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Blog 7, Choi

The role the Sema ceremony plays is the role of meeting their soul with God. There are people that come together and sing praises to their God. In the music of the Mevlevi Sufi order they dance to experience the direct spiritual union with God. There are two parts of the Sema ceremony. The first part is Taksim which is “improvisation on ney (flute) outlining the maqam (scale) used in the rest of the ceremony free meter. The second part is Pesrev where “composition, not improvised strict form and meter ney, plucked and bowed string instruments, drum, cymbal”. They use this ceremony to get closer with God, and have fun and celebrate. This is all part of the Turkish tradition and it is supposed to be a lively, upholding ceremony. 

When someone thinks of Christian music, most likely the first song they might think of is Amazing Grace. It is very popular amongst Christian gospel music and is used for many things in their religious aspects. Coming from experience Amazing Grace is one of those songs that could be used for various amounts of things like prayer, worship, dance, offering. It could even just be used as background music to set the mood for the sermon. 

The Sema ceremony and Amazing Grace have some similarities that include the way they use the music. Both use their music to get close to God in some type of way. Although Amazing Grace could be sung without instruments, they are still used with background melodies accompanied by piano and someone singing. Just like the Sema ceremony, Amazing Grace could be used as a dance song as well, people usually compose body worship to help show the emotions from the past through dance and music to create a stronger bond and feeling towards their God and Jesus.