Edward Sarath

Edward Sarath 0:00

What we call black music, when we really look into it, is a vast musical region. And I'm talking about epistemology. I'm talking about ways of knowing, musical knowing and beyond music, of course, knowing and being creative, expression, spirituality. But black American music, in that is enormous. You

Eugene Friesen 0:29

music. Hi. This is Eugene Friesen, and thanks for joining me for this beyond mastery podcast. This is a conversation with one of the great visionaries of education, Edward Sarath. Ed views all education through the lens of jazz and integral theory, and has particular interest in improvisation as a template for creative engagement across all disciplines. Ed's career as a professor of jazz and consciousness Studies at the University of Michigan has deep roots in his lifelong experience with meditation and Eastern spiritual practices, along with credits as an accomplished jazz artist and composer, in this podcast, we discuss how black music has changed the way we hear, learn and play music, and how traditional musicology can evolve into something that truly reflects of the big world of music. Thanks for joining us. Ed sareth, it's a huge honor to be able to just hang out with you for a little while. Your book improvisation, consciousness and creativity has been mind blowing to me and literally changed the course of my creative life. And so first of all, I want to really thank you for that and welcome you to this beyond mastery podcast. Thank

Edward Sarath 1:44

you, Gene, That's Thanks for the kind words, and it's an honor, totally honor to be here. I've admired your work also for quite a while, and pleasure to meet

Eugene Friesen 1:56

Well, thank you for that, Ed and I was just to backtrack a little bit in 1986 I was given an amazing gift, and that gift was a kind of recorded musical epiphany, in a way, in the great cathedral St John the Divine in New York City, where Paul winter had set me and pianist Paul Howie up to do Some recording, and as we were getting used to the headphones, Paul said, Look, why don't you guys just try doing some noodling and just to get used to the sound? And after about an hour, he came on the headphones and said, guys, I think the album is finished. And in fact, that proved to be the case. It's a collection of duos that were complete free improvisations. And since then, I've often thought about, you know, how, how do we prepare ourselves for this kind of musical transmission and download? You know, when you feel like you're in the zone from the first note to the last note and it wasn't until I read your book, improvisation, consciousness and creativity, that I began to get some valuable clues and also find a way to articulate the nuances of a process that could help US Open to some of you know, what Carl Jung called the language of the present, and so that is an incredible gift to our community. And something I wanted to just dive into with you a bit, you

Edward Sarath 3:33

know, it brings up so many thoughts. It's such a huge area, you know, in some ways, in other ways, in other ways, it's really, it's really the area, you know, it's because it brings together everything and, you know, and it's just, and I know you're tuned into it on this level too, that, you know, it's got musical ramifications, but it's also where, you know, humanity, we're at an improvisatory moment and improvisation and consciousness. And that's, that's a lot of my attention is going on that level. Of course, it's over. The music is never far off. And I really appreciate these kind of conversations. We can kind of swing, I used to work intentionally. We can swing back between the, you know, the forest reaches of the imagination and within the needs of, you know, the historical needs of the moment and and, you know, attention to detail, to just and things like, you know, we could, we could think about in terms of technical detail, theoretical detail, or even historical detail, reminding ourselves that improvisation was actually once a central part of the classical tradition. And I'm always, I'm always really struck by the extent to which I mean, of course, everyone knows this as a kind of a historical curiosity, but in terms of what you might call an ontologically prescient bit of information, not a bit a chunk of information, it's that you know nothing, very little, that happens in muses. Schools really captures it on that level. And that's huge. That's a huge problem. And then even taking it further, is when actually people infer and kind of improvisation advocacy efforts, especially in the curriculum, that somehow this is a anti classical music or something like that. I mean, that that's, that's when. Now, you know, we talk about conspiracy theories and all this kind of thing. You know, when there's no shortage of conspiracy theories in terms of the mainstream, mainstream music studies and, gosh, it's such a fascinating conversation. And then, of course, you know, too, there's the the parallel conversation is, I call, I call these tales of two epistemologies. I don't know if you recall that in that thing is a chapter 10 or 11, but you know, meditation has a very similar history to improvisation. Was it was once central to speaking from Western standpoint. Here, you know, the Western intellectual tradition, actually, you know, going back to the ancient philosophy, Greek and Rome, you know, what we've done is, we've, we skimmed the surface of the epistemological systems and took this, you know, the systems of rational thinking and logic and all that. And of course, all that, those things, those those those developments, would not be possible without the contemplative, the, you know, the modalities of the meditation, modalities that took awareness beyond the realm of reason to therefore produce a, you know, refined conceptions of reason and all that kind of thing. So it's two very, you know, the same thing. The improvisation was essential. You wouldn't have the cannon if you didn't have the improvisatory compositional work. But that's been skimmed off important cornerstones of intellectual achievement, not the only ones. You wouldn't have, those without the inner work. It's just to me, those are two bit bookmarks. You know, there's just like people look these, these two things are clear as day,

