Sing after God a New Song. Ritual-Musical Appropriations of Psalms in Dutch Culture between 1990-2020

Abstract

In the Netherlands, traditional churches and religious institutions are losing ground, as is the case in the rest of western Europe. Religion changes and traditional religious forms migrate to other realms, sometimes to return to ecclesial contexts again. In this article, we present a research project on ritual-musical appropriations of psalms in contemporary Dutch culture. The concept of ritual-musical appropriations implies this is a social, and sometimes collective, process of meaning-making, which raises questions relating to formations of community, identity, and the power relations which structure and are structured by this very process.

Keywords

• psalms
• ritual-musical appropriation
• (collective) identity
• power
• contemporary culture