I remember while I was growing up in rural New Hampshire a friend, Ned Reynolds. He was neighbor who both farmed and owned a Dodge dealership. On special occasions families would get together. Ned’s wife would play an old pump organ and my mom a piano. People around the neighborhood would sing, first just songs, then hymns, and then somebody would ask if Ned would “do the Old Rugged Cross.” Ned was sort of famous for being able to sing that song in a resonate baritone, in a way that nobody else could. Listening to and trying to sing like Ned was like being a “guitar hero” for us.

To say music has changed would be an understatement. My mom was a music teacher, so I was raised on Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms, Hayden and Handle, Motsart and Shubert, Rogers and Hammerstein were constant fare, and hymns were one of the most important elements of conversation for Sunday dinner.

Then music changed. When we were in grade school the powers that be decided it would be good if we had a “hop” Friday afternoons. A teacher brought a 33 rpm record player and we would listen and “dance” to the tunes of Ricky Nelson, Frankie Avalon, The Beach Boys, and of course Elvis. Mom and Dad got me a little radio when I graduated from 8th grade and I made myself listen to that type of music. It was difficult at first because it was so poor. Singers did not use correct diction, the melodies were very simple, and the chord progressions seemed monotonous.

I listened to that kind of music through High School, along with what our family did. I became infatuated with the inferior music.

When I got to Columbia Bible College in South Carolina there was a new idea. The head of the music department, Bill Supplee, had been a missionary kid from India. His father had been there when the British pulled out and bought the instruments from the Military Band.

Bill told the story of how he came home one day and “Pops” for that is what we all called Mr. Supplee’s father, said, “Bill we are going to have a instrumental accompaniment for our singing.”

Bill, “Who will teach the natives to play”
Pops, “You.”
Bill, “But I don’t even know how to play all those instruments”
Pops, “It’s OK. You can teach yourself, then you can teach them.”

So Mr. Supplee did. He became good enough so that when he came back to the States he joined the service in WWII and tried out for a military band (I think it was the Navy) and made it. Sometimes he and some buddies would play for fun at a local night club. It was then that Mr. Supplee learned if they played songs in a certain way they could get sailors more of a chance to have their way with the girls… And the sailors would pay them extra for such playing such music.

After his hitch in the Navy, Mr. Supplee became a real Christian. Then it was time to find out what God wanted him to do. He finally landed at the college I attended.

This was a wonderful place to meet missionaries, for its purpose was to teach the English Bible and educate people who wanted to be missionaries. I believe that a full 50% of my classmates were Missionary Kids (MKs)

Mr. Supplee took the opportunity to begin collecting the music of the natives in many lands. He noticed that there was a common theme in the songs. Certain rhythms called specific spirits. He told us of spirits had individual work, and that was to subvert and allure the ones who were subject to them in sinful ways. He told us the Samba was used for one thing and the Mamba another. He probably told advanced students what those motivations were. He did tell us that much of it was lascivious.

The next step was a shock to me. He said the Rock n Roll I’d trained myself to listen to took the very beats he had been studying and brought them into our country, calling the spirits which enlivened the rhythms. He would not allow “Rock Music” to be played on campus.

Mr. Supplee was not against all ethnic music. I remember playing for an Hispanic night in the cafeteria. I loved classic guitar and did Maliguana from the Andalusia Suit, some Flamenco from Yeppis, and it was all OK with Mr. Supplee.

About 10 years later, during our Missionary Development Program (Arctic Missions, Northern Canada Evangelical Mission, North America Indian Mission, the IMCO Group) we were introduced to spirit power. George Richardson from Arctic told us about the Su-meek of various people. He said Native Americans in the North would go on a spirit quest where they would be alone and seek a “helper” for their life. This helper would give special powers. For example, a person with the Grizzly Bear would be very strong. They had contests in his area where men would compete to see who could carry the most sacks of flour a certain distance. Invertible a person would carry 6-7 hundred and occasionally 8 hundred pounds. The winner would almost always have a su-meek (spirit helper) of Grizzly Bear.

About six years later, in the Okanagan a Native American, Ray, told me his “helper” was a red breasted bird. This bird would bring him messages from far away places. If a friend died, Ray would know before a messenger could come and tell him. Sometimes he would hear messaged in the wind. He said he was almost never wrong.

Ray told me of the spring dancing “up the hill” where there was a long house. He said that certain spirits made men so they would jump into the rafters of the house and be able to go from rafter to rafter like a bird. There were others, Kelowna (the large bear), Sin-Kalip (the trickster and the major religious hero of the Okanagans), and so forth.

