Description

Early Kirtland Mormons were notorious among their neighbors for loud, flailing charismatic practices. Women flocked to the community to “seize sacred space,” claiming embodied, sonic expression through the gift of tongues. Mormon leaders have slowly redefined this gift from channeling Adamic to learning mission languages. Reverence for God became signaled through quiet rather than noise and movement; today’s primary children sing that “it shouldn’t be hard to sit very still.” Pierre Bourdieu refers to the habitus—the “conductorless orchestra” that defines the edges of acceptable social behavior—as producing “embodied history.” I will trace glossolalia as an archival practice that threatens institutional narrative control within the shapeshifting Mormon habitus. I will also examine glossolalia and xenoglossia as transmitters of affect, stirring colonial desire through the erotic signifier of the tongue. In this way, I borrow Stó:lō musicologist Dylan Robinson’s term “hungry listening” to read glossolalia as a mode of hungry vocalizing. I will end by looking at the newest LDS hymnal and handbook instructions regarding music, contextualized through the voraciously expanding Mormon empire.

Claire McMahan is a PhD student in Historical Musicology at New York University. She has an MA in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, concentrating in philosophy. Claire inherits and is informed by six generations of Mormon musical practice.