BAY AREA VOCAL IMPROVISATION & COMMUNITY MUSIC
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What Shall We Do Without Us?

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May 2017

​I read on the internet to gather some of this info. I love my iphone, I enjoy facebook, and I work on my computer a lot of the time. Now some of my music is scanned into my computer and youtube is a good ol’ friend. Yah, all this technology is super helpful with
my process as a musician fo sho!
 
But I don’t have to tell you that we are crazy knee deep into technology in a way that sometimes keeps us from connections with others. The level of entertainment, curiosity fulfillment, and time wasting available online is beyond measurable. The gift of this for me is that I massively value sitting in front of a friend eating a meal or sharing a cup of tea. I am happy when I am in a dance class and I get to laugh and connect with others. When I am in nature being with the silence and natural sounds, I feel my cup is full. And I am elated when I get to be in a circle singing with others!
 
No mater what has happened that day, that week, I get a massive recharge. My endorphins start to dance and the happy thang comes over me. Because I am getting to look in your eyes, feel the spirit of your song, or dance and laugh with you.
 
So, checking out your connections on facebook is fun, but have you thought about the neural connections you are reinforcing in your brain when you are making music?
 
“It’s really hard to come up with an experience similar to that” as an education intervention, said Gottfried Schlaug, the director of the Music and Neuroimaging Laboratory at Harvard Medical School. Not only does it require attention and coordination of multiple senses, but it often triggers emotions, involves cooperation with other people, and provides immediate feedback to the student on progress, he said. Music, on its own, has also been shown to trigger the reward area of the brain, he noted. [1]
 
So, my dears…it appears that coming together to do activities with other humans is becoming one of the basic needs for nervous system regulation and perhaps the survival of our relationships.
 
Stay with us, we are here…
 
Art by Kenneth Patchen

[1] Published in Print: Education Week
November 25, 2013
Studies Highlight Brain Benefits From Music Training
Vol. 33, Issue 13, Page 6

 

silence is the mother of sound

9/15/2017

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Silence is the Mother of Sound
 
My Sound Healing mentor, Tito La Rosa is a gifted flautist, a bird spirit, a trickster of the finest sort. Listening to him play music is a remarkable experience, but perhaps not as fun as listening to him speak. Once I took a private lesson with him and he said “Silencio es la Madre de el sonido” and my whole body resonated with a “yaasss!”.
 
The immediate interpretation of this statement is that silence is the beginning of everything. It may be auditory silence, the quietude of soil in the dead of winter, or the kind of silence we encounter when we meet a blank slate and we can’t find an idea, image, or a way forward. When you meet it, you can bet a death has taken place.
 
There is no life without death, as life continually demonstrates. We are powerless over the natural death cycles of living things in many ways. Since we know we contribute to untimely death at times, we can affect some change to prevent it. And we do when we can because we love beings, animals, and other living things.  Sometimes we hold on even when we know we need to let something die. A human being, an outdated relationship, a project, an identity, and then of course there is our stuff.
 
We love our stuff. Sometimes, the holding on of things, things that continually need to be managed, placed, cleaned, repaired, etc…can become more burdensome than enjoyable right?
 
There are times to free ourselves of things, and when we don’t we are preventing a kind of death, or the sweetness of creating a space for something more current. There is a saying: “The Universe likes an empty vessel”. I agree. And when the slate gets cleaned, whether we choose it or not, aaahhhhh  .   .   .   space   .   .   .
 
There is a kind of uneasiness we tend to have with silence. So we talk, and we fill the space up with ideas, opinions, reflections, sounds and such.
 
It’s like this in music as well. Ever notice how when a musical piece is very busy, there is no space to jump in, let alone for your own idea to emerge? What if we wait in that winter deadness of silence in order to let a new, just right, juicy, authentic, unplanned, never been heard before sound emerge? Sound is vibration. Vibration is life.
Before gestation and birth comes an empty womb.
 
Silence is the Mother of sound.
 
Until we                again,
 
Renée

 
 
 
 
 
 
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  • UPCOMING EVENTS
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