The Message of Music

a sermon by Matt Meyer

The First Relgious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts

October 2, 2005

While studying drumming in Ghana a little over a year ago, I was interested to learn that we would be spending a week studying the northern Dagara music right outside of Accra, Ghana's capitol which sits on the southern coast of the country. Why not study Northern music in the north, I thought? For one, our teacher had his set up his studio in the South, nearer to the capitol, but there was another, more political reason as well.

It seems that several years ago a king in the Northern region was assassinated, and there has since been a struggle between two families competing for rulership of the region. Civil war hasn't quite broken out, not yet at least. And its not terribly dangerous to hang out in the north either. So again, why were we confined to the south? Well, for us, the reason was not political, but rather musical. Drumming had been banned in the North. You see, drummers in that region use talking drums which, although they serve many purposes, can also be used to insult your enemies with more power than words ever could. Compared to shouting at someone, the drums are more articulate, reach deeper into a person's being and past and, as you've heard today, they are louder and can be heard quite far away. Also, because drummers tell the history of their people, teaching the history from one side or another can give legitimacy to one group, over another and fuel rivalries. Drumming had been banned in order to cool tempers and prevent violence.

So, I've been wondering, "Is it true that drumming can be more articulate than words?" Are people in other parts of the world using drumming and music to tell their stories in a way that can't be done by speech alone. I think they are. While meditating on this, I was listening to a Paul Simon album, when a line of his caught my attention. "Some stories are magical, meant to be sung. Songs from the mouth of the river, when the world was young." Some stories are magical, and are meant to be sung. But, being a UU, this brought up more questions than answers for me. Which stories are so magical that they are put to music? When is music used as a device for storytelling? What's the purpose of storyteling? And to get really broad here, What is the message of music? Religion was the first place I looked. The religions of the world, and ours specifically are saturated in storytelling.

I will always remember my first year at a Unitarian Universalist camp. One morning, one of our counselers shared with all us, the story of his recovery from alcaholism. I imagine it was a hard story to share, but he did it because, he said, "our stories are the most powerful and meaningful gifts that we can share wtih one another." I didn't really understand what that meant, for a very long time. But as I look back on those subsequent years of spiritual development I realize that hearing the stories of others, and understanding the struggles and advances in the lives of my friends and community members is, more than anything else, what has helped me to come to an understanding of my own life, and what role I play in it.

One of the best examples of storytelling that I see in my daily life is the five minutes of sharing our joys and concerns with one another every sunday at church. I love this part of our service. Not because every member of every congegration is a particularly elequent speaker. I certainly dont know every person that steps to the front of the congregation, even at my home church. But there is something very powerful in the sharing of our stories with one another. It is the most democratic part of our service and it I think, the most Unitarian Universalist part of the service. It is our experiences, our trials and success, that make us human, and it is the sharing of those stories with one another, whether in the service or during cofeee hour, that makes us a spiritual community.

When people ask me to explain this unnusual religion of mine, after I go through all this stuff about no-one being able to hand you the answers to life, every individual figuring things out for themselves, there always comes the inevitable question, "So what then, could you possibly do on sunday morning at church? Cant you be an individual at home, sleeping in late?" Although I grew up UU, for a long time I just didnt know the answer to that. "What do we do on Sunday's? What does the minister talk about?" But a few years ago the answer came to me. We share the struggles and the discoveries of our journeys, with each other. Every week I choose not to sleep in, because I might find someone who wants to share an idea that just might make sense to me too.

But wait, what about the music? In santeria, the prominent religion in Cuba, the drums actually say the names of the Orishas, or gods, while someone sings over them. Sometimes the singer is praising the gods, and sometimes mocking them, in order to bring them down into the bodies of those present in the ceremony. Every day, Millions of Muslims all over the world recite and chant verses and whole chapters of the Koran by memory, while standing with their hands on their chest. In Judaism, the chanting of the Torah is a tradition that dates back to the era of the first temple, over 25 hundred years ago. Some think the torah is chanted so as to be easier for children to learn, thus helping to preserve the accuracy of the scriptures through the generations. Consistancy in these most sacred of texts is so important that a specific person, called a Gabai, is appointed to stand next to the Torah and correct any mistakes in the sound and pronunciation of the words as recited by the leader.

But the messages of music, certainly are not restricted to holy settings alone. On a journey to discover the messages in music, there are many places to begin searching for meaning. To turn on the TV or radio, it would quickly become obvious that the purpose of music is to show women as objects to be attained by men as symbol of status. A better example, I think, would be found by searching the history of social movements seeking justice. The descendents of those Ghanains and their talking drums would sing spirituals while working as enslaved people in this country. Because those drums, which were such powerful tools of communication were banned in this country, they would sing in code. "Wade in the Water" was a directive to follow rivers while making your escape, so that the dogs would not be able to track you. "Follow the Drinking Gourd," which referred to the big dipper, gave the direction of which way to run to get to freedom.