Eugene Friesen 7:00

right? These two threads, improvisation and contemplation, both are things that that have been marginalized. And that's the word that you used in your book, and that's the one that really rings true for me, too. And they're both being reintroduced, maybe slower than we'd like, but it is happening. I mean, we have examples of Love Supreme. You know, when John Coltrane first articulated his the connection between his meditative practices and his music, and that's one small example.

Edward Sarath 7:32

You know, it's funny, because the Coltrane's are huge. And, yeah, we just, we just celebrated what was called the year of Alex Coltrane, just in the past year. Actually, I think technically, the year of Alice Coltrane was last year. We were a year behind, but we had some really nice events, and one of which was led by Michelle Coltrane herself and some colleagues of hers. And, you know, Alice, Alice has really become such a prominent figure in my mind for this work, because she's got the, obviously, the improvisation, but also the Vedanta view of consciousness. So you've got those two big threads. You have this more and more, I'm linking this to the African American esthetic in the whole pluralism, anti racism, imperative. All these things are all part of one thing. And then, of course, then you have also the divine archetypal feminine embodied in Alice Coltrane too. So it's like, really, she is a real luminary. And I feel like, you know, an important part of my mission is to, is to kind of help tell her story at a time when, like, like I was saying, Boy, do we need it, and it's exciting,

Eugene Friesen 8:45

beautiful. Yeah, I want to bring the thread back to black music and and, and your book, black music matters. But first I want to read something from ICC, improvisation, creativity and consciousness, which I felt like was should be in my bio. I mean, this is like, this is this, is this is me. Preliminary forays into improvisation among interpretive performance specialists, which I was trained as in the in this tradition around the mid 20th century, were facilitated by and also in turn, fueled the narrow structural horizons that prevailed with Syntactic Elements subordinated the prevalence of non syntactic materials offered urological improvisers, inviting gateways whereby successful improviser improvisatory attempts could be made early on and now, the reason this rang true for me is because my early forays into improvisation were kind of licensed by some of the extended techniques that I learned studying. You know, academic new music and and looking at these techniques kind of opened up possibilities on the cello, which, when I began just experimenting with them freely, suddenly felt like something was unlocked inside me, and I could just, I could express myself using these non Syntactic Elements. In other words, I didn't have to worry about melodies or harmonies or even rhythm so much. These were just completely it's like an open invitation to kind of get the gateways of improvisation flowing. And is this, I think is so important for people in in our classical community, as a gateway to this kind of expressive freedom. Do you agree with that? I

Edward Sarath 10:50

mean, totally, and I'm so impressed that you picked that that particular passage. It's a long book for one thing, and and I'm laughing, because I'm going through this process of actually trade taking passages as one set in passages, I think it's maybe one long sentence, and just just making a collection of those, and just as kind of like gateways, you know, guidepost to the whole thing. So I'm very impressed that you chose that because it is so precisely the way that those words were intended for somebody precisely like you. I didn't have you in mind at that time, you know particularly but and also the fact that you can actually look back and see that, and I'm inferring also you're putting it in a broader context too, because it's a gateway. So then there's other horizons as improvisers, as they are relevant to a given musician. And just from what I know about you, that's certainly the case. So, so I really, I, you know, it's funny because you said, if you're gonna read a passage, I just think, oh my gosh, I'm all ears here. Okay. Of all the passage, it was not the one I would have anticipated, but, you know something, it's gonna go into my my repository now. Oh,

