On Resonance: Why Music Matters in Yoga

In various traditions, sound was perceived as an influencing power that entranced followers into ecstasy and liberation. We can perceive this spiritual connection clearly through our relationship with African composition.

Long before language evolved, percussion and rhythm served as the universal tongue in the oldest ancestral lineages. This story resonated through colonization, as the Spanish deliberately separated African slaves from those who spoke their dialect to suppress any unity or rebellion. Yet, the settlers underestimated the unifying power of music. West African traditions endured, giving birth to innovations like the cajón in Perú, crafted from shipping containers. Through music, African ancestors preserved their identity and resilience, transforming rhythm into a vessel of liberation.

The story continues resonating today as Black and Brown people join each other in dancing to modern musical styles that elevate the human experience. Whether you find yourself lounging to jazz, sweating to house, kicking it to hip-hop, mourning with blues and rock, celebrating to salsa, or liberating your pent-up energy with reggaeton, you are partaking on a collective practice of healing by connecting to the primordial language of African spirituality. The drums speak to you, and you match their energy with the movement of your bones.

If yoga is to be considered a prayer, where movement from your body is an offer of devotion to the Divine, dancing follows the same steps. With each pose allowing you to expand your joints and tissues into greater lengths, dancing can also be a ceremonial process where the Sky and the Earth are joined through your intervention as a caretaker (in Quechua: arariwa) of the Earth. Your body activates as you dance, and the soil awakens with the vibrations of our stomping.

Ultimately, the intention of yoga is to unite. If you allow your movement on the mat to be influenced by music that awakens the spirit of African and Indigenous ancestors, you can then bridge your somatic experience with that of an ancestor who also found somatic healing through dance and movement. By integrating this ancestral wisdom, you can transform your personal healing into a force that resonates through time, uniting every generation in between. If the music moves you, it moved your ancestors too. At that moment, you’re continuing the sacred work your bloodline began long ago.

When words fail, and language feels limiting, music offers a harmonizing medicine that transcends. So harmonize together, and be present for the healing revolution that your lineage has long been waiting for.