We Can All Make Music.
Presentation
by Jon
Hawkes to Music, Community, Justice: Australian sounds, a one-day
conference hosted by La Trobe University in association with the Gorgeous
Voices Festival and St. Luke's, Bendigo, Friday September 8th, 2006 at the
Visual Arts Centre, Bendigo, 07/09/06.
Always was, always will be
blackfella country.
I'm a boat person (a ship person,
actually). I thank those who know what it means to belong this country for the
opportunity they may offer my daughter (who was born here) to learn what
belonging may mean. The fact that this gift may still be available, in the face
of all that has happened in the last two hundred years constantly fills me with
wonder and gratitude.
So, 'Music, Community, Justice: Australian Sounds'.
I feel enormously privileged to have
been asked to speak at this forum. Gratified but under-experienced - not that
is, in talking, but in the practice inherent in the topic.
I'm no expert on the work of
contemporary songwriters; I have an extremely limited knowledge of Australian
musical history; and the sounds I employ are pretty much all non-musical.
But I can talk up a storm, so
please bear with me.
I'll start with a story of how
one or two of today's themes have cross-fertilised in my life.
My only concerted effort at
regular singing has been doing the lullaby thing as the father of a
colic-affected infant daughter.
As a general rule, I don't sing.
While I can singalong OK, when I'm left to my own devices, I have virtually no
tune recall, and bugger all lyric memory. So my repertoire was, and remains,
limited to the very few songs that have buried themselves in my body. And,
despite the best efforts of some great teachers, I'm still struggling to
re-experience this childish practice.
I discovered to my horror that
most of my embodied songs were hymns and Christmas carols: '
Much as I often succumbed to
la-laing these beautiful tunes, I was constantly searching my depths for other
fragments that may have stuck - ones that did something other than celebrate
the supernatural.
I found three.
Before I go on, a slight
digression. Two weeks ago I attended a concert celebrating the life of Clifford
Hocking. The final performance was by Paco Pena. He played achingly beautiful
guitar for ten minutes and then told us he was going to sing. He said that he
was an awful singer, but that he'd once shown some of his songs to Cliff, who
had responded by insisting that Pena record them - which he never
did. He wanted to celebrate Cliff's life by doing something he didn't think he
was very good at. What followed was a breathtaking ride through bittersweet
joy, longing, wonder and awesome vulnerability.
It emerged that Paco Pena was a
perfectly adequate singer. I, on the other hand, am not.
Back to the
lullabies.
Speed bonnie boat, like a bird on
the wing,
Onward the sailors cry.
Carry the lad that's born to be King
Over the sea to Skye
The 'Skye Boat Song' tells the
story of the English defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Culloden and
subsequent flight of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1746. 300 years later, my mother
sang me to sleep with that song, and 50 years further on, I find myself doing
the same thing.
They're rollin' out the guns
again, hooroo, horroo,
They're rollin' out the guns again, hooroo, horroo,
They're rollin' out the guns again.
But they never will take our sons again,
No they'll never take our sons again,
Johnny I swear this to ye
This is from 'Johnny I Hardly
Knew Ye' a traditional song from the early 1800s when Irish regiments were
raised by the English for the
It's the same the whole world
over,
It's a shame, a wretched shame,
It's the rich what gets the pleasure,
And the poor who gets the blame.
I first heard this on a 1962
Folkways album, 'She Was Poor But She Was Honest', a
compilation of Music Hall songs put together and sung by Derek Lamb.
It turns out that it's not from
the Music Hall era at all (ie, 1840-1920). It was written in 1930 by Weston and
Lee and made popular by the comedian Billy Bennett during the Depression years
in
So Lucy went to sleep with these
fragments, along with a verse of 'Bella Ciao', a couple of lines of 'Summertime', some mantras and sundry bits of Beatles.
Pretty limited repertoire really.
Which simply reinforces the fact that there's very little you can learn from me
about activities musical.
But if trying to express, in
words, the function that music plays in our lives, is to your taste, then I may
be of some small value.
All three songs
from which I 'sang' snatches, have a take on justice. This is a good excuse for
me to choose 'music and justice' as that small element of the themes of this
day to focus on. After all, for the rest of the day, you'll be hearing from
people, far more accomplished than me, on all the other connections emanating
from the big idea that informs this forum.
Nelson Mandela said: 'It is
through music that we express our deepest emotions, the joys and sorrows of our
people - and our deepest beliefs.'
The 16th of June this year was
the 30th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising. I dedicate this talk to the memory
of the hundreds of people killed then, and before, and since, in defence of
their right to a decent life.
I've chosen
Indeed, there hasn't been a
liberation struggle in
In
Similar outpourings have been
integral to every anti-colonialist movement on that continent.
Nor is this just an African
thing. Our memories of struggles: for civil rights, for Irish independence, for
an end to war, are as much of songs:
'We Shall Overcome',
'The Patriot Game',
'Give Peace A Chance',
as they are of actions or dates.
