Feed Yourself or Feed the Poor

The last objection that comes up when people talk about spirituality, healing and music is the objection of it's effectiveness. Roughly stated the objection goes this way. Being a musician is an inherently self-involved and self-directed activity. If you really want to help people than you should volunteer at a soup kitchen or work with inner city kids or something like that. Imagining that your music can heal the world is a pipe dream.

There is some validity to this argument. Being a creative musician is indeed at least a somewhat self-involved profession. Really engaging your creative voice is an inner journey...rather like Rilke's admonition to the young poet to dig deep in himself and ask...must I do this? We hone our craft in solitude...we write in solitude. We play communally but are still searching in ourselves for the as yet only imagined sound. As Steve Prozinger said over at Brilliant Corners, it's our jazz neurosis.

However this inner journey is also the inner journey of the shaman. In a traditional society a shaman travels innward in what might be rightly called a psychic break, except that this psychic break is caused intentionally through the use of music, drumming, chant and sometimes drugs. While on this psychic journey the shaman gathers knowledge and brings it back for the help and healing of the people. Sometimes the shaman uses what he or she has gained to bring the people on their own spirit journeys. The correlation with music isn't exact...but I do believe that we use sound in a similar way to bring an audience outside itself and somewhere else where hopefully they will derive a benefit. That benefit may be nothing more than just getting outside themselves for an hour or so and it may last no longer than a few hours afterwards...but drugs that heal the body don't last that long either. You gotta keep taking your blood pressure meds for them to be effective. Same with music.

The other part of the objection is that you could do more good actually feeding the poor or working for social justice than imagining your music has some healing power. My answer to this is...it isn't either/or. Musicians I know are often willing to play for free at benefits of all kinds. Most of them also have day jobs. Some of these jobs are pretty demeaning but I know many who work as teaching artists in inner city schools, or do elder music work at senior centers, or work politically for social justice. All of these activities help to tangibly improve society and most musicians I know take them very seriously. I know that I find as much reward in my own teaching artist work as I do in my playing. They are two sides of the same coin to me.

Also, anyone engaged in such work knows that you need to feed yourself while you are feeding others. Most social service people end up in burn out if they don't take care of themselves. Thinkers in the Liberation Theology Movement in Latin America talk about the need for an action/reflection praxis. You must take time to pray, meditate or otherwise feed your soul when you are engaged in social justice work or you run the risk of burnout. I know for me what has sustained me throughout a teaching career that was often extremely demanding is a steady regimen of meditation, and the ability to perform and write music. Neither side of me could really exist without the other.