The Whole Music Experience

Narasirato Pan Pipers Solomon Islands Cry of the Ancestors Arc Music If you follow traditional/folkloric music of the world, you have most likely come across panpipe players from the Andes and from Eastern European countries such as Hungary.   I have heard those pipes, but pan pipers from the Solomon Islands have only recently caught my attention on the CD Cry of the Ancestors .   Narasirato represent the Are’are people of Malaita Island and these musicians who sing, play panpipes, and traditional percussion perform music that oddly sounds like a deep forest circus rolling into town or resembles the panpipes of Andes musicians. When vocals appear, (such as on the track Prophetic Word ), they are delivered in raspy voices that soar to the heights of Native American pow-wow vocals.   Call & response voices compete with the jagged panpipes and drums that sound like a heartbeat slapping against one’s chest. Side Step with the Toes (an odd tit...

photo by Patricia Herlevi I was unable to round up enough students for my class Exploring Music with Ecological Themes, but I still think it's important for us to connect to nature through sound vibration.  So I'm including a short list of practices you can learn to do on your own.  I feel as humans in the modern world we have lost contact with the natural world.  We have given animals human personalities, treated the earth as a resource rather than a living being, and have forgotten how to communicate musically with the natural world or to truly hear its music. Those are the reasons why I created the class.  Too bad only one student signed up for it. 1) Sit in a natural setting (yes, outdoors), and focus on birds singing or another nature-based sound.  Meditate on this sound for at least 10 minutes.  Follow your body's rhythms and pulses as you listen to this natural sound.  Do you start hearing a melody in it? Harmony? How do you feel?  ...

I'm not writing about a new topic.   I write this essay in preparation for two workshops I plan on teaching this winter.  I adapted my course Exploring Music with Ecological Themes into a 2-hour workshop where I feature 5 songs hailing from diverse traditions.  We will explore the Finnish runo-song (sadly a fading tradition), indigenous music (haven't selected the tradition yet), the "wild bird jazz" of David Rothenberg and the sound healing-jazz of the late Marjorie De Muynck.  The exploration reads like a shamanic adventure, but my workshop also focuses on lost healing arts. Sadly as a planet, we have mostly lost touch with the natural world and the purposes of music.  I feel that disconnected from nature and intentional music leads to dis-ease and destruction of the planet. If we perform ignorantly music with ill intentions then we lead ourselves further into dis-ease.  I cannot stress this enough.I see music used purposefully by advertisers who sell...