On Guru Kabir: Why is singing of great importance in spirituality?

The following excerpt is from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question (Q): Acharya Ji, how is music related to Spirituality? What do Bhakti Saints sing of?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Sing with a Kabir, or sing Kabir with yourself. That’s the best thing. The best thing is to sing.

The best thing is to — sing.

But you know, we have become very-very unmusical. Our instruments have lost their tuning. We have forgotten to sing, we have lost all verse. So the fallout of that is, that your Acharya Ji has to laboriously speak in prose. And therefore he has to speak so much. Otherwise, two lines of a Kabir Sahib are more than sufficient.

And even after speaking so much, do I even come close to what he said? I don’t. Sing, there is no alternative to that.

Q: Without knowing the meaning?

AP: Then know the meaning, and sing. He definitely wanted you to know the meaning and sing, that’s why he sang in the language of the people. Had he just wanted you to croon anything unintelligible, then why would he compose in the everyday language of the ordinary people.

Why did he do that? Because he wanted you to also know the literal meaning of his words. If I…