Essay V: Graceland

Thoughts on the making of Paul Simon's "Graceland"

in the 80's (pro-apartheid) African Society

Essay for the University of Pennsylvania

The decade of 1980's was quite significant and a transitional time in mankind history, and usually when big changes happen, they usually start inside a cultural background. Since culture is something everyone grasps and somehow understand at different degrees, artists use their craft to raise awareness of what's going on in society using symbols or just telling their audiences directly how things are going at a particular time. At the end of the day, a true artist wants to leave an impression in the world, so deep it could influence and inspire fellow artists as well as their audiences to do the same, making their work socially (and sometimes spiritual) valuable. This was the case of Paul Simon's Graceland, an album made by an artist who was recovering from a very poor reception of his previous album (despite of its musical quality) and who was looking for inspiration, something he found in a casette containing some african music he liked. Unaware of what he was going to achieve, he decided to go to South Africa and get in touch with talented (but relatively unknown) musicians to make a record in which he could join both his rock background together with his new fond african-music-driven inspiration.

Now, these were difficult times in South Africa, considering they were living under social turmoil for almost 40 years because of the Apartheid policy. Few people, like Steve Biko, have decided to go against the Apartheid movement, because of the fear of being tortured and murdered, like what happened to Biko. Some countries, in order to force the removal of this policy decided to create a sort of "cultural-embargo" not allowing their musicians or athletes go to South Africa as long as Apartheid was the dominant policy. But in my opinion, instead of solving the problem, these actions made it worse. I think it was necessary that someone like Paul Simon, whose music had (and still has) a large impact in the world, did this sort of experiment as a counter-action, and in a rebel manner, just like good rock and roll is. Maybe he did it consciously, maybe he did not. But, doing so he somehow helped raise awareness of the South African conflict, and helped South African music collectives like Ladysmith Black Mambazo get world-wide recognition.

For a musician (or anyone) living under these kind of social conditions in South Africa, this particular event was crucial, because it was one of the many catalysts for the breakdown of the Apartheid policy, therefore it gave a lot of freedom to everyone to work with whoever they wanted, despite their race or ethnicity. In my opinion, Paul Simon's "Graceland" is a glimpse of hope, the proof that the power of music knows no boundaries, and it could bring social changes when made not for a financial or fashionable reason, but for the sake of making this world a better, more liveable place. 

Essay IV : Traditional Music, Part I

Thoughts and Ideas after listening Tuvanese Music

made by the Tuvanese Ensemble Huun Huur Tu

Essay for the University of Pennsylvania

Listening to traditional music is usually an experience where our senses go back to the root of all sounds and music, no matter if we belong or not to the cultural environment who produces it. Clean, acoustic, non-distorted sounds are capable to enlighten both the listener and the performer, when played correctly and with an spiritual intention. While listening to Huun-Huur-Tu it's impossible not to feel embraced by the power of the music they perform. It's like being transported to the Tuvan Steppes and contemplating nature surrounding us, hearing the echo produced by the air movement resonating in the mountains, hear the river flowing, being completely aware of what is going on where we stand. All of this happens when closing our eyes, like some people in the audience did.

In doing so, it's inevitable not feeling healed after hearing these nature-influenced sounds. It's like breaking away from the noise prison we're trapped because of living in a big city where all the sounds you hear are not natural, but artificial and disturbing, usually associated with the "urgent" feeling of going in a constant race against time. In fact, all the sounds you hear in the city are related with this "Urgency" of doing things fast: Car engines speeding up, maniac people pushing incesantly their car horns even if they're stuck in a traffic jam, the sound of police cars chasing thieves, and so many more.

Looking for inner peace is an universal quest, and music is one of the most frequent ways of achieving this mental state. Through the repetition of certain chords, drone-like sounds and special chants, Huun-Huur-Tu connects with their audience in a deep spiritual level that is hardly achieved by popular musicians, who are usually focused on being noisier and flashier rather than leaving a message in their audience. These are experiences that any music listener, student and composer should experience at least once in their lifetime, in order to understand how music connects with our human spirit.

Being able to witness these kind of events (where a musician or group of musicians perform traditional music with an spiritual focus) through a video recording or a web broadcast is not the same, because of the energy flowing between performers and listeners (in constant feedback) in the room where the performance is being developed. In my opinion, we only experience a part of the whole intended aural effect, which I believe is peace of mind, body and soul. It's their message, and their reason to be touring through the world in the countries they are requested to perform.

