The Effects of Place on Music, and Vice Versa

Lori and I were looking at places to visit while in India, and boy are there a lot to look at. The state of Karnataka, which houses our little refugee community, is a tropical and cultural paradise. The place is incredibly green, and incredibly full of temples, shrines, and people (though, thankfully, Bylakuppe is spared from the denseness of population of, say, another refugee settlement like Dharamshala.). Nothing could be more different from the place the refugees have come from - the cold, expansive desert of the "roof of the world."

Hampi, in Karnataka

Tibet!

The interrelationship of environment and music has just recently become a topic of serious inquiry in scholarly circles, particularly among those who call themselves "human" or "cultural" geographers. Topics as wide as the use of music to forward industry in failing communities to the musical habits of geriatric groups in small towns have produced in-depth studies, and the cultural geography community, as well as those who benefit from their research, are taking a closer listen to the human family. Looking at these pictures of different landscapes got me thinking - how has the transition from the Tibetan highlands to the Indian lowlands affected the production of music in Bylakuppe? Tibetan monastic music, as well as folk music (particularly shepherd song), is definitely a product of the acoustic phenomena present in the Himalaya, just as much as Gregorian chant is a product of the long reverberation times of large cathedrals (but, after the genesis of the chant, the interplay between music and cathedral building is hard to follow - did the cathedrals get bigger so reverb times could grow, or did the composers write in response to increased church size?). The huge horns, loud cymbals, and large drums of Tibet are instruments designed to travel across the vast plains and echo off the never-ending white-capped walls of the eternal mountains. On the folk side, the plaintive song of the shepherd immediately directs the imagination in the direction of the lone protector of the flock leading his livelihood through mountain passes. What happens to these songs when translated into the densely attenuated echo-space produced by thick forests and tropical rain?

Looking at music this way, perhaps singing the traditional songs of the homeland is a way to travel there for a few moments, to relive and recapture the freedom of wide-open spaces and the safety of living nestled between mountain-sentinels. And perhaps the new musics being produced by youth represent not only the shrinking world village and crosstalk of cultures enabled by internet and a new physical location, but also reflect the polarity of the green environment they have grown up in compared with their parents' white ancestral home. In a conversation with a classmate who has lived in a Tibetan community, I found that the longer a Tibetan family has been in India, the more they shift their culinary preferences toward ingredients readily found in India, and drink less butter-tea and eat less tsampa. Are the Himalayan horns and cacophonous drums being traded for nagaswaram and mridangam? Or for drum sets and electric guitars? And what of Tibetan music is persistent, responding little or not at all to the changed physical and cultural climate? 

These questions, I insist in accord with a main premise of ethnomusicology, are important for not only artistic purposes but for the wider and grander purpose of coming to a greater understanding of identity, for it is in the artistic expression of a people that the finer ineffable points of what it means to be human, and what it means to be a human in a particular time and place, begin to surface.

There is, of course, the problem of defining what exactly "Tibetan-ness" is, but that remains for another time.

HUM 201 Journal Entry 8

Divine Comedy

In the Celestial realm, in the presence of the Three Rings of Great Light,

I enjoyed my conference with the Divine.

The Love that held me there knew no time; no end was in sight.

Suddenly my vision darkened and the heavens ripped at the spine

            I whirled down, down, down into blackness

            The skin of my face, once bathed in warmth, was bathed in thick, icy grime.

My fine raiment was torn; the bright silk lost its gladness.

            I swam in a river of corporeal pain.

            “From whence,” screamed I, “comes this madness!”

The hourglass slowed as it ran out of grain.

            I could stand, I could see in the dim.

            A man stood in front of me, holding an axe – said he, “I’m Kurt Cobain.”

He had shaggy hair, a lazy beard, and sad eyes brimming with grim.

            Lost to eloquence, I said, “Hallo, Kurt.”

            My briefness was not lost on him.

“I suppose you wonder why the Hell you’re here, and that fall must have hurt.

            Well, I will tell you, dear old friend.

            We have invented new sins with which to flirt

 And you have been brought, the poet eternal, to write them.

            I was told you don’t notice time, not while you’re Up There

            Well, I have to tell you, the world’s become quite a gem.

We can fly. Music plays itself. Even our servants eat with flair.

            Our chariots haven’t needed horses for years.

            We call to our friends twenty leagues away, and in moments they’re here.

Utopia? No. In fact, the truth is the worst of your fears.

            We have ten thousand things that waste time, precious time.

            We have Call of Duty, Socom, not least of all Gears

Of War and computer solitaire. Yes, time wasting is prime.

            And you are here to write these damned souls’ woes

            So the people above might stop pointlessly losing their hard-earned dime.”

A rugged stench then filled my nose,

            Something like a Parisian street at the height of the summer.

            As it is said, “a rose is a rose,”

This rose smelled like a blasphemer,

            The stale smell of denizens too busy to bathe.

            Running live versions, the never-ending gamer

Was forced to live out the fantasy. My heart wrenched, turned as if on a lathe.

            They ran back and forth, ever dying, ever living

            Wounds ever growing, no bandage or swathe

Could stop the blood from flowing.

            While some were men of war, missiles flying overhead

            Others played solitaire with cards with razor sharp edges, gashes ever growing.

When the game was over, king down to ace, the player wished he were dead,

            But the stack just reloaded and a new game began.

            Some farmed in the villa, with their own homegrown food they were fed,

And fed, and fed, and fed. And just when they thought there was no room to cram

            More food down their gullets, a giant finger Poked down their meal

            And compacted the stuff into something the size of their attention span

What horrors! What terrible fates! What did they do to seal

            This end upon themselves? I turned to my guide,

            “Why, Brother Cobain, why? I begin to feel

My constitution weakening, watching these poor souls writhe in such pain,” I cried.

            “They are simply doing in death what they wished to do in life

Thousands of hours they spent hunched over silver boxes while the world passed them by.

While the world passed them by they pretended, their lives rife

            With discontent, ennui, boredom – what a world they missed!

            ‘Here we are now, entertain us’ cuts me, my own lyric is sharper than a knife.

How right I was – a whole generation, only ever virtually kissed!

            1’s and 0’s are no substitution for flesh and blood!

            Oh, what a pitiable, digital, cold cyber-tryst!

And now! Living the games they used to avoid living! I could wish for a flood

            Like the one that came to Noah of old

            To come and wash away all this silicone mud!”

“They chose this?” said I. “It must be true, I suppose.

            Every one in hell is justly put behind bars

            Of their own making. They must wear their own clothes.

Oh, my lament! Oh, fair ones so young! Oh, what new, miserable scars!

            I will write all I have seen, I promise – I won’t give it second thought, if

            God! please, I beg it, You bring me out of this place and back to You in the stars.”