Thank you so much for writing this book. I have been following along for a while now and was really excited to see the last installment was finally here!
As someone who likes to play improvised music in random outdoor locations, a lot of this resonated with what I'm doing. I've had a lot of people scratch their heads and assume that I'm busking and playing covers but I explain the places are often remote and the aim is to play for the place, not the people. If people stumble on it and like it they can enjoy it, but I'm not playing for them or money. There's really no point to it, which is the point. There's a feeling of connection to place when I'm doing it and it's become in some ways almost a spiritual practice, especially when I can get a good rhythm going.
So thank you Ted. Now that the last installment is out I think it's time to go back to the start and revisit it. It really excites me about how little we don't know, how much we have forgotten, and if we could really dive into music and look past it as entertainment how our society could become more cohesive.
I'm a kindred spirit, there's nothing like going outdoors with your instrument and just playing whatever comes out in the moment. Especially if you trek to really inspiring places. Don't need an audience, the whole environment is listening.
I have had a few jam sessions with rivers. It's incredible how rhythmic they are! Even the random fish catching bugs on the surface, or acorns plopping in takes on a syncopation that is so compelling! Playing for, or with, the Spirit of Place is a holy thing. Keep on, sibling.
I have just been transported back to my mom's funeral 16 years ago, in France. She sang in a choir there and all the members of the choir sang at the church and came back to the farm for the celebration afterwards. ~30 family members and maybe 40 choir members and other's of my parents French friends. We ate and laughed and cried and shared stories and then they sang for the family and we sang for them.
At the start of that day my heart was a little broken as I said goodbye to my mom for the last time but when the choir started singing a special song that my mom used to lead them with I could feel something happening and whilst it sounds odd to say it, I felt my heart healing with the singing and the love from them for my mom in that singing. I don't know what happened but the pain in my heart went away.
Been a while since I visited that memory and have cried over it just now and that's from someone who doesn't generally cry. The power in that ceremony and song and togtherness still giving and I am smiling so much today.
Thought about it all day - Raising the Dead or raising happy memories of the Dead - it is real.
I really appreciate how you shine a light on the use of music to facilitate the journey to the underworld. I think your argument is utterly convincing. I take a Jungian view of this and think the night sea journey is about going into the unconscious to bring back knowledge that will make us whole. That is, it's about individuation. I really think you've opened up a whole new way to think about how we can undertake such a journey today, using the same simple means that our ancestors did.
The other big insight I got from your book is that all early poetry was sung. Intrigued by this idea, I started a project to put poems by the great Tang Dynasty poets Du Fu and Bai Juyi to music. I choose classical Chinese poetry because I could never understand why it was so revered and yet to me, in translation, felt so lifeless. Putting these poems to music has been one of the great creative experiences of my life. These poems were initially chanted by the poets and putting them to music feels like it's restored a missing dimension to the translated versions. I can't say if what I'm doing moves anyone else, but I'm often in tears as I work on them -- really. I wrote in a recent post that singing them makes me feel as if I've dropped inside the poem, where the narratives and powerful imagery to come alive in an almost cinematic way. It wouldn't have occurred to me to do this without your book.
So a big thank you for your hard work, your insights, and your courage in putting it all out there.
Reading it made me think that the Samba rhythm comes from Afro-Brazilian religion - Candomblé, where the trance (and spirits incorporation) is a great part of the rituals, as is music with percussion and singing.
Hi, This is wonderful, look forward to reading the whole book. I have a question about the dissociation idea, that rhythm can remover the link between mind and body, and that this is what happens to shamans. I'm thinking about Stephen Harrod Buhner's book on plant intelligence, where he talks about the opposite (I think in relation to hallucinogens) - he suggests that altered states are created not by removing the linkage between mind and body, but by removing some degree of 'sensory gating', ie the filtering that the brain does so that stimuli don't overwhelm us. So rather than remove the link between mind and body, in fact mind/body become one, and become more aware of themselves as one with their environment?
Immense. What an Amazon book! Thanks Ted. One note: "the bridge between mind and matter. This is the deepest rabbit hole of them all, and has bedeviled philosophers, psychologists, theologians, neuroscientists, and every other kind of thinker who peers into the biggest of big issues."
I feel it would be more accurate "the bridge between mind, heart and matter", or something like that...Since most people identify the word "mind" with the organ called brain and because the reasearch of consciousness IN the brain has been proven limited (because...it's not there). Some thinkers have already noticed that, but most experiments still focus on the brain and brain waves etc. We should address and measure the whole body (and not just the physical one) and all the organs, that's what vibrates and resonates.
