A Slight History of Music

When I think of the origins of music I always think of the opening scene from 2001. The apes pick up the bones and start smashing everything in sight. I always thought that Homo sapiens, our human ancestors, would be more curious. As opposed to smashing things, might they not have hit them and enjoyed the sound. Might they not have picked up another bone and created rhythm. Well, who knows, but music probably started something like that. A rock or a stomp or a vocal chant, probably vocally now that I think about it, but who the hell knows.

Anyway, by the time we have recorded history music had become much more intricate, with different geographic areas creating drastically different music, although still mostly for ostensibly spiritual purposes. The Greeks were probably the closest to having secular music first, at least in the Mediterranean. Although, the epic poems and plays all involved the gods, it may have become more a source of entertainment and amusement in the cities of the city-states, than a truly spiritual encounter. Whether or not this was a healthy trend I couldn't say, but it seems to have been a mark of an end of many an empire when its art ceases to have spiritual value. of recorded history as well, again with incredibly diverse styles being developed throughout the different countries and continents of the world. In many of the economically undeveloped parts of the modern world, dancing remains an important element in a spiritual system that no doubt helps in some small way to cope with the heavy burden that is life on the edge. In a city, it is no doubt hard to hold on to those systems once they're devoid of the rituals that sustained there power to energize individuals and give them the strength to continue through hardship. In many ways it is the removal of that very aspect that can lead a community towards secularization. Once you live for this life and not the next, you don't need to generate as much energy, it is to be provided for you in the form of stimulation.

I see that as a problem. I see no reason why the lyrical content of a song should have any bearing on the spiritual value of that song. All music is spiritual, when you open yrself to the possibility. When you let yourself be taken over by it, and channeling it, inextricated by its electric flow throughout the nerve cells in the body and mind/brain. You don't even have to move or dance to do this; you just have to listen with your eyelids and your fingertips, so to speak.

I guess this is one of the reasons that various protestant religions forbid dancing of any kind, Quakers among them (just goes to show you back in the day everybody was intolerant of something). Since this is just a slight history, I won't go into why the intractible psycho-historical European neuroses bend my interpretation of the secularization process (say that five times fast), but I did want to make this point. Many people have made the connection between dancing and sex, which certainly can be when a man dances with a woman, but historically dancing was a process of obtaining an altered state of consciousness, a shift in your normal perspective, possibly a spiritual experience, which I know is a vague term (I'm still working on a solid definition). Anyway, as I've said these ritualistic dances, infused with a belief system that gives deep meanings to the various symbols, which can be lyrically or through specific movements, are foundational to sustaining a system of beliefs and rituals, which provides internal catharsis and external social cohesion, at the very least.

That would be hard to really develop for societies on the scale as large and variegated as our world has now become. Certainly for a place as diversified as America. Don't get me wrong there are still many communities that use music, song, dance, and spiritual ritual to create that energy that comes from letting yrself go, closing yr eyes (not actually necessary, it's just my way), and becoming part of something greater than yrself, usually a community in towards an organized and agreed upon God in a way that does not often illicit the spiritual experience for me because there is a difference between me and the members of these communities; That my churches congregate in bars, concert halls, stadiums, Tom Lee Park, Beale Street, Landover Street; anywhere there's music playing is where my church is gathering. Music has that spiritual quality inherent in it, in the soul and the feel the musician is pouring into her (just saw NekoCase) last night so I'm gonna go with the feminine pronoun here) words and her music. It is the receiver, the listener who has to be open to the spiritual possibilities of the music to experience them.

It's sort of like Buddhism. We all have the capacity within us to experience if not the transcendental connection to the universe, then at the very least we have the capacity to highly synchronize our brain waves at higher frequencies for longer, if we continue to practice ritualized (not totally necessary, but it would probably help) ways to attain Altered States of Consciousness through meditation, chanting, dancing, music, etc. Medititation has been studied the most through the newer neuro-technologies, and it is pretty well shown that the health effects of meditation are immense. Eventually, dancing, chanting, all of these old school methods of handling existence were very healthy, and could be again if societies are willing to look back at their traditions, as well as looking at the traditions of others. While I won't harp on this aspect of the experience, I don't think that psychedelics or any other form of drug will or will not induce a spiritual experience, it depends on the psycho-social circumstances. There's a group somewhere in South America whose shaman's use tobacco, so it's all in yr perception as shaped by yrself and to a large extent the society in which you live, which is what I've really been driving at. I usually have three or four beers when I see a show, which is not totally healthy when frenetic dancing is involved.

I personally love live music, and I love to dance, which has opened me up to the spiritual elements of music through continued practice of this altered state. After an intense bout of dancing yr body is tired, but energized, and yr brain, at least my brain, seems to want to translate everything people say into movement. I can barely speak, but when I do it holds more weight than normal, or so I feel. Many times I leave and sing wandering, unending, improvised songs, or try to write (not always easy in that state), but I always feel like I'm in accord with the world, if just for a little while.

Shit, I'm rambling again. The point is, it doesn't matter that yr in a bar, or some giant stadium, or out on the street down on Beale, if yr open to the experience it will fill your whole body with an a sensation of purpose, defiance, intensity, consanguinity, equanimity; A whole range of emotion that music can bring into you. It can't really be described though. It has to be felt. Eventually…well, eventually all things are possible.