Voices
from Silence
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A 'first Friday of the month' series, from October 2024.
Personal stories of engaging in silence by practitioners from the Global Majority Heritage (GMH) or Black and Indigenous Peoples of Colour (BIPOC) communities.* |
A quarter of the way into the new millennium the reality for many people from this community is that their lives and stories are sidelined. Their voices are silenced.
So, although people from GMH/ BIPOC communities may have a spiritual practice of silence, authors from these communities tend to write more about their experiences of silencing than of engagement with silence-based prayer.
This new series is a way to bring some voices from the GMH/ BIPOC communities into the conversations and resources about silence on the Seeds of Silence website.
So, although people from GMH/ BIPOC communities may have a spiritual practice of silence, authors from these communities tend to write more about their experiences of silencing than of engagement with silence-based prayer.
This new series is a way to bring some voices from the GMH/ BIPOC communities into the conversations and resources about silence on the Seeds of Silence website.
July 2025: Josué Perea
Silence, Music and Contemplation
Image: Gordon Cowie, Los Angeles, unsplash.com/@gcowie
Josué Perea, Brookly,
New York, USA |
Listen to Josué reading 'Silence, Music, and Contemplation'
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Silence, Music and Contemplation
'It’s not the notes you play; it’s the notes you don’t play.' Miles Davis
'Silence is of many kinds.' Howard Thurman
In a recent session of music and contemplation that I led, I incorporated JJJJJerome Ellis's "Loops on Retreat." That piece, pairing poetry with music, explores blackness, dysfluency, and music, suggesting that dysfluency can offer a unique perspective on musical understanding. Dysfluency, characterized by interruptions of sound with silence or irregular auditory patterns, contrasts with the societal emphasis on fluent speech. JJJJJerome Ellis highlights this in his poem, noting how "fluent speech has also been used to police the border between human and nonhumans." This dominance of spoken speech prompts reflection on our engagement with silence. Considering how we interact with silence, and how silence intersects our daily lives, leads to deeper questions about its meaning and impact.
Kevin Quashie's definition of quiet in "The Sovereignty of Quiet" is particularly important when considering silence. Quashie suggests quiet, or as I will use it here, silence, can serve as "a metaphor for the full range of one’s inner life—one’s desires, ambitions, hungers, vulnerabilities, fears." Although Quashie does differentiate between "quiet" and "silence," for this piece, his description of "quiet" will be employed to clarify the intended meaning of "silence."
When silence encompasses the spectrum of one's inner existence, how then can we delve into it more completely? I think music serves as that avenue. Music employs silence deliberately to extract deeper meaning, accentuate transitions, or highlight moments. In Jazz and Hip Hop, both genres I frequently listen to, silence is strategically incorporated into any given piece. Consider Shabaka Hutchings' piece "Black Meditation" from his album "Afrikan Culture." Shabaka, a British jazz musician, uses silence to craft space for meditation. Silence initiates the piece, reappears at the midpoint, and concludes it, guiding our interaction with the sounds surrounding it. Similarly, Chicago based jazz musician Julian Davis Reid’s Notes of Rest®, a contemplative experience through Black American music, integrates silence to teach about the way that it is used in the Bible to lead us to rest.
Silence plays a vital role in hip hop also, fostering contemplation and enhancing impact. Little Simz, arguably the UK's foremost Hip Hop artist, demonstrates this in Stillness in Wonderland, where strategic silences cultivate the idea of inner stillness. Hip Hop DJs also leverage silence creatively, influencing beat construction. J Dilla, renowned for his unique drumming, utilized silences in his rhythms. This distinctive approach to timing and spacing made his drumming both recognizable and challenging for listeners.
So, what does this tell us about silence? It suggests that silence isn't the only avenue to contemplation, nor is it the final destination. While silence undergirds all contemplative practices, the real challenge lies in how we guide individuals into those silent spaces. This maybe can help us shift our understanding: silence isn't the end goal of the contemplative practice, but rather a vital instrument within it. The objective isn't to simply be silent, but to invite people to explore the depths of their inner lives, and so it is incumbent upon us to discern when and how to skillfully employ silence in moments when it's truly needed. It also means recognizing when silence might not be the most appropriate response.
Ultimately, silence marks not the culmination of our practice, but its very beginning. As Howard Thurman eloquently put it, the true aim of our contemplative journey is to delve "deeper into our inner lives." Father Mark Bozzuti-Jones, the priest in charge at Trinity Retreat Center, always concludes his blessing before a meal by inviting folks to sit at the silent table, but reminding that "silence does not necessarily mean the absence of sound." This, I think, offers a powerful way to engage with silence, especially when we aim to diversify contemplative spaces and invite more people in. By using silence to highlight lived experiences but by knowing it may include some sound, we can ultimately encourage individuals to delve deeper into their inner lives and broaden their own engagement with their own silences.