Eugene Friesen 11:59

good. Well, I mean, if you're interested, I mean, I've been through this amazing book. I think I'm on my fifth time now, so the underlinings are extensive. And if you want a consultant on the the you know, the coolest bits

Edward Sarath 12:15

that you know, you know something. I mean, that I would love to do that for saying different

Eugene Friesen 12:19

reasons, so much here and so much, so much that really deserves and requires a deep delving. First of all, because the language, you know, is is extraordinary, and it seems like it's the language you had to invent to really nuance some of these fine or to articulate these fine nuances.

Edward Sarath 12:41

It's hard, you know, just to throw this in, there's, it's in many ways, you know, this kind of stuff is hard to write about, and so we do the best we can.

Eugene Friesen 12:54

Well, you got, you got the lingo, it's amazing. And what I want to kind of draw a thread to is the connection between that gateway appearing and maybe it's the gateway in in academic new music? Is there a relationship between the exploration of some of these sounds and and gestures? You know that that could be non syntactic In other words, not specifically applied to a specific style of music that is related to the influence of black music in our culture.

Edward Sarath 13:28

Yeah, well, you know, you have the, you have the black experimental movement as Sam and all that, which was, which was using this, you know, and George loose, some really important writing on this kind of linking this to the, you know, what he calls the urological improvisers movement and the aphological You know, he compares, you know, John Cage on the urological side and Charlie Parker on the AFR logical side. And to me, that's his conversation is really in his infancy, in a way, but that's the first thing that comes to mind you you have that gateway within the black music heritage of kind of experimental, kind of things. And, you know, you know, it's interesting too, because some things are coming into view here, there. Yeah, you had an AACM work. Sometimes the experimental thrust, thrust preceded the actual what? But some people would say, you know, the bait, you know, more mainstream chops, more mainstream skills, and all that kind of thing. But the way, the way I think about that is that, you know, why do those things have to be linear? It could be like for some people like you were saying, I mean, in that passage you read before that, the passage was, you know, it was precisely on this, this point, a gateway in was, you know, for a certain constituency, was through the non syntactic, for others, it'll be a different gateway. And so this, like, you know, we could argue day to day and night about what gateway is best. But, like, why do that when you just say, like, you know, the more gateways the barrier, as long as we Yeah, and once we're in, we make good, you know, presumably, good choices about what. Where to go next, if you know, and if anywhere knew that we've been. So it's, and I think, you know, yeah, so to get back to the question, and I think this kind of a, sort of a black esthetic, there's something about, I mean, the improvisatory core of the black esthetic really is about that. It's, it's kind of about upending prevailing narratives. Maybe, I don't know, it's probably better way to put it, but it's something about, you know, this whole thing about, you know, linearity is really goes out the window. But there's also an inclusivity, and there's also, you know, it's got its own kind of rigor, its own kind of systematic structure and all that it's, it's a huge thing. This is, you know, this is part of the story. I think that still needs to be told and, but this is, this is interesting stuff. I'll leave it there. And, yeah,

Eugene Friesen 15:57

that's fine. That's fine. And that's, that's really, really helpful and helpful. Also to mention the name of George Lewis, who has not only done some great playing and recording with Anthony Davis and many others on his own, but has also written very eloquently on on this topic. So that's that's a great name to drop into this conversation. And just to clarify, you mentioned Asim ASAM. What is that? Yeah, AACM

Edward Sarath 16:23

is the Association for the Advancement of creative musicians, right?

Eugene Friesen 16:27

Okay, good. Thank you for that. And would you say that there's something in the forms of African music that have also influenced how we think about improvising contemporary languages? Yeah?

