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Bob M's avatar

"In contrast to that algorithmic imperative, the magical and miraculous aspects of music—so essential to its origins and purposes—were increasingly viewed as an embarrassment, superstitious babbling that shouldn’t be taken seriously and, if possible, eradicated completely."

This (and the discussion of Sun Ra) reminded me of the following passage from Bob Dylan's "Chronicles, Volume 1":

"Prior to this, things had changed and not in an abstract way. A few month earlier. something out of the ordinary had occurred, and I became aware of a certain set of dynamic principles by which my performances could be transformed. By combining certain elements of technique which ignite each other I could shift the levels of perception, time-frame structures and systems of rhythm which would give ny songs a brighter countenance, call them up from the grave -- stretch out the stiffnesss in their bodies and straighten them out. It was like parts of my psyche were being communicated by angels..."

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John Blake Arnold's avatar

I feel you do a disservice to Pythagoras, who very much had his own mystery cult (but also had the math to back his suppositions), in your effort to promote the Orphics. Having watched your interview with Rick Beato where you stated the thesis for this book, I acknowledge you want to discuss the marathon-like nature of ritual and "primitive" trance and devotional music. But as an academic who spent a tremendous amount of time researching Robert Graves and Idries Shah and Omar Ali Shah, I found that authors who typically delve into The Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth are going for the full Dan Brown-Robert Blyth esoteric pop lit that sells enough to become hipster tavern conversation. Rarely, among all the esotericism, is the answer given to the question you posited: "why are the mystics, musicians, and poets killed and forgotten?" The answer is "mistakenly speaking supposed truth to power." Whether BraveHeart or John the Baptist or any of the folks you've named, "hocus-pocus" is psychological, real politic- real power- is physical. Salome can in fact have John's head on a plate, no matter how powerful John's magic faith might be. The Hasmoneans win again! Christ annoys the Temple leadership and is flippant to Pilate, and gee whiz, gets nailed to a tree. Rome wins again. The Celtic Bards traveled around to patrons telling them to their faces in front of an audience the actions it had taken to put -and keep- those leaders in power. Cubano son or US rap, say what you can get away with until shot dead in the calle. There are plenty of pagans in Austin, who maintain places of worship and meeting houses, some who supposedly still practice Orphic Rites. I'm sure they will let you sit in a damp field on shrooms, listening to drone music from mediocre "musicians." But the fact that all of that trippy, heavy, meaningful sound is created for spiritual, divine-seeming reasons in no way makes the field less damp and soggy.... And the converse to the esoteric jive, is Bach or Bill Evans or Barry Harris or Jim Hall who had a sign that said "Make Musical Sense" in his guitar case. Thanks so much, Pythagoras!!

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