RockOm

I was interested in the idea of RockOm and thankful to be asked to write for the site. Spirituality and music, I thought, that will be fun, and I bet I'll have a lot to say.

A week went by; nothing. Another. One morning at work I was bursting with ideas. I jotted them on a sheet of paper, which fairly promptly got lost. Oops. Well, I'd have more ideas. And I did, but putting them to words was another story.

Now and then I'd be listening to a song, often while working, and think, now here's a song I could write about! Then the anxiety started to nibble: what do I really know about this song? Besides that, what do I really want to say? Answer to both: the experience.

In music I find a means of connecting with something deeper and broader than my immediate experience of life at that moment. Sometimes I question whether it's just an artificial high, a crutch of some sort, a means of getting through the day. Many times, though, music adds layers of meaning, beauty, emotion, depth, expansiveness, to my life. Be what it may, I think the experience is worth having. Even if I question its usefulness, I don't want to deny its existence.

Music and spirituality. Questions that can't be answered too neatly and are the subject of endless debate, and maybe shouldn't be answered too firmly, definitely, or precisely, or permanently:

What is music?

What is spirituality?

So, in the spirit of setting out with some kind of direction, (though direction subject to change,) here's what tends to interest me. Experience, music, spirituality, and likely in ways that will question, stretch, challenge, and push the boundaries of all three. Stay tuned.

[Anonymous Julie isn't terribly anonymous, but enjoys the moniker and is holding on to it. Find her online at http://anonymous-julie.blogspot.com and http://www.design-realized.com]

On April 24, 2008 came an unanticipated opportunity to watch and listen to two great contemporary pakistani sufi Qawwali singers at the famous UCLA Royce Hall. The concert was titled, Qawwali Music of Pakistan: Sufi Devotional Music . Among the audience were both Americans and a sub-continental audience. What was striking was Qawwali's ability to transcend language with its sheer power and captivating devotion. The nature of improvisation makes each Qawwali, even if its sung by the same group of singers, very unique and makes every new listening a new experience.

Sometimes the depth of the verses, fused with the presentation, took the audience to an "otherly" high. At other times there were goosebumps and surges with the strong emotion that is created in Qawwali performance. The Sufi Qawwalis are considered as zikr or Divine remembrance if listened to with spiritual understanding and depth.

:: What is Sufi Qawwali? | Qawwali is derived from the Arabic word qaul, literally meaning "saying" but has taken on the meaning of "belief"or "credo" in South Asian languages. Qawwali is spiritual in essence; it is the devotional music of the Sufis to attain trance and mystical experience - originating in the 10th century and blossoming into its present form from the 13th century onwards.

Strong voices and explosive hand-clapping characterize the devotional music known as Qawwali. An ensemble of (usually) twelve performers conveys a spiritual message through music and song based on mystic poetry by Sufi masters. The texts usually deal with divine love (‘ishq ), the sorrow of separation (hijr, firaq ), and the union (visal ) - all concepts which are symbolically reinforced and illustrated by the music. Qawwali blends Iranian and Central Asian poetic, philosophical, and musical elements into a North Indian base, combining popular music with classical traditions.

:: History | Qawwali is inseparable from the name of a Persian court musician, composer, poet, and mystic of that period: Amir Khusrau (1254–1325). Amir Khusrau experimented with musical forms, combining the Indian and the Persian, the Hindu Bhakti and the Muslim Sufi to produce the present form of Qawwali.

Qawwali thus became a popular expression of Muslim devotion open to all faiths throughout Northern India. This form of music rapidly became a vehicle for the Islamic missionary movement in India, while at the same time reinforcing the faith of the Muslims. In many cases, the original Persian mystical text is followed by a translation in the local idiom sung in the same manner as the original. Still in this time, Qawwali remains an expanding form of music enjoying universal popularity in South Asia and beyond.

