Max Pollak

I am a ritual singer

It became very clear to me, theoretically, two months ago. It became very clear to me, practically, on Saturday.

I am a ritual singer.

A ritual singer, as I understand it, does two things.

1. Holds group singing in rituals. Eg, Wassail songs in a mid-winter orchard blessing. Congregation singing to welcome the bride at a wedding. And so on. And, in doing so, helps to create a very special atmosphere.

2. Singing, usually improvising, usually with other musicians, to contribute to the atmosphere of a ritual. I did this for the first time, more or less, in a Sufi whirling workshop / ritual on Saturday.

source

People seemed to love it. I loved it. Singing as a gift to people who are active, doing something, going through something - going through something quite magical, even - contributing to the aliveness of a shared experience is for me so On It, in the same way that singing alone to a lot of people just sitting there listening isn't. Also, when you sing for ritual, it's not about you, it's about the experience of the people in the ritual. I'm really comfortable with that, in the way that I'm not at all comfortable with all the attention and fuss that's on you as a regular performing singer.

I hope I'll sing with the Sheikh again. He's a Dude. I'm a ritual singer. Done! Ha! :)

I still haven't figured out what ritual actually means, though, really...

"Resistance to categories"

"The younger generation of American writers is marked by a resistance to categories", said the man on the radio a second ago.

Resistance to categories!

I want to resist musical categories!

I am a classical, jazz, pop, folk, world musician. Ha :)

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)

Press Play

Brazil:

when the stereos stop, people start making music.

Playing with practice

This post sounds like I'm trying to blow my own trumpet, which isn't really what I'm trying to do, but I had an interesting email today that surprised me.

One of my friends is a classically trained pianist. He wrote saying:

I tried out your practice 'technique'... It was a wonderful experience and had a feeling of spontaneity and lack of conscious control that I associate with Contact Impro. It was wonderful. Thank you. And the amazing thing is that in 8.5 years of playing the piano I HAVE NEVER DONE THAT!


so, I think it would be good if play took more of a central place in learning to 'play' an instrument.


here's the full transcript

His first email:
now, at my teacher's suggestion, I am spending a year focusing on Jazz Piano, which I am finding surprisingly theoretical.

I replied
yes, I think Jazz needs to get more playful. The theory is useful but they get too heady about it in my limited experience. I find the best thing is to take a simple chord/sequence/mode/whatever it is you're playing with, throw the book/music away, and just play with it until you don't want to any more. That's my "technique" at least.

he replied
I tried out your practice 'technique' and played my favourite chord C minor, plus a minor 7th, in the LH and then played around in that key with the RH. (actually i have just realised that I mistakenly played an A natural). It was a wonderful experience and had a feeling of spontaneity and lack of conscious control that I associate with Contact Impro. It was wonderful. Thank you. And the amazing thing is that in 8.5 years of playing the piano I HAVE NEVER DONE THAT!

Thanks to bowman_rdb for the pic

Non-commoditised music

I had a nice time in the British Library yesterday. Here's one thing I read:

“In our own society, creative symbolic play tends to be closely associated with a class of specialists we call “artists”, and the results of their activities are treated as “works of art” having (for better or worse) value as commodities.” (Basso 1985:2-3) 

I read it again. Exactly. And that's reasonably specific to our culture, not so to some other cultures.

So I don't do "creative symbolic play", I do "creative musical play" - and I think I want to keep the creative play, but drop the commoditization.

So the first thing in my mind when I woke up today were some rules to try playing by.

1. Love what you are doing. 

It's for your joy. It's about now, not outcomes. If it feels wrong, or bad or tight or forced, take a break, step back, rethink if necessary. You'll find your way back.

2. Play

Play in your practice, play in your sharing

3. When it's time to share, share

There is no performance. There is only sharing. In various forms.

- playing with others

eg a jam, a choir, a band, a quartet

- helping others play

eg, leading campfire singalongs, knowing the chords and words, helping it feel good

- an extended listening

when you feel you've got something long and beautiful to share, invite people to an extended listening where they lie and listen, and you give them something rich to listen to

ok a fourth rule has just come to me

4. It's not yours, it's God's

I don't mind what God means to you: alternative names may include Nature/Geist/Allah/Life/Buddha/Tao/that general sense of some kind of 'higher power'/Music itself - why not.

A musician is like one dancer in a partner dance. Our partner is Music, mysterious music, this immaterial landscape we've been given to get lost in like some enchanted woods.

I think what we are doing when we make music, when we practice, when we take care of the music we are able to 'make'

oo there's a problematic word.

I don't think we make music.

I think music is made through us.

My Indian singing teacher Atul says that he's like a track maker and God is the train. He has to lay really good tracks and take care of them so that when the train comes it can go whenever it wants. He's a violin player. He's incredible.

Right now, my tracks are quite shit. Whatever instrument I'm playing, voice included my body cannot keep up with the music in my mind. I can dance with music a bit but it's not great.

A really great dancer does what Atul does.

A really great dancer takes really good care of the material elements - what the fingers / body can do - so that that immaterial enchanted wood can come into the material world.

But we didn't 'make' that wood. No-one did.

...

I do a lot of yoga. At the end of every class we sit in crossed legs with our hands in prayer position, and every single class for the last four years at least, Alaric has said, softly, "lift your heart and bow your head."

Finally last month he explained why he says that. It's so you don't take personal credit for your successes, he said. That's really important. You have to dedicate your successes to something else. Otherwise you get fucked up like Amy Winehouse.

Ok. I think that's my manifesto of the moment.

Let's see how that goes.