Secular Music and Psycho-Spiritual Wellbeing: A Case of Youths, St. John The Evangelist Catholic Parish Karen, Nairobi-Kenya

Abstract

Secular music is common in every society and those who listen to it mostly are youths. Lyrical contents of many secular music today seem to have caused damage than good among youths. In our society today there is a widespread concern about the use of illicit drugs, increase violence which has become a public health problem with lifelong impact on the physical, social, psychological, and even spiritual life of many in the society. The rate of criminality seems to be on the increase, illicit sex is rampant in the society which often results in unwanted pregnancies, unprepared marriage, hence violent relationship. The research aimed at looking at secular music and psycho-spiritual wellbeing: A case of youths, St. John’s the Evangelist Catholic parish Karen, Nairobi-Kenya. The embedded mixed method design was deployed by the researcher. Responding to Likert-type survey creature for the research, 105 participants provided vital information (quantitative and qualitative) that were used for the research. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) helped in analyzing the data collected from the participants. The findings of this research may help the youths at different levels in the Church and beyond to evaluate themselves to see the negative influence of secular music on their psycho-spiritual well-being and how to manage them. The findings of the research showed that listening to secular music had both positive and negative effects on the lives of the youths of St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church Karen-Nairobi, Kenya. Psychologically, the findings showed that secular music help the youths as it relaxes the mind, while spiritually, listening to secular music does not help the youths improve in their spiritual wellbeing as it affects their time.