sansfife

Primal Music Reconsidered: Part II

2017-06-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

In the last post, I summarized my early life experience immersed in music and my eventual move toward an understanding of my religion that threw my relationship with music into doubt. Music holds a dubious place in my faith tradition, and an axial principle within Islam suggests leaving doubtful matters altogether. I obliged, and that was the end of my relationship with instrumental music for the next 20 years.

It was my divorce in 2015 that forced me to recognize a powerful societal dynamic that has been gaining sway in popular consciousness for some time.

We are living in extremely polar times. This dynamic had crept into my thinking and even into my marriage. It can be heard in today's political rhetoric. It can be heard in religious discourse. It makes up a large part of social media exchanges.

Everyone is in a camp.

You're either this or you're that. You're either with us or against us. You swing left or you swing right. To celebrate black lives is to denigrate white lives. To fight for men's rights is to disparage women. Trump, a perversion of masculinity, vs. Hilary, a perversion of femininity. America first.

And the rest of humanity?

The drawing of these lines puts the emphasis on "or." And when my marriage hit a transition point, I believe we had both been conditioned to consider things in light of that polarizing "or." Each of us had a vision of what had to happen, or what the other must be. Or else.

My children had not yet suffered the polarizing effects of "or." They saw good in their mother and their father. They were Muslims and had an abundant passion for many aspects of our shared popular culture, music included, that in my "or" thinking, I couldn't appreciate.

And through my children, I began to consider the beautiful possibilities of "and." Could I exert myself standing up for the injustices perpetrated against women, my daughters included, and struggle against the gross perversions of justice as they pertain to father's rights? Could I respect the populist rhetoric of Trump and acknowledge the glass-ceiling symbolism of Hilary? Could I hold fast to the tenets of my faith and honor my God-given talents and passions?

Once it's considered, the incredible, mending "and" becomes almost narcotic. And like narcotics, its use must be judicious. It is a healing thing that, misapplied, can become rather absurd.

But I don't believe that, in courting instrumental music as an observant Muslim, my application of "and" is absurd. Not in the least. To remind us of the axial Islamic tradition:

That which is lawful is plain and that which is unlawful is plain and between the two of them are doubtful matters about which not many people know.

About instrumental music in Islam, there has only been debate. And then, only among the scholars and their respective students. The whole of Islamic history, from its earliest days until the present, speaks to the rich instrumental musical traditions of the Muslim people. From the simple shepherd's flute to the development and codification of the myriad maqamat, the contribution of Muslims to the cultural stores of world music cannot be overemphasized, nor should it be under-appreciated.

I'm a rock musician. Some estimate that 20% of the African men and women brought over to the Americas and forced into slavery were Muslim. Their songs informed the development of the blues. The blues were caught up by white country musicians and that was the birth of rock and roll. And there is every reason to believe that Muslims and their early stringed instruments presaged the guitar.

From Wikipedia:

Many influences are cited as antecedents to the modern guitar. Although the development of the earliest "guitars" is lost in the history of medieval Spain, two instruments are commonly cited as their most influential predecessors, the European lute and its cousin, the four-string oud; the latter was brought to Iberia by the Moors in the 8th century.

The Moors were the Muslims of North Africa.

Rock and roll brought together black and white culture in North America. It was an "and" response to an "or" worldview. There's medicine in that.

Rock and roll is not about sex and drugs. At its heart, rock and roll is about the quest for authenticity, and rebellion as a tool to get there. Rock pushes hard against the status quo, and in the early, Beaver Cleaver days of rock's inception, rebellion really was about doing everything your parents hated.

But in an era of recreational sex and legalized pot, there's really nothing rebellious about sex or drugs. Which, in many ways, is why mainstream rock had lost some serious cultural currency. Seattle's grunge scene was a short-lived and powerfully corrective moment where area musicians realized the extent to which their art form had been co-opted and neutralized. While the Seattle explosion was noted on an international level, rock has always nurtured an independent underground scene that carries, in many cases, the energy and passion to fuel movements.

But it's not for everybody.

In November of 2016, I wrote and recorded my first instrumental song (using prerecorded loops) in close to 20 years:

That felt good. And after that, I sent a note to my old songwriting partners, Chris and Issac of Stillwater Black, a rock band I last co-fronted in 1997. We're writing and recording again. I'm gonna be over there for awhile.

You're more than welcome to join me and stay true to what's Real.

Primal Music Reconsidered: Part I

2017-05-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

Music gets me through hard times.

My father was a blues and country man. Sired in the hills of Kentucky, he had a profound appreciation for the everyman twang of Hank Williams and Willie Nelson. A lifetime of bad choices put him in the company of bluesmen like T-Bone Walker and B. B. King. My father spent a lot of time listening to men moaning about what went wrong and why.

My mother, a Syrian immigrant, loved a good folk song. The lighter stylings and socially conscious musings of Bob Dylan or Joan Baez was the soundtrack to her cooking and my homework. And in her more passionate moments she thrilled to a sweeping show tune, songs from the stage, perhaps My Fair Lady or Jesus Christ Superstar.

My parents split up when I was twelve. These were hard times, and music was there. I was drawn to the anger and gravity in some of the more fringe rock genres: East Coast punk, speed-metal, and thrash. This was music that tied neatly into my fractured experience. These were artists articulating my state of confusion and dismissal and I found solace in their grinding guitars and primal howls. By age 15 I had a guitar of my own and within a couple of years I was jamming with friends in garages across several neighborhoods. I was grinding and howling and it was tremendous catharsis.

In my twenties I had a record deal and also a deepening interest in spirituality. I was raised in the Islamic faith, though for me this was more of an inherited cultural relic than a life path. But, through various challenges as a young adult, my behavioral patterns and developmental limitations became apparent, and my desire to experience something limitless surged.

