There was a news story coming out of Quebec about an incident of racism at a hockey game. It was a minor league game. One of the players was black. He was taunted repeatedly in an extremely aggressive, and humiliating way specifically because of the colour of his skin. The player’s family was at the game and they were also harassed. The player’s teammates asked the referees to intervene and they did nothing, the other people in the stands did nothing to defend those being harassed, and the player ended up leaving the game early because of the incident. This story really upset me. The description of how they harassed the young man and his family really makes me feel ashamed that people could act that way; I feel so sorry for what they had to go through that day. Also my daughter is of mixed race, and to think that this is something that is happening in Canada and could potentially happen to her is very upsetting.
It has been observed that students who learn about Social Justice Issues in school are more likely to become engaged with these issues outside of class. Speaking and learning about SJ issues helps students define it, be aware of it, and realize its importance which results in speaking up and acting in real life situations. In my opinion the people in the stands who sat and did nothing are just as implicit in these events as those who were committing these attacks.
This song is simple in nature. It has a good feeling, and an easy jazz swing feel that lends itself to the message of the song. It’s about friendship, and sticking together through tough times. Value is placed in friendship, so that’s shy I see it as being for the common good.
People in prison have to deal with living a hard life. They experience loss of power, they are rejected by society, and labelled as outcasts.
Prisons are built around retributive justice rather than restorative justice. Music programs try to rebuild lives…increase self-esteem and confidence, they are an outlet for creativity, emotional expression, pleasurable experience. From a social aspect it can strengthen social skills, nurture identity, increase concentration, coordination, and motor skills, it creates positive social networks and a new perspective on how to use leisure time.
The chapter begins by describing history of music coming from people who were in jail, or spent time in jail. The music was an expression of pain, and described the prison experience. The history of the blues is connected to prisons. Some historical blues songs hold knowledge about the history. Notable musician- Huddie Ledbetter aka Leadbelly 1889-1949.
The bulk of the chapter outlines Music programs that have been implemented globally and the positive results. Some of the projects:
Spain. Two cries of Freedom: Gypsy Flamenco from the prisons of Spain.
National music contest for inmates. Winner gets money and reduced sentence. People sent in demo tapes, narrowed down to a smaller group which had to play for panel. Two winners recorded a cd of music. The success of the project and cd lead to provisional parole.
Ireland needs music therapy programs for prisons. Approx. 77% of prisoners re-offend on release.
Hawaiian prison recording by Brian Wong was recorded on donated equipment. The proceeds from the CD are donated to Crime victim compensation commission- aims to help the victims of crime and create reconciliation between offenders and victims.
Rehabilitation and Transformation- Prison Reform
UK 2002: 76 artists or organizations involved in 650 arts projects in UK prisons, half of the projects are with young offenders
York project with women in prisons. The women get to create quality music alongside professionals. Following the music activities, the women get to perform concerts in other prisons around the UK. The project helps build self-esteem, self-confidence.
Men’s project involved a production of Julius Ceaser. Results showed that inmates did not commit other offences during production, and offence rates dropped by half for 6 months after.
Oslo, Norway. Objective is to improve chances of being able to function in everyday life. Music as expression and to change emotions, a creative outlet. Improve social skills, self-confidence, positive use of time.
Project include 3 phases
1 Music in Prison
2 Music following release
3 Permanent music projects
The Prisons Transformation Project
South Africa The reality of male prison is that you dominate or be dominated. BBC documentary- Killers don’t Cry”, showed extremely hardened criminals set to a backdrop of dramatic music, a female music therapist helps inmates face their emotions. The gang of criminals all break down in tears, including their leader a man who couldn’t remember how many people he’s killed, but does recall some of the brutal acts he has committed. This breakthrough leads to reconciliation between two rival gangs.
“Music plays an important role in keeping the peace behind bars. It keeps people’s minds off the negative and provides a healthy outlet for creativity. It increases empathy and reduces animosity. With additional research and funding, music could be utilized even more purposeful to amplify the opportunity for self-expression and enjoyment.” (Jones, 2005)
Jones is a man serving a long term sentence in a prison in the US.
