I spent the summer of 2002 in Granada, in the southern region of Spain called Andalucía. While there, I visited the Alhambra, a medieval palatial city where Muslim royalty first lived, along with military personnel to protect the fort and the surrounding Moorish community (History.com Editors, 2018). Alhambra is an Arabic word meaning red fort or castle (History.com Editors). In this intricately carved stone palace, I came upon a room in which the ceiling was constructed of interconnected archways. Unlike most of the buildings on the grounds of the Alhambra, this particular room made of stone archways was not intricately carved. The archways and ceiling were smooth and had what appeared to be relatively simple lines. As I entered this room, I noticed the voices of people leaving continued to reverberate clearly from across the room. The acoustics were astounding. I waited until I was alone in the room, and I began to sing, while moving about the space and listening to my voice resonate, up and over the arching ceiling and back to me. I stood in the sunlight that lit up parts of the room and then moved into the shadows, facing the walls, singing.
I waited until I was alone in the room, and I began to sing, while moving about the space and listening to my voice resonate, up and over the arching ceiling and back to me.
I felt a profound peace of mind and a blissful, vibrant sensation throughout my body, as the sounds danced around and through me. A foundational tenet of Physics is that all objects (matter) have natural frequencies (Brubaker, 2022), including human bodies (Brownjohn & Zheng, 2001). Resonance occurs “when one object vibrating at the same natural frequency of a second object forces that second object into vibrational motion” (The Physics Classroom, 2022, n.p.). This understanding of resonance from the field of Physics translated into my physical body and my state of mind. The vibrating, resonating sounds filled me, and my mind felt an equanimity with all things and beings. I was tuned in to the resonance of those stone archways, and the physical space they formed.
Magan (2020) describes a similar experience he had in the Loughcrew Cairns, also known as the Hills of the Witch, located near Oldcastle in County Meath, Ireland (Heritage Ireland, 2021). The Loughcrew Cairns are the site of four Neolithic tombs that date back to 3,000 BCE (Before the Common Era), where ancient artwork etched onto stone has been preserved (Heritage Ireland). Magan tells his story of chanting in the Irish language while deep inside one of the caves at Loughcrew. He describes his experience,
Squatting there in the darkness, chanting away to my heart’s content, […] I realised that the space was ideally suited for chanting, and I noticed that the sounds echoing at me were different from those that had come from my mouth. They had a different resonant frequency, and I wondered if that was why these places were said to alter consciousness. […] Altering resonant frequency can affect the brain and body, as well as the general surroundings. (Magan, p. 189-190)
Magan goes on to explain that a 1994 study in the chambers at Loughcrew, and other similar sites in Ireland and England, showed that these caves can sustain resonant frequencies of about 110 hertz, “which is the tipping point that sparks altered patterns of activity in the prefrontal cortex” (p. 191), causing a partial deactivation of the brain’s language centre while also activating the left side of the brain where emotions are processed. Magan explains that “the easiest way to create this frequency is by singing” (p. 191).
Storytelling, Singing, and Activating Empathy
The significance of these findings, for me, is that words voiced at the right frequency may activate the part of the brain connected to mood, empathy, and social behaviour (Magan, 2020). When we humans share our stories, our experiences are voiced, creating and transmitting sounds at particular frequencies. “Words can be wedges that prise back the surface layer of thought and feeling, revealing a deeper truth. […] The idea of resonance in language is something important in Irish” (Magan, p. 185) and likely also important in all human languages, in different ways.
The power of oral storytelling is that it invites us to tune into an emotional, spiritual, and creative state of mind that leads to greater empathy and social-mindedness.
I understand this when I speak my first language, English, compared to when I speak my second and third languages, French and Spanish. Each language has its own pitches, cadences, and lyricism. I’ve been told by fluent English speakers in North America that I sound Irish when I speak English; Irish people do not have the same impression, but it says something about the way I speak English. Perhaps my ancestral language resonates through my use of the colonial language that became my mother-tongue. First-language French speakers who are also fluent in English, have told me that I sound completely different when I speak French, from when I speak English. First-language Spanish speakers, speaking to me over the phone and, therefore, without any visual reference to my pale pink Irish skin and Celtic heritage, have asked me which part of Latin America I’m from, because they have found my Spanish accent indecipherable, and yet somehow Latin American. There is something going on in the sounds I make when speaking these three languages. While travelling on a boat off the West Coast of Scotland in 2013, a Scottish storyteller addressed me in Scots Gaelic. I replied in English that I do not speak the language and he responded, “Yes, you do. You’ve just forgotten it.” This storyteller understood that my ancestral language had been passed on to me and still resides within me, even if I am not conscious of it or able to use it. I wonder about this form of resonance that reaches across time and space, passes from generation to generation, and is embodied in descendants, like me. I was born and raised at a great physical distance from my ancestral homelands; nevertheless, perhaps I do carry the resonance of my lost or forgotten language[i] within my physical being.
