With One Voice and One Heart: Orthodox Chant as a Tool of Resistance for Middle Eastern Christians

This paper will discuss the function of Eastern Christian liturgical music in preserving the religious and cultural identity of Middle Eastern Christians, with a special focus on the role of women in the successful transmission of oral traditions. One of the most distinctive features of Eastern Christian worship, the musical traditions of the Orthodox Churches represent ancestral bonds that hold their communities together across time and space, allowing them to resist assimilation into the dominant cultures of Islamic society and Western Christendom. I will highlight non-standardization and embodiment as key features that enable this resistance. After establishing a theoretical background, I will discuss the practical necessity of expanding women’s access to liturgical music for the future of Orthodox communities in the Middle East and in the diaspora. I will conclude by discussing the enduring barriers to women’s participation in chant and highlighting recent efforts by Orthodox women to overcome them.