I've recently begun to observe the mood-altering abilities of Kingdom Melodies, when played at meetings and assemblies.
After hyping up the audience for hours at a convention, a melody like, "We Thank You Jehovah" has the ability to make everyone all fuzzy and happy. Some even have tears in their eyes.
Before a meeting, a Kingdom Melody is usually played quietly in the background, but it sets the mood.
The Melody's are part of the culture of Jehovah's Witnesses. People play them in the car, on the audio system at home, and play their instruments in synch with the melody.
The Kingdom Ministry has often commented on their self-published hymns, how beautiful they are. It is true, that some of the songs can be mood altering (isn't that true of most types of music?), but knowing the JW culture, it seems to be another one of the Sociey's tools to control people by playing on their emotions.
Can music be used in this way, to sublty control people? Or am I reading too much into this?
Having read "Captives of a Concept" it just seems to me, that the Kingdom Melodies are just another tool used to subtly influence people.
Consider the melody, "Life Without End At Last" - not a bad set of lyrics, but when you know that people really do want to see their loved ones again, and you also know the WT has been lying about so many things, the lyrics and music of this song gives the JW's that nice warm feeling, that "this is it, this has to be the truth."Isn't it about time they came out with another song book? They've been playing the "same old tune" since 1984.
1984...uhmmm. interesting. That was the date the new song book was released.