In an ideal world, every country would witness these kind of events, that are both healing and inspiring as well for the people performing and the people in the audience. But when you don't have these kind of chances for whatever reasons (Polithical Turmoil or living in a society not interested at all in these kind of cultural manifestations), I encourage to the people living under these circumstances close their eyes and focus on the music. You will be healed, no matter what kind of thoughts are troubling you. Close your eyes, then feel healed. It's the power of music. It gives you the power to overcome the most terrible situations, it gives you the inspiration to carry on no matter what. And Huun-Huur-Tu certainly inspires you to listen carefully, and pay more attention to what's going on around you.

Essay III: On Selling Sacred Music

Thoughts on the Massification and Commercialization 

of Gregorian and Sacred Chants

By Carlos W. Murgueitio

Essay for the University of Pennsylvania

Gregorian and Sacred Chants have played an important role in the history of music for centuries. Back in the time the music was considered a way of connecting with a much higher spiritual force or power, those chants provided somehow a bridge between we Men and the Divinity, regardless of what religion one could preach at the time. The quest for the Divine and the ultimate perfection and balance is something we see in every art form, and music is not the exception. In Christian and Non Christian (Hindi, Muslim, Buddhist, etc.) early communities, sacred chants were the way composers translated that desire to connect with the higher and universal  divine root, and somehow, through the music, bring to the listener a sense of deep spirituality and reflection, something they may have experienced, considering they did not have something we have in our modern world that I call "The interference of technology in people's attention span". So, as a consequence, the experience may have been more intimate, higher and purest.

Considering the Study Case of the commercial recording of a Gregorian Chant, makes me think from my perspective as a listener, musician (I'm a composer and piano / classical guitar player), and man seeking answers through spirituality. From my perspective as a listener, it makes me wonder how it is affected. While listening the recording made by the German Monastic Monks, the music is there, the monks are there singing, but the intention (connecting the soul with a Higher Power / God / Universal Force) seems lost, to me at least. I believe this happens because the intention has changed, it is no longer about enhancing the listener's spiritual experience, but rather, an economic exercise of popularity and revival of "some old interesting stuff" as it usually is seen by younger people in most cases. 

From my perspective as a musician and composer, the monks seem to not understand the intention of the composer of the chant and just take it as an exercise of perfect technique and pitch. They ceased to be monks, and they became performers. I am not sure how Gregorian / Sacred Chants were sang in the times they were released because I wasn't there, but there is clearly a difference in the final sonic result when something is not made for financial reasons, but for spiritual growth reasons. 

And this leads me to my perspective as a man seeking answers through spirituality: Once the original intention (Enhancement of the Spiritual Experience) is gone, and it's replaced by a new one (Massification, which I am not saying is bad) you may be able to sense it, and as it happened in my case, feel nothing at all but sadness because a sacred composition has changed its nature to a commercial product. By no means I am a purist (musically or spiritually) but nevertheless, the spiritual realm and the mundane fast-moving economic world are two separate things, and they should remain like that.

Essay II : Going Solo

Essay on Eric Klinenberg's Going Solo

by Carlos Murgueitio

Sociology Class, Princeton University
 

Years before Eric Klinenberg published his "Going Solo" book, in which he tries to understand the views and reasons of people who have decided to live their lives isolated from other people, C. Wright Mills in his book "The Sociological Imagination" dwelved into something that may relate to Klinenberg's ideas. According to Mills, he found out that people usually felt "trapped", or pretty much hopeless in their social environments because they thought they could not change what was going on around them, that it simply was too much overwhelming, so taking action into account was pretty much useless. But, Mills also thought that every single individual of a society was pretty much responsible (or took part, even without knowing it) of what he or she was receiving from society. Indeed, it is a feed-backing act between individuals and society. 

Likewise, Howard Becker (A few years after Mills' ideas were published) thought that we as scientists, we should not let our biases to interfere with the final results of whatever social analysis we were undergoing, in order to keep the results under an objective and scientific point of view. The question is, how does this apply to Klinenberg's ideas explained in his "Going Solo" book. Plus, he also remarks something very important, which I'll quote because it does apply to the context in which I'll develop this essay: "In any system of ranked groups, participants take it as given that members of the highest group have the right to define the way things really are"​.

Going through Klinenberg's "Going Solo" reading, I've focused on the quotations he put on, which are made by people from different times and centuries, who have manifested their views about loneliness, or solitude. From Benjamin Franklin, to Margaret Thatcher, these quotes seem to reinforce the will of the author of making us readers think that we actually are living in a "singleton society" - as he calls it -, and in fact he seems to perceive it in a very strange, sometimes confusing and contradicting way.

In some of the paragraphs of the lecture, he seems to agree with the views of Franklin, Thoreau and Thatcher, considering their roles in universal history and their contributions to society. But on the other hand, he seems to be quite worried about the growing number of people deciding to live alone, especially in "most developed" societies like those from Scandinavia, Japan, North America and Brazil.And it seems to me that he comes to the conclusion of the "singleton society" because of these particular countries' cases. And here's where Klinenberg's views fail to meet what Becker requests from sociologists, the ability to keep our personal biases away from our research, or as I prefer to call it "under observation" 

- Or as Freud calls it, "Observing Ego". Because at the end of the day, our conclusions, biases, are nothing but the result of our Ego reinforcement -.

