Music, Meditation, and Weather

Weather and music seem to be intimately connected at times. That makes sense when you think about it: the first music people ever heard was the rush of the wind, the fall of rain, the crunch of snow. As winter and spring are negotiating the weather in my neck of the woods just now. it has me thinking about music, weather, and contemplation.

R. Carlos Nakai plays Native American flutes; Will Clipman plays all manner of percussion, including Frame drums, claves, Tibetan bowls, bodhrans, all sorts of other things. For Awakening The Fire they’ve paired up the fluid melodies of flutes with striking, beating and chiming notes of percussion in a dialogue which leads them through ten tracks of original music. By turns fast paced and reflective, pieces including Kindling the Essence, First Morning, and Portal evoke the landscapes of the southwestern United States, landscapes which often suggest mediation themselves with the fall of light and shadow.

The landscapes of the Highlands of Scotland have a different character altogether. They inspire and evoke reflections as well, though, through their wooded glens, dramatic coastlines and rugged crags, all with falls of northern light with characters all of their own as well. For Celtic Airs and Reflective Melodies Ian Green of Greentrax Recordings has chosen eighteen slow airs and reflective tunes from across the Greentrax catalogue, a creative companion and a doorway to meditation that speaks without words. Harp, fiddle, and pipes are the primary instruments as artists including Fiddlers’ Bid, Ceolbeg, and Tony McManus lead the way through tunes including Cairn Water, Ye Banks and Ye Braes, and Wendel’s Wedding.

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Hanneke Cassel: For Reasons Unseen

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Music and silence

Music and silence arise from each other. They frame each other in the listening, the sharing, the creation, the performance. Think of the moments in between songs or tunes or orchestral movements. They form as much a part of the music as does the unfolding story of the notes and words.

There is music that calls directly on that aspect of framing silence, as well.

Tony Duncan’s music lends itself to that idea. On his album Earth Warrior: Light of Our Ancestors he performs songs which honor his family, his tribal heritage (he is of Apache/Mandan/Arikara/Hidatsa peoples), the landscapes of their history and his own, and the connections of all of these things with music. Duncan’s instrument is the Native American flute, an instrument he first began to learn from his father. Through traditional pieces including Zuni Sunrise, Taos Round Dance, and Going Home and his own stories in song including Battle for Night, Ancient Stories, Grandmother Moon, and The Flicker of Light, Duncan both invites and guides contemplation of landscape, story. sound, and silence.

So does Padraigin Ni Uallachain, though she comes for a very different set of landscapes and music tradition. The wellspring of her music for Songs of the Scribe is the poetry of ancient Ireland. She chooses not the great epic stories, compelling as they may be, but rather the marginal notes, the asides, the personal poetry of those scribes who created illuminated manuscripts, and at times left marginal notes which illuminated their own lives as well. Longing for a lost love, a reflection that the wild winds of an Irish night mean that the writer is safe from Viking attacks for these hours, the flight of a blackbird across the water, a hermit's praise to God, a quiet time with a companionable cat: all these are things which caught poets’ imaginations and catch Ni Uallachain's, as well, as she creates contemplative settings of these words though her voice and spare accompaniment of drone, bells, harp, and Tibetan bowl.



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rest in music
music, silence, and spiritual journey

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Road Trip Music: New Mexico

The was a time when the town of Taos, in northern New Mexico, called itself the soul of the southwest. Granted, that was a marketing slogan, but one with elements of truth in those four words. As the Great American Road Trip travels through New Mexico, as the cottonwoods turn to gold in Taos, and snow makes its way from the top of the Sangre de Cristos into the roads leading into town. I’ll let the words and melodies of two musicians who have deep connections with the soul of the southwest be our soundtrack.

Taos Pueblo, a short distance north of the town plaza is both centuries away from the modern town and very connected at the same time. Once you pass the old cemetary and cross the cattle guard, you are in a different place, if you choose to be open to that. What you find depends on what you bring, in part, anyway.

Robert Mirabal grew up on the pueblo, taking part wooden flutes to learn how they worked, and seeing the connections and differences in the world on and off the pueblo. His work as a musician has taken him down many roads in many countries. For this trip through New Mexico, take a listen to a bit of his music that was inspired by sources close to home, on his album Taos Tales.

Tish Hinojosa grew up in Texas. It was in New Mexico, though, in Taos and in Red River, that she began to write songs, and to discover the heart of the vision that would inform her musical imagination of the west and southwest. Any of Hinojosa’s recordings would work as a fine soundtrack. Her first album, Taos to Tennessee and the lyrical re thinking of the sounds of the west on Dreaming From The Labyrinth are two good places to start, as is Culture Swing, an album which crosses borders among country, folk, Texas, Mexico, English, and Spanish.




photograph of Tish Hinojosa copyright Kerry Dexter


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Southwestern Imagination: Tish Hinojosa
Music Road: looking toward christmas: kidstuff
more music from the road trip

This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting.