This initiated a period of existential inquiry that landed me, ultimately, into a fuller appreciation of the faith of my birth. And in this new and growing understanding of Islam, there seemed to be a number of incompatibilities with the person I was and the person I wanted to be. In order to set my spirit free, it seemed, I had to drop some weight. And among those things rather abruptly jettisoned was my relationship with instrumental music.

Behind this was a centuries-long debate within Islam about the legal permissibility of using tuned instruments in the creation of music. There were opinions and arguments on all sides of the debate, and in the end only one thing was absolutely certain: there was no certainty.

But so vast and perfect is Islam in its articulation of the human experience that even uncertainty is addressed. The Prophet, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him, teaches:

Leave that which makes you doubt for that which does not make you doubt.

For centuries, Islam’s greatest thinkers and most pious practitioners could not agree on the permissibility of using tuned instruments for musical expression. As a corollary to this, there is absolute certainty as to the permissibility of leaving off musical instruments altogether. For the aspirant then, the choice is made still more clear by the following axial teaching of the blessed Prophet:

That which is lawful is plain and that which is unlawful is plain and between the two of them are doubtful matters about which not many people know. Thus he who avoids doubtful matters clears himself in regard to his religion and his honor, but he who falls into doubtful matters falls into that which is unlawful.

Twenty years ago, in order to protect my religion and honor, I walked away from my musical collaborators and our recording contract. It was a choice I felt good about, but in order to keep feeling good about it I had to radically restructure my social circles. I cut out my musician friends, and even those Muslim friends and acquaintances that advocated a more permissive approach to music. I cloistered myself in the supreme safety of religiously conservative people that had made similar choices and together we reinforced the sensibility of our decisions and the privilege of having been so guided.

There was no distancing myself from my love for melody and rhythm, however, and I had the extreme good fortune of exposure to the song-circles of religiously observant Muslim mystics, the sufis of the Levant who taught me the immeasurable pleasure of communal singing. There were no instruments beyond a simple frame drum in their gatherings, but the resonance and power of men singing as one voice impressed me greatly. I seemed to glimpse through them the singular utility of music in bringing people together to inspire, emote, refresh, and elevate. I termed this audition primal music and I had experienced no better tool in the reconciliation of the daily incongruities encountered on the spiritual path.

In this vein, limiting musical expression to one’s voice seemed to encourage an intriguing exploration of self. Save for those early childhood experiences where we (perhaps along with our parents) delighted at the sound of our own voice, most of us have never been prompted to fully develop our vocal capacity. Whatever insecurities we might have in this regard, it remains true that bringing one’s voice into reverberation with others has the potential to amplify and beautify the sound, to excite not only the sonic texture of the melody, but also the veracity of the words sung. Unified voices hint at how the multiplicity of creation might be simultaneously derived from and subsumed by the Oneness of God.

Musical instruments add nothing to this. They are a distraction in fact, pulling power and attention away from our personal and collective ability to summon forth the latent and incomparable beauty within. To play a musical instrument is to be ungrateful indeed.

This was my mindset for many years. In some respects, I fancied myself an anti-musical instrument activist. I have children, four beautiful daughters, and I was vigilant about the sounds that they were exposed to. We didn’t have a television in the home. There was no radio. When we listened to anything it was a cappella and most often religious.

And there were problems.

It was in the context of a very homogeneous cultural group, Levantine sufis, that I came into many of my ideas about what primal music might offer a person or a society. Indeed, as I began to look more deeply into the world’s traditions of unaccompanied communal singing, I found brilliant examples of its power to connect and amplify in virtually every culture, so long as the culture was homogeneous. The primal music of many Native American tribes, or the chanting of Tibetan monks, or the rural folk singing of Balkan Georgia all validate the beauty and function of music simply and effectively realized. But I could not find examples of where vocal communal music bridged different cultural groups on any appreciable scale.

Primal music is barely represented in the cosmopolitan urban centers of the world. The historic convergences that led to the rise of these metropolises and their more heterogeneous populations is worth exploring. I won’t do that here, except to say that things happened and here we are with globalization absolutely forcing some confounding cultural encounters.

And in this context, my context as a denizen of the Greater Los Angeles area, primal music exists only in isolated, homogeneous pockets. Rather than the fantastic gathering quality that I observed in the Levant, primal music on the pluralistic West Coast is ghettoizing.

I’m a hopeless idealist and this initially upset me. I actively looked for ways to introduce this idea of primal music to a larger, more diverse audience. I learned about various drumming traditions, reasoning that perhaps not everybody enjoys singing. Through drumming, people could still participate in the musical experience. I hosted a number of drum circles over several years and I had a great time doing it. Eventually, I began to write songs as sansfife, at first using only drum and voice, but with melodies and subject matter that I felt were more in line with my contemporary milieu. There was some interest on the part of others in listening to those songs, but there was very clearly no interest in building a communal singing tradition out of that material.

Through this work I met others who were exploring similar ideas. There is absolutely a palpable hunger out there for a communal, participatory, and ultimately more meaningful relationship with music. And while that’s true, something else was happening that got my attention.

I was asked to leave my married home in June of 2015. The immediate effect of the divorce upon my children was to remove them from my influence. Their mother did not share my qualms about musical instruments. When I saw my girls on the weekends, I was serenaded with all of the latest and entirely vapid pop nonsense.

At first I was angry, but in time I became curious. They took to contemporary music so quickly and so totally. They had no comparable enthusiasm for the well-sung sufi ode or the grass dances of the Plains Indians. Why was that?

The answer, of course, lay in the fact that the pluralistic, heterogeneous, urban metropolis that we call home does have a sonic backdrop. And it’s bombastic and loud and supported by musical instruments. My daughters were simply resonating with and expressing their cultural experience.