The opinions of Franklin, Thoreau and Thatcher are not appliable to all societies, because we're not living under the same conditions, or set of rules in the societies we're part of. For example, in my country (Ecuador) people have a tendency to live on their own at first, but after a certain age (Middle Twenties) both males and females start to find a couple, if they have not met them before being 25. Because here in Ecuador there is a certain fear of living alone or developing a professional life on your own, by your own set of rules just like Franklin said. 

Ecuadorian society tends to be a big collective. We have a historical background of social changes where the most dramatic transitions have been made collectively, not by the people in the higher powers, but rather by a certain group of people who have protagonised huge manifestations in the capitol cities of the country. So, Klinenberg's "Rich Experience" here would be labeled as wrong rather than rich.

Now let's go to the countries where people are choosing to live alone. It's the same, they have not the same social conditions, nor they have the same life cost or life expectancy. European, North American and Asian societies are not the same as their less developed counterparts. In this study it shows Brazil as a "representative" of South American culture, but that may not be the case because, Brazil's cultural background is quite diverse and casually, it does have people from European, North American and Asian Societies living in their country.

Rather than taking for granted and as the ultimate truth the results of "Well-Developed-Countries", Klinenberg should have considered broaden his research horizon if he was going to make such conclusions, which to some extent, seem illogic.

- Essay for Princeton University -

Essay On Laureau's Unequal Childhoods

By Carlos W. Murgueitio Roa.

Sociology Class - Princeton University

Annette Laureau conducted an interesting research in which, using the concept of Social Imagination developed by Mills, she tried to tie the level of communication between parents and kids of a certain neighborhood. The Concept of Social Imagination developed by C. Wright Mills says that we as individuals and sociologists should be aware of whatever role we play in certain conditions (space and time) in our neighborhoods, countries and the world, because we are part of what's going on in history. Without being aware of it, we are being actors of the changes we experience and witness in society, no matter if those changes are "good or bad".

In Laureau's book named "Unequal Childhoods" she dwells into the experience of kids living in diverse social environments: From Upper High Class to Working Class. And, inside these environments, she tries to understand what's going on with the children on those classes, meaning how they're developing a higher sense of themselves, intelligence, and how do they behave in their relationships as classmates and students. Using Mills' "Social Imagination", she comes up to the conclusion that kids in the middle and high classes have developed better ways of communicating with their peers and with their school teachers, because their concerted education with after school agendas expands their mind, and they experience more communication with their parents in their own homes, something that also re-inforces their self-steem somehow. Working Class children on the other hand, had no after school education and had fewer moments of communication with their parents, so their communicating skills and self steem were lower.

I am not sure if Laureau's study applies well in Latin American Culture. I live in Ecuador (In Guayaquil City), a small country of South America placed between Colombia and Peru. And things here are a bit different (economically and socially) than in the States. My country has incredible rates of debt with the IMF which seem to never end, and sometimes life here seems pretty much hopeless because of political turmoil. I'll not dwell on that in this essay but rather, how I kind of disagree with Laureau's study because of what I experienced living here in Guayaquil in a middle class family and studying in Upper High Class high schools and colleges.

There's a thought here, among high and middle class families that "the more activities the children has, the more he/she learns". In that aspect, families have the same mindset as Laureau's in her study. But, sometimes I've felt that people put their kids into lots of activities just to keep them busy and away from them. I have given guitar classes and tutored kids in high class families, and what I've seen usually is that kids are kind of away from their parents, because they keep working to make more money, and the only time they see their kids is at late night, in which the kids are completely tired after a whole bunch of useless activities and never ending homework they have from their schools. Sometimes I believe that parents put their childs into useless activities just to "show off" how busy their kids are. 

I might be wrong, though. I am not against after school activities, what I am against is at the unnecesary quantity of activities after school that leave the kids without time to study or rest from their activities from school. Kids from working class environments on the other hand, are a bit more healthier and close to their parents, because usually their parents handle their own little business and go back from work early. They do experience after school activities as well - usually soccer because that's what is most popular here rather than artistic activities - but not in an exaggerated manner just as some of the high and middle class parents put their children into. And, the communication between kids and parents is way much better, and they do experience much higher levels of self steem than their high and middle class peers, even if they live in a harsh environment, because they have learned from their parents to keep going. 

I believe that we should let kids be kids and let them enjoy their childhood, with no pressure from us parents to do what we "believe" is the best for them, and encourage them to pursue their interests.