Often we hear the thought expressed that music is a universal language. While it is true that music in some form exists universally, different cultures can have very different perceptions of what music is and its role in life. I have spent a great deal of time contemplating the nature of music in its various manifestations, and I have come to see that music may not quite be the universal language that many think.
I have always been fascinated by music from different cultures and their multifarious forms. My travels have brought me close up to some of these, and the diversity of humanity that I prefer to be surrounded by among my friends and in society has exposed me to yet others.
I grew up with the stories my mother told me of hearing the talking drums in Africa. She told me about how they were used for long-distance communication and how they would permeate the soundscape where she lived in Mbeya in what is now Tanzania. My father also shared stories of his impressions of the sounds he heard while living in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia or the vocal music of the Mauri people during his years in New Zealand.
When I was in college I was once invited to dinner at the home of a professor at Michigan State University. I remember intensely the tremendous impression it made upon me when he played for us a recording of music from India and spoke about his interest in music from around the world.
While working in the Filarmónica in Santiago, Chile during the early 80’s, I loved to absorb the sounds of the charangos, quenas, zampoñas and bombos–tiny armadillo-shelled guitars, reed flutes, panpipes and cylindrical drums–of the musicians who would busk Andean music in the streets. Theirs is a music that grew as a protest to the dominating Spaniards by the Aymara and Quechua-speaking Indians of the Andes to the north.
I had several opportunities while I was there to take a break from the orchestra to travel south to the Araucanía region of Chile, a ten-hour overnight bus trip. Temuco, together with Villarrica 45 miles farther south, are a hub to the Mapuche culture of this region. The Mapuche are a strong and ancient culture with a profoundly spiritual view of the universe, the only indigenous people in Latin America to never have been conquered by either the Incas or the Spaniards.
Among my traveling companions on one of these trips, to Nueva Imperial, 35 miles east of Temuco, was a ten-year-old Bahá’í Mapuche boy with his kultrún, the sacred Mapuche drum. I have observed that the rhythm of indigenous peoples in the Southern Hemisphere tends to be in three, whereas that of those in the Northern Hemisphere tends to be in two or four. This is the case with a typical Mapuche rhythm of
as opposed to the northern drum rhythm that I have heard so many times at pow-wows and other First Nations gatherings here in North America:
My friend and I decided to blend together this traditional Mapuche rhythm with the gigue from Bach’s 3rd cello suite, which I played on my viola. The result was so captivating that we were invited to play on the local radio station and talk about our motivation for making this unique mix of music. We shared our perspective that the diversity of cultures is something beautiful to be celebrated and that different peoples can indeed come together in harmony.
More recently I have been doing research for a potential composition that would include ideas influenced by Mapuche music. In the process of doing this research, I discovered that in the Mapuche language of mapundung there is no word for “music.” To me, this is quite telling about the Mapuche cosmology, which includes the view of the material world as a reflection of the spiritual. Music is such an integral part of Mapuche life and communication that there is no need to have a special word to separate it. Music is a thread that connects the physical existence to the reality of realms that can be felt rather than seen.
I had the privilege of participating in a three-day Mapuche conference that was held to deal with a severe fifty-day drought. The crops so important to a traditionally agrarian culture were dying. A nguillatún dance by all present was performed as a prayer to address the urgent need for rain. Many of the participants were playing kultrúns, rattles and various types of Mapuche trumpets, flutes and whistles. On the following day, not only had it begun to rain, but the rain was so intense that there were literally rivers flowing down the streets.
In other cultures around the world, music of a given society can have a profoundly different meaning from that of another. There are many examples available that could be expanded upon. I feel so fortunate to have an extensive collection of CD’s of world music with informative liner notes as well as numerous mp3’s, and my library contains a fascinating number of books on the topic. In addition, the ample resources today on the internet for study of divers cultures provide an enormous advantage over what was available just a few decades ago.
Without considering only their outward elements when comparing musics, but also looking to what function and meaning music has to a people, I have come to believe that music, in a universal sense, is more akin to the essence of language rather than being a universal language in and of itself.
Allow me to explain this concept. The essense of language is the capacity of human beings to communicate with each other through the use of words, phrases, symbols and gestures. However, for any of these things to be able to convey the intended meaning to another person, that person needs to share the same understanding of what those words, phrases, symbols and gestures mean. This is what constitutes a language.
We can appreciate the beauty of the sounds and rhythms of a given spoken language, but if one does not understand the meaning of the words and phrases, or deeper still, the cultural context of that language, one is missing a great deal.
This concept can be extended to music. I have come to view a specific culture’s understanding of what music means as a language, which may not be the same language as a different culture. We certainly can appreciate the beauty, power, spirituality, aggressiveness, or whatever a particular cultural music may convey, but unless we can really deeply understand the meaning of the music within the cultural context of its creators, we have not received the whole message.
I am very much an advocate of listening to music from all cultures, and I hope that you will open your ears to do this as much as you can. In the process, open both your heart and mind to try to learn something about those cultures and also what that music is saying to them. When we combine understanding with acceptance, then we are able to grow love. This would certainly be a positive step toward creating more harmony in the world.