Which is, of course, my cultural experience. My girls brought me full circle, forcing a reconsideration of many things including my position on music. But it wasn’t only my personal domestic reorganization that triggered renewed introspection. America has a new president and my faith community is on the global hot seat.

In the next post, we’ll talk about taking risks, adopting inclusivity in the fight against otherization, and the surprising relationship between Islam and rock music.

Primal MILCK

2017-01-27T19:29:00.000-08:00

Although my own experiments with primal music are drawing to a close, I will not, God willing, lose my awareness of the power of voice and rhythm to unlock the deepest part of person and community.

If you are not yet aware of singer/songwriter MILCK and her deeply primal moment at the Women's March, please watch this:

You can read more about how things came together here.

And you can support her here.

orchid

2016-02-04T17:12:00.002-08:00

I'm struggling with committing the shuddering reality of my present to song.

In the sixteen months since the release of what they took, I lost most everything that I loved. Or tried to love.

I could write to that. I want to, but it's hard. I don't know what to say.

God Most High led me to a poem. It's a simple thing, but that's what distillation ultimately is: a purging of the inessential. And what little remains hints at worlds beyond.

And it was enough to get me behind my microphone, wal-hamdu lillah.

From a single point you grow so bright,
my sweetest angel.
You spread your wings and soon take flight,
my sweetest angel.
A beauty to rival the rose in bloom,
my dearest angel.
With Heaven’s scent upon your plume,
my dearest angel.
You cast a coolness upon my eyes,
my brightest angel.
Give birth to hope that never dies,
my brightest angel.
Engulf this soul in the warmth of your wings,
my beloved angel.
Ease the path to what eternity brings,
my beloved angel.
Guide me with scent to the eternal gate,
my forever angel.
A gift of love to close my fate,
my forever angel.

words by Naziyah Mahmood
naziyahmahmood.wordpress.com/

Twinning on 12/6

2015-11-26T14:52:00.003-08:00

Back in 2008, the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding launched an initiative they call "twinning." It's a beautifully inspired movement bringing Jews and Muslims together into community and conversation.

The drum has opened many, many doors, wal-hamdu lillah. I am invited, along with my dear friends Bassem Rashidi and Moose Simjee to facilitate that intentional community with drum and song. I couldn't be more honored or excited.

The event is being locally coordinated by the Southern California Muslim Jewish Forum:

We Refuse to Be Enemies

Sunday, December 6th from 1-3 pm

I.M.A.N. Center

3376 Motor Ave.

Los Angeles, CA 90034

The event is free.

The spirit of this impending, historic moment of shared sacred space is captured in a beautiful video shot by the lovely individuals behind Two Faiths One Prayer:

Be with us, people.

The Lomax Effect

2015-09-23T18:44:00.000-07:00

My first exposure to the work of Alan Lomax was a collection of prison songs that I picked up, probably after hearing something on public radio. It was the Big Brazos collection. I remember that much:

The disc was a watershed moment for me, linking the lingering effects of the African Diaspora with my growing awareness of communal music and all that it might hold for us. Sylviane Diouf has suggested that as many as 20% of those enslaved and brought to the Americas were Muslim. It's possible that, in listening to those prisoners singing away the hell of a blazing Texas work-farm, I was listening to the descendants of my brothers in spirit. And their message was clear.

Singing together makes the day go. It revives the spirit and shunts blood through tired muscles and a broken heart.

Those voices would have died out there on the field if it wasn't for the work of Mr. Alan Lomax and those who follow in his footsteps, those who record and archive the living history of common people. And this was not work without significant danger. Alan Lomax was branded a Communist. The FBI, CIA, and the British M15 kept files on him and harassed him mercilessly.

People's music is dangerous. It is the antidote to panem et circenses. Lomax brought attention to the communal traditions of musical expression that brought people together, that afforded people the collective strength to stand up and resist oppression, even if only at the level of spirit. And, like those slave masters who forbade their charges the drum, Lomax would be criminalized for his work.

There are people like Lomax today, people who sit with others to record, to compile, to archive, and to share. They have an open, encouraging presence that allows them access to the masters of a particular tradition. And they are preserving.

In that preserving there is also a perpetuating, and that's the dangerous stuff. They bring us glorious noise to challenge the contemporary entertainment paradigm, and these are the sounds that mainstream media wants so desperately to drown out.

Lomax set a wonderful precedent, and there are others who continue this work, many outside of the American folk milieu. The people at Ihsan Press are doing this work. The nascent effort that is Nashid Lyrics is another example of quiet revolution.

There are those who sing the songs. There are those who beat the drums. There are others who capture the experience and tell the story to the masses.

It is this triad that will deliver the bullet, guns down and voices up in the primal circle.

Weddings

2015-07-26T13:27:00.000-07:00

This could be the summer of the drum.

Primal Music Monday (PMM) was abandoned months ago. There were lots of reasons for that. Multiple obligations, dwindling participation, stagnant momentum.

It was time to move on, and that was a good choice, wal-hamdu lillah.

But seeds were planted. And we're seeing a little fruit.

I got a call recently from a brother who used to come out for the drumming. He's getting married. He wants a drum circle facilitated at his wedding feast.

And then another of the guys from PMM sent me a note. He's a professional musician and he's put together a drum ensemble. They've been asked to drum in the groom at another wedding. Would I like to help out?

Of course! To see my community embracing their celebratory heritage by pulling together the irresistible energies of drum and voice to commemorate holy matrimony- that's exactly what I'm about.

That's how you do it.

FOLI (there is no movement without rhythm)

2015-05-16T17:46:00.000-07:00

Life is rhythm.

If you have external speakers, do yourself the tremendous favor of hooking them up before you watch this.