Edward Sarath 16:40

You know this, yeah, you know, we get so hung up in labels, and to the point we don't even, you know, we don't even wear, we're not even aware of to the extent we're hung up in labels. On the other hand, you know, there's a place for labels, and I've done a lot of thinking about this, like the words we use to describe different kinds of, you know, so we can say white music, black music, the African logical, urological, global and this whole thing about so called World Music, what are, you know, talking about its problematic category, what, you know, what is Mozart, not a world music, and all that kind of stuff. So, so, one of my, you know, one of my, one of my things is this needs to be kind of an area of systematic investigation in terms of, we have to be vigilant about the words. We can't go without words, you know, we can't, we can't live with them, and we can't live without them. So what happens with labels is that we compartmentalize things, and one of the things that's obscured is that we get locked into a kind of quasi egalitarian view, a politically correct, I mean, in a very negative way, is a very, you know, a quasi, quasi egalitarian view of the musical world, where we have to make room for everything. And everything is, everything is equal in terms of sort of, I gotta be very careful here, in terms of its sort of link, how it links to the whole. And the reality is certain musical regions, as I like to put them, I think they use that book. They use in the book, actually quite a lot, you know. So instead of thinking of musical categories as, you know, just as a genre names all, we think of them as musical regions. And some musical regions are quite enormous. Other musical reasons are, regions are more localized. It doesn't matter that one is better than the other, but in terms of apprehending the totality of musical world around us, it's extremely valued to know that those particular you know, to know particular regions that happen to be big, and what we call black music, when we really look into it, is a vast musical region. And I'm talking about epistemology. I'm talking about ways of knowing, musical knowing and beyond music, of course, knowing and being creative expression, spirituality. And so we have in terms of, in terms of black they say black American music, okay, speaking from Western standpoint, of course, black music goes beyond that. But black American music in that is enormous, because we have, we have two major processes. We have we have improvising. We also have composing. Band. Black American music is the site of the return of basically improvisation in the West. And it's a major one of the major sites, probably the major site, and improvisation and composition together. And then the other thing is, in terms of these, these are sort of the epistemological pillars, you might say, of black music. Okay, so you have improvising and proposing and composing. I would even put put before composing, I would put, but not before improvising, maybe up there with it again. Doesn't matter, as long as you get them in there, okay, the rhythmic foundations. Oh, right, yeah, those three things, improvising, rhythm and composing. And then you have, I call this the improvisation noetic matrix in my most recent book. Then you have an infinitude of things that are organically extend for that. It is massive. And the problem is our system of labeling. You know, I'm talking about whether. For our former writing, but even in our informal conversation, basically decimate any sense of the significance of what I just said, you know? And that's really, it's really a huge problem. So people reject, people think that you're actually pushing or privileging. That's a good academic word, privileging a certain kind of music. And the thing is, when you actually stop and look at it through the lens of musical epistemology. What you're doing is you're privileging music

Eugene Friesen 20:29

that sounds like a good idea.

Edward Sarath 20:31

And the thing is, and the result of it is that you're actually making a space and hoping this sense is always in any version of this thing that comes out, this sense the prior one. You're actually making space for connections to a wider portion of the musical world around us. Then is imaginable, even if somebody, oh, we can't privilege. We have to like, then what happened? You end of this piece. Now we need a little bit of this, a little bit of this. And unfortunately, much of ethnic music colleges have gotten sucked into this music education too, a little bit of this a smorgasbord or something like that. And you're never gonna, you're never gonna achieve musical wholeness through a smorgasbord. You will achieve a musical wholeness through epistemological diversity. And just like stepping back and look at, okay, basically, what do real world music and musical navigators do? Well, basically, for the most part, they improvise. And when you're improvising, there's going to be some kind of compositional things most commonly going to be there. But the other thing is, yeah, okay, so those, those are sort of genre neutral. You might say, okay, I'm good with that. But then we start talking about the rhythmic dimensions of of music, music, music making that crosses boundaries. I mean, you're gonna have, you can definitely have improvid foundations that, more often than not, can be linked back to some kind of a logical black origins. And I'm saying it from the standpoint of a Western musical navigator, somebody, somebody who launches their journey from the West,