Silence, Music and Contemplation
'It’s not the notes you play; it’s the notes you don’t play.' Miles Davis
'Silence is of many kinds.' Howard Thurman
In a recent session of music and contemplation that I led, I incorporated JJJJJerome Ellis's "Loops on Retreat." That piece, pairing poetry with music, explores blackness, dysfluency, and music, suggesting that dysfluency can offer a unique perspective on musical understanding. Dysfluency, characterized by interruptions of sound with silence or irregular auditory patterns, contrasts with the societal emphasis on fluent speech. JJJJJerome Ellis highlights this in his poem, noting how "fluent speech has also been used to police the border between human and nonhumans." This dominance of spoken speech prompts reflection on our engagement with silence. Considering how we interact with silence, and how silence intersects our daily lives, leads to deeper questions about its meaning and impact.
Kevin Quashie's definition of quiet in "The Sovereignty of Quiet" is particularly important when considering silence. Quashie suggests quiet, or as I will use it here, silence, can serve as "a metaphor for the full range of one’s inner life—one’s desires, ambitions, hungers, vulnerabilities, fears." Although Quashie does differentiate between "quiet" and "silence," for this piece, his description of "quiet" will be employed to clarify the intended meaning of "silence."
When silence encompasses the spectrum of one's inner existence, how then can we delve into it more completely? I think music serves as that avenue. Music employs silence deliberately to extract deeper meaning, accentuate transitions, or highlight moments. In Jazz and Hip Hop, both genres I frequently listen to, silence is strategically incorporated into any given piece. Consider Shabaka Hutchings' piece "Black Meditation" from his album "Afrikan Culture." Shabaka, a British jazz musician, uses silence to craft space for meditation. Silence initiates the piece, reappears at the midpoint, and concludes it, guiding our interaction with the sounds surrounding it. Similarly, Chicago based jazz musician Julian Davis Reid’s Notes of Rest®, a contemplative experience through Black American music, integrates silence to teach about the way that it is used in the Bible to lead us to rest.
Silence plays a vital role in hip hop also, fostering contemplation and enhancing impact. Little Simz, arguably the UK's foremost Hip Hop artist, demonstrates this in Stillness in Wonderland, where strategic silences cultivate the idea of inner stillness. Hip Hop DJs also leverage silence creatively, influencing beat construction. J Dilla, renowned for his unique drumming, utilized silences in his rhythms. This distinctive approach to timing and spacing made his drumming both recognizable and challenging for listeners.
So, what does this tell us about silence? It suggests that silence isn't the only avenue to contemplation, nor is it the final destination. While silence undergirds all contemplative practices, the real challenge lies in how we guide individuals into those silent spaces. This maybe can help us shift our understanding: silence isn't the end goal of the contemplative practice, but rather a vital instrument within it. The objective isn't to simply be silent, but to invite people to explore the depths of their inner lives, and so it is incumbent upon us to discern when and how to skillfully employ silence in moments when it's truly needed. It also means recognizing when silence might not be the most appropriate response.
Ultimately, silence marks not the culmination of our practice, but its very beginning. As Howard Thurman eloquently put it, the true aim of our contemplative journey is to delve "deeper into our inner lives." Father Mark Bozzuti-Jones, the priest in charge at Trinity Retreat Center, always concludes his blessing before a meal by inviting folks to sit at the silent table, but reminding that "silence does not necessarily mean the absence of sound." This, I think, offers a powerful way to engage with silence, especially when we aim to diversify contemplative spaces and invite more people in. By using silence to highlight lived experiences but by knowing it may include some sound, we can ultimately encourage individuals to delve deeper into their inner lives and broaden their own engagement with their own silences.
Guesnerth Josué Perea, July, 2025.
Josué is Associate Pastor at Metro Hope Church in New York City and Co-Curator of the AfroLatine Theology Project: see here. You can link to Josué on his website, here.
Josué is Director of Black Lives and Contemplation for the Centre for Spiritual Imagination in New York: see here. He is also Executive Director of the documentary film Faith In Blackness: see here.
For more info on Julian Davis Reid's Notes of Rest, see here.
Josué is Director of Black Lives and Contemplation for the Centre for Spiritual Imagination in New York: see here. He is also Executive Director of the documentary film Faith In Blackness: see here.
For more info on Julian Davis Reid's Notes of Rest, see here.
* The terms 'Global Majority Heritage' (GMH) and 'Black and Indigenous Peoples of Colour' (BIPOC) refers to people whose backgrounds are from non-Western, non-White ethnic and cultural groups, reflecting the fact that the majority of the world’s population comes from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. These terms acknowledge the rich heritage of ancient Indigenous communities and challenge the traditional framing of racial and ethnic minorities by emphasizing that these populations are, in fact, the global majority.
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