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Looper's Delight
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Rick, Actually, all those trance-inducement practices depend on their mutual abilities to trigger the appropriate brain-wave activity (I did a fair bit of research on the central/west African and eastern South American [read: Brazil] traditions, as well as the Caribbean ones, both from the musical and socio-anthropological points of view, as an undergrad) ... while the "manifestations" appear different (internal vs. external, mental vs. physical, etc.,) those can pretty easily be attributed to the culturally different "set" of the trance-induction situation itself. Musically, or should I say physio-psycho-acoustically, the same things are happening in all of the traditions. BTW, the two traditions I initially started studying were Candomble and Umbundu ... despite the use of syncopation in those tradtions, the essential bass rhythm and frequencies were there and were found to be the trigger. That got me looking elsewhere pretty quickly. It all comes down to brainwaves. If you can train in on those, you can trigger it. After all, remember what the dormouse said ... Dennis, who gave up drumming a very long time ago On 4/30/08, Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com> wrote: > Qua wrote: > "Maybe the American drumming changed after the colonizers arrived.. as a > form of resistance. no colonizers around to hear the drumming >(perhaps > less march like) in its orig .form ;-)" > > Actually, Qua, from my understanding and research, the answer is >probably > not. There is a lot of variety in Native American drumming (hundreds >of > different > tribes, some separated by 3,000 miles) but most of the traditions that I > have heard (and I really went looking in the early 80's to learn as much >as > I could > about that diversity) are consistent with Northern Hemispheric Shamanic > traditions which are , essentially, non synconpated > in style. > > The reasons for this is that , frequently, the constant shamanic >rhythms > (in either constant pulses, two beat, four beat and > sometimes 'shuffled' three beat patterns) are played quickly and have a > lot to do with entrainment that causes theta wave production > in the brain (waves associated with lucid dreaming and > creativity)....................they are a form of trance > induction that is very, very different > from the paradigms of central and west african trance music which is >very > syncopative in nature. > > The forms of trance states in the two large paradigms (and to talk about > African rhythm or Shamanic rhythms in one sentence is just plain foolish >so > forgive me the generalizations) have a really different quality. Having > been through traditional Peyote Ceremonies as well as Voudoun rituals, >the > trance states and 'possessions' > are vastly different in a way that's hard to describe. Roughly put >(and > I'm NO expert), northern shamanic trance states seem to be more internal > and mental and Voudoun, Condomble, Santeria and other forms of trance > states involving spirit possession are more external and physical. > > As I said, I'm no expert in these matters but I've read a lot and > experienced a lot from different trance drumming traditions (including >Raves > where large quantities of people were on E) and this is my general > impression. > > Actually, I really disagree with a lot of things that Bob Brozman > theorizes about in this fascinating interview. > > I've performed with him and made many recordings with him and he's a > fantastic musician and a very thoughtful and > intelligent human being but he is also very dogmatic about the subject >of > how > colonial and colonized musics effect each other. > > I also have had just as much experience as Bob, interacting, > professionally and musically with > people from different ethnic musical traditions from the colonial and > colonized worlds and I think the interaction of these different >paradigms > are vastly more > complex that he presents them. This is the subject of a much longer > post that I'm working on now but I just wanted to go on record to > say that. > > > > >