And see if you can spot the dancing sheikh.

We'll be organizing a field trip to Motherland Music for a West African drum circle real soon, insha Allah.

Be ready for that.

Interview: Soul of Islam Radio

2015-04-17T11:36:00.002-07:00

I had a wonderful evening connecting with my dear brothers Ahmad Sakaamini and Emil Ihsan-Alexander Torabi on their podcast, Soul of Islam Radio.

You can check out our discussion here.

CSULB Pow Wow 2015

2015-03-12T06:35:00.004-07:00

A pow wow is a gathering of the North American indigenous peoples. The plains Indians got this going awhile back, but now it's really about people from all tribes getting together to catch up and have a good time as they preserve and share their respective cultures. Think ISNA for Indians.

While there are pow wows happening all the time, one of the more engaging ones I've been to is coming up this weekend, March 14-15 at California State University Long Beach. Clicking the link will take you to the flyer.

It's free, but bring money. Lots of shopping if you like Native American handicrafts.

It's also a good opportunity to see the extent to which drum and voice figure into the lives of our indigenous population. There are many other wonderful similarities between Native American and healthy Islamic worldviews, and that can be validating and interesting for some of us.

Take this picture of Zuni women:

Pretty incredible, right? There are very interesting linguistic relationships as well. Take this line from the Wikipedia entry on Zuni language:

"Zuni adults are often known after the relationship between that adult and a child. For example, a person might be called "father of so-and-so", etc."

Like abusajidah!

Anyway, you should totally go to the pow wow.

ISIS: Officially Not Cool

2015-03-09T20:47:00.000-07:00

Now here's violence I won't stand for:

Not the drums, guys. Anything but the drums . . .

Women, Drums, and Social Justice

2015-01-14T20:08:00.001-08:00

I like to keep up with all of the wonderful things that Miranda Rondeau does. She's an amazing drummer and a wonderful, generous human being.

Browsing her Facebook page, I came across this article that really sums up the power of the drum in the hands of the socially conscious.

Read about how this group of lower caste Hindu women were empowered through the drum and how they leveraged their new-found strength and unity to protect women in abusive situations.

An inspiring read, for sure.

Along similar lines, I have been working for the last several weeks with Rowan Storm to build a local women's rhythmic ensemble. She facilitated a frame drum intensive a little over three weeks ago that left a small band of 15 women very inspired.

Will that inspiration be enough to bring these women into a committed relationship with one another and the drum? Will they blaze an opening for joy, power, and social justice through the universal language of rhythm? Will they break through the silent societal barriers that restrict imagination to only that which is immediately acceptable?

Whether taken up today or later, the drum is there, a holy tool ready to bring so much to those bold enough to strike it.

The BDS Movement and Primal Music

2014-12-09T22:37:00.000-08:00

Our collective silence is the playground of despots.

Our collective action is their death knell.

There is more than mere music that happens when you beat a drum and sing a song with others. You break silence. You create together. You build together. You listen to one another. You learn to trust.

And when you trust one another, you can roll up your sleeves in community.

God give us the bravery to work together for good.

Idle No More

2014-11-26T07:59:00.001-08:00

Frame drums and a high intention. Perhaps among the most galvanizing forces in the created world.

Don't believe me?

The white slave owners of the Americas knew this. They would let their African charges play anything they wanted, but not the drum.

I only just learned about Idle No More, an advocacy group for indigenous peoples everywhere. They are capturing the hearts and spirits of local communities with their spontaneous, and perhaps even confrontational, round dances. Check them out taking over the Mall of America back in 2012:

May we be led through the permissions granted us by the Almighty Creator toward the pursuit of justice and equity for all people.

In peace.

The Primal Music Family Drum 11/23

2014-11-08T20:22:00.001-08:00

We’ve got Primal Music Monday coming up in a couple of days. The second Monday of every month. It’s for men only and you can read about that here.

The real news is that sansfife and the good people at Zawiya Perspective are gearing up to host our first ever Family Drum on Sunday, November 23rd from 5-7 pm, insha Allah.

There is certainly precedent for what is being proposed. Elements of the primal music community circle can be seen in social gatherings around the world.

I don’t think we are making anything up so much as drawing from existing traditions to create a compelling whole that is new perhaps only at the level of intention.

And that intention is to smash current musical paradigms that leave us silenced. And to have fun and maybe learn something while doing it.

Our community circle is exactly that. A circle. Or rather three concentric circles that help us to identify and strengthen complimentary energies. More on that in a second.

I just want to mention a few remarkable things about circles. A circle symbolizes unachievable perfection. We can intuit from a circle that such perfection exists, but it is just outside our reach, for “there is no such thing as a perfect circle.”

A circle has no beginning and no ending. A circle is infinite. All points along the arc of a circle are equidistant from the center. Taking up our positions in a circle, we are all equal. Our relationship with the Divine is therefore suggested by the circle.

When the community gathers to make primal music, we place our children in the center of the circle. This is where a circle’s energy is most concentrated. This is the place of movement, of spontaneity, and kinetic abandon. The innermost part of the circle is the place of protection and potential. Children are free then to move with their joy, but they are also learning to function as part of the group.

And so our men surround the children. Masculine energy is recognized by its power to limit and contain. The men are a boundary- their proximity to the children is both protective and restrictive. The men’s circle is also the ring of voice. It is the men who carry the melody in primal music, and this is in consideration of the sad reality that many men have lost their way. Would we have a world so steeped in violence, waste, and disparity if the everyman had enough faith in his own voice that he might speak it? Where is that arresting voice of man that cries, “Enough!” to those who perpetuate injustice with terrible impunity? And so it is the men who must sing.

