ICHI-Art
Monday, February 23, 2004
Eddie K @ HOB
FEBRUARY 25, 2004 -- Ash Wednesday. The opening of The Passion of the Christ. Eddie Kowalczyk (of Live), FREE, @ the House of Blues. Damn it's hard to choose. Good thing I'm a sucker for freebies.
Friday, February 13, 2004
SINGING AS A WORLD
I attended a wonderful two hour workshop on Hindustani singing over the weekend. It offered at the Old Town School of Folk Music on the north side of Chicago. It was a lot of fun, and very valuable. I received a packet of materials detailing several aspects of the North Indian music tradition, we listened to some wondrous music, and best of all we sang sang sang.
The teacher, about my age, played a "harmonium," which is like a small organ. He led us (a group of ten students) through round after round of intentioned singing. We worked on the primary modes (or scales) of the music, using Sargam, which are the Hindustani version of what the West refers to as solfege. All the while, there was a drone machine sounded (I love drones). There was drum machine to sound like a tabla, and we also tapped out several primary rhythms (talas) to begin to understand the rhythmic cycles of the music. We even began to sing a short raga, and learned some common embellishments and pitch combinations that singers can use in their vocal improvisations. In actuality, we barely poked our head above water. If we would have, there still would have been a mountain range in front of us. Two hours in this music is barely a speck of dust in an ocean.
Naturally, the Hindustani music discipline requires the most rigorous commitment. It is probably the most pitch-sensitive music in the world. It is just astonishing to clearly hear a Hindustani singer play music. As a Westerner who is educated in 20th C British-American pop music, American Blues and Jazz, and European classical, naturally I have to understand the limits of my own ability to grasp any other music tradition, and especially Hindustani vocal tradition.
Every tradition has its deep nuance, impenetrable to outsiders. You can never leave where you come from. Every tradition, though, also has its gifts to the world, which I believe are open to anyone who brings an open attitude, a desire for deep embrace, and the willingness to learn from square one.
So what can I learn from Hindustani music? In large part, the answer is, “I don’t know, because my cup is empty.” But more generally, through immersion and lots and lots of singing practice, I can learn to experience a substantial part of the aural/harmonic sensibility that informs the tradition. I can learn to feel why the music is several orders of complexity beyond the ability to notate it adequately. I can learn to hear better, and to sing better. I can learn to feel into the various pitches, the music between the pitches, the ways that the pitches can work together. I can learn to sing according to the various meter and rhythmic forms. I can learn some tendencies of when singers choose to improvise, when they choose to sing a repeated melody, and when they are somewhere in between.
What I’m looking for is simply a deeper immersion into music, felt by all of humanity. I’m looking for the best place to learn the deepest sensitivity to pitch that I possibly can. I’m looking to bow my head, sit on the ground, and take a beginner’s mind that can soak in the work of masters, whose level I will in actuality never touch. I’m not looking to steal from the tradition. I’m not too proud to know that the tradition, in truth, is safe no matter what little me does. I am quite small in the face of a music tradition that goes back many, many centuries.
So I seek to honor the tradition by acknowledging one of its primal gifts to humanity, namely its full and vibrant exploration of the most subtle pitch intonation. There are other gifts the music offers, naturally. I could spend a lifetime in this tradition and touch only a small portion of them. By dutifully singing scale after scale, pitch after pitch, reflection after reflection, always against the drone, I feel like I say to the world: "I am small. I cannot do this automatically, nor in a vacuum."
As I sing pure tones against the drone, I feel like in my smallness, I honor all of humanity. Pure tones are available to every one, no matter what culture or tradition. Pure tones are what light us up, and rev our engine, and squeeze our juices. Pure tones are what goose us to the Kosmos. Hindustani music traditions offer several of the clearest and most navigated paths toward the real experience (hearing + singing) of pure tones, and the playful interaction of pure tones.
I can return to my musical home, take a look around, and reflect through music how my aesthetic interior has opened and relaxed. In the simplest of terms, I listen, I resonate, then I stand tall and sing, transformed.
