The Timeless Power of Sound Across Civilisations
In Ryan Coogler's film The Sinners, Annie delivers a haunting warning about a young blues guitarist in the Mississippi Delta. His music is not mere entertainment; it possesses a raw, devastating truth that summons spirits and opens passages between the living and the dead. This concept echoes through history, where sound has always been revered as a bridge to the divine and the supernatural.
Ancient Foundations of Musical Worship
Every great civilisation built its first altar not to a king or conqueror, but to a sound. The Vedic priests of ancient India understood the universe as born from vibration, a principle known as Nada Brahma, meaning the world is sound. Similarly, ancient Egyptian priests used chants to guide the dead into the afterlife, while King David of the Bible soothed troubled spirits with his harp and composed psalms that shaped worship. The Romans integrated music into every aspect of life, from triumphs to coronations, using it as a medium to reach beyond the ordinary.
Heroes and Mystics: Music as a Tool of Power
Historical figures like Alexander the Great and Samudragupta of the Gupta Empire exemplified music's role in containing and expressing extraordinary power. Alexander's campaigns were accompanied by war hymns, and Samudragupta, a warrior and poet, was depicted on coins playing the veena, symbolising that true power extends into the soul's invisible territories. Mystics across cultures, such as the Irish Filí, Choctaw Firekeepers, and West African Griots, wielded this gift to connect the living with ancient, profound forces, yet it always carried a risk of attracting evil.
Rasputin: A Modern Echo of Ancient Warnings
The story of Grigori Rasputin, popularised by Boney M.'s 1978 hit Rasputin and revived in Bollywood's Dhurandhar, embodies Annie's warning. Rasputin, a Siberian peasant with no formal training, healed Tsar Nicholas II's son Alexei from haemophilia and gained influence in the Russian court. His survival of multiple assassination attempts—poisoning, stabbing, and gunfire—only deepened his myth, illustrating how a gift that pierces the veil between life and death can lead to political decay and collapse.
Parallels in Contemporary Narratives
In Dhurandhar, Hamza Ali Mazari mirrors Rasputin's trajectory by saving a life and becoming integral to a collapsing system, facing repeated threats yet surviving. This reflects the broader theme that such gifts, while healing communities, inevitably attract instability and evil. As Annie cautions, the same channel that allows holiness through can also permit darker forces, a truth resonating from ancient rituals to modern media.
Ultimately, music's role as a language for the inexpressible—whether for gods, kings, or mystics—remains a powerful, double-edged force in human history, reminding us of its capacity to both uplift and destroy.