It is the outer ring of women that contains the gathering, as the womb contains the entirety of humankind. Feminine energy is expansive and passionate, and if men have been cut off from their voices, it may also be said that our women have been cut off from their deepest strength. Our mother’s heart is the first rhythm any of us will ever hear, and her drumming in the third circle will focus her limitless power into the primal pulse that carries the community.

A bit flowery, all that. We could just say that the girls play drums, the boys sing, and the kids dance in the mush pot. And that’s true, too, so look at it how you will. But I’d like to suggest that this is ultimately about shifting our ideas around music and entertainment.

We need to move back into that place where music is not mere diversion. There was a time when music was not the tool of distraction and division that it is now. A primal music gathering is about communal participation, civic engagement, and intentional silliness that revives, refreshes, and connects- the absolute antithesis of the contemporary musical experience.

Anyway, this is actually a real-time opportunity to build not just community, but culture, insha Allah. We haven’t done this before, so I’ll be haughty and even call it historic.

It all goes down on Sunday, November 23rd, from 5-7 pm. Bring your family and friends to Zawiya Perspective:

1800 E Garry Ave #101
Santa Ana, CA 92705
949-394-6090

Women are encouraged to bring one drum or many. Frame drums are preferred. We’ll have a few loaners, but they are likely to go quick. We’ll cover some basic drum strokes and within minutes you’ll sound like rolling thunder. You’ll love it.

Men are encouraged to be bold. A few of us will sing loudly enough that nobody will blame you for anything that happens. But I promise that if you allow your voice to connect and resonate with me and the other men, you won’t soon forget the experience, and with God is every success.

If your kids are having fun dancing in the middle of the circle, great. If they are acting like idiots and pounding on people and equipment, they’ll get thrown out. If they don’t feel comfortable being away from a parent, it’s perfectly fine to keep them near you. Later you can all talk about the importance of pushing past what is immediately comfortable.

Tea and light refreshments will be provided, insha Allah.

Wa billahi tawfiq.

Debut EP: what they took

2014-10-28T13:28:00.001-07:00

There's not a lot to show for my tinkering with primal music composition over this last year. There was more, but my house was broken into and my laptop was stolen along with several microphones and other assorted recording paraphernalia. I didn't have most of my songs backed up, so those are gone.

But there were three songs that made it onto my SoundClound page. These were supposed to be demos, works in progress that I would continue to fiddle with, probably forever. But without the master files, all I had was my rough stereo mixes.

The burglary forced a decision. I decided to master the songs and release them as is.

Recorded using only frame drum and voice, the EP is called what they took and it's my first release as sansfife. The title is a nod to the burglars, but also to the loss of our collective voices, something I touch on here, here, and here.

Have a listen:

what they took by sansfife

Downloading the EP is free. You will be asked to name your price. You can pop in $0 without offending me. I'll get your email address, so it's even.

Excellent Primer By Rowan Storm

2014-10-25T08:06:00.001-07:00

I have a lot of respect for Sister Rowan.

My family and I have sat in on a few of her classes and we always have a great time. She is nurturing, intelligent, worldly, wise, and incredibly talented. She's a wonderful coach and can really bring out the best in people. And her Thinline drums are the best thing going for new drummers or people that want to get in some serious practice time without getting hurt.

Maybe we can one day arrange for a women's frame drum clinic with Rowan at Zawiya Perspective, but until then enjoy this collection of short tutorials.

The Cruel Wars

2014-10-23T20:47:00.001-07:00

Celtic punk band, The Dreadnoughts, know how to kill a shanty. I've got their version of Randy Dandy-Oh and Old Maui here.

They do it again with this amazing rendition of Cruel Wars. Listen for the bodhran, the Irish frame drum:

Rock Power

2014-10-01T21:13:00.000-07:00

My forays into primal music composition invariably turn up rock. I'm not sure what I thought I might come up with with all my banging and hollering. Indigenous people around a fire, pow-wow drums, African polyrhythms, prisoners singing a trench- all of that rattling around in my head and chest, but it all just comes up rock.

A lot of it is in working alone. You can't really sound like a tribe by yourself. And a lot of it is in the composition. Line by line. Hit on a nice rhythm, mumble nonsense, find the hook, vocal patterns coalesce, memories and ruminations find their way into my mouth and I scream.

And it's all rock.

I send songs to a friend of mine. He's an amazing drummer, a wonderful songwriter, and just a really good guy. I'm working on primal music, I tell him. He tells me it sounds like rock.

I send songs to another friend, maybe one of the best singers I've ever heard. "You sound like you need a guitar, a band."

It got to where I was apologizing. I sent another song to another friend, a classically trained singer who grew up to spin records as a DJ before growing up again to stop listening altogether. "I'm sorry," I said. "I know it sounds like rock."

"Don't apologize. It sounds like you."

He's the one I go to when I need clarity, God bless him.

I sound like me. And that doesn't sound like whooping African caterwauling or medieval Arabic chanting or Native American night-shrieks. I came from none of those places. I was born in the 70s, raised on Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary, a touch of Willie Nelson, and much later, when these things began to matter, Metallica.

It was 1988. I was going on 14 and I heard somebody mention a radio station that they liked. I tuned in and heard music I'd never heard before. Dark and abrasive. It had a forbidden feeling. These people sounded angry. I'd never heard an angry song.

It became a tonic. My parents had recently divorced. I didn't know what made sense or where I belonged, except maybe with these angry people. The first CD I ever bought was Metallica's . . . And Justice for All. I remember playing the opening strains of Blackened for my brother. It was like nothing we'd ever heard. I'm not sure that we liked it, but we were tied to it by a strange gravity.