Any struggle against oppression,
anywhere, any time, has a soundtrack:
The American labour struggles
gave us:
'Which Side Are You On?' by
Reece,
Oppenheim and Kohlsaat's 'Bread
and Roses':
As we come marching, marching, we
bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler - ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses!
Bread and roses!
'Solidarity Forever' by Chaplin,
Joe Hill's 'The Preacher and the
Slave':
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die
Woody Guthrie singing 'This Land
is Your Land'
And I came to adulthood singing
along with:
Dylan's 'Masters of War',
Country Joe McDonald doing 'One, two, three, what are we fighting for?'
'What Have They Done to the Rain?' - Malvina Reynolds,
Phil Ochs and 'I Ain't Marchin' Anymore', and
Buffy Sainte-Marie's 'Universal Soldier'.
Even
I don't think I need to say any
more to show that the most obvious manifestation of the connection between
music and social justice is the anthem.
There's a sixties poster showing
a Fabulous Furry Freak Brother exhorting - 'Remember kids, when you're smashing
the state, keep a song in your heart!'
Music provides the stirring
singalong anthem in the struggle for justice; but there are many other strings
to music's bow.
Three of the most obvious are the
narrative, the lament and the exposé.
Along with the praise song
(otherwise known as the singalong anthem), the four constantly overlap and meld
in the identities, aspirations and memories out of which a community's music
emerges.
Consider this sample from the
blackfella canon:
'Blackfella Whitefella' (Warumpi
Band),
'We Have Survived' (No Fixed Address),
'Treaty' (Yothu Yindi),
'Took the Children Away' (Archie Roach)
'From Little Things Big Things Grow' (Carmody and Kelly)
These are multi-functional
musics, in which praise and lament, personal biography and social history,
vision and memory, demand and prayer, intermingle and combine.
But music is more than a hammer
of justice.
It is the companion and equal
partner of the Law.
Justice is an essential
ingredient of community.
To live together we need to agree
on a social response to what are agreed to be unacceptable behaviours. That
negotiation becomes the Law.
But Justice is more than equal
access to, treatment under, and right to determine, the Law. Justice is
respecting, validating, honouring, embracing, and celebrating diversity. Liberations that easily match the limitations inherent in a social
contract.
The most accessible, most enjoyable,
most emotional, most affective and most memorable way of directly experiencing
this other side of justice is with music.
Music is the joyful face of
justice.
The Law is one visage, music is
the other.
We have forgotten this.
We live in unbalanced world
The Department of Health is
actually the Department of Illness and Injury
The Department of Justice is
actually the Department of Punishment
We formally express our sense of
justice through our legal system and we celebrate our achievement as civilised
citizens as being the acceptance of the Rule of Law.
Which is to say
that we (formally) define the operations of society in punitive terms - THOU
SHALT NOT (OR ELSE).
This may be necessary, but it is
hardly attractive (and certainly unbalanced).
Perhaps this is the fundamental
awareness behind the movement for a Bill of Rights. The awareness that a well
functioning society needs a formal and definitive statement of our co-operation
that expresses the positives: a statement that expresses the rewards of living
together as strongly as we are prepared to express the obligations, limitations
and punishments for transgression.
Where this is going is that the
social contract would not have been enjoined in the first place unless the
rewards were as palpable as the obligations.
It's easy to tick off a bunch of
medium term benefits that a family joining a community could expect - increased
security, access to specialists, access to a more diverse gene pool, town water
etc but most of these could arguably be accessed without having to go all
'community'. Margaret Thatcher certainly thought so - 'there's no such thing as
society'.
What's becoming increasingly
difficult to remember is what the immediate gratifications must have been for
agreeing to sign on.
Imagine small groups of hominids
wandering out of the jungles into the savannah. Larger groups survive better -
what can evolution accentuate in order to attract members to these larger
groups? Intense pleasure in musicking together. And so
our physiologies continue to remind us.
If the law is codification,
interpretation and enforcement of rules, then music is both parallel and
opposite - the exercise of liberation. A society whose members don't make music
is not well.
And this is only the tip of the
iceberg. Scientists and scholars have been speculating for years now that
without music, there'd be no justice.
Now that's call and a half, even
the most dedicated of you might say. But let's go there for a while.
Ian Cross, Director of the Centre
of Music Science at
He spoke at the Oct 2005
Musicological Society of
In it he claims:
'The most important abstract
concepts that frame and give meaning to human interaction - such as social
justice, that aspect of morality which is concerned with the achievement of
equity in human relations - have their roots in human musicality.'
Cross, along with many other
serious thinkers, is proposing that music is not (just) this fun thing to do
that makes us feel good.
It is also a stage in our
development (both evolutionary and individual) and an integral part of the
journey of our lives through which we joyfully experience and explore our own
identities and ways of sharing space, time and intention with others.
With music-making we get to
practice social behaviour in a free and fearless space and we come to
understand, physically and emotionally (that is, not necessarily intellectually
or consciously) that there is fulfilment in co-operation. We get to be
flexible, and to enjoy being so - across and between all the domains of our
existence - physical and mental, rational and emotional, secular and spiritual,
individual and social.