:: Setting | Although Qawwali has today become part of mainstream music, it is traditionally a part of Sufi ritual at the shrine of a saint on a Thursday evening. Large gatherings of Qawwali are held at the death anniversaries of Sufi saints, in which their death is celebrated as marriage with the Eternal (‘urs ). Qawwali groups play day and night, with the best performing at the end.

Qawwalis are heard by "the friends" (a term denoting members of Sufi orders) and by lay audiences attracted by the occasion. Drawing and holding the attention of a heterogeneous audience is the skill that the performers of Qawwali attain. They claim that Qawwali breaks the barriers of language and draws people closer to divinity. They do this by attempting to alter the state of consciousness of the audience in order to make them more receptive to the content, which is of a syncretistic and mystical nature.

Interestingly, the UCLA concert, too, was also scheduled on a Thursday night, which traditionally is designated in Islam as holy night. Pure Qawwali has the quality of Zikr or Divine Remembrance.

:: About Mehr Ali and Sher Ali, the Artists | Mehr and Sher Ali were born in the Pakistani border-town of Kasur in the early 1950s and received their earlier training in classical music from their father, a court classical singer. Their father then became the disciple of Fateh Ali Khan, the father of the famous Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and young Sher Ali was the student of Bakhshi Salamat Ali Qawwal. Mehr Ali and Sher Ali thus acknowledge that the family of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is their "Ustad Gharana" or "Teacher House," a term imbued with veneration among musician circles in Pakistan and North India. The music of this group has its origins with the Talvandi classical school of Hindustani music.

Mehr Ali was taught by Muhammad Ali Fareedi, an ordained Sufi qawwal of the shrine of the 13th century Sufi, Baba Farid. Mehr Ali was thus trained in Sufi philosophy, poetry, texts, and rituals. All qawwals must have a deep knowledge of Sufi poetic texts. The group feels that their music brings harmony and peace to the soul and projects the message of love and unity for all. "We sometimes go into a trance during our performance, so moved are we by the text and music," says Mehr Ali. They believe that qawwali goes beyond the limitations of orthodox religion and is a universal invitation to all living beings to share in the feelings of the powerful emotion of pure love, the pain of separation, and the joy of union.

I have also uploaded a badly captured video from this concert @ Royce Hall to YouTube: Check it here .

___

Sufi Qawwali from "Inspirations and Creative Thoughts" (http://mysticsaint.blogspot.com ). This post was originally posted to this blog on April 26, 2008 .

The dictionary definitions are not enough for those of us who are alive to the sense of the sacred which we find in so many unexpected places ... and are often disappointed not to find in so many expected places.

Perhaps a better question is: what is the sense of the sacred? What does this word mean to us in a universal sense, in the context of our contemporary world of pluralism and multiculturalism, a world in unprecedented evolutionary crisis?

It is my belief, based on travel, research, and the experience of performing sacred music for people of radically different worldviews and religions, that religious tolerance, like interfaith dialogue, is growing by leaps and bounds, far outstripping the old intolerances and insularities we are all too familiar with. The mass media might make it seem otherwise --- but as we know, they thrive on bad news, and are parsimonious in reporting the good news which is happening right under their noses.

The best short response to this question I've heard is from Pierre Rabhi, founder of agro-ecology, and author of the book As in the Heart, So in the Earth : "The sense of the sacred is a sense of humility, where gratitude, knowledge, wonder, respect, and mystery all come together to inspire and enlighten our actions."

This would have seemed pretty obvious to people of ancient times. Only in the last few centuries of modernism and postmodernism has it become fashionable to ignore and disdain the sacred, much as it has become fashionable to ignore and disdain beauty, and to revere irony.

But for those who will not allow this sense to wither in them, listening to sacred music can be a heart-opening experience, even when it comes from a tradition or a culture which is strange or bizarre to them, even if they disagree with certain doctrines of that tradition, even if they reject all religion, and even if the music itself has no formal connection to any sacred tradition.