G.G.., a missionary in the Gulf Islands made friends with a band who liked G.G. better than any other white person before him/her. They allowed him/her to go to the Pow-Wow. It was not during the day, when whites were welcome, but after the “show” Pow-Wow. It began shortly after midnight and lasted till about 4:00 AM. She wrote a paper that told about her experience.

Each season young people would be initiated into the band. This initiation included being “grabbed”. When one was “grabbed” two or more older persons in the tribe would take, by force, a younger one. This initiate would be beaten, sometimes with deer hooves, sometimes with other things, and deprived of sleep and food for a certain amount of time. Occasionally one of the “grabbed” would die, but that was exceptional. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) used to investigate, he/she said, but when two of their officers disappeared “without a trace” in the midst of an investigation the RCMP lost interest in looking for missing young Indians at “dancing season”.

The captivity of these young people would end in the initiation ceremony at the Pow-Wow dance in the “long house”. There the initiates would be given their freedom and as a “spirit” lead them they would go onto the arena floor and begin to “dance” in a specific way. The drummers were schooled in recognizing the spirit and the dance each spirit “taught”. When an initiate began to dance such a recognized dance, the drummers would beat cadence to please that specific spirit. Typically an initiate would do the dance of some deceased person from the band. C.F. (a fictitious initial, for reasons that will be apparent subsequently) reported that there was a new phenomena appearing in the band. There were multiple people controlled by one spirit or one kind of spirit. These had the same dance and were called “Twins”.

C.F. reported strange things happening in the “big house”. C.F. told of a long board which would float around the room and come near a spectator. The spectator could grab hold of the board and be floated around the room and then returned to his seat. She reported other super natural happenings as well.

The year G.G.. wrote a paper C.F. said certain of G.G.’s friends told her some natives planned to “grab” G.G. and make this missionary a member of the band. G.G. would be the fist white person to be so honored. Our mission took this as a threat and put G.G. up in a hotel hundreds of miles away under an assumed name until the dancing season and the threat of kidnapping stopped.

G.G.. then wrote a paper describing the reason G.G. was not around for a couple of months. This paper was distributed to the NAIM staff with caution not to circulate it for fear of consequences to C.F. In that paper she told about “spirit dancing”. I no longer have that paper.

These data supported William Supplee’s idea that certain spirits with specific powers were called by specific rhythms and would bother the people who called them.

Later I heard Mr. Bill Gotherd tell about music. He seemed to agree with Mr. Supplee but added another facet.

Mr. Gothard told of missionaries who let their kids play rock music when they went back to their native people. The aboriginals asked, “Why do you let your children play songs that invite the spirits we have left behind?”

Mr. Gothard told his audiences that if a person played two contrary rhythms at the same time it would have a confusing effect on the listener. That is the listener would have a hard time concentrating on other ideas. He also said that if you had music which was not in harmony with God’s word it would weaken you. I tested this theory by having my children listen to various songs and asking them to lift one arm while I provided resistance. I believed that there was a noticeable difference between Jimmy Hendrix and Fredric Handel….Evil Spirits, Suicide and the Songs of Midian and the music of Zion

The hold pagan music has on people seriously impacted me with a group of American Indians in Tanasket on the Coleville Reservation in Washington State. There I held a weekly or fortnightly Bible Study (about 70 miles south of our home). An Elder Williams called. He said there was a recent convert to Christianity whose father had been an “Indian Doctor”. The title was passed from father to son from time immoral. Only this generation had no son… so the title (the new name), the new spirit and the new song were passed to the only heir, a young lady. She had three children but was afraid of committing suicide. She was out of town that night I visited.

The Native people told me about suicide in the home a few months before. People were afraid to sleep in the room of the person who committed suicide, so I offered to sleep in that room….but not before cleansing the house. I believe that suicide is often the result of committing a capitol crime in the Old Testament and New Testament sense of the word, and there were lots of suicides on our reserves and reservations. Cleansing the house meant looking for any occult amulets, destroying them, and committing the people and the home to the LORD anew.

We found a Devil’s Eye and some Playboy magazines. “You don’t think these have anything to do with the suicides, do you?” the residents asked. “They could have because worshipping other gods and adultery are both crimes for which people died according to the command of God.” Magazines and Devil’s Eye were burned.

. The bed was a 4 decker (when the mattresses get uncomfortable, one way to make it better is to put another on top). The pile of mattresses leaned a bit to one side, so I could not sleep too far to the listing side or I would be on the floor… But I slept in the room, rather peacefully, I may say

That night I learned the young mother had dreams of a masked Indian man, with a song that she could not shake…and because she was resisting being an Indian doctor, the masked man who brought the song was threatening to kill her. His means was suicide!

