Primal Music Reconsidered: Part II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.