Planetary Gig Talk

Paula Bellenoit had a lot of music in her life when young, and started taking piano lessons at age six. She took lessons for many years, played in a wedding band at age 16, and then was music director of the church choir when about 19. She loves music with a purpose, the kind of music that could "make me soar." She says, "Music can affect your emotions" and "takes you places you might not have gone to." Music adds meaning and context, she says, and singing especially is something that everyone on the planet can do, "everyone can feel the music." Music can help bring lucidity, even for dementia patients. You can also play music with people who don't speak the same language. She now is on the production side and produces podcasts for Human Factor LLC, which also produces Planetary Gig Talk.

Milagros Phillips grew up in a musical family and she says, "Music was always in my life." She was always singing as a child, various eclectic forms of music, but stopped singing in her teens because of an issue with a teacher. She started singing again when a friend asked her to sing in her wedding. She then discovered a new way of using her voice, in sound therapy, which came naturally and intuitively for her. She also sang for hospice patients, which was very profound.

 She studied the power of music in many ways, including cymatics and the book Nada Brahma, the World is Sound. She realized that healing others through music and signing was really an effort to heal herself, and that "healing me is healing the world." She also says, "I'm willing to be still and be quiet so that I welcome the instrument through which the music is played, so at no point do I own the music, I own the instrument." She says, "Music is one of the most healing things on the planet," and that, "We are naturally attuned to music from in utero."

 She has recently been conducting seminars on race healing. She says people are made of vibrations and all have their own sounds and frequencies, but have a common ground that is loving the people in their lives, and have more in common than their differences. She explains that people need to look at and understand the past, because it is difficult to heal if one is in denial. She is currently engaged in a new television show, Race Healer TV; please visit www.racehealertv.com.

Scott Ainslie’s mother played piano, and he started learning to play music at the same time he learned to talk, about 3 years old. He played all sorts of instruments, but when he first heard John Jackson sing and play guitar, that was his first taste of vital, homemade, handmade music. Scott sought out John and other experienced musicians. He says, “I’m a strong believer in the power and necessity of apprenticeships, and I also know when you love something, it will transform you; you should let the music change you before changing it.” He believes people in the old times played music to serve and support their families and communities. He also believes that musicians hold up a mirror to ourselves, and try to put us in someone else’s circumstances for a moment, which can create empathy and compassion, making the world a little kinder and breaking down the barriers. “What better use of white privilege could we have than to honor the multiracial nature of our country.” He says, “I think we can make the world a little better with something as ephemeral as music in the air.” In that way, musicians are servants to society and can inspire people; we can become better people playing on stage and performing music.

Marcus Sims started playing music and writing songs early in his life and played with his brothers in a bluegrass band. He says, “Music comes naturally, so you can jump into it.” In this podcast, Marcus explained TaKeTina, which is a musical activity for the purpose of creating inner peace and learning about life. Marcus says, we are rhythmic and have rhythm in us; life is rhythm, but modern humans have lost touch with the rhythm of life. TaKeTiNA helps awaken our natural rhythms and is one answer to the challenges of life by reconnecting with nature and the rhythms of nature. TaKeTiNa takes us through a musical journey using our body as an instrument, with rhythmic mantras, clapping, and stepping. TaKeTina helps shift our perception from linear to simultaneous to enter a deep state of relaxation. It is a very joyful process and can result in a deep trance or deep state of being, and lead to profound insights. TaKeTiNa “cultivates the state of being music,” and helps modern humans remember this. Marcus says it is a good thing to cultivate the present, and focus on our own inner world, starting with ourselves and our families, and creating peace and music in our families. For more information, visit www.taketina.com and email Marcus at [email protected]. 

David Julian Gray has been playing music for 60 years; the clarinet chose him to be his main instrument. He remembers hearing music when he was just 4 years old and being profoundly influenced; he had never experienced such pleasure before and music has been the most important thing in his life since then. He says, "All that we experience as so-called reality is the intersection of vibration." He says playing music is a very real state of heightened awareness, feeling and manipulating vibrations. Music is a great path to higher consciousness and, if you attain that, then more peaceful and empathetic behavior happens naturally. He wishes everyone was taught music in schools as in the past, "which leads to a greater degree of empathy than learning morality out of a book."

Arminda Thomas grew up in Memphis and her parents always had music playing. She sang a lot as a child but didn't really play an instrument, until Guy Davis left a banjo at her house and she started playing. She also remembers that, when both of her grandmothers passed close in time, she began researching the music they would have listened to when young, which led her to discover the wide variety of roots music. That led eventually to her radio show "Music from the Well," hosted as MemphisMinda, which features eclectic roots music, streams at www.rhythmandsoulradio.com, and is archived on mixcloud. She says "I like the idea that the music is alive" and wants to give people the "chance to connect." She says a lot of roots players were the type who sang and played on their front porch; she thinks it was joy, the joy of doing it, that was their goal. She also says, "I think everybody should be in a band, because bands are about being in relationships in ways that are very practical, and also emotional, but there are solutions. It has helped me grow, ... leads me closer to building peace."

