I acquired some more material on Buffy SainteMarie after putting together the original slides on Buffy and her music, so this will be a supplement to the original presentation material. This material comes form the Newport Folk Festival and from the ABC mini-series titled Music Scene. Some comments by some of the folk musicians there caught my attention, and I decided to use them as a springboard to further articulate the philosophy of music I expressed at the beginning of the class. Something related to this is likely to be the focus of the essay question on our exam.
The Song of the Universe; Everything is Music The folk music movement provided a forum for Peter LaFarge, Buffy Sainte-Marie and for Johnny Cash to do his American Indian ballads.
The Song of the Universe Everything is music; We don t play Music, Music plays Us. Several musicians at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival expressed in a ten second sound byte a lens of perspective and a paradigm of understanding regarding the place of humans in the world that expresses the philosophy of music found in much of Indigenous America. I would argue that if you could come to understand the full import and significance of these few words, they would provide you with greater enlightenment than possibly all the other courses you might take during your undergraduate education.
What does it mean or imply when one says everything is music. We don t play music; music plays us. It says that music is an inherent aspect or dimension of the universe. It exists separate and apart from humans; it pre-dates human existence. Humans did not create music; music in a significant way created humans. Music is an inherent dimension of the universe and of all life. According to the Hopi, according to the vision of Black Elk and according the the meaning of the Navajo concept of H0zh= that permeates all of creation (to provide just a few Indigenous examples), the Song of the Universe is sung by all who hear it and allow it to compose their lives and enhance their experience.
Black Elk s Grand Vision
In his Grand vision, Black Elk saw future environmental disasters (global warming?)
In this environmental trauma, species of every kind try to resist the devastation to their habitat, but all are unsuccessful. Then they call for Eagle Wing Stretches (Black Elk s name in his vision), and they cheer him as he comes with the powers of the six Grandfathers of the World, and he is able to end the trauma and restore the earth to health again: The flames died. The trees and the grasses were not withered any more and murmured happily together, and every living being sang in gladness with whatever voice it had. (page 33)
To the Navajo, h0zh= is beauty, harmony, joy, peace, health and wellness in the broadest sense of the term. H0zh= is infinite in form, but singular in its inherent characteristics. The Songs of the Fourth World for the Hopi, the Maya and many other Indigenous cultures is not a single tune or form. It is singular in nature, but it is infinitely diverse in its various forms and expressions. The natural characteristics of music are rhythm, melody, harmony, synchrony and complementarity. These features are inherent characteristics of the universe, and that is why to most Indigenous Americans the world is a song, not a conquest; it is a concert, not a contest. The Song of the Universe is a cosmic symphony in which the voices and lives of all creatures blend and bond together into a common yet diverse harmonious, melodious, rhythmic synchronization. That is the mystic experience that only music, art and dance can provide.
Music is more than playing instruments and singing songs. The fellow in the movie says everything is music. This comment came in response to a conversation with the camera crew doing the filming at the Festival. They cut the filming of this group off when they thought their song was over, and that provoked a friendly discussion. The cameraman asked if they were offended by them cutting off the song before it was done. One guy says, no, it just tells me where you are at implying he did not fully understand their song and their music.
This group played with some unconventional instruments, including a jug. Then they tell the cameraman that the camera can also be a musical instrument, and that you can make music with the camera if you let it play you, if you let it capture the music of the universe. And that is what then led to the statements everything is music. You do not choose to play music; music chooses to play you. I would add, and it is implied in these statements by these folk musicians, that everything is music if you are able to hear the music that is playing inside of you and playing all about you in the world in which you live. That music, that song of the universe, is trying to find its voice and expression in your life and in the lives of every creature in the community of life on the earth.
People frequently say that much if not most of music is about love and expressions of love. I say love, in its most sublime expression, is not a theme of music; it is music in its purest form. When two beings bond together in deep and intense love, they reach an intensity of spiritual and physical oneness that is an authentic fulfillment of their universal nature, and they experience a synchrony of rhythm, motion and emotion that is musical in it most sublime expression. A joint conjugal orgasm is one of the most powerful and beautiful ways in which we participate in the song of the universe. And music in all of its diverse forms is analogous by extension to an orgasm with the cosmos. It is singing in harmony and in synchrony with all of creation.
