums in the Experience of Black Catholicism in Minas Gerais, Brazil
- Chant as the Articulation of Christian Aramean Spirithood
- The Politics of Pronunciation among German-Speaking Mennonites in Northern Mexico
- Hidden Histories of Religious Music in a South African Coloured Community
- Music and Religiosity among African American Fundamentalist Christians
- Songs of Oru Olai and the Praxis of Alternative Dalit Christian Modernities in India
- The Renaissance of the Corsican Confraternities and Their Musical Negotiations
- Local Music Making and the Liturgical Renovation in Minas Gerais
- The Survival Story of Syriac Chants among the St. Thomas Christians in South India
- Russian Church Music, Conundrums of Style, and the Politics of Preservation in the Emigre Diaspora of New York
- Parading Protestantisms and the Flute Bands of Postconflict Northern Ireland
- Everyday Musical Ethnicity and Roma (Gypsies) in Hungarian Pentecostalism
- Transnational Connections, Musical Meaning, and the 1990s “British Invasion” of North American Evangelical Worship Music
- Negotiations of Faith and Space in Memphis Music
- Tropes of Continuity and Disjuncture in the Globalization of Gospel Music
- Mainline Protestantism and Contemporary versus Traditional Worship Music
- Negotiating the Tensions of U.S. Worship Music in the Marketplace
- Contingency and the Symbolic Experience of Christian Extreme Metal
- Palestinian Christmas Songs for Peace and Justice in Sacred Place and Politicized Space
- The Diffusion of Gregorian Chant in Southern Italy and the Masses for St. Michael: To Barbara Haggh and to the Memory of Michel Huglo
- Performing Pannkotis Identity in Haiti
- Christianity and Korean Traditional Music
- Congregational Singing, Orthodox Christianity, and the Making of Ecumenicity
- Afterward: Sound, Soteriology, Return, and Revival in the Global History of Christian Musics
- Index
