The Heart's Answer: more clues about the Meaning of Music

In “Origins of the World’s Mythologies” Witzel distinguishes himself from others in his field. He reveals the overlaps and contrasts between various full bodies of myth (as opposed to just comparing myth pieces across cultures and time periods). We can thus see the development of a story line that resonates across human history and propagates to an estimated 90% of all human society. Further substantiation is provided for the thesis via linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidence. Witzel's myth classification scheme is tripartite. 

• First, we have the Laurasian storyline. This is the most widespread of all myth bodies and is the one virtually all readers of this blog will know. It is so pervasive that recognizing myth vocabularies outside of the Laurasian one is the primary challenge to the reader. Witzel calls this "pathway dependency" and proposes it as an explanation for the pattern cultures follow.1 

• Second, we have the Gondwanan myth set. A study of this myth body reveals its most prominent difference from the Laurasian one; that is, the concern with the beginning and end of the world. The Gondwanan myth set simply accepts the world as being there and never requires a beginning or end to it. Or it may have a Creator god that made the world but he is not engaged in human affairs. The focus here is on the emergence of humans over that of the creation of the world. 

• Third is the Pan-Gaean myth body which is the set of myth components that can be discovered at the deepest time depth. It is posited to be the origin of both Laurasian and Gondwanan myth sets. Though how it is so is not clear to me. 

You can see in the table below a side by side comparison of the two main myth sets.

"Origins of the World's Mythologies" was published in 2012. Witzel was 69 years old. It is his life's work. When it comes to academic texts I tend to prefer reading ones from writers advanced in age. At that point in their life, they usually have secured tenure for themselves. Their supply of fucks is at its lowest. As such, they are less compliant to “pathway dependencies”. The blurb on the back of "Origins" reads: “Boldly swimming upstream against the present scholarly emphasis…” ."Origins" enhanced my understanding of what shamanism is, how it is defined and its role in the development of myth. It also revealed an error I had made in my understanding of the shaman's role in community. I had correctly understood that the shaman was an outsider who is nonetheless integrated because of his unusual condition (not despite it). I failed, however, to understand that the shaman/community relationship changes with the size of the community. Witzel points out that as early societies grow, the myth of the divine provenance of humans changes to that of the divine provenance of a special class (nobles, shamans, etc.). This class in turn becomes a ruling one wielding greater prestige and influence which results in paralyzed, damaged communities (e.g. via the creation of taboos). This raises some important questions and provides in sight about communities:

Questions:

• How can communities remain well-functioning as they grow beyond a certain size?
• How to solve the problem of community leaders creating punishable taboos that bind their subjects, damaging the entire community as a result?

Insights:

• It also offers insight into the mechanics of fame and the phenomenon of celebrity.
• Finally, it emphasizes the importance of micro solidarity.

Though I have seen the musician and artist nicknamed "modern-day shamans", I think this invocation is incomplete. There are some important gaps in the musician role as it exists in the current time versus the shaman's role in its own context. These gaps shed light on a multi-year hunch I've nurtured. A hunch that nags at me, telling me something is wrong wit music right now. Telling me we can be better.

Here is a very interesting table from "Origins". It forms a cogent speculation about the shaman’s role at the deepest possible time depth.

I've highlighted parts of this that are directly related to the musician’s craft. I also included some less obvious examples as well:

• We see music as a mode of generating trance/ecstasis. One particular example from "Origins" is that of the San Bushmen who sing and dance for prolonged periods. Their aim is the generation of magical "heat" that is then used by healers for treating illness. This is resonant with the Altaic signing of the soul home as a treatment for illness. 

• We also see "inner transubstantiation" which I think is a (partial) match for the "zone" recognized - if not revered - by virtually all serious musicians. I equate here "the zone" or "flow" to a loss of self-identification and a surrender to the spirit of music. This also resonates with the shamanic technique of "spirit possession". 

• We observe human-animal hybrids in cave paintings reflecting the bi-condition explored in this article.

• Another example is the mode of initiation of shamanic institutions seeing some (distorted) resonance in the community of musicians.

"Trois Frères Sorcerer" dated to 13 000 BCE

The shamanic use of music as a tool for mediation between the human and the more than human worlds is  not well understood in the current culture. The pressures of commerce and a delusional materialist paradigm suppress most musicians from even considering “spirit” as existing on the spectrum of possible entities. Yet we see a strong legacy of it in human history. It is a foundational aspect of our ancestors' lives. We refuse to explore this at the risk of losing something valuable. I propose that musicians look to the shamanic use of music and envision how they may offer new ancient boons to their communities.

Shamans exert influence in part by being story stewards. The animist/shamanic lifeway holds that stories are alive with spirit. A Guarani shamaness once characterized the prayers she prays as teachers. Listening to her pray, one can see that she is in fact singing a story imparting a lesson. What is the lesson being taught when we sing? Listen to the Heart's answer. 

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CODA

Gordon White's "Star.Ships" makes reference to Witzel. I would like to share a quote from "Star.Ships".

"Stories are perhaps the most curious of survivals. They can fall in and out of remembrance. Who is telling them often matters more than how they are stored. For probably tens of millennia it was the shamans and sorcerers who kept the stories of the tribes, who held the mirror of identity and meaning up to their people. Like so much in the West, this function has been outsourced from us with predictably disastrous local consequences. In the mid-twentieth century, academia became aware that our understanding of knowledge is always situational and always contingent on cultural institutions that create that knowledge. But by then it was too late. Our stories had passed from us. This was too much power to hand over. It was a bad deal.

Any given field makes 'truth statements' that form a network of relationships with themselves, governed by a worldview that establishes what is or is not knowledge within that field. Stories that fall outside this network first become untrue, and then they fade completely from reality. In the early years of the twenty-first century, the empowered, informed shaman is presented with the opportunity to rescue these fading stories from the spirit world and restore them to the tribe."

Now, that is a worthy resolution.

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1The concept of pathway dependencies is supremely important I think. It is key to my call to action for musicians. I've explored the topic here and here. Further discussions about unbinding from these dependencies will no doubt ensue.