Theorizing Beyond Discourse: Music as Method

In this paper, I will analyze the significance of the concept of intuition in the context of the philosophy of religion by examining the relationship between intuition and the role of improvisation in jazz music, with particular reference to the intersection of musical and religious intution in the work of John Coltrane. Improvisation, like philosophical intuition, is a rationally grounded practice through which a soloist freely interacts with the musical themes of the composition, composing "on the fly" on the basis of the melodic and chordal qualities of the composition, and yet not strictly constrained by those qualities. Particularly within the bop and avant-garde genres, the soloist may follow their musical intuition far beyond the musical base defined by the chorus of the composition, seeking ever deeper expressions of musical truth revealed within the composition.

Agamben wrote, "Just as, for a soldier, the trumpet blast or the drumbeat is as effective as the order of a superior (or even more than it), so in every field and before every discourse, the feelings and moods that precede action and thought are musically determined and oriented." Such theorization of music, or perhaps, a musicalization of theory, has been taken up productively recently by thinkers like Fred Moten in his In the Break, and CJ Uy’s deployment of free jazz to theorize the dizzying rhetorical stylings of Sa‘d al-dīn Hammuya. In this paper, I would like to propose an exploration of the sonorous foundation of the Arabic maqām tradition (employed in the recitation of the Qur’an, poetry, and classical Arabic music) in the works of Ibn al-‘Arabī and Ibn al-Fārịd, the most influential Sufi authors of Arabic prose and poetry, respectively, followed by an investigation of that of Yorùbá ritual music used for òrìṣà worship in Yorùbá cosmologies as expressed in festivals and the performance of Ifá divination.