Art is also a form of music, as well as music is a form of art. Art is part of the music of the universe, the Song of Creation in Hopi terms. When the Inuit artist picks up a stone to carve, he or she does not think about what form can he or she impose on this stone. They think about what form lies within the stone, and when they discover or discern that form, they release it through their carving. Art is not imposing an alien form; it is discovering an inherent form! We will also see that this is the way the highly acclaimed Apache sculptor Allan Houser works with very huge stones and pieces of marble
The ancestors of the Zuni migrated for over 800 years not in search of wealth, power or conquest, and not even in search of adventure; they migrated in search of the center place where the energies of the universe swirl and a place where they could live in harmony and in synchrony with the song of Halona Itiwana, the Center Place. They did not seek a place with abundant resources to develop and exploit, but a place with which they could harmonize. Singing, dancing and living in harmony with a place in the universe is for them the greatest ecstasy of life, the highest achievement in life and the most sublime way to live in the world.
Here we have people migrating to find the spiritual center of the sacred landscape where the energies swirl, where they seek to obtain the permission of the water spider and other species to see if it feels OK with them, and to see if this is a place they can give themselves to!
The Zuni sunrise song is not a song created by humans about the sunrise. It is the music of the sunrise finding voice and expression through humans. It is not humans imposing a human composition on the sunrise; it is humans listening to the sunrise with all of their sensibilities, discovering its music and character, and then being a conduit for the expression of the music of the sunrise. The music of the sunrise is playing in humans; humans are not composing it. Humans are conduits for the music of the sunrise. The music of the sunrise, however, does not just play itself through humans. If you have ever been in nature during the sunrise, birds sing the the song of the sunrise in a loud and diverse chorus. It is really one of the closest things one can experience to that grand cosmic concert when all of creation and sang and danced to the song of the great Black Stallion in the vision of Black Elk.
Humans and birds and other living creatures did not create the music of the sunrise; they can only provide a conduit through which the music of the sunrise can be played, experienced and sung. That is what these folk musicians discovered, and its a discovery that the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas made many thousands of years ago. There is a song inherent in every place and in every dimension of this world, in every species and in every person in this world, and that song can play us, play in us, play through us, if we only have the sensibilities to hear it and to allow it to play us. We do not play the music; the music plays us when we allow it to guide, direct and compose our lives in synchrony and in harmony with all of creation. That is the First Nations philosophy of music as best I can tell in the 45 years to which I have been exposed to it and been a part of it.
Most musicians and most music in some way or in some manner captures, expresses and/or responds to the Song of the Universe. The Song of the Universe is singular in nature, but infinite in form and expression. The Song of the Universe does not play in its entirety in any single being or in any single community or in any single species, and no music and no musician expresses it without flaws or limitations. But all of us, to one degree or another and in one way or another, sing the Song of Universe and live in its midst. It composes our lives, orders our experience and enhances our awareness of the world about us to the degree that we allow it to play us.
Many of us have been given this notion that the music of the elite, the symphony orchestras, and the music of popular idols and celebrities, is somehow better music than we can make, or better music than First Nations people make. We are led to believe that more instrumentality makes for better music. The quality or value of music is the degree to which it enhances our lives by allowing the song of the universe to compose our lives and sing through our voices and instruments. The music should be measured as to whether it puts us in accord with the communities of life in which we live. Remember the Buddhists monks singing the AUM, the song of the energy of the universe. That was the simplest of all songs, and it yet may be the most sublime.
We have made music into a commodity, a means to wealth for a few, rather than a life enhancing experience for all. Woody Guthrie once wrote in the front of one of his song books: This music was composed and copyrighted by me, and any use of it, with or without my permission, will be greatly appreciated by me. Sing it, copy it or play it in your homes, churches, schools and communities, but do not try to limit anyone s access to it.
Buffy Sainte-Marie Sings Universal Soldier on ABC s Music Scene in 1970
Pete Seeger has put some new phrases in this song to make it applicable to the Iraq war. At 88 years of age he sings this song today at rallies and festivals.