Totally high. I’m at the Omega Institute in New York State, just after the first night of a workshop with Bobby McFerrin. The Master
thanks to pitch, rhythm and God for the picture. Oo. Pitch rhythm and God?
Circle songs
He creates them quickly. No premeditation. He gets a feeling, starts singing something, turns it into a loop, looks around for which voice it is, assigns it appropriately. Creates another, off he goes.
He creates parts which he can break into chunks. It’s like a dolls house that you can take parts off. You can take off the whole roof, or this or that chimney, or all chimneys leaving the roof, or the whole roof again. By which I mean, he’ll give three voices the same part in harmony, and the part can be split in two. Then he plays call and response. Sometimes with one voice, silencing it one round while he sings in the gap that creates, bringing it back in again one round while he stops singing, silencing it again and singing back. Or he’ll do that with half the part – silencing it for the first half of the loop and singing, bringing it back for the second half. Sometimes he’ll do that with one voice, the top voice, say, keeping the lower two voices of that part, sometimes he’ll do that with all three voices, just leaving, say, the bottom three voices keeping a different part of the sound going. Like sometimes peeling off the trees, and sometimes peeling off the trees and the earth showing the bare rock beneath.
The conductor in the middle plays solo. They’re not taking from the group sound, the group doesn’t subjugate to support them; they’re contributing. Giving whatever they can to raise the energy. Bits. Pieces. Artful little contributions. The energy raises. They alter the piece. Add something. A hey on an off beat. That gets gradually louder. An underlying beatbox. Something that gives.
It’s brilliant. It’s fucking brilliant.
Small group improv
Wowweeeeee I can’t say how delighted I was to see what they started with.
A group of five. Bobby got going with a loose little loop that sometimes stuck to the pattern and sometimes didn’t. Gradually each singer began to contribute something complementary. All voices relaxed and soft. Everything playful and delicious and musical. The piece meandered, grew, took a left, up a sharp hill, down a soft slope, suddenly in unison, now polyphonic again, Oh My God this is heaven and I want to jump in and I want to swim and swim and live in this.
The four singers accompanying him are the teachers. They are Rhiannon, Christiane Karam, Joey Blake and David Worm. They are humble and brilliant and beautiful and I want to sit at their feet and apprentice myself to them, to Rhiannon and Bobby in particular.
There is embodied grace, embodied humility, embodied excellence, a palpable spirituality that is about grounded authentic play, play with elegant beauty, play with beastly snarls, play with all that it is to be human, but all that so subtly, because above all it is music and it is very very musical. Sometimes I find, in myself and in others, that when the musical expertise is lacking an over-expressiveness can take over to compensate. These guys have the balance.
Here are some of the things that they said.
Someone voiced my question: what are you doing when you do that? They said things like this:
I’m thinking, co-operate, co-operate, co-operate. Blend in. Don’t do anything tricky.
Give away. Find out where you fit. Trust. We have each others’ backs. A lot of love. Being very quiet. Listening for what’s being given.
Everyone has a tone, sound and rhythm. Don’t be impatient. Take time to listen for what the person is doing.
Not really thinking. Anticipating what they might do (often wrongly), supporting and accompanying.
Practice informs and enriches your vocabulary. Listen listen listen to all manner of things. Among other activities that will develop your vocabulary.
It’s all jazz. Be loose, be free, don’t think too much about it, let the music come out.
Skill building. Become confident to jump in. At first it will be fearful, of course. “Anything worthwhile doing, if it’s new, you’ll be a little afraid of it.” (Bobby).
Watch the music come out. See where it goes.
Practice
Play with different sounds, the whole alphabet. Play with each consonant against each vowel. Quickly. Light and agile. Play your way through the whole alphabet in something like a minute.
Could be supported by an underlying slow groove circle song.
Someone can lead it. Calling things like chord number – singing the instructions. And say things like: Stop. Hold a silence. Then, Go.
Humm. What can I do, each week, little by gentle little, humble by playful humble, enjoyably, to expand my vocabulary?