I tip my hat to Prof. Gioia! Out of all my favorite courses from the polymath, Musicology is my favorite. I'm still processing Girard's YT video quote I wrote down, "You can refuse sacrifice only if you accept to die"...I wish I understood this when I thought my bullies mattered (high school). I should now thank them as a grown woman for crushing me so I could rebuild.
I will most certainly be delving into this read over the course of the evening/week. Thank you!
Many good perspectives, and I do appreciate much of the factual tidbits and examples.
And I am glad that so many readers feel inspired by this book, genuinely.
However...for me personally...
As with your tech articles that don't usually reconcile the underlying friction between profit-and-growth on the one hand with whatever may appear more creative and ethical on the other, so too in this writing there is a completely unresolved antagonism between shamanic inquiry and a persistent, righteously materialistic worldview that underpins everything here. It gets frustrating and frankly, condescending.
Why go to such lengths to say "see! science says its TRUE" all the flipping time?
Especially when you continually leverage magic and the unexplainable as the juicy stuff, for instance using strings of refreshingly non-scientific terms in order to add fortitude and pizazz to your thesis here:
"Orphic rituals and mystery cults"
"visionaries and healers, truth-tellers and dreamers, or explorers of the imagination and alternative realms"
And yet the whole project here seems to be saying that those very things -- as "fun" as they may sound, you seem to be saying half the time-- are now and have always been "superstition" -- except no, wait, hold the phone: SCIENCE more and more in the last 10 minutes says they are "real" -- so, yeah, good let's get excited again about this stuff! I guess the folks of antiquity weren't total numbnuts! -- do you see what I mean?
It's like a bizarre yep-nope approach that feels derogatory even as it hopes to be creatively enthusiastic. No, not for me I guess. I operate daily and symbiotically with the power of wild imagination and raw qi -- these and so so much more are not to be measured with the tools of the fevered rationalist. And yes, we are in agreement, music is often the key to many of these "beyond" things. But not because Science -- rather, more often than not, in spite of it.
I am a fan of your blues research (except when you talk trash on Electric Mud) and much of your substack, but this approach to a very vital topic ultimately left me dry. I read Tomlinson's Magic and Music in the Renaissance book 30 years ago and it changed my perspective forever; I have been operating off of most maps and beyond category since then. And my own undergrad paper at the time on that subject has this same rational-apologist flavor that I am attempting to criticize here -- and I for sure hope that I have matured beyond by now.
The left brain will not lay claim to realms for which it is ultimately inferior, no matter how messed up things seem to be right now. The deepest intelligence does not divide or kill.
I suggest another tome "In Spite of Science: Music Beyond Imagination" to be written on Substack. Turn some of that bad qi into a positive endeavor. Go be wild in your own way. Sounds like you got the chops.
Excellent, as usual. I was particularly interested in the added value of music listening to the sport performance.
It's not a sport per se 😉, but I now understand why a certain kind of music (Megadeth and the likes) works so well for me when I have to write a financial article in total focus mode under a short deadline. Thank you Ted!
I think many of us are on a quest. Your gift is that you name it, and thereby orient me, and deepen me. Some time ago you wrote about “…. Polish Noir”. (11/4/2024)
I am what is loosely referred to as a “creative”, and suffered a slump, a dead-end. Playing the music you recommended allowed me to float, to dream, loosen up, and make significant progress, to the point where I am submitting it as a “concept” to a juried, international competition. Will I be chosen? Who cares. Do the best you can and go on to the next project.
I would love to see this book released in a print version. I missed most of it and I would prefer reading a book over the online series verison. Not knocking it, I think it's great that authors can get new work out that way and engage readers, I just like books.
I am continually shamed by and ashamed of my lack of intellectual rigor, Ted. But I admit I don't care enough to know as much as you do. I wish I did--this is not sarcasm, or praise a la that Roman emporer guy. I hope I will at least keep trying to pay attention. And, Ted fans, buy my meandering book about something or other--once I'm motivated enough to finish it. Support Subtack in the mean time? I am not an AI bot. Really.
Oh, and music is cool. A great tool for feigning interest to attract mates in youth, then a source decades later to spark, spark, spark whatever connections those were to the misremembered will to attract mates...
Thank you so much for writing this book. I have been following along for a while now and was really excited to see the last installment was finally here!