The awakening of this sense, at least in listening to music, does not depend on having specific beliefs, or even on knowing the meaning of the texts that are being sung or chanted (though it can of course be infinitely deepened by knowing and studying their meaning).

Music can be an ambassador for peace where other embassies have failed. I first learned about this power of music over twenty-five years ago, when I participated in a two-day conference at an American university, which sought to bring Jewish, Christian, and Muslim (mostly Arab, but a few Persian) students together in dialogue concerning the Palestinian problem. This was in the days of the Carter administration, when such hopeful attempts were more common. I was part of a small student musical group (oud, santur, percussion, guitar, and a male and female vocalist) thrown together at the last minute, and our job was to offer a short concert of a mixture of Arab and Jewish songs at the close of each session. The first day was very difficult, because we had to play after a stormy session with several shouting matches, much anger in the air, and little if any real dialogue. On the second day, we asked the directors to let us open the program instead of closing it. We had to beg, then insist, and they reluctantly agreed. What a difference it made! Not only was there no shouting during that conference, people really listened to each other --- and there were even some friendships made! I can't attribute it to the quality of our music (my oud-playing was pretty amateurish in those days), but I did learn something important about the power of the intent of music. Whatever our shortcomings as an ad-hoc musical group with too little rehearsal together, our individual and collective intent was so strong on that second day, that it communicated a message of peace which words alone could not have done. Last, but far from least, our motivation, on that day at least, was for our music to serve --- to serve something higher than the usual desire to shine, to thrill, or entertain, that had previously motivated us.

This was also my first inkling that the influential modernist doctrine of l'art pour l'art --- art for art's sake --- is a fatuous dead end. From the earliest times of performance art, all the way back to its beginnings in shamanism, authentic performers have always known that they are at their best when their art serves something higher than art. Individually and collectively, we are beginning to rediscover this ancient truth, but in new and mysterious ways...

By Joseph Rowe

http://www.naturalchant.com

also, see my significant other's site:

http://www.myspace.com/catherinebraslavsky

and my memoir of my teacher, Hamza El Din:

http://www.naturalchant.com/hamza.htm

"You can't play the blues... if you ain't lived the blues!"

I’ll never forget those words as they came deeply from the heart of an elderly gentleman strumming a well-worn Silvertone guitar. Those words were never so poignant as in the life of the first blues master. Not Handy, not Johnson, not Ledbetter. Let’s journey back in time past New Orleans, past Chicago, past Kansas City… way back. Let’s drop back to ancient Jerusalem.

The blues man I’m referring to is David, King David to some of us. If we look at some of his lyrics and those of a few of his fellow musicians (found mostly in the Bible's book of Psalms) I think we can find a man who lived the blues - so he had a right to sing the blues. The encouraging part of his compilation is that as he struggled through disappointment and heartbreak, family trauma and the consequences of poor choices, he always seemed to find a way to look up and see the bright side. For him, that bright side was his trust in the profound and extravagant love and mercy of his God.

What can we learn from him… those of us who strum our way through life?

I want to invite you to join me as we research the Psalms over the next several weeks and look at them from the standpoint of the blues. Check out Psalm 142 between now and my next post to see how it relates to the blues.

[By Scott Carroll, Associate Pastor at "The Journey" in Rock Hill, SC]

The Angel Oak, a "live oak" specimen of oak near my home in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, is purported to be 1,400 years old. However, no one can substantiate this because of the difficulty of core sampling such large trees. Standing beside this beautiful tree I can’t help but feel the mystery of being swell inside me. I stand silent beneath her ancient canopy and connect with the energy that is undeniably present. I let my mind flow back through the centuries until I lose myself. When I open my eyes I am standing before a sapling sprouting from the ground, a tender shoot raised from a seed that was stubborn and steadfast enough to anchor itself into the Earth and lay dormant until the time was just right for emergence.

