What Does Dreaming About Singing Mean?

Psychologically, singing is the voice raised in expression and (usually) joy — so it most often touches self-expression, joy, and the voice: expressing yourself and your feelings, the happiness or emotion poured into song, and finding and using your 'voice.' Singing is one of the most direct expressions of feeling and self, so a singing dream frequently mirrors emotional expression and release, and how freely your voice is flowing.

This carries several charges. As self-expression and the voice, singing touches expressing yourself, finding and using your voice, and letting what's inside out in song. As joy and celebration, singing touches happiness, joy, gladness, and celebration — the song of a glad heart. As emotional release, singing touches the release and expression of feeling (joy, but sometimes also sorrow or longing poured into song). As harmony, singing in tune, or singing with others (harmony, a choir), touches harmony — being 'in tune,' in harmony with yourself or others, and the togetherness of voices joined. As being heard, singing (especially for others) touches the wish to be heard, seen, and to express yourself before others. The experience matters: singing joyfully and well (free, harmonious expression and joy), singing out of tune (feeling out of harmony, off-key, or self-conscious), singing with others (harmony and togetherness), or being unable to sing (blocked expression, a lost voice). Whether you sing joyfully, out of tune, with others, or can't find your voice usually mirrors self-expression and the voice, joy and celebration, emotional release, harmony or disharmony, and the wish to be heard.

A Freudian reading would attend to singing as the voice raised in expression — the giving of voice to feeling, the release of emotion in song, and the harmony or discord of what is expressed. Singing can embody the expression of feeling in voice, the joyful or sorrowful release poured into song, and the harmony or discord of the voice raised.

Its joyful or discordant voice carries the charge of expression and of harmony. What singing evokes — the joy of the song, the release of the voice, the discord of the off-key — tends to point at the dreamer's relationship to expression and feeling: the voice raised in expression, the feeling released in song, and the harmony or discord of what one expresses and how freely the voice flows.

Scripture overflows with singing as praise and joy — 'sing unto the Lord a new song,' 'O come, let us sing unto the Lord,' 'is any merry? let him sing psalms,' and the making of 'melody in your heart to the Lord.' Singing is the voice of joy, praise, and the glad heart raised to God — a central act of worship and gladness.

A singing dream, read this way, can touch joy, praise, the glad heart, or expression. A biblical sensibility might weigh singing above all as the voice of joy and praise — 'sing unto the Lord a new song,' the merry heart that sings, the 'melody in your heart' — reading the dream as a prompt toward joy, gladness, and the raising of one's voice in praise and thanksgiving, the song of a glad and grateful heart, and the harmony of a soul 'in tune' and singing.

In Islamic sensibility the raising of the voice finds its highest expression in the beautiful recitation of the Qur'an and in the voice raised in remembrance and supplication of God; more broadly, singing touches expression, joy (wholesome joy and celebration having their place), and harmony. Singing evokes the voice raised in remembrance and beautiful recitation, expression, and joy.

A singing dream, in this frame, might point to self-expression, joy and celebration, emotional release, harmony, or the wish to be heard. Held with humility, singing can recall the beauty of the voice raised in the remembrance and recitation of God's words, the place of wholesome joy and gladness, and the harmony of a heart at peace — an invitation to raise one's voice in what is good and beautiful (remembrance, gratitude, wholesome joy), and to the harmony and gladness of a heart in tune with the good.

In a Hindu frame singing is sacred and central to devotion — bhajan and kirtan (devotional singing and chanting of the divine names), the singing of mantras, and music (sangita) as a path of devotion (bhakti) and even of the divine (sound as nada brahma); singing evokes devotion, the voice raised to the divine, and joyful, harmonious expression. Singing evokes devotional singing (bhajan, kirtan), the voice raised to the divine, and harmonious expression.

A singing dream, in this frame, can point to self-expression, joy, emotional release, harmony, or devotion. The tradition's note attends to devotion and the voice: singing as a path of devotion (the bhajan and kirtan that raise the heart to the divine) and as joyful, harmonious expression — an invitation to heartfelt, even devotional, self-expression, to the joy and emotional release of song, and to the harmony of a voice and heart raised in gladness and devotion.