A couple of years ago, as part of
an intro to CMV, I wrote:
'Traditionally, making music
together has been one of the most important binding agents within and between
communities.
'When people make music together,
connections develop. These connections can transcend profound difference,
illuminate unexpected unity, bring cathartic joy and extend into everyday life.
Through creative practices, we discover and develop connections that join our
collective beings in imaginative and intuitive ways that transcend the
rational.
'We often use 'harmonious' as a
description of the society we aspire to live in. This is no accident. Our
bodies respond physically, sensually and emotionally to harmony - the
connections between sounds moves us. Making harmony in the moment is a joyful
and uplifting experience; a tangible manifestation of our dreams of oneness
built on diversity.'
When I wrote this, I wasn't aware
that there were biological and evolutionary rationales to support these claims.
Imagine how excited I was to discover that science, that most rational of perspectives,
can help us to understand, or at least to express and justify, what we
intuitively know.
And it gets better.
It may be that this music thing
does not just introduce us to an operational mode (learning to share) but to
the values that underpin a healthy existence.
After all, where do values come
from?
If we accept, for a moment, that
they aren't handed down on stone tablets then they must come from experience.
The scientists speculate that one
of the most important moments in the evolution of the human being was becoming
bipedal - learning to stand on two feet (it's certainly a critical moment for
our infants).
(What has this got to do with
justice? I can hear you muttering - well, just hang on, I'll get there)
To stand on two feet requires a
quite spectacular level of balance control and the constant interplay of
pressure between our two connections to the earth, may
well be our first introduction to controllable rhythm. And then we walk, and
the dancing begins.
What learning is embodied through
this experience? Balance is necessary (and, not surprisingly, the ear is
critical to its achievement). And it's not such a huge jump to imagine how a
function that is necessary becomes idealised into a value that is 'good'.
I think that, intuitively, this
is what I was trying to get at when I talked about harmony in the CMV intro.
Sonic diversity pleases the ear, therefore diversity is good. A physical action
(related soundwaves striking a drum that vibrates sympathetically) transforms
into a moral value. This is not such a big leap.
But it is a long way from the
idea of music as a practical here-and-now weapon, tool or instrument for the
achievement of social goals - what often gets called the power of music.
Sound qualities (pitch, timbre,
melody, rhythm, imagery, wordplay) are created with music that can profoundly
affect both makers and listeners.
Music's capacity to affect
emotions and mood, energy sources and health, the sense of social and
individual identity and connection, and the quality of empathetic response, has
been experienced, witnessed and documented for as long as we've been making it.
Perhaps the most impressive
argument for this power can be found by exploring the reverse of all this
positive stuff.
This, after all, is the way of
the scientific researcher:
Don't ask, 'Does child love
mother?'
Don't ask, 'Why does child love
mother?'
Ask 'What causes the one who
doesn't to be like that?'
Understand the pathological and
the path to health becomes clearer
The elemental power of music to
socially cohere is a quality that has not gone unnoticed by the powers of
darkness. As has its capacity to induce states of ecstatic
emotion.
These are powers that can be
harnessed to evil as easily as to good. For every anthem of humanity there is
one of inhumanity. For every dance of peace there is a march to war. For every
paean on welcoming strangers there is a hymn of xenophobic patriotism. For
every exhortation to excellent behaviour there is a catchy ditty promoting
consumerism.
In fact, the advertising industry
has understood and harnessed the power of music better than anyone.
Not only do they cause clever
jingles to be created, they appropriate and pervert songs that, before the
touch of their hands, were in some way, difficult for me to express, community
property. What comes immediately to my mind is a new car ad that features
'Revolution' as its backing track. Even though this Beatles song is defiantly
anti-revolutionary it nevertheless became the symbol for a generational spirit
utterly at odds with owning expensive motor vehicles (no matter how many of
these the composers themselves actually owned).
And just as music's developmental
capacities extend far beyond their direct affect, so do its capacities to be
used as a means of social manipulation.
One piece of
And not only have we become
consumers primarily, we're encouraged to become discerning consumers, aware of
the social consequences of being seen to appreciate particular strains
And music-making, like so many
once commonly held skills, becomes specialised, professionalised,
individualised, mystified, idolised. And the amateur practice, often
patronisingly head-patted, is perceived to have no more than leisure activity
status. The function of collaborative grass-roots creativity and expression has
withered away. We have forgotten much.
But the monsters haven't.
And, just as monsters eat, drink
and breathe so do monsters sing.
Music is as essential to human
life as food, drink and air, but that does not mean that it cannot be used for indecent
purposes AND it means that it CAN be used as a weapon of disempowerment, just
as the withholding of other life-essentials can.
Nevertheless, just as there can
be no justice without food so can there be no justice
without music.
I have written that perhaps our
cultural rights could be expressed in one sentence:
Perhaps this could be more simply
expressed:
Now that would be justice!
Music may not be the answer, but
without music, there can be no answer.
CMV - making a sound world together.
©
Community Music Victoria Inc.