Can you see the 1,400 year old tree hiding inside the seed? Is it any less a giant, tightly encapsulated within a resilient casing that with time becomes weathered, fragments, and falls away allowing freedom for emergence towards the light? Can you see the potential budding inside you, inside your gift of music? Perhaps you are even afraid of all the potential you feel. Are you not like this seedling-giant? Are you seeking answers to these questions or, are the questions themselves witnessing your inevitable emergence as the answer?

From a song in the works:

“I've been trying to find you
yes, trying to find you
You've been trying to find me
yes, trying to find me
All that I'm searching for- is searching for me
trust and we'll see
There's a season to come
a season to come
Rain, it follows the sun
follows the sun
Sunshine follows the rain, night into day
trust in this way
And if I dreamed it all differently
would it be any easier for me to believe?
Live whatever may come
whatever may come
Dream whatever the dream
whatever the dream
Close and yet far away, near as the end
is where we begin.”

[By Tom Crenshaw. Tom is a singer- songwriter who lives with his family in Bluffton, SC and is on the staff at RockOm.]

After months of work, here we are! We've launched! The ship has left the platform; we're officially off the ground. The RockOm team has put a lot of time into getting us this far and we know you're going to love exploring the site.

Take some time to look around - enjoy our Featured Track of the week - Tommy Fields' fantastic song "Be the Change." Delve into the mind of Futureman, Krishna Das or Ricky Skaggs. Head over to the forum and start a new thread about what music inspires you. Or download our current Podcast. Peek around and poke about.

We look forward to getting to know you better. Sign up for a user account today, leave some comments and let's get this conversation going!

Many continued blessings-

Trevor Harden, President

"Be the Change"

Tommy Fields

www.tommyfieldsmusic.com
www.myspace.com/tommyfields

"My inspiration to write 'Be The Change' came in the realization that if we want to change the world, we need to start with ourselves. It can be overwhelming to look at all the things that are wrong in the world and feel overwhelmed and powerless. I believe if we 'Be' the way we want the world to be in a conscious way, then change will happen...one step at a time."
[Tommy Fields]

Click to Play!

RockOm Exclusive: Download "Be the Change" for FREE, June 24 - June 30 ONLY.

Download "Be the Change"

RockOm July 2008 Featured Article

In yoga centers and practitioners' MP3 players worldwide stream the melodies and voice of artist Krishna Das. Krishna Das' legendary history began with befriending spiritual teacher Ram Dass and soon thereafter becoming a disciple of Maharaj-ji (Neem Karoli Baba). Today he records albums and tours the world leading kirtan (devotional music) and has sung for and with many of the world's foremost spiritual teachers and musical artists. KD recently shared with RockOm's Trevor Harden about his rock'n' roll past and the influence of his guru.

RockOm - In the yogic tradition, there are several pathways to connecting with or serving God. You've chosen the devotional path, which is carried out through song. From Krishna Das kirtan sessions to Sunday morning church services, why do you believe music is such a powerful agent in connecting us with the divine?

Krishna Das - That's a good question. Music is a way people can get out of their minds, get out of their thoughts. It's something they can do themselves with their body and with their voice. It's something they can give themselves to without any artificiality; it just moves you. The rhythms of music and the sound and all those things helps people get out of their heads. I saw the new Rolling Stones movie at the IMAX that Martin Scorsese directed and they played some stuff from way back, stuff from their early albums from when I was in college listening. I broke out crying because those songs were so important to me at that time. They helped me so much to get through hard periods. It was so powerful for me. Our emotions are able to move into the flow of music in a way that's very beautiful. With chanting, there's music involved but also something else which is called the Divine Names in the East - the names of God or the names of that place in us that's ok, the place that we forget a lot. By melting the music in with these sounds, we not only get that ability to move out of our minds, but we also move into something that's more lasting in our own hearts - in our own self. No matter how much that music of the Stones helped me when I was young, it didn't give me something lasting. I'm not trying to put music down in any way, but the spiritual aspect of music doesn't necessarily come from the music itself. It can come from the person who's doing the music. It can come from what's in the music, what's put into the music by that person. The intention of the musician is very important.

