Raga

Raga (Sanskrit = color, tone)

Raga in the Evening: Akira ASKR / AKIRA Asakura

In Indian classical music, a raga is the totality of a set pattern of notes acting as a template that provides a structure for improvisation. When improvising on a raga, the performer is free to change the pitch, volume, tone, timbre, tempo and number of notes but must always begin and end on the same note, as stipulated by the particular raga.

Although ragas are regarded as vehicles for spiritual meditation, they also recall, in an abstract and condensed form, epic stories and actual events from Indian history–e.g. the archetypal motif of arriving home after a lengthy war and finding that one’s lover has died.

Accordingly, many see the raga as a tool for transcendence; for others it is also sublimely emotional.

» Mantra, Orpheus

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Synthesizer

newscool software synthesizer

Originally uploaded by Dean Terry

Synthesizer

Most associate the idea of the synthesizer with electronic music equipment but this could be a misperception.

Since ancient Greece, people have been experimenting with combining different sounds and also with playing more than one instrument at once.

In the 3^rd century BCE, for instance, the Greek engineer Ktesibios invented the hydraulos, a prototypical pipe organ using a hand-pumped air chamber located in a tub of water.

In the 1400’s, the hurdy gurdy played several melodies with a background drone.

In 1761 the panharmonicon automated the playing of flutes, clarinets, trumpets, violins, cellos, drums, cymbals, triangle and other instruments, and was even used by Beethoven.

In 1867 we have one of the first electronic keyboards from Switzerland. And in 1899 the Singing Arc was used to obtain sound from different lamps.

In the 1960s and 70s the analogue synthesizer made its debut in pop music. It mimicked symphonic strings and also created new, fascinating sounds. Some groups used it to poor effect (e.g. the early Doors) while others created distant sonic landscapes that arguably rival the classical greats in terms of sheer innovative brilliance (e.g. Yes, Close to the Edge and Fragile).

In the 1980s digital sound conquered the market, replete with digital sampling where any natural sound could be digitally copied and reproduced at will without any sound quality degradation from the original sample.

Taken for granted today, this was a sonic revolution in the 80s, giving birth to a new era of musical innovations with groups like Depeche Mode, The Eurythmics and The Art of Noise.

In the 1990s (and beyond) the rise of home computers along with the development of the internet, the mp3 file format, Flash, YouTube and other technologies enabled just about anyone with a PC and a keyboard to become a hobbyist superstar, publishing and sharing their musical creations with anyone else on the web willing to listen.

» Orpheus

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Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf - Born to Be Wild: Mark Sardella

(1) A Canadian rock band popular in the 1960s to early 1970s, credited with being the very first heavy metal band because the single, “Born to be Wild,” included in its lyrics the phrase “heavy metal thunder.”

Other hits include “Magic Carpet Ride,” which describes a sort of psychedelic mysticism, and a slow moving song called “The Pusher” that seems to condone marijuana use but condemns heavier addictive drugs, such as heroine. In this song addicts are said to be “walkin round with tombstones in their eyes.”

The band still tours and has sold some 25 million records worldwide. Steppenwolf’s music has been used in approximately 50 motion pictures.

Steppenwolf: @BB

(2) Steppenwolf is also an introspective novel by Hermann Hesse that explores the Jungian idea of the shadow, and to which the rock band most likely owes its name.

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Song

Old Sheet Music Page: 'Playingwithbrushes' / Renee

Song

It’s generally believed that the emotional, vibrational and spiritual aspects of music can elicit uniquely different experiences.

St. Augustine is often cited as having said “He who sings, prays twice.”

Since the 9^th century, so-called Gregorian chants have been sung in monasteries for worship and spiritual elevation. And polyphony developed in a religious context as liturgical music, sometimes viewed by authorities as too radical for that purpose.

Jazz and Rock and Roll developed from the Blues, which itself emerged from the black spiritual music of the American old south.

In the East, it’s believed that chanting the sacred AUM syllable fascilitates spiritual liberation.

Today, Chinese and Hindi pop blend ancient Eastern and contemporary Western musical forms.

The French structural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1908 – ) noted that a certain shaman’s song was used to assist a woman in childbirth.

In classifying human experience within a complex system of binary oppositions which he believed were fundamental to thinking, Levi-Strauss suggested that song, speech and signals were categorically different.

But Levi-Strauss’ classification scheme doesn’t really hold up in light of a more contemporary understanding of music. One only has to listen to the work of, say, T. Power, to realize that electronica spans several of the categories outlined by Levi-Strauss.

On the Web:

• The Tallis Scholars sing the music of William Byrd, a leading Renaissance polyphonic composer

» Bauls, Bhagavad-Gita, Lorelei, Mela, Orpheus, Polyphonic Chant, Shamanism, Sirens, Slamming, Soul

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Slamming (also Slammin, Slammin’)

SLAMMiN' STRAPS: aJ GAZMEN ツ GucciBeaR's

Slamming (also Slammin, Slammin’)

A term used by rap artists conveying several possibly interrelated meanings:

• rhythmic verse and music of intense vitality or aggression-e.g. slammin’ vibes, slammin’ groove
• something very good, hot, sexy, cool or happening
• some form of power, and perhaps in some instances spiritual power

The connection between music and power is nothing new. Anthropologists believe that the musical bow evolved from the ancient bow and arrow used for hunting and warfare.

Piano strings are struck with a “hammer.” And rock and jazz musicians often call the guitar an “axe.”

While the bow and arrow, the hammer and the axe may be used for non-aggressive or aggressive purposes, at bottom some notion of power is connoted by all of these terms.