We went on to buy their other albums. And we met people. Angry, disaffected people. People that smoked cigarettes and drank. They'd been dealt a raw deal. They weren't like all of the smiling, toothy people on billboards and walking through malls. Our new friends shared other songs, other records, and we learned about punk, the early 80s bands that we had missed. And then we fell in love with Minor Threat. Later, Fugazi. To this day, I check up on Ian MacKaye. What's he doing? What's he saying?

And our sense of community grew. We were skateboarding now, rolling around and carving up surfaces made for gentler things, listening to loud, angry people, people that made so much more sense than all of the candy and glitter. But it wasn't enough to listen. We had things we wanted to say. We were angry, too, and we wanted to scream.

Mom took us to a music store. We promised good grades and I got my first electric guitar. My brother got his first bass. Later we found a drummer. We made a lot of noise and called ourselves Fury.

There were other bands, shows, records, and eventually we were signed to a local independent. And it was all rock.

There's nothing else I know. Not like I know rock.

Rock and roll represents the first real fusion of black and white culture. Way down south, white country music came up against black swing, rhythm, and blues. The only people to get it were the kids, on both sides of the color line. Right out of the gate, rock was the voice of youth and rebellion. When rock becomes the status quo, it isn't rock.

Which makes what I do even more rock.

Free to Choose?

2014-09-14T16:34:00.005-07:00

I live in America where choice is marketed pretty hard. Here, we are free. We have options. Nobody tells us what to do.

Except maybe the tax collector. Or the police officer. Traffic lights. The boss. The regulatory agencies that govern business. The divorce lawyers that bleed for alimony. The terms and conditions on your blender’s warranty. The academic standards of whatever institution of higher education you happen to find yourself in. The selection at your local dress shop that boxes you in to whatever colors and hemlines the fashionistas have determined to be the rage this season.

And there are other limitations.

We’re only so tall. Our visual acuity is what it is. Can’t seem to hear frequencies much below 20 Hz and not much more than 20,000 Hz. We’ve only got so much money in the bank and the temperature outside doesn’t really care how we feel about it.

And then there’s the whole mortality thing. We get sick, most times without our consent. And no matter how careful we are, there’s always the other guy- the drowsy pilot, the buzzed driver. My life could very easily end at any moment without a whole lot of input from me.

If only we could be free! Like birds!

And then we’d only have to worry about instinctual migratory patterns that carry us potentially thousands of miles to treacherous breeding grounds to lay eggs at exactly the same time every year! But, ah! The wind through our feathers!

Alright, maybe there are some restrictions out there, but it sure seems like we’ve got at least a few choices that are under the semblance of our control. Our attitude, perhaps. The length of our hair, maybe. What we’re going to have for dinner, if we are privileged enough to have that option. Some people don’t.

Life experience should be enough to demonstrate to all but the most dense that virtually everything that comes our way has so much more to do with factors outside our control than we have been conditioned to believe. And that conditioning has everything to do with the marketplace and nothing to do with our well-being.

Restrictions are real. They cannot be avoided and the enlightened person finds contentedness within those restrictions. This involves cultivating a positive attitude and the liberal application of creativity and imagination to our respective situations. We can’t break the rules, but we can make love to them.

We can learn to see that, without restrictions, whether the laws of physics or municipal building codes, we couldn’t have crops, or running water, or buildings that could withstand earthquakes. We can embrace the utility of restriction to promote the security that allows our powerful individual energies to surge without arcing, to warm without burning, to ennoble without effacing.

So much is written by intelligent people suffocating under the perceived burden of imposed constraints. And their response, tragically, is to dismiss the constraints as limiting what would otherwise be their vast potential for authentic expression. They want to be what they want to be and the whole thing sounds fantastically romantic and sensible.

Except that there is no getting around restrictions. You’ll cast one off to find ten more. Concrete and abstract, we are limited at every moment by gravity, traffic, and the opinions of people we care about.

Quit running away, folks. There is no stepping out of the finite, limitary nature of our existence. We are preconditioned by a thousand laws- just a single chemical reaction out of sync and you’re dead or crazy.

I make music using the frame drum and my voice. I have other options, but I choose to embrace these restrictions as one way of practicing acceptance and resignation.

What other choice do I have?

Protest Drumming

2014-07-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

There are terrible things happening in Occupied Palestine at the moment, made all the more terrible by the fact that the atrocities committed against her people are only made possible by the taxes that I pay.

That's an issue that needs to be addressed. I'll have that opportunity today, God willing, at a protest scheduled to take place at the Los Angeles Federal Building later this afternoon. I'll brings my drums and I'll bring my voice and I have invited others to do the same.

We've talked for months at our Primal Music gatherings about the various manifestations of communal music. It makes the work day easier. It helps to internalize shared values. And it can embolden us to speak truth to power as a united body.

When Africans were first brought to this country as slaves, they were forbidden to play the drum. The power of the drum to gather and unite was acknowledged and feared. Not much has changed, and so it was with a great sense of validation that I came across this treatise on the resurgence of the drum in contemporary protest.

Among the many exciting points of this article:

Drumming groups are easily organized compared with melodic marching bands. (I've discussed the comparatively divisive nature of melodic instruments here.)

Drums are most powerful when they are played sparingly and with discipline.

Drums have not quite been defined by modern society, and the media will try to fit you into a category they've dealt with before: hippies, Africans, new-agers, Hare Krishnas, men's groupies, or something "tribal" or cult-like.

Police often get agitated by things they don't understand, and they are intimidated by the sonic power that drums wield. (just like the plantation days!)

And my favorite paragraph, on the politics behind the drum set:

Have you ever thought about the origins of the drumset? The drumset is the percussive symbol of capitalist domination. Where once the percussion section united cadres of dedicated individuals to work together for a common rhythm, to communicate, to learn each other's strengths and weakness, and to come to consensus on the beat and the swing. With a drumset, you fire everybody except the most dextrous drummer and eliminate all of that beautiful social interaction. Why? Is the music any better having one person play everything? No. It is all about maximizing profit. The manager reasons, "Why pay five drummers, when I get away with just paying one!"