Eugene Friesen 22:04

yeah, gotcha, yeah. Well, I mean, that may be a global phenomenon at this point, but everything that we're exposed to musically, you know, that is kind of made accessible to us through the big corporate channels, you know, opens our ears to just this vast, vast world of synthesizing multiple, multiple streams of music. And so for us, you know, who come up through a classical, so called classical training in the urological stream, you know, we're alive and we're taking in all these influences that go way outside of the music that we actually study. And so how do we make that that, how do we allow our curiosity about the music that makes us move the music that we associate with different parts of our life? You know, so called Popular music and and blend that into our into our own musical expression,

Edward Sarath 23:07

I tell you, you know, it's funny so much this just comes down, it doesn't it just comes down to some very basic musical truths that that just are so self evident. I mean, and if we suddenly, we just this what the Academy does, you know, it just loses sight of basic, the basic principles. And I'm not saying there's not a play. I mean, my book is probably a prime minister. I'm not saying there's not a place for extraordinary analytical commentary, elaboration on a given musical truth, you know. But just just as you as you put it. And you know, I would just want to throw one more thing in the conversation the context of this right now, a guy named Jeff pressing, a very brilliant musician scholar who passed away way too soon from one of those viral infections that that basically it takes five days and you're gone. And Australian guy only spent a lot of time in us, but he wrote a number of things. But he wrote what I call this the most important 25 pages in the history of Musicology, a paper called Black Atlantic rhythm. It came out probably about 25 years ago now, a little less than, I think it's 2003 something like

Eugene Friesen 24:21

the little that's an expression that you refer to in in in your book, as well, black Atlantic rhythm pressing

Edward Sarath 24:27

totally. And this is huge, because basically it is black Atlantic rhythm, computational, trans cultural and computational analysis. I think, I think something like that. And he's actually not only a brilliant musician, but also, I think his he also had professional expertise in some kind of medical medical field too. So he's really had this, you know, serious science side to him too. Like people say that Mendelssohn, mendelsso was, was, was huge. Reviving Bucha. I say aspire to be huge in reviving Jeff. Jeff pressing essay. Nobody's talking about this essay, and I'm just waving this at this flag, you know, tell it.

Eugene Friesen 25:10

Tell us the name of that essay again, yeah, yeah. It's a

Edward Sarath 25:12

Jeff pressing black Atlantic rhythm, trans cultural and computational analysis.

Eugene Friesen 25:19

Okay, so black Atlantic rhythm is part of the title. Yep, you just Google,

Edward Sarath 25:24

you Google it, and you'll find it in music cognition. Music cognition journal. The name of the journal is music perception,

Eugene Friesen 25:31

beautiful. Well, you certainly refer to it in your book, but I think it would behoove us to read the original article as well. Yeah, no,

Edward Sarath 25:37

it's like all my books, since you know, it's all my writing and speaking and teaching cool Jeff, really, really, you know, he's such a brilliant, brilliant thinker and artist that, you know, it's just so important, yeah,

Eugene Friesen 25:50

well, I mean, in part that that is, that's an answer to that, that question about, you know, how do we, how do we make that bridge between what we've been reading our whole life as so called classically trained musicians, to what we've been feeling our whole life, which is, in a huge part, influenced by that concept black Atlantic rhythm, and getting rhythm into our bows, into our instruments and to our voices. You know, I think is a huge part of the step of moving forward improvisation.

Edward Sarath 26:23

You know, this is such a I love this kind of conversation. One of the things I've been I've been saying recently, I make some of my colleagues nervous, but you know what we're doing, we're basically articulating the foundations of a new musicology. But I take it further until, until you deal with this kind of thing, you know, the improvisation, consciousness linkage, and then the different the different pathways within music, and like we were saying, you know, the improvising and rhythm and all that kind of thing, and the black origins of, you know, so much of that that's relevant to at least the West and far beyond. We have a word musicology. But we don't yet have a field, and I really think that, I guess this story. So I'm starting to use, I use the word sometimes I forget what I did in ICC, maybe integral musicology. I'm starting to use the word noetic, kind of soul based, noetic Musicology, and but this is what we're doing. And, you know, we're sort of, we're sort of we, we're sort of telling a story that has not really been told yet, near to the extent that it needs to be and can be. And I, you know, I'm excited to just do what I can to push it along.