As someone who likes to play improvised music in random outdoor locations, a lot of this resonated with what I'm doing. I've had a lot of people scratch their heads and assume that I'm busking and playing covers but I explain the places are often remote and the aim is to play for the place, not the people. If people stumble on it and like it they can enjoy it, but I'm not playing for them or money. There's really no point to it, which is the point. There's a feeling of connection to place when I'm doing it and it's become in some ways almost a spiritual practice, especially when I can get a good rhythm going.
So thank you Ted. Now that the last installment is out I think it's time to go back to the start and revisit it. It really excites me about how little we don't know, how much we have forgotten, and if we could really dive into music and look past it as entertainment how our society could become more cohesive.
I'm a kindred spirit, there's nothing like going outdoors with your instrument and just playing whatever comes out in the moment. Especially if you trek to really inspiring places. Don't need an audience, the whole environment is listening.
I have had a few jam sessions with rivers. It's incredible how rhythmic they are! Even the random fish catching bugs on the surface, or acorns plopping in takes on a syncopation that is so compelling! Playing for, or with, the Spirit of Place is a holy thing. Keep on, sibling.
I have just been transported back to my mom's funeral 16 years ago, in France. She sang in a choir there and all the members of the choir sang at the church and came back to the farm for the celebration afterwards. ~30 family members and maybe 40 choir members and other's of my parents French friends. We ate and laughed and cried and shared stories and then they sang for the family and we sang for them.
At the start of that day my heart was a little broken as I said goodbye to my mom for the last time but when the choir started singing a special song that my mom used to lead them with I could feel something happening and whilst it sounds odd to say it, I felt my heart healing with the singing and the love from them for my mom in that singing. I don't know what happened but the pain in my heart went away.
Been a while since I visited that memory and have cried over it just now and that's from someone who doesn't generally cry. The power in that ceremony and song and togtherness still giving and I am smiling so much today.
Thought about it all day - Raising the Dead or raising happy memories of the Dead - it is real.
I really appreciate how you shine a light on the use of music to facilitate the journey to the underworld. I think your argument is utterly convincing. I take a Jungian view of this and think the night sea journey is about going into the unconscious to bring back knowledge that will make us whole. That is, it's about individuation. I really think you've opened up a whole new way to think about how we can undertake such a journey today, using the same simple means that our ancestors did.
The other big insight I got from your book is that all early poetry was sung. Intrigued by this idea, I started a project to put poems by the great Tang Dynasty poets Du Fu and Bai Juyi to music. I choose classical Chinese poetry because I could never understand why it was so revered and yet to me, in translation, felt so lifeless. Putting these poems to music has been one of the great creative experiences of my life. These poems were initially chanted by the poets and putting them to music feels like it's restored a missing dimension to the translated versions. I can't say if what I'm doing moves anyone else, but I'm often in tears as I work on them -- really. I wrote in a recent post that singing them makes me feel as if I've dropped inside the poem, where the narratives and powerful imagery to come alive in an almost cinematic way. It wouldn't have occurred to me to do this without your book.
So a big thank you for your hard work, your insights, and your courage in putting it all out there.
This is quantum musicology. Beautiful!
Reading it made me think that the Samba rhythm comes from Afro-Brazilian religion - Candomblé, where the trance (and spirits incorporation) is a great part of the rituals, as is music with percussion and singing.
I've seen a baby bird I thought was dead wake up and fly onto my head from a heartfelt piece of lute nusic being played in tribute to it.
Congratulations, Ted. Your work is stunning and you really have fundamentally changed how I think about music.
Hi, This is wonderful, look forward to reading the whole book. I have a question about the dissociation idea, that rhythm can remover the link between mind and body, and that this is what happens to shamans. I'm thinking about Stephen Harrod Buhner's book on plant intelligence, where he talks about the opposite (I think in relation to hallucinogens) - he suggests that altered states are created not by removing the linkage between mind and body, but by removing some degree of 'sensory gating', ie the filtering that the brain does so that stimuli don't overwhelm us. So rather than remove the link between mind and body, in fact mind/body become one, and become more aware of themselves as one with their environment?
Immense. What an Amazon book! Thanks Ted. One note: "the bridge between mind and matter. This is the deepest rabbit hole of them all, and has bedeviled philosophers, psychologists, theologians, neuroscientists, and every other kind of thinker who peers into the biggest of big issues."
I feel it would be more accurate "the bridge between mind, heart and matter", or something like that...Since most people identify the word "mind" with the organ called brain and because the reasearch of consciousness IN the brain has been proven limited (because...it's not there). Some thinkers have already noticed that, but most experiments still focus on the brain and brain waves etc. We should address and measure the whole body (and not just the physical one) and all the organs, that's what vibrates and resonates.
