Before there were scriptures, there were songs. Music predates written language, organized religion, and borders. It is perhaps the single most universal human expression of longing, joy, grief, and transcendence.
Sacred sound around the world
Gospel music fills churches with an energy that moves the body and the soul. Sufi qawwali uses ecstatic singing to dissolve the boundary between the self and the divine. Hindu kirtan invites call-and-response chanting as a path to devotion. Jewish cantorial singing elevates prayer into art. Indigenous drumming connects human heartbeats to the rhythm of the earth.
The universal language
You don't need to understand the words to be moved by sacred music. A qawwali performance can bring tears to the eyes of someone who has never read the Quran. A Bach cantata can stir the soul of an atheist. Music bypasses the intellect and speaks directly to something deeper — something we all share.
Making music together across difference
Some of the most moving interfaith encounters happen not in dialogue but in shared music-making. When people from different traditions sing or play together, something bypasses the usual barriers of doctrine and language. There is a long history of this: the interweaving of African spiritual music and European hymn traditions that produced American gospel, the influence of Sufi devotional music on Andalusian and even European classical forms, the way Indigenous drumming has found its way into contemporary spiritual communities of many stripes.
If you have the chance to attend an interfaith choir, a world music gathering, or even just a concert of music from an unfamiliar tradition, take it. You do not need to understand the theology to feel the invitation. Music has always been less interested in our divisions than we are.
If you want to understand another tradition, listen to its music. You might find that it sounds a lot like your own heart.