Poor old Amy

I just heard the sad news about Amy Winehouse's death.

She was in a tough position.

In a great TED talk, Liz Gilbert muses on what a difficult position contemporary arts culture puts artists in.

Back in the day, she said, artistic inspiration was understood to be about more than the individual. The creative at work was inspired, in-spired; spirit was in the house. The creative was a channel. Upon her shoulder sat a 'genie' - etymological origin of 'genius' - some small creature who would pour the ideas into the creative, who would then pour them into the work. If the musician was fabulous, they were lucky to have a great genie. It wasn't all about them. If they were having a fallow period, bad old genie wasn't showing up for work. The ego was protected from taking direct responsibility for the inevitable peaks and troughs in creative productivity.

Not so these days with our secular ideas: the individual is responsible for the greatness when the work is great, and has lost it, fallen from grace, when the work lacks spark.

It puts the ego in a difficult place. Especially for someone as talented as Amy. Huge inflation from the huge audiences, deals, money, fame. Huge crashes when her identity struggles to healthily accommodate these bloated notions.

She would have struggled too, I imagine, with the absence of a grounding humility in the idea of the role of the musician.

I once sung with some Kora players from Mali and was struck by their humble, generous, relaxed and playful attitude towards making and sharing music. The Kora player in Mali plays a cultural service, they explained to me, with three main roles. Firstly, to hold the values of the culture that are embedded in the traditional songs. Their role is to learn the songs, know the songs, teach the songs and sing the songs so that the people remember who they are and what they value. (The Shona songs from Zimbabwe that I sing with Chartwell play a similar role in carrying values. "Where will I be when the problem comes? I will be with my father" are the lyrics to one entire song. It tells a lot about the role of a father. "Don't make the children wear patchwork: patchwork clothes are only for adults," sings another. Patchwork fabric is a sign of poverty. If there is poverty, the priority is to protect the children from feeling poor, the song instructs.)

Two more roles for the Kora player from Mali: to create a party atmosphere for weddings and celebrations, and to keep the peace. The kora is wonderfully soothing - you've heard Toumani Diabate right? So, if you argue with, say, your partner, someone will go and fetch the nearest kora player to come and sit nearby and play the kora while you argue. And when he does, you will not be able to help but soften. You will soften into a way of communicating that is less violent, and as a result, face a better chance of hearing and being heard, and finding a resolution to your conflict.

How cool is that?

I think we need these ideas as musicians, of service, of embedded social role, of being a channel for 'god' rather than 'god' itself.

Malidoma Some agrees. He says:

"[Artistic] talents are widely recognised in indigenous communities because indigenous people assume that the artist is a priest or a priestess through whom the Other World finds an entrance into this world. If the priest or the priestess regards with reverence and humility the world where his or her art originates, then the work done becomes lasting and impressive. If not, the artist does not last very long."  - The Healing Wisdom of Africa

I bet a lot of people helped Amy to package herself - her sound, her appearance, her songs, her stage presence, her CDs, her financial management.

I wonder if anybody helped Amy to see the enormous talent she had been given in this way.

Somehow I doubt it. These ideas are not prevalent in our culture.

Poor Amy.

Practice; Prayer; Ritual

-       At the Rainbow (hippy) Gathering in Brazil, before food, we would stand in a circle holding hands and sing songs. The last song was always the same: "Esso es familia (this is family); esso es comunidade (this is community), esso es sagrado (this is sacred)."

-       On the stero somewhere a couple of days later I heard a kid singing hip-hop. One of the lines was “not much is sacred.”

      I put my head back to think. What in my life is sacred? I scoured. Ah! The yoga mat. That is sacred. Most of the time. That’s a start.

-       Reading Chatwin p200, about the dearth of ritual among Baseri nomads of Iran. It's noteworthy because tribal life tends to be laced with ritual. Norweigan anthropologist Frederick Bath, Chatwin writes, “concluded that the journey itself was the ritual, that the road to summer uplands was the Way, and that the pitching and dismantling of tents was prayer more meaningful than any in the mosque. (Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines, 1998:200-1).

I lie back in my hammock and think.

Ritual tends to be symbolic.

There is a dial, a spectrum

One end: loads of symbolism – for example, Indian Hindu rituals.

Other end: no symbolism, eg Baseri journeys.

I pick up my guitar and begin to play some scales. I started yesterday. I’ve been playing a lot here in Brazil and the tips of my fingers are starting to edge away from the composition, wanting to explore and improvise, but they don't know how. I started playing scales as a way in to the instrument, to get to know some of its forms and ways.

As I steadily play the scales up and down the fret board, I think

Maybe practice is prayer.

Not symbolic prayer, but actual.

I think of Atul’s image of the practicing musician as the railway track layer. God is the train that comes through you when you improvise, he says. The better you lay your tracks, the further they go, the more that God can play through you.

In playful practice you are learning to play creatively and freely with the instrument.

But in scales you are not playing or being creative.

You are being steady, repetitive, focused, humble, smoothly concentrated.

It is a form of meditation.

And if musicians are the architects of heaven as Bobby says, then maybe our practice is our prayer.

(Thanks to vanarts for the picture)

Genius

The artist in Dagara, Burkina Faso

"Community can create a container for natural abilities that can find no place in a world defined by economics and consumerism - abilities such as artistic talent or shamanic gifts, healing skills and clairvoyance. These talents are widely recognised in indigenous communities because indigenous people assume that the artist is a priest or a priestess through whom the Other World finds an entrance into this world. If the priest or the priestess regards with reverence and humility the world where his or her art originates, then the work done becomes lasting and impressive. If not, the artist does not last very long. The artist as an artisan of the sacred can cooperate in bringing the sacred to birth in this world. Indigenous people believe that without artists, the tribal psyche would wither into death. Carvers and painters produce their things for ritual purposes, which are enjoyed by the entire village. Storytellers act like the repository of the village genealogical memory.

"Artistic ability, the capacity to heal, and the vision to see into the Other World are connected for indigenous people. In my village there is only a thin line between the artist and the healer. In fact, there is no word in the Dagara language for art. The closest term to it would be the same word as sacred. It is as if there is an intrinsic sacredness to artistic symbolism. This is perhaps why art objects do not go on show. This is also perhaps why the artist does not think about how to gain public stature. In the village the ability to birth art is a sign of approval by the Spirit World.

...

"... collecting art objects in one place, to indigenous people, would be a sign that people want something from the Other World that is not being supplied adequately; they would be experiencing a thirst that is not being quenched. And, even more important, it would mean that the community is in struggle, is experiencing a longing for the sacred. In such a place of struggle, the longing for the sacred is so enhanced that people are collecting art objects. From an indigenous point of view, the isolation of self and community from Spirit appears to have translated into the imprisonment of art. The museums of the West, from an indigenous perspective, speak poignantly of the sharply felt longing for Spirit experienced by modern people."

Malidoma Some, the healing wisdom of africa, p96-7