RO - You mentioned the Stones; were there other artists or albums when you were a young man or teenager that also spoke to you?

KD - The blues. Mississippi Delta blues, country blues. When I heard that music, I fell over. I grew up on Long Island in the '50s and '60s. The '50s were a very superficial time - Eisenhower was the president; it was a weird time. Everybody was repressed, nobody talked about anything. And then I ran into the blues and I could not believe it - the power, the presence, the wisdom and the intensity of the experience of these musicians like Mississippi John Hurt, Rev. Gary Davis, Skip James, and Robert Johnson. I couldn't believe how real this stuff was and how it cut through the nonsense of what I was living with every day. That music really changed my life, absolutely. And in some ways, what I do - I'm really still just a blues singer. It's big blues, but it's blues.

RO - It is well noted that your time in India brought you to the feet of Neem Karoli Baba. What, if anything, did your guru have to say about music?

KD - Not much other than, "Sing!" He wasn't a teacher. He didn't do a lot of intellectual talking. He didn't explain a lot of stuff but he guided each of us to finding our own way to help ourselves. He always asked me to sing - he asked all of us to sing - and the chanting became very important to me so I just kept up with it. Once again, he talked about the Name, the repetition of the Name. It is like calling out when you're in love with somebody, your heart is always calling them - calling their name and bringing their face and their presence to your mind. It's the same thing. Through this music, we're calling that Love - the essence of all that Love - to bring into ourselves, to bring it into our moment, into our lives. That's what the practice is about.

RO - You're currently on tour throughout the Eastern U.S., including June 28th at Charleston's Jivamukti Yoga and June 30th at Atlanta's Variety Playhouse. What have you learned over your years of touring and leading different kinds of people in different parts of the world in devotional singing?

KD - Get enough sleep! [laughs] For me, it's like being with family. No matter how many people are there, no matter where I am, no matter what language they talk it always feels like family to me. It's a wonderful feeling. I've found that everybody's the same, everybody wants the same thing. Everybody wants some relief from the intensity of the stuff that happens every day to us. We want to find a way to live with that. Everybody wants that love, everybody wants to find that place no matter where they are on this earth. You can see that a lot of us don't know how to go about doing that and that, instead of helping us find a way to deal with it, our very actions make more stuff to deal with. That's the same across the board everywhere. I've learned that everybody's the same.

RO - And you feel that through your sessions with these people it's helping them through this process a little?

KD - It's certainly helping me. I don't know about them. I would hope so, but I know it's helping me.

Krishna Das is currently on tour in Georgia, South and North Carolina and a few states in the Midwest, among others. Check out his tour schedule as well as much more information at www.krishnadas.com.

www.krishnadas.com

Top photo by Carla Cummings.
Second photo by Meg Carlough.

Article edited by Andrew Hoogheem.

RockOm July 2008 Featured Article

Futureman (Roy Wooten) is known for his work with the multi-Grammy award winning Bela Fleck and the Flecktones as well as his recent project, "The Black Mozart Ensemble." He is a self-professed "inventor, scientist, musician, and composer" and is the mind behind two electronic instruments: the drumitar and the RoyEl. RockOm's Trevor Harden recently met up with Futureman in an apropos ex-Sunday School room within the Freedom Center - an old church building that has been converted into a performance space - in Rock Hill, SC.

RockOm: Can you speak about your background growing up in Virginia? Did you have a spiritual family? Did you do the religious church-going thing?

