Spiritual Adventure through Song

Abstract

Paul Ricoeur makes the claim that “consciousness of self seems to constitute itself at its lowest level by means of symbolism” (9). Remarking that “our true being is not in the forms that shatter but in the imperishable out of which they again immediately bubble forth” (Hero 269), Joseph Campbell too penetrates the hermeneutics at the heart of the myth informing this “substructure of meaning.” Afro-Caribbean song-dances synchronize energies that erupt from this constitutive symbolic arena. These performances comprise mythic markers, reenactments of a religious consciousness that delve beneath form, beneath what Harry Hoetink profiles as “ego-oriented, body-related behavior and activity.” Coordinating forms of music and sound, song and lyrics, and dance and gesture, the song-dances appear as self-transformational media that manifest psychospiritual realization formally.