I love music and have worked in Media Production for many years. During that time I have learned quite a bit about music and how it affects human beings. I have especially researched drum beats because they are a controversial issue. First I’ll share a little of what I have found out about drums and then some about my personal experience with music.
Most of the drum beats and rhythms that we hear in America today originated in African forms of devil worship. When slaves were originally brought from Africa to Haiti, they brought their religions with them, which became intermingled with Catholicism, resulting in what we now call voodoo.
After the slave revolt in Haiti, many Haitians immigrated to New Orleans, Louisiana where they were permitted to practice their voodoo rituals in only one location, called Congo Square. These rituals centered around drumbeats, which are used to bring spirits into people, thought to be the spirits of gods. Of course we know that the spirits of gods are actually evil spirits. In other words, the rhythm and beat of the drums causes the voodoo worshipers to become demon possessed. This process is known as the “crossroads” by those who engage in voodoo rituals. The drummers create complex rhythms until they find one that brings the “god” into the person. In voodoo, different rhythms are named after different gods which are induced by that particular beat, such as the Mambo, the Samba, the Congo, etc. These rhythms are used to hypnotize and entrance people, and tend to stimulate in particular the sexual part of the brain. Thus, the voodoo rituals were often accompanied by immoral sexual practices.
The danger in the use of drumbeats is that music largely bypasses the logical centers of the brain and immediately affects the emotional regions. In other words, music can control us whether we like it or not.
From New Orleans the voodoo music spread all across America in different forms, and almost all of our modern music has its roots in that music that came out of New Orleans. The drum rhythms in modern music are just varied forms of the original voodoo drumbeats. Modern musicians even attest to studying under voodoo drum masters to learn these techniques.
And of course the drums have now found their way into the Christian churches of America as well. The drumbeats are very much the same as those used in other kinds of music, although they may be quieter.
Now, I wanted to say a little about my own personal experience with music. First I wanted to mention something that happened to my cousin. His parents didn’t want him to listen to rock music, but he eventually got ahold of a rock CD and listened to one particular song over and over. One night his parents heard noises in his room. They came in and found my cousin in his closet about to hang himself. They brought him out and laid him on the couch, and found that he was in a trance! He couldn’t talk and his body was rigid and motionless. Finally, after a while he was able to motion for a pen and paper and he wrote down that he had been listening to this song over and over and how this had happened to him. Music is powerful and the devil knows how to use it! The modern music puts people into trances just like the voodoo music did!
As I mentioned before I have worked in Media Production for many years now, and in studying how to use music in videos I have come to learn a lot about the power of music. Music is the language of emotion. A movie producer can control the feelings of his audience by the kind of music he puts into a movie. I don’t make movies like Hollywood and I am very careful what kind of music I use, but a movie producer can make hundreds of people feel sad, angry, spooked, sexually aroused, etc. just by using different kinds of background music in his movie. Music truly does control people!
We see this in the Bible too. What did Nebuchadnezzar do when he wanted to get everyone to bow down and worship his great image? He played music! What will be used to get people to worship the image to the beast at the end? Music?
Music is powerful! And we as Christians are greatly ignorant of its power. Satan is wily and he is stealing our young people by using music! And he starts in the church! The music in the church is a quieter version of the music in the world (with different words), and our young people are getting a taste for the music of the world by hearing the music in church.
I know a girl who used to listen to worldly music before she became a Christian, and she said that living in the islands and hearing the drums in the music at church started to arouse the old desire for worldly music again. She has to leave whenever they start playing music like that in church. If it does that to one person I’m sure it has the same effect on others.
The drum rhythms of the world have come into the church, and if we think they won’t have any effect on us because the words are different, we are wrong. The words of a song have very little to do with the emotions that are created by the rhythm and beat of the music. A movie producer doesn’t need background music with words. Words would just get in the way! The music itself is what creates the emotions. And drums don’t need to be loud to arouse the sexual parts of our brains. Some of the most sexually oriented music in our world today, such as R&B, does not have loud drums in it. Drums have an effect even when they are played softly. For further information, I recommend the ministry of Bryan Newman and also Ivor Myers, both of whom were once involved in the music industry and have done excellent research on this subject.
If you have been attending a church where drums are used in the service, consider standing up for your conscience in whatever way God leads. I don’t mean that we as Christians should insult or hurt those who do such things, but this is a serious situation and God wants each of us to do what’s right. If we are worshiping a holy God and preparing for translation into His kingdom, we need to be spending this lifetime preparing for heaven and for the trials and temptations we will meet before that time, and we have no time or place for the delusive snares of Satan involved in his forms of music.