I chose to explore the music of Turkey, specifically folk music. I stumbled across folk music that is played by an Ashik.
An Ashik (Azerbaijani: aşıq; Turkish: aşık, Armenian: աշուղ) was traditionally a singer who accompanied his song— be it a dastan (traditional epic story, also known as hikaye) or a shorter original composition—with a long necked lute (bağlama) in Turkish culture and related Turkic cultures. The modern Azerbaijani ashik is a professional musician who usually serves an apprenticeship, masters playing the bağlama, and builds up a varied but individual repertoire of Turkic folk songs. Below are examples of Asik music from two Turkish musician songwriters. I find the music and performances to be very intimate and captivating. I find the music to be very evocative, full of depth and meaning, although I have no idea what they are saying.
Aşik Sümmani- (1861 – 1915) was an Aşik, a singer who performed with a lute, from Narman, Erzurum Province, Turkey
Âşık Veysel, was a Turkish minstrel and highly regarded poet of the Turkish folk literature.
Turkish folk music (Türk Halk Müziği) combines the distinct cultural values of all civilisations that have lived in Turkey and its former territories in Europe and Asia. It was the most popular music genre in the Ottoman Empire era (spanning 600 years and only ending with the forming of the Turksih Republic 1922). After the foundation of the Turkish Republic, Atatürk asked to make a wide-scale classification and archiving of samples of Turkish folk music from around the country, which was launched in 1924 and continued until 1953 to collect around 10,000 folk songs. In the 1960s, Turkish folk music met with radio and folk musicians like Aşık Veysel, Neşet Ertaş, Bedia Akartürk became the most popular names of the Turkish folk music.
Trauma Trails comes as a result of a research study of the Australian Aboriginal peoples and the cross generational traumatic effects of colonization. To understand the people you need to know their history and their values.
The Aboriginal people have ceremonial obligations to the land, in order that the land will nurture them. They also have ceremonies to manage conflict, people meet social obligations and in turn they are nurtured in a process of reciprocity.
Identity is formed from relationships to the land, and relationships between people. Ancestors created the known world. They gave form and meaning to: creation powers; rights to human groups; land; sacred objects; songs/ dances/ art forms. By doing this, they created continuing and interconnecting relationships between past, present and future. In the present, ceremony allows for teaching and storytelling. An import concept to understand the Indigenous has to do with the Dreamings: The Aboriginal people were intimately familiar with the land. The acts and events of their lives humanized the land in the process of the Dreaming. Human action in co-creation with the Creator and the ancestral beings.
After trauma, the single most important factor for recovery is supportive family.
A series of workshops were delivered to promote exploring the personal and collective stories in a safe environment. The workshops helped people connect their stories into a whole, to aid understandings and provide insight. Sitting and listening to each other in a deep-reflective discussion, or dadirri.
Healing as awakening- refers to the phenomenon of people becoming conscious of their own needs in multiple domains of their individual and collective existence, and of an acknowledgment that these needs were unmet.
I found the discussion interesting and the chanting to be very powerful, I wish we had time to go longer with it. First of all, the introduction of the poet Rumi really connected with me in the brief amount of time that we spoke about him. I will definitely will be reading more of him in my spare time, which at the moment is almost nil. I found the imagery of his words very appealing and his philosophy connected personally; it was only an introduction, but intriguing none the less.
