"I just jammed with a cricket. While I was writing a musical interlude on guitar, it began chirping in the same tempo. After hearing its syncopation, accents galore, and periodic metrical changes within my first and last beat, I moved closer to the cricket somewhere near my doorway. But alas, my massive size, and perhaps the reputed violence of my species, cast silence over my fantasy of sitting face to face with my cricket friend. I know, however, as I have repeatedly found when I consider a cricket’s chirping in my room to be only noise that it will come back, and we will make music again.
Though studying the “music of nature” does not necessitate playing music with different animals, the roots of music can found in this. As a musician’s palette is comprised of his/her aural surroundings, which range from aesthetically pleasing music to noisy industrial sounds, the first music of all peoples was derived from nature’s sonic collage. It is this “original” music that I want to experience and learn, to make naturally resonant music and get a sense of how music can be a functional art, used in daily and ritual life, and by all organisms. I will ask people what meaning they ascribe to music, investigate how it acts as a tool of communication with nature and the spirit realm, and search for the philosophical underpinnings behind aesthetics. My basic question is: “How does music work?”
To prepare for my journey, I have been researching the music and culture of my destinations, speaking with ethnomusicologists and bioacousticians who have done fieldwork in my areas of interest, and learning more about the methodology and techniques popularly employed in the course of fieldwork and field recording. This preparation, and the conceptual and physical tools of these disciplines, will help me explore and immerse myself in these new environments more fully. I will carry out my project primarily through musical study, observance of rituals, and extensive interviews with musicians, priests, shamans, scholars, religious devotees, and laymen. To strike a balance between breadth of multicultural interaction and depth of local understanding, I propose to go to Norway, the Tuva Republic, India, Indonesia, and Cameroon for approximately two and a half months each. This trajectory allows me to follow the moderate weather that allows people to be active outside, and it reduces my airfare since it roughly outlines an ellipse. To overcome the language gap, I will consult a few like-minded individuals in each country as both tutors and interpreters; this way, I can learn the language a few hours a day from different perspectives and also have some assistance where my English and grasp on the local language is insufficient.
Overall, I am moved by the prospect of increasing my understanding of the relationships between animals, humans, and the divine realm through the universal language of music. This project is also important, as we “global citizens” increasingly distance ourselves from the nature with which we can potentially have a symbiotic relationship. Our separation is evident in our devaluing of the lives of flora and fauna, our isolation from nature and one another, and a highly commodified music that is literally out of tune. This study is also about my personal revolution in the presence of those people who have kept loving Mother Nature, listening to her wisdom and serenading her with her melodies in return. It is, however, much bigger than I am, as my quest to breathe life anew into this art that exists in all is symptomatic of a larger demand for a reunion with nature, the divine, and ourselves."
More soon! Enjoy!