Bill Barclay is Director of Music at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. When he was young, he took piano lessons and sang with folk groups in church, and in middle school was in choirs and orchestras, and plays bass, guitar, trombone, and other instruments. He is a composer, director, musician and actor, and enjoys music most when it serves a story. He has been a fan of Shakespeare forever and was interested in music during Shakespeare’s time, which led him to conduct research into the topic, the Music of the Spheres.  That took him to Johannes Kepler, who had researched the planets in the early 1600s, and determined by calculating measurements of the speed of the planets that their paths were elliptical, rather than circular as the Catholic church believed. Further, Kepler found that the relationships of the orbits of the planets were consistent with the Western musical overtone series. Bill says this indicates the planets essentially entrain themselves, seeking and “finding ways to discover consonant stable relationships over time. … Entrainment says that over time things, objects, the universe, everything wants to find a stable relationship … and everything that’s periodic, regular, seeks stability with other things that are regular.” He believes also that “people do reach for music to entrain certain pleasant emotional states.” The mainstream responds to entrained tonal and rhythmic behavior in modern music. The music is describing stability and what the inclination to order looks like. Bill says, “the focus of healing ourselves and what to do in our modern world should be with our vibrational state.” Referring to the book Nada Brahma, The World is Sound, by Joachim-Ernst Berendt, Bill says Berendt points to a “new consciousness, which is trying to raise our vibrational energies towards even more compassionate, more aware, more kind, more empathetic, to the rest of the world, more appreciating and tolerant of differences, above differences, above our thinking, and into a felt oneness with each other and with the planet.” He believes people should include as much music in their lives as they can, and that it is important to share music they like as much as possible. He also suggests musicians focus on their performance space, and entrain the audience to the space, explaining the why and how of the music to be played, so as to entrain us together. He has presented on Shakespeare’s Music of the Spheres numerous times and a video of the presentation is here: https://www.shakespearealoud.com/music-of-the-spheres/ 

Shana Oshiro had music all around her growing up; her parents met in a band and Shana was always singing and immersed in music. She has degrees in voice and music therapy. She was classically trained but began singing Barbershop, which involves intricate four-part harmony singing, which was based on many African American singing styles, such as work and spiritual songs. The singing creates amazing overtone and undertone vibrations that are really profound.  She says, “The vibrations create this indescribable moment of joy when you are doing it and also can contribute to lasting relationships and friendships.” Barbershop singing is a social and musical experience and can teach us how to approach conversations and conflict with an understanding of our interconnectedness and help us work together in tense moments. Such singing relies on collaboration and cooperation and can result in the blurring of self-other distinctions. She is a trained music therapist, which is a research-based professional practice that can provide a variety of benefits to individuals with many needs. Shana has a desire to connect with others and music therapy allows connections with others for the purposes of healing. She is now with the only African American female Barbershop quartet – the Halo quartet - competing on the international stage, and has realized that the special aspects of Barbershop singing also can help address the residues of racial and social ills that still resonate today. She says Barbershop music can help us have conversations about race and embrace the tension of racial conversations as a beautiful thing. In other words, we can allow the philosophy of Barbershop singing to guide conversations about race today. The Halo quartet is doing just that in a series of programs with singing called Race and #RealTalk. You can find out more at http://www.haloquartet.com/. 

Pearl Bailes took piano lessons as a child and played the oboe for a while, but later in life she says, "the harmonica chose me." She says when you play that little unique instrument, the sound really comes from your body and you just need to breathe. Playing harmonica is joyous, she says, and the most important thing about playing is about communicating. She also says music builds community and if people can be open to one another's music, that can lead to understanding of other cultures and help bring us together.

Christina Lewellen grew up with Barbershop singing; her father started when she was just born, and her entire family are Barbershoppers, including her mother, husband, and children. She has won an international competition and recently finished her term as President of Harmony, Inc., which is a longstanding and wonderful female Barbershop signing organization.

Four-part harmony singing is not easy; it is hard, and takes a lot of teamwork, but “it is healing, it’s stress reduction on steroids,” she says. The singing can produce amazing overtones and undertones, like a fifth voice. “Where the magic happens is in the relationships, in the love and cherishing of each other and the respect for each other.” She says you can tell when singers are there with ego and not surrendering to the music, and that Barbershop singing is very spiritual. “If you get into a song and she (the singer) tells the truth of that story from her perspective, everything around you stops.” There is “something very powerful, that we are only beginning to figure out, the full impact of what music can do,” such as in music therapy. “There is something about making that music that really strips away any of the artificial social constructs that we put either on ourselves or on each other.” And, she says, “having a female only singing organization is special to the Nth degree. … The ability to sing with women is more necessary than ever before.”

Check out www.harmonyinc.org