Towards the origin of devotion and happiness: An acoustical and neuro-cognitive exploration of Indian spiritual music

Abstract

Since the age of the Vedas, devotion has remained a key component of Indian music through centuries of changes and foreign influences. The brightest example of this is the Bhakti tradition, a pan-Indian movement (7th-15th Century CE), which integrated poetry and music in the transmission of spiritual and social goals. Devotees often report perception of emotions like devotion, happiness, awe while listening to spiritual music of their own religion and culture. This paper aims to study the acoustical and neuro-cognitive correlates of these emotions for two Indian spiritual music traditions – (a) Sikh Gurbani/ Shabad Kirtan, (b) Bangla Vaishnav Kirtan, both of which emerged from the Bhakti tradition. 5 Punjabi and 5 Bengali speaking participants listened to 3-minute long four songs from these two spiritual music traditions while EEG signals were recorded from each participant along with their emotion responses. Acoustical time series of these music clips and their corresponding EEG signals were analysed using nonlinear DFA technique. DFA Scaling Exponent values were calculated for multiple 30-second EEG segments across the total duration of each music clip to understand the perception and induction process of devotion and happiness in human brain, which is a novel step in the domain of music cognition and signal processing.