Zooming With God

A look into musical worship at U of T during the pandemic

by Jennifer Wan

Music is an important part of many spiritual practices, from personal meditation to services to holiday traditions. In Judaism, music is a fundamental part of liturgy, with songs and chants used for scripture reading, prayer, and celebrations. In Islam, the recitation of the Quran is beautified through rhythm and tone. Meditative music is common in Buddhist and New Age practices. Gothic churches were designed with good acoustics and reverberation for choral and organ music to have optimum sound travel. Beethoven aptly said, “Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life." In numerous spiritual traditions, music takes on the role of helping people connect to the divine or to their own spirits and souls. 

At the University of Toronto, many religious clubs and choirs reflect this spiritual relationship with music. There are more than 70 faith-related campus groups on Ulife. Many of these student groups meet regularly to fellowship and worship together on campus. From this massive list, I am familiar with two of them, Power to Change (P2C) and Chinese Christian Fellowship (CCF), both of which have been helpful to me in my exploration of my faith and in connecting me with the U of T student body. These two clubs have weekly meetings on campus that have a musical worship element to them. Similar to the way many churches are run, these student groups have volunteer roles to be part of a worship team or band to lead in musical worship at the start of every meeting. This type of shared musical worship allows participants to feel connected to God and to each other. 

However, thanks to COVID, religious communities and campus clubs alike had to adapt to lockdown restrictions. The once communal activity of singing and worshiping together had to be done in isolation. Just like with online studies, these services and meetings had to adapt quickly. Remember last year when your professor locked half the class out of their zoom meeting because they accidentally set a participant limit? These clubs and communities had to deal with similar technical difficulties. Some of my Christian friends talked about their churches having pre-recorded sessions while others' churches were committed to worshipping live despite constant streaming issues. 

Other than the technological part, the isolation aspect of COVID compounds the change. Having a large workload at Daniels and a weak attention span had already made in person Sunday worship hard for me to engage in, but the fact that my church’s service was now a Youtube livestream made distraction nearly unavoidable. Never mind a gothic church’s acoustics or megachurch smoke machines, now it was all contained on my screen and easily muted for me to finish a Wandavision episode.

Campus clubs, ranging from orchestras to choirs to these religious clubs I’m a part of, are familiar with these technological difficulties. Zoom fatigue and audio issues are just a couple of the problems that student groups face as they try to continue operating. Music-related challenges are especially trying. Try singing or jamming in unison in your discord or zoom voice call and you will soon find that the result is chaos. However, that is not to say that there aren’t advantages to meeting online - locationless flexibility and being able to turn off your mic when you need to burp are just two examples. Additionally, it is in these times that human ingenuity and teamwork truly shine through. 

I especially saw this in the student fellowships I am a part of, P2C and CCF. Although we were now socially isolated, each week, during the P2C Zoom meeting, a different member of the club led worship live from their homes with their voice and a keyboard or guitar. Being on Zoom, I experienced a much stronger feeling of community compared to a Youtube stream. We could scroll through the muted boxes and see each other mouthing the words to the songs, just slightly out of sync. In CCF, we also had live worship at the beginning of the fall semester, when the worship teams met up to lead in real time on Zoom. However, smaller gatherings were soon restricted, making that impossible. CCF’s worship coordinator, Joshua Wong, quickly organized audio recordings that played instead, allowing for better sound and streaming quality. Although recordings can feel somewhat less organic, every meeting participants are encouraged to turn on their cameras to preserve that feeling of communal worship that previously took place in the Multifaith Center auditorium. 

In the winter, many music-related clubs started exploring new ways to respond and adapt to lockdown. My friend Naomi Gagnon, who was part of U of T’s Gospel Choir, was tagged in a beautiful throwback compilation of previous years’ Christmas concerts. Leading up to CCF’s annual winter retreat, which would now be online, the leadership team invited all participants to join in the worship recordings. A few of my friends in first year participated by submitting video recordings of vocal or instrumental parts. Josh mixed and compiled them together into videos that were used for musical worship during the online retreat. Seeing our friends sing together on screen with all of us in the Zoom meeting was very comforting, and the quality really stood out. It also fostered a sense of being part of something greater and a feeling of belonging to many of those who were involved. 

Vaccines are slowly rolling out this spring, and things are gradually returning to normal, signaling the return of in-person meetings and services. Although COVID presented many challenges to the musical traditions of religious clubs and organizations alike, both I and these fellowships have learned a lot about worship from the experience. I asked Josh for a reflection on how COVID changed his perception of worship, and he said: “Worship itself doesn't change during COVID, but it has increased exposure about how our daily lives such as school or making music could and should be an act of worship, to find joy while giving our all”. The meetings during COVID helped club members to connect across the world and get involved by sharing their own musical talents. It helped me realize how musical worship, the faith community, and spiritual engagement don't have to be tied to a physical building or atmosphere. Despite the geographical limits of lockdown, music is truly a medium that crosses boundaries, connecting our souls and spirits. ■

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