Eugene Friesen 27:38

Well, absolutely. And, and the devotion you've given to this topic and the ramifications of this COVID into education writ large, not just musical education, but all education must come from a deep personal experience you've had. And I would love to ask you to describe a little bit. For example, once you told me that the vision for this amazing book, improvisation, creativity and consciousness, came in a single flash of an image that came to you. And so that is interesting, and also just your general experience with how improvisation has influenced your performing life.

Edward Sarath 28:26

Yeah, no, this is, there's a whole, whole thing in itself. I the thing I'm to remember. In fact, I think I remember that. I think I the opening of might be chapter six that compares improvising and composing. And I think the chapter might just be called improvisation. I think I talk about an experience I had on a meditation retreat. Sometimes it's called Vedic cognition. It was definitely mystical experience, if I've ever heard of one, but a like in a very powerful flash, like a huge story with incredible nuance, overtook me. I have no idea how long it takes. It was probably, it was probably, like a really short amount of time. And the thing I remember after the experience was that I during that instant of time I had privy to kind of very advanced, you might say, understanding of improvisation on a cosmic scale and composition, also on a very deep level, and how these work together, but how these are fundamentally different. And a lot of people, a lot of people actually, when, when I write about this, they immediately go into this. It's like I'm trying to oppose improvisation, the composition, or something like that. And actually what I'm trying to do is say, look, there's a much bigger story to be told about both of these processes. And the thing I remembered after the experience was that there was a flash where I knew I knew stuff that I. I didn't even know could be known. But the thing is, I had already forgot it. So the thing is, but this, this is huge. But the thing is, I didn't What I didn't forget was that I knew. What I forgot was what I knew. Yeah, wow, I remember that I knew. And I had, about a year later, I had a similar, a similar kind of thing and, and, you know, the one that happened later, I was in India, actually, and in the presence of my my teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and the what, the one in India, I would put it this way, I had a very exquisitely detailed understanding of the improvisatory nature of the cosmos, this Vedic notion of Villa or improvisatory play. But it was the same thing. I mean, it was just absolutely mindful in terms of I I knew that I knew after the experience, okay, I remember knowing that I knew on a scale that was beyond comprehension. But what I didn't retain was what I knew. It both said, you know, I'm still, I'm still sort of working on telling these stories, you know, actually unraveling those seeds that were planted them. That was awesome stuff, though, and but, yeah, it's, you know, these two things, you know, you know, I look back at my personal history, I think you were asking about, I mean, you know, my pathways with meditation practice and consciousness studies, and then also with improvisation, pass, it almost went hand in hand. I mean, almost like, you know, around the same time in my life when I started those, those those pathways, and it's just just ongoing

Eugene Friesen 31:48

that's really that's really interesting. So you've been, you've been interested in this kind of work since you were a student. Yeah, basically, in my case, I feel like the experience I had in the cathedral that night 40 years ago was a kind of experience of non duality that that I first experienced through music, and then I've been, you know, struggling to kind of understand it and also lead my students into a kind of deeper state of receptivity when we pick up our instruments,

Edward Sarath 32:24

you know? And it's interesting to and like, you know, I think I might have mentioned this by email, you know, you and I, we definitely have to do something musically Right, right? And much of my playing, most of my playing, is, it's really like I do very, very little sort of mainstream jazz playing, although I miss it, and it's more circumstance, partly circumstances. Anyway, I'm doing more like just open improvising. But, of course, the jazz informs pretty much everything I do. But I would love, you know, you and I, we definitely have to fight, you know. And let's play in the cathedral.