Plz tell us when u publish as book, Ted! I may have to buy a hard bound copy or 3!
I tip my hat to Prof. Gioia! Out of all my favorite courses from the polymath, Musicology is my favorite. I'm still processing Girard's YT video quote I wrote down, "You can refuse sacrifice only if you accept to die"...I wish I understood this when I thought my bullies mattered (high school). I should now thank them as a grown woman for crushing me so I could rebuild.
I will most certainly be delving into this read over the course of the evening/week. Thank you!
Many good perspectives, and I do appreciate much of the factual tidbits and examples.
And I am glad that so many readers feel inspired by this book, genuinely.
However...for me personally...
As with your tech articles that don't usually reconcile the underlying friction between profit-and-growth on the one hand with whatever may appear more creative and ethical on the other, so too in this writing there is a completely unresolved antagonism between shamanic inquiry and a persistent, righteously materialistic worldview that underpins everything here. It gets frustrating and frankly, condescending.
Why go to such lengths to say "see! science says its TRUE" all the flipping time?
Especially when you continually leverage magic and the unexplainable as the juicy stuff, for instance using strings of refreshingly non-scientific terms in order to add fortitude and pizazz to your thesis here:
"Orphic rituals and mystery cults"
"visionaries and healers, truth-tellers and dreamers, or explorers of the imagination and alternative realms"
And yet the whole project here seems to be saying that those very things -- as "fun" as they may sound, you seem to be saying half the time-- are now and have always been "superstition" -- except no, wait, hold the phone: SCIENCE more and more in the last 10 minutes says they are "real" -- so, yeah, good let's get excited again about this stuff! I guess the folks of antiquity weren't total numbnuts! -- do you see what I mean?
It's like a bizarre yep-nope approach that feels derogatory even as it hopes to be creatively enthusiastic. No, not for me I guess. I operate daily and symbiotically with the power of wild imagination and raw qi -- these and so so much more are not to be measured with the tools of the fevered rationalist. And yes, we are in agreement, music is often the key to many of these "beyond" things. But not because Science -- rather, more often than not, in spite of it.
I am a fan of your blues research (except when you talk trash on Electric Mud) and much of your substack, but this approach to a very vital topic ultimately left me dry. I read Tomlinson's Magic and Music in the Renaissance book 30 years ago and it changed my perspective forever; I have been operating off of most maps and beyond category since then. And my own undergrad paper at the time on that subject has this same rational-apologist flavor that I am attempting to criticize here -- and I for sure hope that I have matured beyond by now.
The left brain will not lay claim to realms for which it is ultimately inferior, no matter how messed up things seem to be right now. The deepest intelligence does not divide or kill.
--
I suggest another tome "In Spite of Science: Music Beyond Imagination" to be written on Substack. Turn some of that bad qi into a positive endeavor. Go be wild in your own way. Sounds like you got the chops.
Thanks for the viewpoint Scobiphonic -- yes, you make a substantial and valid point here...! could be exciting or even inspiring
Excellent, as usual. I was particularly interested in the added value of music listening to the sport performance.
It's not a sport per se 😉, but I now understand why a certain kind of music (Megadeth and the likes) works so well for me when I have to write a financial article in total focus mode under a short deadline. Thank you Ted!
What a Gift you’ve given us.
Thank you.
I think many of us are on a quest. Your gift is that you name it, and thereby orient me, and deepen me. Some time ago you wrote about “…. Polish Noir”. (11/4/2024)
I am what is loosely referred to as a “creative”, and suffered a slump, a dead-end. Playing the music you recommended allowed me to float, to dream, loosen up, and make significant progress, to the point where I am submitting it as a “concept” to a juried, international competition. Will I be chosen? Who cares. Do the best you can and go on to the next project.
You’re the goat bro! I got so much love for you!🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
I would love to see this book released in a print version. I missed most of it and I would prefer reading a book over the online series verison. Not knocking it, I think it's great that authors can get new work out that way and engage readers, I just like books.
I am continually shamed by and ashamed of my lack of intellectual rigor, Ted. But I admit I don't care enough to know as much as you do. I wish I did--this is not sarcasm, or praise a la that Roman emporer guy. I hope I will at least keep trying to pay attention. And, Ted fans, buy my meandering book about something or other--once I'm motivated enough to finish it. Support Subtack in the mean time? I am not an AI bot. Really.
Oh, and music is cool. A great tool for feigning interest to attract mates in youth, then a source decades later to spark, spark, spark whatever connections those were to the misremembered will to attract mates...