I See Music As Everyone's Birthright.

My style of teaching is rooted in the view that music is one of the gifts all humanity shares that brings the most love, meaning, connection and joy to our lives. Hence why I chose to study Ethnomusicology and Global Popular Music as a BA, and have devoted my life to giving others what I’ve been given: the fathomless and regenerative source of energy that is music.

Discipline and work, steadfast commitment and determination are central pillars to developing as a musician. If you’re not ready to embody this, to live and breathe it, then you won’t grow.

But, and it's a huge 'but', I feel strongly that the source of energy we must tap into for us to achieve this rigour in ways we will ever be grateful for,

is a sincere and joyful love for our craft.

We don’t get bored or tired of something we love, really love, neither do we give up on it or find it too difficult.

I wonder if the study of music is like having a child, or growing into new depths of relationships: when it's at it's highest - we learn new ways of loving deeply.

90 percent of people who decide to study guitar quit, and most in their first year. It’s similar for most instruments and vocals also.

I don’t believe people are fundamentally undisciplined. Some, for example, simply realise that they have other callings, and that’s fine. 

The problem is where people who could have become wonderful musicians and enhanced their lives with rhythmic power, beauty, and soulfulness lighting up their nights and days drop out, then later regret it deeply that they didn’t persevere when the time was ripe to do so.

I feel that this is partly because conventional attitudes towards music in commercial society, symptoms of the illness of extraction-capitalism, and the same-old westernised classical-based teaching methods, can sometimes suck the life out of the life-source that is music. More formula, power dynamics and brain-stuff than love, harmony and spirit. To put it simply. Mainstream music taught us to want to be ego-driven stars, living out the superficial image of our prescribed role models, heightening our status, bedazzling ourselves in the mirror. 

We soon realise it’s a laughable endeavour, only surface deep. We encounter the heights of the capitalist cliffs to scale, the sore fingers and strained vocal chords, the competition, the hierarchical attitudes, the judgement and cynical, unsupportive attitudes of some musicians towards others. 

Bubbles are blown, dreams dashed, people get hurt..

Music like many artforms, in its raw essence, is precisely that which aids us to transcend the trappings of our egoic selves and our ever-frenetic minds. I believe everyone has this musical ability and birthright of permission, that can be tapped, catalysed, alchemised. It appears to be near universal, in our very DNA.

The key, this was at least the case with me and many other artists I’ve shared this with, is in living the unforgettable, really quite life-altering moments where we experience the raw power and wonder of flow-state. Apparent telepathic connection with other artists, playing things we never imagined we could play, true euphoria, awe and expansion: total joy. 

Some call this channeling, others call it the flow-state, catching the wave, or the zone. In scholarly circles, it’s described as trance, ecstasy, and even spirit possession depending on the cultural context. Sufi’s in Turkey and other areas of the Middle-East call it Sema, or Tarab, and those of South Asia call it Qawwali. 

There are as many terms as there are cultures, especially many First Nations cultures that continue to practice long-held ceremonial traditions. Some cultures, of course, see this phenomenon as a moment of union with spirit, and deeply sacred and healing. Now that I’ve lived it enough, I concur.

This has never happened however, not to me at least, while drilling my scales, or while repeating a classical piece for the thousandth time! This happens in performance with an audience that is immersed, when alone and deep in a mode of creation, and in the best and most liberating jam sessions. 

As so many traditions comprehend and practice intentionally - it seems that this requires ritualism of some kind. The good news? We can create our own kinds.

These are the experiences that make us truly love the creation of music. This is therefore the drive and direction, the essence I attempt to ignite in my lessons, balanced with a sufficient strong foundation-building of discipline and practice. Because it is still possible to experience the hundredth repetition of a scale as sacredly soul-expansive and so on if you choose to! Or, at least, as enjoyable and satisfying ;)

I’ve had the fortune of learning music, and fundamental attitudes towards it, from masterful musicians all over the world, in cultures that not only consider music as a sacred phenomenon that brings us into contact with the essence of the universe, but practice this in their quotidian.

Others, many in academic circles for example, still believe and practice the same things, but are engaged in the art of defining and exploring the layered meanings and possibilities, as well as practicing music in their own ways.