She had tried to get the song out of her mind. She had tried to forget the masked Indian. She had tried to ignore that spirit that brought special powers to her family and insisted that she carry the family tradition to her final resting place.

Special powers for the medicine men (Indian Doctors) could include the ability to have duels with other men with spirit powers. One Indian doctor would curse another doctor and anybody who came between them could be killed by the spirit power going between the “doctors”. The concept seemed to come right out of comic books of that time, but these traditions generations old.

The afflicted young mother had gone to a Christian school in Quinell, B.C. and knew some things about the Bible and Christian Theology. She had been taught that a Christian could not be bothered by evil spirits and should not have a fear of this evil song. She knew this teaching was in error.

Indian songs such as this have a strong beat, little melody except that of the chant, and no harmony. If it were not for the spirit world, they would have no power. The power of pagan songs is noted in the Bible when Moses is returning off the mountain and hears the multitude whoring after Midianite women. The songs of Moab and the Songs of Zion contrasted in every dimension.

This young mom came home. The elders and I prayed for her. She said she felt somewhat better. I had to go home for it was now morning.

Later that day Elder Williams called me. “She cannot sleep because of the song. She is afraid to keep the children with her because the Masked Indian (the spirit) is threatening to kill her. What should we do?”

I told him to get the other Christian Elders together with the young mom. I told him thy needed to pray over and for her, and she should confess her opposition to this spirit and song. I told them they should take some time and pray and fast for the situation. She should read the Psalms and sing hymns that gave her comfort (as David played songs for Saul in the early part of David’s public life). I think I said she should have company of one of the elder’s wives.

In a few days they reported they had done these things. The demonized mom had a good deal of relief and the family was OK. She still had some flashbacks, but the attacks were growing weaker and further apart as she practiced replacing the evil music and ideas with Biblical ones.

Several months later the whole thing had quieted down. No more masked Indian, no more spirit song, no more suicide ideation. God was both gracious and good.


Music has been called the War Department of the Church. For many older people there are the “Great Hymns of the Faith” . A century ago the favorite was “The Old Rugged Cross.”

Music has a captivating aspect to it. There are many parts to music. Basically there are three, though there are other ways to describe its parts. These three parts to music are melody, harmony and rhythm.

Very interesting, Dave.
Have you googled "Psychology of music"?

I found some interesting websites. Two of them stood out in your context:

#1
The Psychology of Music
Effects on Behavior, Intelligence, Learning, Pain and Health
© Jennifer Copley

Feb 25, 2008

Studies indicate that music can have profound physical and psychological effects not only on people but also on animals and plants.

Research into the effects of music on behavior, intelligence, learning, pain tolerance and health have generated a number of interesting findings. This article describes the results of some of the more intriguing experiments and studies.

Music, Mice and Madness
A student named David Merrill devised an experiment to discover how music would affect the ability of mice to learn new things. Merrill had one group of mice listen to classical music 24 hours a day and another to heavy metal music. He then timed the mice as they ran through mazes to see if the music affected their speed of learning. Unfortunately, he had to cut the first experiment short because the heavy metal mice all killed one another. In a second experiment, mice that listened to Mozart for 10 hours a day dramatically improved their maze-solving abilities, while the heavy metal mice actually became worse at solving mazes than they had been at the beginning of the experiment.


Read more: "The Psychology of Music:  Effects on Behavior, Intelligence, Learning, Pain and Health" -


Emotional Manipulation
source

All Pentecostal and charismatic organizations use two things to influence people: sensory overload and expected response.

 

When something comes at you quickly, like a machine gun,you have no time to think. Your instincts take over. When someone, such as a sales person, pitches you something in a high-pressure manner, they are overloading you with information, using things such as a loud sound form their voice or emphatic gestures. They overload your senses of hearing and seeing. The rational faculty usually cannot process all this information coming at a person at high speed. The rational faculty typically shuts down; the emotional response is all that is left. If one does not regain his rational faculty before the close of the deal,he might purchase something that he will later regret.

 

Highly trained religious recruiters use this technique to an extreme. They sometimes approach the victim in a rapid-fire manner and say, “ You are going to hell!” If they are well trained at presentation, they can hypnotize the person before he understands the subtle manipulation, and he might accept the doctrinal sales pitch. He is overloaded with information. He may feel that his rational faculty is working because he hears a doctrinal rationalization or explanation. Music is another way to create sensory overloading. Loud music with the proper chord progressions tends to force down the rational faculty.

