THE HEALING POWER OF SOUND

In the beginning was “Thought”. The thought became Desire, and life came into being; where Desire is, there is life. Where there is no Desire, there is no life. Desire became Allurement and love came into being, for where there is Allurement, there is Love. Where there is no Allurement, there is no love. Love became a word. From word came the primordial sound by which the world was created and is sustained.

The world was created through sound. The world can be understood only through sound. Sound is the master key to unveiling nature’s mystery. The Big Bang theory of the evolutionist school of thought maintains that the world was a huge ball of fire at the beginning. Then, suddenly, this ball of fire exploded with great ferocity. It was a tremendous bang. The ball of fire scattered in all directions. Thus the world came into being. This primordial sound still resounds at the heart of creation and is the force behind the cosmos. The big band theories of the evolutionist school of thought are simply reaffirming the widely held idea that the world came into being through sound.

An unobtrusive yet inescapable thought that reverberated across different native societies and is presently approved by the imprimatur of science is the idea that all of the presence resounds with vibration. From the far-off divine bodies decorating the night sky to the tiny particles like neutrons and protons, and, surprisingly, the incalculable cells inside our mortal vessels — everything moves to its vibrational orchestra. Strikingly, inside the human casing, these cells throb agreeably at a beat of 14 vibrations each second. In this specific situation, it becomes obvious that similar to instruments defenseless to dropping off key under the kind of pressure, cultural assumptions, monetary tensions, and unfulfilled fates, the utilization of sound as a recuperating methodology holds the commitment to restoring our reverberation.

For the traditional African, the Drum is the carrier of the Word, the primordial sacred Sound by which the world came into being. The Drum is to the Traditional African what the Bible is to the Christian. The Drum is the supreme symbol of God’s incarnation, of God among us, Logos. It is the sacrament of the Divine in the human, of spirit in matter, Sacred in the profane. Sound for the African, is an emotive and creative force. We see this even in the infant responding to the lullabies of the mother, or the snake or praying mantis swinging to the vibration of sound, or of the monkey swaying to tune. The African can evoke and manipulate potent psychic forces through the medium of Sound.

In the Yoruba language, there is a clear distinction between mere spoken words and [potent speech. The former is called oro, a common word used in conversation. The latter is called Ofo. The Hebrew equivalent is Dahbar, while the Greek is Logos. Ofo refers to words, which have the power of becoming an event in life simply by being uttered. When an ofo is uttered, it goes to actualize itself. This power of making events happen through utterance is what Yoruba calls Afose. Fo means to speak or utter with force. Se means to come to be, to make to happen: A-fo-se. When you remove the Fo, what you have is Ase. The Hebrew equivalent of Ase is Mi-sewah, which means commandment, incarnation, or authority. To give somebody Ase is to give him/her authority, power, and force. In Igbo tradition, the Ofo is a short stick, which symbolizes ritual, political and religious authority. The man who holds the Ofo is highly respected and feared, for whatever he says while holding the Ofo stick in his hand becomes Ase, potent psychic force, power, command, more powerful than gunshots.

To be continued...