You make a lot of very good points here...
I would like to add that many of the types of music I like are based on my
conditioned responses and my personal odyssey:
i.e.: classical western music (grew up in Cleveland around the Cleveland
Symphony),
bluegrass (went to college in Southern Ohio in the foothills of Appalachia),
R&B and later hip-hop (hung out with a gang of guys from Harlem and
Westchester, lived in the Fillmore in San Francisco)
African music (I served in the Peace Corps there)
etc. etc. etc.
But shakuhachi music seems to fall in a separate category in that it
actually seems to *deprogram* and move me beyond my *conditioned*
existence... it thereby falls into the category of "healing" or meditative
music... it opens my pure awareness, moves me beyond "the vicious cycles of
samsara." It's long moments of silence, lack of predictable cadence,
surprising twist and turns always surprise and "cut through" the more
predictable patterns of consciousness and redirect me towards "no eyes, no
ears, no nose... no consciousness....no object of consciousness..."
The other types serve a useful purpose as well, they awaken different
chakras, open different avenues of exploration.
Brett "Bud" Breitwieser (bud@rajah.com)
check out my zen site at http://rajah.com
or my tech support site at http://rajah.net
walking, greens, and my recumbent trike at http://rajah.ws
the dragon is at http://rajah.org
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Gutwein [mailto:dfgutw@prodigy.net]
> Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2002 9:24 AM
> To: Bud; shakuhachi@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: RE: tradition
>
>
> I've been debating about getting involved in the discussion of "musical
> taste", especially since I'm involved in a profession that, in
> the minds of
> most people, is about teaching "great" music. But, with this
> email list I
> feel freer about speaking from the heart rather than from a "politically
> correct" perspective (i.e. every musical activity is equally worthwhile
> because every human is equally valuable). Music means more to me
> than the
> sensual experience of figuratively or literally bathing or dancing in
> vibrating air. Its meaning for me is inextricably linked to
> being actively
> aware of and engaged in using set of skills and concepts that have taken
> hundreds if not thousands of years to evolve and develop. Skill-sets and
> concepts that require my concentration and discipline in order to
> use,
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