 

Charismatic and Pentecostal musicians are among the world’ s most skilled artists. Why is this? Sensory overload using music has the effect of attacking the rational faculty for enough time to stimulate a person to high levels of emotion. They accept religious persuasion easier if accompanied by such music. The resonance makes one feel the music, making it feel tangible, real, and powerful. Another technique of sensory overload is shouting over a loudspeaker. This amplifies the message, making it unavoidable to one’ s consciousness. It can be so intimidating that one cannot focus upon anything else while listening to someone shouting over a loudspeaker.

As the person shouts over the loudspeaker, this high state of sensory focus and overload imprints the message in one’ s mind. During the emotional releases in such an environment, one does indeed feel changed. The problem is that this change is simply a state of hypnosis. One’ s rational faculty shuts down almost completely. For a moment, emotions soar to the highest levels, because they no longer have the anchor of the rational faculty. This feels liberating. Why? The rational faculty designed to protect us from physical or emotional injury is no longer controlling our emotional states. This is why one feels changed and free.

The problem, however, is that civilization is the process of channeling our emotions to useful ends, not letting them get out of control. When sensory overload kills off the inhibitions controlling the emotions, of course, one will feel liberated. This is the state of emotional explosion and indulgence that feels good. Losing control, running around, shouting and speaking in tongues, climaxes in a state of ecstasy. The stern father of the rational mind shuts down and the childish barbarian emerges.

The child hates the father’ s control, but he is not yet mature enough to understand that the father protects the child. Once someone accepts this emotional state as evidence of some Truth, one is open to emotional manipulation and control. One can use fear to control a person because fear is an emotion similar in class to this initial “ life changing experience.” One can eventually become a slave to emotional manipulation. One accepts strangers as “ brothers” because of this common “ life changing” experience. This leads us to bypass the normal friend-making process, accepting strangers as “ brothers” based not on rational trust but on emotional “ brotherly love.” Both are addicted to emotional indulgence. This acceptance of brotherly love further opens one to emotional manipulation.

Once one accepts the initial emotional experience as a life defining moment, one lives by their emotions out of consistency. The acceptance of these new “ friends” and “ brothers” builds strictly emotional bonds usually void of rational trust. Thereafter, the leaders of the group can use these emotional bonds as a weapon against anyone who he wishes to control or destroy.

Since the entire group is based on emotion, and emotional indulgence, the leadership seeks to exploit people by threatening to break these bonds when a member becomes troublesome or threatening. To leave the group is to be cut off from this “ brotherly” bond of all one’ s “ friends.” The threat of kicking one out of the group threatens a person’ s circle of support in this mutual emotional indulgence. Separation from the group can be devastating to a member who must now conform, or join another emotionally indulgent group, or wake up and reactivate his rational faculty. No option is easy. To join another emotionally indulgent group requires making new bonds. Conforming robs the person of his conscience and possibly his mind.

Returning to the rational life might be the most painful thing since this requires the recognition that one has wasted much time, effort, and money on a corrupt system. This requires purging one’ s mind of the wild emotional fantasies. The problem is that the process of reversal takes longer than the recruiting process. The rational faculty will not wake up with a reversal process at the same speed as the quick and easy conversion. The rational faculty wakes up only after intense exercise and forcing one’ s self to look at reality as it is, and not as one’ s former doctrines dictate. This takes much time and effort.

Occasionally, the person’ s mind floats back into the former emotional mode of thinking, triggering fear and anxiety. The emotional mode sometimes takes over one’ s thinking temporarily, causing the person to question the decision to quit the group. Since the emotional mode that the victim is accustomed to is easy compared to the exercise of the rational faculty, sometimes it just feels easier to give up. This can make the person an emotional basket case. Healing takes tremendous effort on the part of the victim. These groups slowly condition people toward expected responses. Since one is subject to emotional indulgence as part of the group's activities, one is at the mercy of others' emotional feedback.

The group expects particular emotional responses. Soon enough, one recognizes particular cues after which particular emotive reactions are required of the group member. This is all learned though the process of feedback to a response. The positive feedback and the negative feedback are not rational instructions, but emotional responses to one's actions.

Sometimes there is childish glee, shouting, hugs, big smiles, and back patting for positive feedback, and frowns, strange stares, and social estrangement for the negative feedback. The particulars of the feedback can vary from place to place, but the power of such conditioning is enormous in Pentecostal churches. In many ways, the churches manipulate people using emotional feedback.