Futureman: Yeah, it was a really religious place. My mom and her mom and grandma were really centered around the church. For me, it wasn't so much one particular religion. Basically how many ways can you say "Do the right thing"? If a cow is stuck in the ditch on a Sunday but I'm not supposed to work on Sunday, do I remain inactive? What's the right thing? Stick to regime or what the right thing is in the moment? As a system of thinking and of character building, [religion] is really good. I remember when we were little kids our mom would read stories that carry messages and one of them was King Solomon. One of the angels told him he could get whatever he asked and he asked for Wisdom, not money. If you're wise, you know how to make money. Reading those kind of stories, it becomes aware these are axioms. When you put that into your art, it opens your mind.

RO: So you think those early stories helped influence who you are and influenced your art?

F: Yes, it encouraged me to dig deep. Like Miles Davis said, "What is the meaning of that note? How do I feel about that note?" As people grow up, maybe Led Zepplin hit them really hard, or something else hits them - maybe that's their thing. They respond to a different kind of music. Maybe jazz is not your particular cup of tea. But if you're a movie maker, you want to tap into all of that. Maybe in this scene I need a walking bass. Or right here i just need that sizzle cymbal. There are different aspects of yourself which are like a kaleidoscope. This gets into the whole thing of knowing yourself. There are so many aspects of who you are and as you get to know yourself, the art can help bring it out.

RO: One of your pieces with the Black Mozart Ensemble is East-meets-West: Indian vocals paired with Amazing Grace. What was your inspiration for that particular song?

F: The inspiration is the project that I'm working on right now, going back to the 1700s all the way up to 2050. We're looking at this guy, Joesph Boulogne de St. George, who is known as the Black Mozart; a great man and a musical hero but he's been lost to history due to the times. When we see the movies of Mozart it seems like everything's fine at the ball, but outside the ballroom is the height of the world's slave trade. You have a lot of mixed-race kids who were being born as a result of these unions between plantation owners and slaves. A lot of times history is not looking at that but here's one who made a great impact in classical music. We don't know about his story because when Napoleon reinstituted the slave codes he banned [St. George's] music and even banned his name, so that even to this day he's in the blind spot. His story is one of the greatest stories never told. But I'm looking at this brother and he's wearing my stuff. He's got my tri-cornered hat, I was like "What's this?" He's wearing all my stuff. Who's this cat wearing my stuff? So I wanted to find out what his story was about.

RO: ...so you did a little homework...

F: Yeah, looking into his story he may have been a Futureman type-of-guy in his time because he was questioning the order of the day and challenging the status quo. He was not allowed to conduct or lead any orchestra at the time. But he created something larger than ever before. He influenced Mozart. He created two new styles of music. There's not many people in the history of music that do that - even one new style - the Symphony concertante and the string quartet itself. He was a super-virtuoso only equaled later by Paganini. It's a renaissance kind of thing - looking at the past as it relates to the future.

RO: Tell us about your new instrument, the RoyEl.

F: I created my own piano which is an extension of what I'm doing on the Drumitar with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. I knew when I first started if I could learn to play the drums with my hands, it would be hand drumming in a modern sense. Because I had more than two sticks it would get to the complexity of the piano and then I would be able to play the drums like an orchestra. You were saying "How does this influence you?" - all the things I've been into I have infused into my art. I realized that in order to recreate [dynamics electronically] it was very difficult and frustrating because when I'm playing the drums I can just hit it. But here you gotta get the samples and get them to imitate the real world. It got me to understand the real world a little bit better. It got me to think that when I'm going from a soft sound to a loud sound it's not only getting louder, it's also getting brighter. Down low it's real dark, but louder there's a higher tint to it; there's a whole flowering going on. I got so intimate with the dynamics that now when I got to this piano thing, I can assign different notes on each key according to how hard I hit it. On every key I've got four different notes. I know where those four notes are and I can pull them out.

RO: And be expressive.