For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

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here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Autumn & Thanksgiving listening

As autumn’s gathering in unfolds across the northern hemisphere and the season of Thanksgiving approaches in the United States, here are two quite different ways to approach this time through music.

Though stories vary as to just what happened and when, and just what was on the menu people, too, who had arrived from Europe to find new homes and members of Native tribes already living on the land joined to celebrate that early Thanksgiving. Since that times, connections and relations among the peoples have not always been as cordial. Joanne Shenandoah, who is of the Oneida-Iroquois Confederacy of New York state joins with Michael Bucher. of the Cherokee people, are both well respected songwriters and singers on their own. They’ve teamed up for Bitter Tears Sacred Ground, an album in which they offer original songs as well as giving the nod to three songwriters who explored the connections and disconnections of Native American life, Johnny Cash, Peter LaFarge, and Floyd Westerman. The musicians’ original songs and those of other times find connection, a connection only emphasized by Shenandoah’s singing of The Star Spangled Banner, which is offered almost as a lullabye.

It was thinking about passing along songs to her daughter, songs her parents had sung to her, that got Robin Spielberg started on what became her album Sea to Shining Sea: A Tapestry of American Music. Spielberg is a classically trained pianist and composer with many awards and albums to her credit. For this project, she did include several original pieces, but most of her selections are from the melting pot of popular American song. Let Me Call You Sweetheart, The Water Is Wide, Home on the Range, and Oh Shenandoah are just a few of the well loved songs that take on a fresh sparkle in Spielberg's thoughtful arrangements. Her guests include her daughter, Valerie Spielberg Kosson, on bells and marimba, Catherine Bent on cello, Kate Macleod on fiddle and guitar, Nancy Rumble on oboe and English horn, and Paul Henle on percussion.

here is another pair of recordings well suited for your autumn and Thanksgiving listening autumn & Thanksgiving listening, continued
suggestions for winter listening and holiday gifts to come as well, along with reflections on music and the season of Advent ahead here along the music road.

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Music Road: autumn: music for memory, and for dance

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Music Road: holiday gift list: music of Canada

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Road Trip Music in Wisconsin

As the Great American Road Trip winds through the landscapes of Wisconsin, from the big cities to the farmlands to the university towns to the watersides, listen to the music of two Wisconsin artists who, in different ways, each have the landscapes of their native state embedded in their music.


Bill Miller is a member of the Menomonee Nation. He’s a writer, a singer, a player of the flute and a gifted visual artist. Though he has lived in Nashville for some years, his songs and his melodies often hold elements of his Native heritage in the land of the wild rice people, and he has won several Native American music awards. One good introduction to Miller’s work is Spirit Rain.

John Smith has that most everyman of names. To set that apart a bit, professionally he writes it johnsmith, but really it is his lyrics and his skill at painting pictures of small town life that reach beyond the bounds of the town that set him apart. Gravity of Grace is a good place to meet johnsmith, who lives in a Wisconsin town on the banks of the Mississippi River.

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Music Road: looking toward Christmas: Bill Miller

Music Road: Tish Hinojosa: Our Little Planet

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This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I’m partnering up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’ll find there. Stop by and see what the Library has in mind to inspire travels in Wisconsin.
For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

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here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Harvest Time: Native American Music

As autumn turns toward winter in the northern hemisphere, harvest time is celebrated, and in North America, stories of history involving contact between Native Americans and European settlers are told. Many of those stories, over time, have come to have more fiction than truth in the details, but the peoples did connect with each other in many different ways. As they still do.

Louie Gonnie, a visual artist and musician of the Dine (Navajo) people of the American southwest, sings of fire, water, wind, and earth in Elements.The songs are in the Dine language. With rhythm and sound, pitch and harmony, his ideas come through clearly, though, and in the liner notes there are words in English which reflect his thoughts as expressed in songs including Dawn of Fire, Earthbound, and Winter’s Breath.

Johnny Whitehorse offers a percussive groove laced beat in a selection of song honoring his name, framed around the connection between man and horse, and the life the two live out beyond the edges of places where people gather. Warriors dance around a ghostly drum, and then ride off into the distance, wild ponies race, and the iron horse of the railroad comes to the west in Whitehorse’s vision. Tribal drum and Native flute meet in stories of a west gone by in >his self titled album,in songs including Indian Pony, Last Ride of Cochise, and Riders of Snowy River. Whitegorse is a character created by Robert Mirabal, who comes from Taos Pueblo.