A man after my own heart!

There are many, many more interesting and enlightening points, and I highly encourage you read the whole thing here.

Today is my opportunity to walk the talk, to test all that I suppose about communal music. Will I find others to play with? Will I find others to sing with? And what will be the outcome of our melodic and rhythmic interactions?

I'm looking forward to finding out!

Enjoy this short clip of some rock-solid protest drumming out of New York:

Primal Music and Pain

2014-06-07T13:05:00.003-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned some interesting studies that I came across in relation to our work with primal music. And for those of you just now coming along for the ride, primal music is music that we make together with drum and voice. It's "primal" because it is rudimentary, simple, intuitive, and engaging in the way that music should be for its full benefit to be realized.

What benefit?

You can read through some earlier posts to get an idea, for sure, but here's where we start trotting out some research to back up and build on all that has been said. And we'll start with a study that just blew me away.

People making music increase their pain threshold. This is not true for those simply listening to music. It is necessary that one be a part of the process, singing, drumming, or even dancing. All of a sudden, the work song has some real physiology behind it.

Check out this Alan Lomax recording of prisoners at work back in the late 40s:

It seems that in the making of music we release endorphins. In a nutshell, the researchers put a blood pressure cuff on participants and pumped it up until the the subject cried uncle. The researchers noted the reading. Then the various groups, a bunch of drummers, church singers, practicing dancers, and people just passively listening to music at different tempos, were rechecked with the blood pressure cuff after engaging in their particular activity. Those that were participating in the music had a notable increase in their pain threshold. Those that merely listened to music, no matter what kind, had no appreciable change in their ability to tolerate pain.

Make music together, go farther, harder, and longer.

We live in a time when academics with some grant money are the ones to tell us what's going on. I do enjoy the validation that comes from reading their work, but I should get a whole lot more from my own personal experiences.

Learning to trust that experience is a challenge.

Primal Music, Elliot Rodger, and the Hijacking of Women's Advocacy

2014-05-31T13:20:00.001-07:00

This whole Elliot Rodger thing has me all shook up. And I'm really surprised at the total lack of nuanced analysis. It's all second amendment crap, hand-wringing around male brutality, and the inadequacies of our legal and mental health systems. There is little talk of male obsolescence or any of the other nasty, unforeseen consequences of a hijacked feminism. Women have made great strides on a lot of fronts, and deservedly so, but my concern is that such gains come at a price that disenfranchised men are beginning to tally up. I am not here to argue for the accuracy of their accounting, only to point out that I think it's happening.

My concern is that Mr. Rodger represents the tip of the iceberg. I sense a simmering resentment toward women, globally, that could get a whole lot uglier.

God protect us.

Let's go back a generation or two to see how this all got started. And, so you know that I'm not making this up, I got a lot of this information from a wonderful 2005 paper written by Hester Eisenstein, Dangerous Liaison? Feminism and Corporate Globalization.

White women in the 50s were bored. They wanted more opportunity in the forms of employment, education, and political participation. These were boom times, after all, and women wanted a piece of the action without having to work through any middlemen. In this case, the obstructive middleman was her family.

Women got together on this and there were grounds for dissatisfaction. Enough noise was made in the name of creating equal opportunities for men and women, particularly in the workplace, that people started paying attention. Although initially grating, as any break with accepted norms will be, it didn't take too long for corporate America to get behind this new feminism in a big way. A larger labor pool meant lower wages and more profits. A woman with money in her pocket did not have to consult her husband on purchases. This in turn increased demand for goods and services. Globalization, with its lopsided trade agreements, exported these ideas to the developing world. Industry was thrilled to have such a cheap and willing supply of third-world women who were equally thrilled to give up the rice paddies for a seat behind a sewing machine. The circle was complete when, with all of those suburban white women advancing in their corporate careers, cheap female labor could be imported from developing countries to take care of the house. The shackles of domesticity had been plated with silver and passed a little further down the economic chain.

Proponents of neoliberalism took full advantage of the increasing desire among women for economic independence. Welfare programs initiated as part of the New Deal were dismantled. Women and children were expected to work rather than receive government handouts that were initially calculated on the basis of familial support. Except there was no more family to support. The divorce rate soared along with the growth of single-parent homes.

The New Imperialists also came to love a strong feminist. Advocates of American imperialism see the world as divided in two: those that are open to American economic practices, and those that are not. In parts of the world where the family unit remains strong, accusations of outmoded patriarchal repression are linked convincingly with sensational media accounts of brutal misogyny to paint the picture of a people that need to be taught a little something about freedom and the marketplace. Islamic finance, with its various charitable devices and 2% flat tax for all but the poorest individuals and its populist condemnation of usury is anathema to the interest-based financial instruments of American banks. But, with all of their women covering their hair, are such things even worth considering?

Militant capitalism and its rapacious endorsement of profits at the expense of people requires that society be fragmented, broken down into its smallest possible paying unit: the individual. Feminism, for all of its initial promise and intent in rectifying the injustices perpetuated against women, has been totally and completely hijacked in order to further American corporate and ideological interests. This is possible because freedom and independence are the common rallying points for all camps.

What does this have to do with a depressed and totally unstable kid rampaging through a college town with the intent to destroy women?

Selling freedom and independence without qualification sets us all up for some pretty wild expectations. I should be having more sex than I am. I should be having more fun than I am. I should not be forced to respect anything or anybody that stands in the way of my happiness.