Eugene Friesen 32:56

Oh, great idea. Oh yeah, let's hold that out there. Beautiful. And,

Edward Sarath 33:02

you know, but you know, you're, you're sort of musical interested me in other ways too, because, you know, a lot of the work I do pedagogically is with, you know, being sort of facilitating classical musicians in Proposition journeys, you know, especially in fine players, and I've done that all over the world and in the music, you know, I think I might have mentioned this big piece for orchestra, choir and improvisers. I wrote 150 musicians. I ended up having it being played in South Africa and also Brazil, and particularly in Brazil. I mean, it's great in both places, because the poem, I said, a poem by Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou, yeah, yeah, to Nelson Mandela, after he died, called his day is done, and five movements is long, long piece. And, you know, so I got to, you know, in a way, that was another angle into, you know, I always, in my compositional work, there's always improvisatory sessions, sections of different kinds, and especially when, you know, we were involved in classical musicians, you know, I call it setting up, you know, improvisory, improvisory passages, they controlled. It's like a controlled burn, right? You set up really cold, you know, certain parameters that you know, will are kind of, they're contained. They're still contained. So whatever happens there, it's like, it's still gonna, you know, it's gonna basically work, and it's so, you know, that sort of brought me into this space of, you know, improvisation for classical musicians and musicians of your kind of, because you've gone so much farther with it than most, but businesses who followed, who were at the beginning of what you actually, you know, for you was a major entryway and, and I just love, you know, it's just, you know, again, it's another example of bringing together cultures that have everything to gain from being in touch with each other and to, all too often, get separated and. Yeah, it's,

Eugene Friesen 35:03

well, I think that that's, that's, you know, especially in this day and age, I think it's increasingly a radical metaphor, in a way, and something that, you know, it's just beautiful to see that once we engage in it, we feel the joy in it, and we feel the joy in collaborations across cultural boundaries. It's simply that it's, it's a, it's a beautiful experience to be involved in that,

Edward Sarath 35:32

you know, and as cliche as it sounds, but I mean, you know, even just saying it's the need. Like, 20 years ago, we could have said the need, need has never been more urgent, but now we have to. The need is like, it's off the scale. There's no words for need, no but it's really music has so much to teach the word the world in this way and but one of the things I'm interested in is that, you know, on our campus, in many places, you know, the whole dei movement and all this kind of is a really perfect example of

Eugene Friesen 36:05

equity and inclusion. Yeah, yeah, we need to,

Edward Sarath 36:10

you know, I've been, I've been talking about a post dei movement, and I'm not the only one, of course, but it's not from a conservative standpoint. It's from a more of a, you know, a radical, progressive standpoint, we need to it's become a kind of a pocket in itself, again, a language. It's become language bound and kind of rigid, and it's totally, you know, music. Music could be like, a huge part of this. And because, here's the thing, it's been so politicized, but I'm saying from the like on like on a typical college, college campus like mine, if you really want to do dei deep, you're gonna deal with black, black music and esthetics. But nobody's dealing with that. Yeah, and it's got to the point now you cannot critique dei from the left, from the from the left. If you take it from the right, then everyone huddles together. We've got to protect it from the you know. We just had a huge thing, you know. And of course, I'm sympathetic to that because of the general idea of it. But if critiquing dei from the left is problematic on college campuses, which is huge, huge problem, it's really interesting.

Eugene Friesen 37:22

Again, that's part of the beauty of music, because whereas words are symbols in themselves and can be interpreted in different ways language, I mean, Music is a language that is quite apart from that, quite different from that, and something that speaks much, deeper and much more subjectively. Thank God for that. Yep. Well, one last question, Ed, you know, in your work, teaching with consciousness studies, especially related to musicians, is there, is there an outline or a syllabus or a pathway that can be easily summarized as we as we take everything that we have have practiced, you know, all the rigor that we've developed over years of training. And how do we put that in the service of the soul and make it, make it short, man, I was