Joanne Shenandoah, who was of the Oneida-Iroquois Confederacy of New York state, and Michael Bucher, who is Cherokee, join together for a project that in many ways traces the troubled history of Native American connection with the laws and lives of those have come later to North America. It is also in part a tribute to three musicians who walked that ground several decades ago, only to experience blacklisting and hostility: Johnny Cash, Peter LaFarge, and Floyd Westerman. There are songs by each of those men on the recording, which is called Bitter Tears Sacred Ground. There are several very fine originals by both Shenandoah and Butcher, as well. In what may be the balance point of the album, Shenandoah sings The Star Spangled Banner -- yes, the one you’re thinking of -- as almost a lullabye, and a lament. Whether you know or care anything about the history of all the varied Native tribes or not, it’s likely you will be drawn to listen to this album all the way through, and to come out with both answers and questions when you’re done.

That may be true, though for different reasons, when you listen to Kelvin Mockingbird’s recording Sacred Fire, as well. Mockingbird grew up on a Navajo reserve in Arizona, which, he says, taught him respect for space, spirit, and time. He was drawn into playing the flute by a dream. This album features songs of quiet reflection, with titles including Wind Child, The Flames Within, and The Healing of Hand, with emotion which translates readily through melody, with no words needed.

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R Carlos Nakai: Talisman

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Image by Debby Chatzi from Pixabay

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R Carlos Nakai: Talisman

R Carlos Nakai
Talisman



RC Nakai’s latest recording begins with music that’s like a quiet walk into evening darkness, and continues with wonder and the stars, the many version of night, and then through early morning hours through sunrise. Speaking as I just was in the post about Billy McComiskey about music that could last through the turn of seasons, this also could be a quiet soundtrack of preparation for the work of winter.

Nakai, who is of Navajo and Ute heritage, plays traditional Native cedar flutes here. It is to the spare sound of solo and duo flute her returns, in the midst of a career long exploration of the possibilities of Native music on the cedar flute, and exploration which has seen him found an ethnic jazz quartet, play with many symphony orchestras, collaborate with a Japanese ensemble, and work with many other artists as well as create adventurous music of his own. He has earned two gold records - the only Native American recording so far to do so -- and has received eight Grammy nominations. And is is to simplicity that he returns.

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Music Road: looking toward Christmas: Bill Miller

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Three ways of looking at faith through music

Connection, affirmation, trust, healing, reaching beyond the immediate and being present in it: music which deals with faith usually includes some or all of these ideas, or stems from them.

Mark O’ Connor’s Folk Mass is a rare pair of choral pieces from the composer/violinist/fiddle player. They are sung by the Gloriae Dei Cantores of Massachusetts and were commissioned by them after they heard O’Connor play. The first, Let Us Move, is a piece for which O’Connor says that he had the melody very strongly in his head but hadn’t found words until lines from a hymn leap out to him from the page. The folk mass setting is , unusually for O’Connor, a composition where the words suggested the music, and is in part his response to the events of 9/11. If you’re looking for a down home sort of mass setting, this isn’t it, but it is as most of O’Connor’s recent work, Americana themes set in the language of classical music.

James King’s Gardens in the Sky
is down home music, of the bluegrass sort. This is an eighteen track collection of new an perviously released bluegrass gospel, some form King’s days with the band Longview and some from his time with Ralph Stanley. It is, with the exception of David Olney’s Jerusalem Tomorrow, straightforward music of hope, retribution, and we’ll meet in heaven some day variety, done by one of the masters of traditional bluegrass.

The traditions of Come to Me Great Mystery
are of the First Peoples: Blackfeet, Kiowa, Inca, Lakota, sung by those who know those traditions well. These are songs calling for and recognizing healing, and trusting in the hope of that, songs which reach past the perhaps unfamiliar languages through melody and voice.

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looking toward Christmas: Bill Miller

Sacred Gift
Bill Miller, a Native musician of the Menomonee people of Wisconsin, brings his long immersion in country music and his deep faith, and his conviction that the Americas are as much holy lands as those which are usually called that, to this seasonal album. It’s a seasonal recording that would work well for any time of year, really, though the content is focused around Christmas. The quiet flute based title track serves as an invitation to the idea of preparation and quiet reflection. That is carried out in Miller’s approach to Joy to World, Silent Night and his own originals including I Saw the Star of Bethlehem. If you’re looking for music which invites contemplation while offering fresh melodic ideas, check this out.

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Music Road: Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights
Music Road: words and music, continued