Singing a Wide Heart: Timbre and Sung Prayer in Senegal’s Layène Community

Authors

Margaret L. Rowley, University of IowaFollow

Abstract

Layène sung prayer (called sikkar) is embedded within the religious practices of the Layène community, a minority Sufi order in Dakar, Senegal. This article explores the functions of Layène sung prayer, focusing especially on its loud, vibrational timbre. Both men and women vocalists in call-and-response sing loudly, using wide vibrato and electronic amplification to ensure that the sikkar reaches the inhabitants—both human and non-human—in the surrounding community. This article demonstrates that the distinctive timbre of Layène sung prayer serves the spiritual functions of binding the community together in spiritual and social cohesion, increasing individual and collective generosity, and demarcating Layène territory in the context of rapid urban growth. Through contextualizing ethnographic research, interviews, and analysis of audio recordings within the community’s hagiography, this article demonstrates threads of connection between community ethics of generosity and hospitality and the timbre of sikkar.

Author Biography

Margaret Rowley is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Iowa, where her research focuses on sonic constructions of religious subjecthood in Senegal. She received her PhD from Boston University, and her work has appeared in Islamic Africa, African Studies Review, and Ethnomusicology. Her current book project seeks to re-sound human, non-human, and interspecies communities along Dakar's shorelines, particularly in a global moment where temperatures, sea levels, and Islamophobia are all rising.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Rowley, Margaret L. (2025) "Singing a Wide Heart: Timbre and Sung Prayer in Senegal’s Layène Community," Yale Journal of Music & Religion: Vol. 11: No. 1, Article 7.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17132/2377-231X.1295