F: Yes, be expressive according to the groove. It really has a melodic slope to it that starts pulling the melody out depending on the four notes that I choose. Automatically it creates a graph. It already has a slope to it. Depending on how I lay it out, there's a composition already happening before I play anything. So it's a lattice work; it's like a chessboard where you choose the notes laterally, left-to-right but also by how hard I hit it. It's like Spock in Star Trek - the King's 3-level chess. And it's not so much intellect as it is you're feeling the flow of what you're hitting. I'm literally using piano, soft, and forte, loud, to hit different notes. Boom these chords just pop out; my music just pops out like a baby being born. I composed it, but it's like having a baby.

RO: Some people talk about composing coming from beyond yourself. Do you feel that to be true?

F: Yes. I create this complex latticework and it seems like there's a higher mind that really understands it. When I go on [the RoyEl], it works through my understanding of groove but then it's like - WOAH! There's a line and counterpoint popping out that is cohesive. All I did was just ran the tape because I saw something was working. When I was deciding the notes and the layout, it was all like sacred geometry. So even on the splits on the notes, I just split like nature splits. Like your cells split. A cell has one split - boom - it goes to two, which doubles to four. Four doubles to eight. Eight doubles to sixteen. When you take Pythagorean numerology or Vedic mathematics where you take a big number and reduce it down to one, the numbers have nine gears. We have two numbers like 32, 3 and 2 makes 5. 11 would be 1 and 1 makes 2 - so that you can always see the representation of that number as one digit. When we do that we begin to see the forest for the trees. So we take doubling. One doubles to 2, doubles to 4, doubles to 8, doubles to 16 which we can see is 7 (1+6). 16 doubles to 32 which we can see is 5 (3+2) and that's the end. It just starts that all over again. 32 doubles to 64, which is 10, which is 1 (1+0). You're back to 1 again. It starts all over. 64 doubles to 128, you add them together and reduce them. 8+1+2=11 which would reduce to 2. That's your next two. 128 doubles to 256 - true middle C - which is 2+5+6=13 which reduces to 4. There's your next 4. It's going 1, 2, 4... and the next one is going to be 8, then 7 and 5 all over. It keeps repeating over and over. So on the splits on my keyboards, I was doubling like that: root, 2nd, 4th, octave. Logically it seems that nature or a higher mind can work with that. It's not even like I knew what I was doing so much, I was just playing on it and all of this information was coming through. I feel like it's some sort of abacus I created or a Ouija board or something. It's like I was able to have a baby. The baby had a heartbeat like mine but do I know how to make it? Not necessarily but I was part of the process. That's spirituality in a sense.

Spiritual has to do with spirals. Spiraling. Spinning. What goes around comes around. You look at the bass clef, it's the same shape as you ear. It's the same shape as the nautilus. It's the same shape as an ocean wave. That's the golden ratio! The bass clef is a symbol of the golden ratio. No one ever says that, but that's what it it is. Put two of them together and you get a heart shape. It has something to do with spiraling. If we went further on, you spiral down and out. But you can take a cross section of it and spin it around. I've seen a guy do it. [Makes shape with hand] Here's the cursive a, b, c, d, e - the whole greek alphabet you can get from that one shape. Check that out! That's E Pluribus Unum, you get many out of one principle. I don't believe it's an accident that we see these powerful symbols on the music staff and all the music flows out of it. To follow that even further, we turn that upside down, draw a line through it and come back, that's how I see the treble clef. The treble clef almost looks like the dollar sign and it seems like the line is flat but no, that's the golden ratio. The golden ratio is a spiral - so this is actually showing you a toroid. It's like an 8 almost. It's showing you - "as above" - it comes back in on itself - "so below." That line is orienting you through that golden ratio. Then it doesn't just keep going, it comes back in on itself. That's toroid - "as above, so below." If you take two Pepsi bottles tied together, the vortex spins: black hole spitting out to a white hole. The key is that nozzle in the middle. This is deeply spiritual. "As above, so below," but the connection [in the middle] is the thing.