I feel I gained some insight into the Islamic Sufi culture, specifically why men and women hold different positions in society/ what their roles are. I don’t think I realized, as some others in our class, the extent to which we would be delving into other cultures, religions, and practices, and spending time on social justice issues. The last time I was at University was about 15 years ago and a lot has changed since then. Personally, I think I’m slowly starting to get what we’re after here. Simply put, as community music facilitators our role is not only to get some people together to play music, there is a much bigger picture, and the music is just the vehicle to grow, learn, and heal ourselves as a community. We ‘need’ to broaden our perspective and our awareness of the world around us and in order to do that it might get uncomfortable at times. How can we foster an inclusive environment without knowing anything about the diverse backgrounds of the people within it? Understanding where people are coming from (and I don’t mean just physically) is vital to creating a safe, inclusive space for everyone. No longer are we able, if we ever were, to ignorantly think that what we want and need is what everyone else needs. If I don’t try to grow and learn in this way my own biases will direct the facilitation and it will end up being exclusive. That’s just the beginning I believe; a starting point for growth…
Speaking to what I could see was some others reaction to the class…I can only say, from my own perspective that I am not at all bothered by discussion and participation in religious cultural activities, but being asked to participate in certain religious acts may go to far for me, but I don’t feel it has reached that point in class yet. It does bring up the question, is what we were doing sacrilegious? It didn’t really feel like we praying to me, so I was fine with it. Trying to connect with a higher power/ the universe/ god in a mystical way is real, it can be done because I have felt it. It is like Sparks said, talking and studying something will only get you so far, but empirical knowledge is really is true knowledge; participating in the chanting is the best way to gain an understanding of it. I don’t have any strict religious beliefs, so I just look at these activities as an outsider getting a peak into another culture, and while I’m doing so I’m trying to learn something of the essence of it so that I can have some perspective and use that to engage people in the future as I described earlier. I think just being open minded is important. We all have our own beliefs, even not believing in something is a belief, and I think we have all showed tolerance and acceptance. I have been impressed by the fact that we have been able to do what we have done in class considering that we are a diverse group with different beliefs. We all need to reach out to each other, help each other, and learn from each other. If we can’t then it doesn’t speak well to our futures as community musicians.
Hello all, here are some of the points from my presentation on The Poetics and Politics of Pygmy Pop.
Schizophonic Mimesis- separation of sound from its source. copying/imitating sounds.
In the 1950’s and 1960’s Anthropologist, and Ethnomusicologists made recordings of the Central African forest peoples (Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Mbuti, Baka, BaBenzele, Binga, Ngombe are all considered ‘pygmies’ and are forest people from the Central African Region.
For the Mbuti, song is used to communicate with the forest. The sound awakens the forest. The forest is benevolent and powerful. Quiet (social cooperation) pleases the forest and Noise (laziness, aggressiveness) displeases the forest. Singing opposes noise and silence and stimulates the forest to start talking. Singing opposes death, reestablishes harmony.
I should point out that the tribes had different songs for different purposes, but to illustrate the point of how their sacred music was taken and re-contextualized, and sold as a commodity I will use the music created with the papaya-stem whistle by the BaBenzele people and what it led to.
The whistle produces one tone only. The BaBenzele developed the technique of blowing into the whistle and then alternating the tone with a vocal pitch. This is a recording taken from an ethnographic study.
In Hebie Hancock, Headhunters popular recording of “Watermelon Man” one of the band members who had heard the ethnographic recording produced a similar sound by blowing into a beer bottle.
Two decades later Madonna sampled Hancock’s recording in her song Sanctuary:
Hancock sees himself as having the authority to make such musical references, and that in his case it’s politically or culturally acceptable. It’s in the jazz tradition of recycling to burrow, quote, or build upon what’s already been done. It’s the same self-referential style that we see in rap and hip-hop.
Madonna’s record company WB gives Herbie Hancock a co-author credit on her song, and they licensed and paid for the sample. Both Hancock and Madonna profit off the recordings while the BaBenzele received nothing. You can also hear the same whistle technique more recently in Arcade Fire’s song ‘Everything Now’
Who owns this sound? Who controls it, and who should have the rights to use it?
Here are some other points, and questions I came away with from the book:
The recordings of the Central African forest peoples were meant to be Anthropological and Ethnomusicological documents and yet they end up reaching a large and diverse audience, packaged, commodified, recontextualized.
The music of the Central African forest peoples is distinct, and it is their own so shouldn’t they be the ones to say how their invention is used.
Distinct music of a culture that has sacred meanings being sold by people who appropriate their music, bastardizing it. Sometimes claiming that they care about the forest peoples, but doing almost nothing to support their way of life as in ‘Deep Forest’.
‘Western’ researchers went to foreign lands to study, and document a foreign peoples. Western culture is linked to a colonial past which includes exploitation and inequitable treatment of those they tried to dominate.