Sexual agency, economic opportunity, and the right to do as one pleases without consideration for established societal norms are all objectives of the women's movement that have been amplified and exploited by vested political and corporate interests. And this is accomplished in part by celebrating unrestrained freedom and independence as the only alternatives to oppression and subjugation. These are entirely false dichotomies. And if we buy into them we will come to hate the things that we believe keep us down, whether despots, husbands, or sorority girls.

What happened to cooperation? Compromise? Interdependence? Are these not also alternatives to oppression and subjugation? Is our self-determination really an all-or-nothing enterprise?

Primal music can't happen without a willingness to work together. Whether we are drumming or singing, the music doesn't happen unless we're listening to one another. But it's not necessarily an egalitarian exercise. There must be someone to lead the song. In it's purest manifestation, this is an experienced reality, not an articulated rule. It happens quite naturally, but the participation of all is necessary or the song is compromised.

As we remember the fallen students of Isla Vista and the Dalit girls of Uttar Pradesh and the oppressed and abused peoples all over the world, let us not forget that we are all connected in huge and mysterious ways. Good intentions must always be balanced with a healthy dose of circumspection and when things go bad somewhere, there's no doubt that we had some small part to play.

We are responsible for the world.

The Transition

2014-05-24T15:52:00.000-07:00

We've had lots of conversations in our primal music gatherings about the lamentable movement away from communal music (and all of the supposed benefits of that model) and the current iteration of music as an industry that disenfranchises and distracts.

Communal singing brings people together around societal requirements: religion, work, national pride, and political protest, as examples. Much of that has changed, at least on our shores, with music still bringing people together, but not around high ideals.

Instead, we come together as fans.

It's a word that derives from fanatic, which is generally cast as a bad thing, at least when applied to things like religion and politics. The social engineering goes like this: do not be zealous when it comes to your beliefs and your ideas around governance and social justice. Rather, take that energy and put it into your favorite musical artist.

That's a really amazing picture. That's the opening of the original Woodstock concert in '69. And what's incredible to me is that I think it captures a point in our transition in moving away from a resurgence in communal music (the new folk movement of the early 60s) and into the vapid stadium bombast of today. It was possible to have a yogi address a crowd of 500,000 in order to frame the event in spiritual terms, as is happening in this picture. The people had already been connected through the folk revival. You could address the crowd's sense of unity and purpose, and you could speak about the event in terms of how it symbolized the possibility of an extended peace. But, just as comfortably, you could also turn the crowd over to their new idols.

And now the idols have taken over and we're no better for it.

We need to get back on track, God willing, and so we need to really lay out the empirical benefits of primal music. I've had a chance to read a number of research papers that I intend to share over the coming weeks, great stuff that really seems to corroborate some of the underlying, intuitive assumptions I have about communal singing and drumming.

Until then!

Primal Music Monday 5/12

2014-05-07T07:21:00.000-07:00

Al-hamdu lillah wa shukr lillah, it's that time again. The second Monday of the month is when, for two short hours at Zawiya Perspective, we reconnect to the incredibly rich tradition of communal music. Real music. Music that binds. Music that heals. Music that restores. And music that makes working on a ship a little easier.

I'm in the mood for sea shanties.

We're a family that believes in the importance of a proper musical education. Tonight, Miranda Rondeau will be coming over for a drum and voice lesson for our four daughters. Giving our children a creative outlet is an excellent thing to do on so many fronts. This is worth it's own post, so we'll get back to that later.

But as part of this idea of a proper musical education, my wife was researching communal music that she thought the kids might enjoy. She struck on a rich collection of sea shanties, or what the girls call "pirate songs."

Here are a couple of their favorites:

Now we are ready to sail for the Horn,
Weigh hey, roll and go!
Our boots and our clothes, boys, are all in the pawn,
To be rollicking randy dandy-O!

(Chorus)
Heave a pawl, O heave away!
Weigh hey, roll and go!
The anchor's on board and the cable's all stored,
To be rollicking randy dandy-O!

Soon we'll be warping her out through the locks,
Weigh hey, roll and go!
Where the pretty young girls all come down in their frocks,
To be rollicking randy dandy-O!

(Chorus)

Come breast the bars, bullies, heave her away,
Weigh hey, roll and go! .
Soon well be rolling her down through the Bay,
To be rollicking randy dandy-O!

(Chorus)

I thought I heard the Old Man say:
"Leave her, Johnny, leave her."
Tomorrow ye will get your pay,
and its time for us to leave her.

(Chorus)
Leave her, Johnny, leave her!
Oh, leave her, Johnny, leave her!
For the voyage is long and the winds don't blow
And it's time for us to leave her.

Oh, the wind was foul and the sea ran high
Leave her, Johnny, leave her!
She shipped it green and none went by.
And it's time for us to leave her.

(Chorus)

I hate to sail on this rotten tub.
"Leave her, Johnny, leave her!"
No grog allowed and rotten grub.
And it's time for us to leave her.

(Chorus)

We swear by rote for want of more.
"Leave her, Johnny, leave her!"
But now were through so we'll go on shore.
And it's time for us to leave her.

(Chorus)

That is undeniably masculine stuff! And I would also call this proof that it is the very heart of a man that has been undermined by the current, dominant model of music performance and distribution. And the kids love it!

We're going to get our hearts back this coming Monday, May 12th, from 7-9 pm, insha Allah. We'll swap grog for tea, of course.

Zawiya Perspective
1800 East Garry Ave. Suite 101
Santa Ana, CA 92705
(949) 394-6090

A quick reminder of the rules:

1) No lassies. Kids are fine.
2) Show up groomed and smelling good.
3) Absolutely no tuned instruments allowed. Bringing your own drum is encouraged.
4) Sound recording devices are fine, but no personal photography or video, please (Note: I have spoken with Brother Abdullah about a commisioned promotional video to help spread the word).

See you soon, insha Allah!

Was-salam,
Ahmed