Marko Rodin says that if you reduce numbers down to one digit, they tell a story. It's a 9 part story for every number. 0's story is always 0. 1's story when you run the multiplication story is always single digits - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 11 reduces to 2, 12 is 3 all over again, 13 is 4. It's going to always do that, even though the numbers get big. But two does something different. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 (which is 1), 12 (which is 3), 14 (which is 5). If we step back and look at what it's doing, it's going up the even numbers and then up the odd numbers. And what is 2? Duality. It's yin and yang. Up the even numbers, up the odd numbers. Now if you remember that forumla you can start to see the rest. 0 is always resolving to 0. Now when we get to the end of the number spectrum, 9 is acting like 0 because it's always resolving to itself. 9x1 is 9. 9x2 is 18, 1+8=9. 9x3=27, 2+7 is 9. 9x4=36, 9x5=45, 9x6=54, 9x7=63, 9x8=72. It's always resolving to itself. The numbers are mirroring each other but they're doing them backwards. It's the toroid again - "As above, so below." 3 just always goes 3, 6, 9, 3, 6, 9. 6 goes back the other way starting with 6 - 6, 3, 9, 6, 3, 9 going the other way. It's the middle where the crossover is...I'm going to do it with 5. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30. It's hard to see it but if you play piano, think of 5 as the 5th. 5, 10 (1+0=1), 15 (1+5=6), 20 (2+0=2) or 5-1-6-2-7-3-6-4-5-1-6-2-7-3-8-4-9-5-1... Four goes the other way. 4x1=4, 4x2=8, 4x3=12 which is 3 (1+2). So it goes 4, 8, 3, 6... 5 is going one way, 4 is going the other. In the middle, there's the cross. I got this from a guy named Marco Rodin. He says that numbers are showing you the order of things even though they get bigger. Vedic mathematics are based on this, Pythagorean also.

I'm saying all this to say that when you talk about music and spirituality, I found out that St. George, Bach, and Mozart (who joined later) belonged to a Pythagorean society. I didn't know this! I was just being nerdy! When I start playing those numbers like that as pitches - that sounds like Bach! It sounds perfect, because it's processional. Bach and [these composers] belonged to this Pythagorean society to study a Pythagorean philosophy. Those that belonged to the society had their portrait done and each of them brought something. What Bach brought was the art of the fugue. The secret of the art of the fugue is that it's perfect music. A lot of time in Bach's music he wouldn't tell you where the beginning was or the end, it was just perfect music. But Pythagorean thought, which is looking at numbers like this, reveals their essence and their story. See this is again what I was talking about at the beginning of this article. I always knew growing up that 1 was different than 2. The teacher said, "No, 2 is just two 1's, " but I just showed you 1 as a symbol that has a hologram that always goes up single digit. It's pattern is different than 2. Two goes up the even numbers then up the odd numbers. Three goes up in 3s. 4 goes up bling, bling, bling, 5 goes bloom, bloom, bloom. When you go to 6 it does the opposite of 3, 7 does the opposite of 2. 2 goes up the even numbers, up the odd numbers. 7 comes down the odd number, down the even numbers. 7x1=7, 7x2=14 and there's your 5 (1+4). You can guess that the next one's going to be 3. 7x3=21, 21 is 3 (2+1). 7x4=28, there's your 1 (8+2=10, 1+0=1). So it goes 7-5-3-1, the next one is going to be an even number. 7x5=35, there's your 8 (3+5). So now that you know the themes, you can step back and use Vedic mathematics where you just know it. That's how these guys in Indian mathematics can do this and beat the computer. It's because even though the numbers get big, they're following a...

RO: ...larger pattern...

F: A larger pattern. This to me is spiritual.

In August we continue with Part 2 of RockOm's exclusive interview with Futureman. In the next segment, Futureman touches on creating matter from frequencies, the properties of Beauty, and the Big Bang as the "Big Orgasm." You don't want to miss this...

www.futuremanmusic.com
www.myspace.com/futuremanmusic

Photo by Maria Grazia, www.mgfoto.com

Article edited by Andrew Hoogheem.