In 1988, during the struggle to end aparthied in South Africa, Miriam Makeba, one of the country's finest musicians said this of musics role in the struggle for justice. "In my home, from which I have been exiled for almost thirty years now, my people are seperated by the evil laws of aparthied from an full and free life. In our struggles, songs are not simply entertainment for us. They are the way we communicate. The press, radio and TV are all censored by the government. We cannot believe what they say. So we make up the songs to tell us about events. Let something happen, and the next day a song will be written about it. "

The traveling bards of New england and Irelend fulfilled similiar roles for their people. Before newspapers or tv, they were responsible for turning the latest news of the day into a song and bringing it from town to town, often with diplomatic immunity from political conflicts. Their function was not only that of a newspaper. As far as I can tell, they were the centers of culture in their time. Carrying on the stories of their people from one generation to the next. The story of King Arthur, was passed from bard to bard for hundreds of years before it was ever put into book form. This traditon was carried over to the new world and is quite visible in the popular songs of the revolutionary war. There were songs that told the story of the Boston tea party and songs that mocked the british losses. Yankle doodle was originally played as a british marching song, but was appropriated by the rebels, who would then play the song at british surrender ceremonies, to sort of throw it in their face, which became a source of pride for the bourgening country.

New England's folk tradition permeated many aspects of our culture. The rhythm of Sea chanteys brought speed and efficiency to the crew of our boats. Other songs related the stories of marriage, farming, courting new lovers, and even finding work in the lumber yards of Maine. There is even a tradition, also dating back to England, of the infamous murder ballads, that told the stories of some of the more interesting and crimes committed in the community over the years.

But what of our time? What about our country, in this century? Is there any music around, whos message is not consumerism, heterosexism, or the oppression of women, like we find on almost every radio and tv station? I'll admit, you have to look, or I should listen, for a moment, to find it, but let me give you some of my favorite examples.
Arlo guthrie, it seems, one day wanted to let people know that he opposed the draft. Do you think Arlo Guthrie wrote to his congressman, or signed a petitiion for MoveOn? No, he wrote a song. Well, maybe I should say he wrote a story with some musical accompaniment. It's called "Alice's Restaraunt". It's about half an hour long, it goes in circles, has countless tangents, and takes for ever to get to the point , and it's absolutely brilliant. It even includes complete instructions for building an anti-war movement.

So, back to my original questions. Is this then, the message of music? How to protest the draft? How to end aparthied? The story of King Arthur. How to insult your neighbors dead grandparents using a drum and only a drum? No, I don't quite think so. Music is used for so many purposes in every culture in and in every time. it is sometimes sacred and sometimes secular. It is sometimes for storytelling and sometimes without words. With so many functions, is it even possible that music can have A message? Contrary to all this evidence, Im going to argue, "Yes." Not just because my sermon depends on it.

Have you ever fealt a beat to a song that was so powerful, your body began to dance, or at least tap a bit, without you having given yourself permission to do so. Have you ever heard a song so beautiful that it seemed to reach out a grab something deep inside your gut, that you didnt even know was there? perhaps it moved you in a place so deep and universal, that an attempt to explain it in words left you silent and puzzled. There are times when a rhythm or a melody seem so natural and make so much sense to me, that I know the creator of that piece has a little bit of me inside and a little of them inside me, in order to have expressed my own experience so eloquently.

This, I believe, is the message of music-at its best. That it can sometimes, if only for a moment, bring us to a place where we know that we are not alone in our experience of this world. A place where the differences between us fade to nothing. Where the seperation between inner and outer fades as well. There are times when this music runs so deep and its inspiration so large, that no human hand could have created it. At best, they can only provide a pathway, a medium, for this inspiration to come to us from a place that is indeed larger than you or I. A place that is sacred.

My spiritual friends, the message of music, at it's best, is not a means of escape from this world and it is not the soothing of broken hearts or the celebration of love found. The message of music is that we are connected to each other and every other living thing on this planet. The message of music is a call to action. It is first, a realization of our reliance on one another for not just love or companionship, but indeed, for survival. And it is second, a call to radically change the way we act towards one another.

Our spirituality as UU's is not a spirituality of interdependence and connectedness on sunday mornings from 10:30-11:30am. It is a knowledge in our hearts that the trees cut down to produce our mail order catalogues means less air for you, me, and everyone else on this planet. Our spirituality is not a spirituality of just caring for those who are closest to us when they are sick. It is acknowledgement that the clothes we wear were made by people who have no system of health care in place to protect them from the dangerous work conditions that our own dollars demand.

To me, Unitarian Universalism is a spirituality of purposeful living. It is the knowledge that neutrality is myth in this world of opposing spiritual movements and political tides. Your life has serious consequences in the lives of coffee farmers, clothing makers, union workers, social workers, diamond miners, forest destroyers, physicians and politicians, storytellers, and peacemakers in every part of the world, either by your action... or by your inaction. When there are systems of oppression in place that wish for you to not speak out against them, silence can be deafening in it's message. I believe there is music in the way we talk with each other. I believe there is divinity in our relationships and in the stories we share. I believe in the interdependent web of which everyone one of us is a part. I believe that the more stories we do share with one another and the more actions we take to recognize our place in that web, the more whole we become, as individuals and as a community.

May it Be So.

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