The Whole Music Experience

On the day of the Pisces Lunar Eclipse, I had a sudden urge to listen to recordings of bird songs. Although I live in Bellingham, a city known for its natural surroundings, I live in a residential neighborhood with little nature and a lot of concrete. So until I can take a walk in one of the parks, listening to nightingale songs suffices. This brings up the concept of starting one's day with nature recordings. You can find just about every nature call on YouTube from birdsongs to wolf calls, to whales and dolphins galavanting under water. I also enjoy ocean waves and other water sound recordings. We are, after all, connected to nature. We regain balance when we immerse ourselves in these sounds even if we live on the 14th floor of a tall building.  So here are a handful of recordings I found on YouTube to get you started: Nightingale Songs Whale Songs   Dolphin Songs Wolves Ocean Waves Happy exploration of nature sounds. 

photo by Patricia Herlevi Ever so often I wake up with an idea for a new blog post for working with sound and music.  Today while meditating, I started paying attention to how my body responded to the songbirds outside my window.  Then I pondered the question, what constitutes music? Since I have listened to music from around the world in a variety of modes, scales, and structures, I understand that when even 3-notes are repeated in a pattern, this constitutes music.  Since all of this music came from humans there was no question as to its status as music.  But when we deal with nature do we consider the frog and bird songs actual music? And what about the frequencies contained in these nature songs, how do they affect our health and well-being? Do you ever wonder? To indigenous musicians and people this is a no-brainer.  To them of course nature provides music and healing frequencies.  Indigenous people the ancients believe that the world is made...

Thai Elephant Orchestra Dave Soldier & Richard Lair Mulatta Records (2000) Thai Elephant Orchestra Dave Soldier & Richard Lair Elephonic Rhapsodies Mulatta Records (2003)     Thai Elephant Orchestra Dave Soldier & Richard Lair Water Music Mulatta Records (2010) Never in my wildest imagination did I ever expect to review CDs by elephant musicians.   True elephants play music differently than humans, but when we consider that they are limited to a trunk and their front feet, the music they do make seems extraordinary.   Little did I know ten years ago, living in Seattle and testing recordings out on squirrels and crows that musicians with a scientific bent in New York were actually playing music with birds and elephants.   While there are likely animal advocates who will think that human musicians encroach upon the non-human’s space for ego gratification, I would disagree.   The musical interaction and interludes...

Explorers of Music via Nature During my years of listening to hundreds of recordings, including field recordings of indigenous musical traditions, I discovered a few musical traditions that still amaze me today.   While these traditions range from the didgeridoo ritualistic music from Australian aboriginals to the hula tradition of Native Hawaiians to folk songs of the Okinawan people of Japan, I’m focusing on three groups for this essay including the Wulu Bunun (Taiwan), the Saami (Nordic countries & Russia), and the Baka pygmies of the Congo/Cameroon and Gabon.   We enjoy a myriad of ways of connecting to the natural world through the sound vibration.   We whistle at birds, sing like birds, perform trance music (drums) that connect us to the heartbeat of the earth or we can perform a vocal tradition that connects us to people, places, and creatures, as in the case with the Saami’s spiritual chant, the yoik.   As modern human beings we often look at in...

photo by Patricia Herlevi The Sound of Music opens with a nun Maria (Julia Andrews) roaming around an Austrian mountain singing, listening to church bells, and connecting with the natural world.  We would call her enchanted.  Another movie that provides an enchanting blend of nature and music comes to mind, Brother Sun, Sister Moon which chronicles the early life of Saint Francis of Assisi who used songs to connect to nature.  But do we need movies to remind us of the everyday musical sounds that surround us? And do we need these movies to remind us of our musical connection to the natural world? Take a walk on a park or a street with little car traffic and listen intently to all the sounds that greet your ears.  How do these sounds make you feel? Do they remind you of a childhood event? Are you taken to a pleasant place or do you feel dissonance grinding away at your muscles? Take a walk in a wooded park, where most everyday sounds are drowned out and na...

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...