Unknown Speaker 38:24

just gonna say, you say,

Eugene Friesen 38:32

volume six of my conversation with that. I

Edward Sarath 38:34

mean, there's so many things on this though. I mean, you gotta admit but you know, one things, first thing comes out is, where do we put it? Okay, so you're saying, you're asking, What are we what are we putting in? But another question is, where do we put it? We, I think we covered the sort of, the what, to some degree. And we're talking about creativity, we're talking about improvisation, we're talking about rhythmic embodiment and all this kind we haven't used embodiment so much, but that's in there. And then, of course, consciousness, competition, meditation and that. And the thing I would say is that, you know, when we start to look, you could almost fit that. You could probably fit aspects of this work in anywhere in a curriculum. But here's one thing that eludes the academy, is that going into the curricular foundations, particularly music, particularly music, this will be another symposium itself. Okay, we got it. We already have at least two or three already wind up, right? People don't want to look at the curricular core because it's too political, it's too confounding, it's too mired in convention and all this kind of stuff. And to me, it's a big cop out, because we don't change the foundations. You haven't really changed much and and I think this would be okay. So what would this look like in a musical curricular core? And this raises really important questions, because much of what constitutes the core is so outmoded it was even outmoded when you. Before it was outmoded. I mean, it's, you know, you talk about, if you talk about a field that is built on shaky foundations, you have to look at music studies, you know, in this, I mean, you know, and we sort of hit the nail on the head early on in this conversation, right? We're talking about improvisation was central in the European classical traditions. And it's like, basically so, so as soon as you know that, and you look at a corporate relation, the curriculum that is one devoid of improvisation, two people will fight to the death to protect, to actually protect it predicated on preservation of tradition. We know, you know, I come back to this thing. We're talking about, conspiracy theories that go way beyond anything that we can complain about coming from, you know, the different sources that are so easy to Yeah, I mean, so I would say this will be the next frontier it's like, really, you know, bringing creativity and consciousness to the curricular foundations. My music theory through improvisation book goes into this. Actually, this would be, this would be a good source where the theory curriculum is, you can really just overhaul the theory curriculum and build the theory curriculum on with black music roots, with openings to Europe. Okay, so this whole thing is like, it's not either or, but it's like, it's like, you know, that idea that we had the you know, the concept of gateways that we talked about, this is part of the artistry of curricular reform. It's like you don't have to necessarily toss anything out, but you you have to change priorities. And so music theory through improvisation, that's predicated on the black music foundations, music theory, core curriculum, music theory even for classical musicians. You might even, say particularly for classical musicians. And then, and then you just change your narrative, and then you create openings to Europe and the rest, and also, you know, rest of the world through those black music windows, you're coming up with a theory curriculum that you talk about rigor, you talk about chops, you talk about hearing and thinking and playing. And the thing is, in my system, everyone plays the keyboard, no matter what their principal instrument. As you play you learn the harmonic structures at the keyboard. It's just, you know. It's just a matter of, you know, can we get people to stop and not go ballistic and tell these, you know, can you, can you wait 10 minutes before going ballistic and then go ballistic? Think,

Eugene Friesen 42:27

Well, the thing that you've hinted at here, which we haven't talked to during this conversation, is, is the rigor aspect of this and and that has been kind of well thought about, and there are some very, very known pathways in terms of the rigor. But what's new is, as you call it, creativity consciousness, or creation consciousness, and that, that is the thing, the kind of mind blowing new way of looking at what we do as creative artists, rather than curative artists.

Edward Sarath 43:06

And you know, one of the things when I think back of the work I've done, particularly working improvisation with classical musicians, when you see, and sometimes even within an initial two hour sessions, I can, I can get, you know, not to be immodest, but, you know, I can often get like, something happening that is really magical, yeah, and you and you see, like, especially, they're improvising for the first time. And you see, you know, especially, I would say, not only you know, especially musicians who really have a, you know, really can play. I mean, they've, you know, they can really play the instruments on that. And this is nothing like it, you know, that's

Eugene Friesen 43:40

what's kept me at it all these decades, is just seeing that kind of opening and the real beauty that emerges completely, innocence, Yeah, beautiful. Well, I think that's a that's a good bookend to close out this conversation. That's great it's been such a pleasure Eugene thank you very very kindly, and to be continued, Wonderful All right signing off for now, thanks Eugene