I feel the same way. At my mother's funeral there was a big singing in the chapel and I was struck by it in a way that is hard to put into words. Singing is so much better than words for expressing something where body and mind are united rather than separated.

These professional Christian singers come from a very old community that is now slowly dying and only a few of them are left who have mastered this kind of singing and are confident enough to raise their voices. Compared to them, the voices of the parishioners or the gathered mourners are rather puny and it was a kind of pain to me not to be able to hit the notes myself and so I left it and let it carry me away. Without this part of the funeral service, something would have been missing, I think. The silence of the congregation has to do with their inability to sing and when the pastor is the only one in the room capable of singing, the whole thing loses its power. It is a great pity, but I have done little myself to become a living part of this. I only realised in my later adult life how much admiration I have for singing, and I very much hope that this tradition will be maintained in connection with the milestones in life elsewhere.

Did you once take singing lessons or sing in a choir yourself? I did as a child in our evangelical church. But I have been away from there for a long time...

Even at school in my time, singing was no longer something anyone was good at and the artistic subjects were underrepresented like everywhere else or were not allowed to mix with the cognitively oriented ones, which is a great pity and prevents many potentials from developing in the first place.

As I am so poorly practiced this is something I got shy about. So I am hoping you do better than I :)