The Diamond of Praise – The Niggun (wordless praise)
A Facet of Praise – Niggun (Wordless Song of Praise).
“The area of ancient Israel’s greatest creativity, and so what they did best, was the praise of God.” (Ellen Davis, Getting involved with God). “I will extol Thee, my God, O King; And I will bless Thy name forever and ever. Every day I will bless Thee, and I will praise Thy name forever and ever. Great is the Lord Yahweh, and highly to be praised; And His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise Thy works to another, and shall declare Thy mighty acts, the glorious splendor of Thy majesty, and on Thy wonderful works I will meditate.” (Psalm 145, a song of praise by David).
Scripture doesn’t define the word “praise,” but it offers plenty of descriptions. Praise can be described as an outward expression of gratitude for all that God has done for oneself, for the community, for the world. Praise is a recounting of the many blessings that God has provided in His grace and mercy. Praise is a grateful appreciation of God’s mighty works. Praise is an expression of thanksgiving to the Lord, an acknowledgement of God’s righteous deeds. To praise God is to thank God and celebrate His presence in the world.
Praise is what we were created to do, it is the chief of our ultimate satisfactions, and we won’t find personal fulfillment unless we develop the habit of forgetting ourselves and praising God. Most of us Christian believers are not following in the footsteps of our Jewish brethren and praising God with an inspired creativity. The fact is, the Hebrew Bible reveals a vocabulary of praise that will help us in our bid to be more expressive of our praise, more imaginative, more creative. The Hebrew Bible reveals praise to be a diamond with an almost uncountable number of facets. There are many words in Scripture that may translate as praise, but the reality is praise has an abundance of angles and facets and dimensions that we need to learn if we want to mature in our praise of God. The Hebrew language is loaded with words that contain the element of praise but with added qualities that expands our view of what praise could mean to us in our walk of faith. Knowing these words will help us to participate more fully and deeply in praising our God, in expressing our thanksgiving to Him in every way humanly possible. “Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim Thy praise (tehillah, see below).” (Psalm 51:15 )
Praising God involves all of us, not just our intellect to think with or our bottoms to sit on. Praise and worship in the Jewish tradition is a physical experience as well as spiritual, with lots of meaningful postures and gestures, singing, multisensory, thoughtful yet expressive. Praise and worship in the Hebrew Bible invariably incorporated music and melody and instrumentation. Praise is not a spectator sport, but one that asks for full participation. As Dwight Pryor once said, “Praise is not afraid of feelings, but they are not based on feelings. If praise were a train, the engine that needs to constantly be stoked is God-focus and self-forgetfulness, and the emotional feelings are basically the caboose… still a part of things, but not what’s running the train.”
Praise is our exhale of gratitude and devotion after our inhale of God’s inspired presence. God initiates, we respond. So praising God is like our respiratory system, and unless we are breathing in God and then breathing out praise, we will spiritually expire. If we don’t learn how to respond to God’s goodness with heartfelt praise, our faith will soon become lifeless. Consider this category of “The Diamond of Praise” in the blog to be my meager attempt to polish each facet on this sparkling diamond. Each Hebrew word in this expanded vocabulary of praise will convey a different aspect of praise, and is intended to help us be more creative in our praise, more expressive, more biblical.
A nign, or niggun, is a song of praise that doesn’t use formal words or lyrics. A niggun is a non-word song that is often used in praise of God, but sometimes is not referring to God at all. They are Jewish songs that have long been central to worship in many synagogues, especially Hasidic Judaism. A niggun is a song that bypasses language, and is instead totally non-lingual. Because there are no words, and instead uses what might be called “nonsense” syllables, many are not comfortable with this type of worship. We Gentile Westerners are so accustomed to using our intellect in our worship that sliding past the intellectual and heading straight for the spiritual is a rather foreign experience.
Remember Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” and he is singing “If I was a rich man”? Wasn’t it wonderful when he started to wistfully express himself without words when he sang, “yaba dibi dibi dobi dobi dum.” Or in that movie’s classic wedding dance scene when they are da da da da da da as they are joyfully whirling in circles? Those are nigguns. Pop music has always been full of nonreligious nigguns, whether it is “sha la la” or “na na na na, hey hey, goodbye.” Nigguns occur when mere words aren’t quite sufficient, and the song repetitively uses expressive nonsense sounds with a spontaneous melody. Sometimes the pace of the niggun is fast and energetic, other times slow and meditative. A niggun can be jubilant or full of lament. Nigguns tend to be emotional, because the singer of the niggun is expressing whatever is going on in the heart, which in the worship context is praise. A niggun can be a heartfelt meditation in order to commune with God. It can be a “dance niggun,” like the wedding dance in “Fiddler.” The dance nigguns are usually much faster, if not frenetic, more rhythmic, and intended for group singing during the dance. A niggun could also be a “table tune,” intended for the Sabbath meal or during other holy day celebrations.
A survey of Jewish literature reveals an interesting array of thoughts regarding the niggun:
… “A musical path to God that transcends the limitations of language;”
… “Sometimes words get in the way, they interrupt, the stream of self-expression with God;”
… “It distracts the physical and allows the spirit to sing to God;”
… “It transcends syllable and sound, and raises holy sparks;”
… “It is a form of music that is straight from the heart and thus stirs the soul;”
… “It is an outlet of one’s emotions, the deepest cry of the soul;”
… “Because a niggun can sound just like a child singing a melody that has words he can’t quite remember, a niggun can often be the time when we can approach God with the heart of a child.”
As one might expect, the early Christians used this form of praise in their worship services as well, following up in the tradition of the Jewish niggun. The early believers in Christ called this the “jubilus,’ and was their own version of a spontaneous worship using repetitive nonwords. Their jubilus singing would be without lyrics, and often took the form of singing out the last vowel of the allelujah, and repeating it and praising God in that joyful meditational way.
Here are some examples of the niggun that may seem foreign at first, but the more you think about it, is actually pretty common in our contemporary music scene.