But the term has another meaning, outlined by urbandictionary.com:

the act of injecting a drug into your veins.

I’ve been slamming heroin for the past 2 years.

Meanwhile, urbandictionary.com has the following for Slammin’:

very attractive physically, tight body, etc. – That chick is slammn’!

» Shamanism, Song

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Throat Singing

khoomei by Brandon Berg

Throat Singing

Various cultural, scientific and religious practices suggest that different types of music bear distinct effects on consciousness.

The noted biologist Lewis Thomas says we enjoy the music of Bach, for instance, because we’re getting a glimpse inside the fantastically complicated mind of the composer.

But others say there’s more to music than that. In fact, it’s generally believed that certain musical forms can literally transport consciousness to a different kind of awareness.

Tibetan Buddhist throat singing is no exception.

Individual monks practice for years to perfect their ability to simultaneously produce two notes. They believe that the vibration created through their singing helps to deliver the fettered soul blinded by maya (the illusion of physicality) and dukkha (the sorrow that arises from bondage to maya) to a better plane of existence.

Ultimately this leads to nirvana, which for Buddhists is an ultimate, blissful release from worldly ignorance. » Buddhism, Orpheus

On the Web:

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Young, Neil

Young, Neil (1945- )

The Canadian-born grandfather of grunge rock was originally a folk rocker with Steven Stills and Graham Nash in the group Buffalo Springfield (“Stop Children, what’s that sound…”).

Also a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, his solo career has influenced on a wide variety of musicians and some of his songs arguably demonstrate what might be called archetypal depth.

Watching Young perform live can be like witnessing a Toltec Elder harness the Powers That Be, especially when he performs tunes like “Cortez the Killer,” the “Halls of Montezuma,” and “Inca Queen.”

Other more intimate songs like “After the Goldrush” (in the 1970 showpiece album by the same title) reflect the noble, if drug induced, dreams and despair of the hippie generation, now revived by the media-hyped fear of Global Warming.

“Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s.”

Well before considered fashionable to speak of alien abductions or the possibility of mankind leaving Earth to inhabit other planets, Young related a dream in that same song where “silver spaceships” take “Mother Nature’s silver seed to a new home in the sun.”

Of course, it could be argued that Young was talking about the US Apollo space program. After all, man had just landed on the moon for the very first time in 1969 and the early 1970s were all about the so-called “space age.”

In the 1980s Young parodies his hippie phase by referring to an earlier Crosby, Still, Nash and Young song in “Hippie Dream” from the album Landing on Water (1986).

And the wooden ships,
were just a hippie dream…
capsized in excess
if you know what I mean

Young has epilepsy but this has not slowed him down nor deterred him from influencing other prominent rockers like David Bowie and Avril Lavigne. In fact, Young has been described as a musical workaholic. He has released seven new albums in the new millennium. » Archetypes

Image Credit:

• “Neil Young” by JD Lasica at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdlasica/115199274/, Creative Commons License.

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Zarathustra

Zarathustra (c.1200 BCE ?) was an ancient Persian prophet who fled his homeland because his teachings were controversial. He ended up in eastern Iran under the protection of King Vishtaspa who embraced his teachings.

Zarathustra’s dialogue with the Lord, Ahura Mazda, is recorded in the Holy Book The Avesta, a set of scriptures based on an oral tradition of roughly 1000 years.

The surviving scripture we have today is somewhat fragmentary, seemingly contradictory in places and only a part of the original.

Greek writers called Zarathusra Zoroaster.

Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, used in the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosphical work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which itself was influenced by the prophet. » 2001: A Space Odyssey, Avesta, Ahriman, Zoroastrianism

Image Credit:

• “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” by kian Elyassi Bakhtiari at http://flickr.com/photos/kian1/1390286041/ , Creative Commons License

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Archetypal Image

Archetypal Image According to Carl Jung, the archetypal image is a representation of an underlying archetype.

The archetypal images symbolize and mediate to everyday consciousness the psychological power of the collective unconscious.

Through various modes of expression (e.g. works of art and architecture) mankind translates these hidden archetypal forces into the realm of human culture.

Some contemporary and ancient examples of archetypal images would be figures like Godzilla, the Klingons, The Cylons, Luke Skywalker, the Magician, the Witch, the Angel, Yahweh and the Devil.

Jung believes that the ancients did not always view the archetypal images as mere symbols, but as actual things in themselves. The Indian sun god, Surya, for instance, was not a symbol but a real deity, diurnally traveling across and lighting the heavens in a splendid chariot.

Likewise, many American Indian cultures firmly believe that their myths tell of actual ancient events and heroic ancestors.

Meanwhile, contemporary Catholics believe that the Eucharist is not a symbol but the real presence – in essence but not form – of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.†

On the topic of UFOs, Jung regarded the rounded saucers of the 1950s as archetypal images of the human self, not unlike the mandala. But Jung didn’t rule out the possibility of actual UFOs.

However, Jung was not quite so open-minded with regard to Christian religious truth-claims, choosing to adapt them into his own theoretical structures. At times he speaks of the crucifixion of Jesus, for instance, as producing a mere “skewed symbol of the self” (i.e. the crucifix) instead of seeing Jesus’ death as a saving sacrifice, as most Christians would believe. » Archetype

Image Source:

• Resized from “Benzaiten” by colodio at http://www.flickr.com/photos/colodio/1420007024/in/set-72157602055544339, Creative Commons License

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†Belief alone does not necessarily render truth out of falsehood. But as Plato pointed out, a true belief does relate to an actual truth (if not knowledge of that truth).

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