Deep in the deserts of Namibia, the San Bushmen guard a virtually untouched, millennia-old culture.
Learning music lies at the heart of that culture. But not ‘learning music’ as you and I know it.
There’s no mention of wrong tempo, or better interpretation or sharper technique. None of the things we love to discuss in our lessons and moan about after concerts. The San Bushmen don’t have time for any of that. Theirs is a different kind of music.
It is a vehicle for passing on thousands of years of knowledge, from the droughts their ancestors learned to survive to the healing minerals they discovered beneath the sands.
It holds the story of their identity, their ever-evolving history. It is their Doomsday Book and Bayeux Tapestry, a living chronicle of every time and place, each god and war, all the savage beasts that have stalked them and fearless hunters that have led them.
Most importantly, it is the cornerstone of their survival. It keeps the peace and resolves all disputes. It inspires the co-operation needed to outwit the desert. It weaves a thread between them, a thread that means they stay together, a thread that means they survive in a habitat no individual could withstand alone.
Even through my laptop screen, it was a lesson in the need for music. The hollering and stamping, the upturned mouths and tight-shut eyes – every reason we crave music, feel compelled to make it, even require it to survive lay plain to see.
At first, it was uplifting, inspiring. But as I watched on, I began to feel only one thing.
Embarrassment.
Because equally clear was how often my own music-making lacks this essential purpose. How often the cocktail of ego, fear of judgement, and ceaseless busyness called ‘modern life’, replaces all the most meaningful urges to make music.
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I sat down to write this because I’ve just opened the page on Brahms 4th Symphony, 2nd movement.
It begins in classical majesty, a Greek temple of sound. However, the grandeur is short lived. In its place, emerging from the colonnades comes one of my earliest memories:
As a young child, I really struggled to sleep. The only thing that helped me was my mother singing me to sleep at night.
I suppose by the ‘standards’ I judge my music with, it wasn’t good singing (sorry mum!). She hadn’t been instructed in diaphragm control or taught to shape unending lines. It was breathy and sometimes it cracked under the strain of singing so softly.
But, though I may make music to my dying day, I’ll doubt I’ll hear a more perfect performance. A sound that makes me feel such deep connection to someone else. A colour that brings me such peace. A melody that wraps me in such a fortress of love.
If I ever hear music with more purpose and power, I’ll be a lucky man.
I’ve been taught to hear that Brahms as clarinets in thirds. With a countermelody in the bassoons, plucked strings beneath. In the key of E (Tonic major), time signature 6/8, beat in six (but with the feeling of two in a bar).
But I’ve decided not to hear it that way anymore.
(There is no denying the necessity for technique in making anything. A writer with ideas and no eloquence has nothing. A painter without brush control has just the images in his head. A conductor with untrained ears is of little use to anyone.
But there’s also a point where technique, correctness, etiquette becomes an excuse. A means to avoid the the difficult things – the honesty, vulnerability – that making stuff things is really about.)
I’ve decided to hear this Brahms as something far more important than instruments and chord progressions. I’ve decided to hear that quiet voice, the only one in the world that mattered when I heard it, the one that made me – my mum’s.
I’m conducting the symphony next week, so I suppose this is my pledge to conduct it right. Not to progress my career, nor to meet the standard I feel the world is demanding.
But to make music the way my mum did, the way the San Bushmen do.
To help everyone who listens to it truly listen. To help them hear that truth, insight or encouragement that they are searching for.
To help everyone who plays it truly play. To help them say whatever it is they need to say, with honesty and without fear.
And to help all of us, whatever our role, experience it together.
Perhaps then we’ll glimpse the real symphony – this extraordinary world and us, the people that make it – with new and precious clarity.
It’s a grand and daunting task. I’m not saying I can do it. But those would be terrible reasons not to try.
And before you wish me well: I am a musician, so this post is about music. But make no mistake, this post is about whatever you do too.
Because the point of doing anything should be the same: build our culture, progress our civilisation. That culture, that civilisation is what has elevated us to where we are today – soaring above Darwin and the savagery of the survival of the fittest. We’re doing well, but there’s an awful long way to go. We need you to get involved.
So whatever you do, do it cleverly, get well-paid for it, win praise with it. That’s all great.
But do it so it upholds our culture too, strengthens its quality, widens its reach. Because that’s something a lot better.
https://youtu.be/kQmOQHdNvcQ?t=13m42s
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