Schizophonic Mimeses
Post Modernism: appropriation from mimesis is the official bastard of social hierarchy and shows the mark of unequal power relations. Lots of other artists have drawn inspiration from African music, but when is it ok and when is it inappropriate?
Are African-American, and African artists in a position of power over the African Forest peoples?
Governments of Central African countries mine their resources in-order to help pay back large debt owed to Western countries. The people who suffer culturally lose some of their habitat, and gain nothing in the process.
In reading Ray Brooks book “Blowing Zen” I found myself wrapped up in his personal story; a journey of self discovering, a search for meaning in life, and his journey of learning to master the Shakuhachi.
In Ray’s story I found something that I think any musician can identify with, a desire to be the best that we can be. It is not necessarily about trying to achieve perfection; there is beauty in learning and not fixating on an end goal or result. It is the act of creating/ performing art that is important more than anything else. Why is it important? What do we get from practicing, learning, and performing art? Are we healing ourselves, or healing others who hear us? What is the value of learning an instrument, why not do something else more important?
Specifically, Ray learns to play the Shakuhachi, a bamboo flute that is very difficult to play and requires patience, concentration, and a strong spirit. Suizen or ‘blowing zen’ is a shakuhachi practice where performing the pieces is an act of meditation. The Japanese Komuso monks which translates as “Monks of nothingness and emptiness” lived a life of poverty and hardship and would travel around playing the shakuhachi for money and food.
This piece “San An” is performed by Katsuya Yokoyama, a shakuhachi master who becomes Ray’s teacher while he is living in Japan studying the shakuhachi.
My name is Luke William Cyrus Hunter. My mother chose a name from the bible for each of her children, I was given the name Luke. William is my father’s name. My Dad picked Cyrus for no reason other than he liked the sound of it, and Hunter is my Scottish family name.
I am Canadian born, my Dad’s family tree in Canada is deep. His ancestors were among the first early European settlers in this area (Somewhere in Southern Ontario, close to this region). I identify as being Scottish, English, Irish and Canadian. My family- wife and daughter, are my people and we belong to each other. I come from a close family- parents, one brother, one sister, and we see each other regularly. The people that I feel I belong to has expanded since meeting my wife, whom is African Canadian. As time passes my tie to her community gets stronger and stronger. And finally I consider music, and musicians a tribe of people that I belong to as well.
I identify as being Canadian, and also feeling comfortable, and at peace when I’m on and close to water. I was a rower throughout high school, I have a some experience sailing, canoeing, and I worked on a Cruise Ship.
Music has been a constant for me throughout my ever changing life. Playing music, and creating sound grounds me. When I don’t have time to play music I don’t feel like myself; I feel like something is missing. When I’m feeling overwhelmed with life, anxious, or nervous, music is what settles me. It was in my teenage years, when I found myself living in a new town, not knowing anyone, I ended up spending more of my time alone and this was really the beginning of finding a deeper connection to music. I had grown up playing piano, but I began learning guitar, singing, writing songs and eventually playing with others from the community. At this point I was hooked. I went on to study music in college and university. I played in many bands and developed close personal friendships with those that I worked with. Some of those people that I spent so much time with I consider my closest friends, and second family. Because of the skills I have acquired, I have always found myself collaborating with others, and supporting people in their own pursuits, but leading bands and writing my own music is something I always come back to, and in which I find great fulfillment. I work in many musical setting/ styles… jazz, blues, funk, pop, folk, even country. A year ago I wrote and recorded an album with a friend in which I was the primary person involved, writing the songs myself, playing all the instruments, except drums, percussion and also a couple other guests spots on two songs, and I co-produced. I sang lead and harmony, played various keyboards, and synths, guitar, and keyboard bass. For this project I chose to write music that was upbeat, mostly had a positive message, and that was dance- oriented, not dance music, but music that you can dance to, and incorporated vintage and new keyboard sounds . It was a great experience and I’m currently working on a follow-up album.
I made two videos for the project. This one features the scenery of Niagara Falls, and my daughter at about a minute in dancing.
