Some musicians seem like they’re made to lead the world. Some seem born citizens of the earth, regardless whichever country, heritage, religion they’re born into. Regardless what their parents wanted for them; regardless of childhood introjects… they travel the world, often as what I’d call ‘rememberers,’ musicians who help us remember that water can flow through stone.

If spoken words are capable of too easily offending some, destroying and dividing us, then music seems far more often able to unite, to cross tightly controlled checkpoints that bar babblers and blabbers, but let through musicians carrying a stringed, wind, or percussion instrument… like water through stone. Maybe the musicians who are Rememberers could for a while, lead the detente talks, the conciliation talks, the cease fires and peace agreements. Arion of Methymna and Orpheus of Thrace are celebrated in song to this day, for Arion surrounded Thebes with walls by the power of music, and Orpheus tamed the wild beasts by the mere might of song. Some element inside the mythic is always very real.

Tisha B’av is about mourning what has been destroyed and finding a way to build a new, even more beautiful temple, whether cultural, personal, religious or creative. Here are some musicians who are pylons and piers and guy wires and girders for bridges across roiling waters:

Jewish-Muslim music: Gerard Edery…”I’m not naive about the political reality, or about how polarized Jews and Arabs have become.” Edery is a singer and classical guitarist …Standing before a room full of Muslims, this Jewish musician launched into “a very Jewish song” in Hebrew about Elijah the prophet. Then, “without even thinking,” he started teaching the audience the words. “At first, I sensed a hesitation from the audience… After a few measures…700 to 800 Muslims [were] singing with me in Hebrew.” Edery, who was born in Casablanca, moved to Paris at age 4 and then the United States at age 8… Like those of Central Asia, Jews and Muslims in pre-Inquisition Spain, the place of Edery’s maternal ancestry, “shared similar, musical, poetical and artistic” license. There was a tolerance and a cross-pollination…”I’m not a politician or a scholar. I’m a musician. And I believe in doing what I can through music…: “We should all delve into our past and embrace all our traditions, whether Jewish or Muslim. Let me sing to you in Arabic and you can sing to me in Hebrew and let’s realize, very specifically, that we Jews and Arabs are from the same soil.”

Hindu-Muslim music: Bismillah Khan’s ancestors were court musicians who played in Naqqar khana in the princely states of Bhojpur. His father was a shehnai player in the court of Maharaja Keshav Prasad. Despite his fame, Khan’s lifestyle retained old world Benares: his chief mode of transport was the cycle rickshaw. A man of tenderness, he believed in remaining private, and that “musicians are supposed to be heard and not seen.” He was a pious Shiía Muslim and also, like many Indian musicians regardless of creed, a devotee of Mother Saraswati. He often played at various temples and on the banks of the river Ganga in Varanasi, besides playing outside the famous Vishwanath temple in Varanasi. Khan is one of the finest musicians in post-independent Indian Classical music and one of the best examples of Hindu-Muslim unity in India. He said, “Even if the world ends, the music will still survive… Music has no caste”.

AfricanAmerican-Jewish music: In New York, The American Symphony Orchestra wove this: concerts that “contribute to the current political debate by presenting a moment of history when matters were different. Not nostalgia, but rather the exploration of different models from which to draw inspiration for the present and future. The composers on this program born into Jewish families who integrated African-American materials in their work–Gershwin, Gruenberg and Gould–did so in ways which earned the respect and admiration of their African-American contemporaries and colleagues. The composers of African-American descent–Price, Ellington and Kay–who integrated European traditions with African-American traditions, did so in ways which earned the respect and admiration of their non-African-American contemporaries and colleagues.

“At mid-century, Jewish Americans tended to regard their African-American contemporaries as allies. Both communities experienced in recent and distant history oppression, discrimination, prejudice and the brutality of violence. The African-American community did not regard the Jew as the quintessential example of the American white oppressor. The facts of slavery and the disappointments stemming from the era of reconstruction were more recent than they are today. The idea that the poor and disenfranchised immigrant Jewish population that fled to America at the turn of the century and their descendants were at the root of white racism in America, was decidedly implausible.”

The credo shared by all the composers on this program included: 1) faith in the social and economic potential of democracy and 2) the hope that neither a distinct white nor black identity would emerge, but instead a unique amalgam. More to the point, the Jewish-American composers represented here rejected the idea that they were prisoners of a heritage of something that was truly “Jewish.” In fact, they turned to the music of the African-American experience because it seemed to be at the heart of what they dreamed they would be part of: an America in which they could feel comfortable and celebrate. They had less interest in the New England cultural tradition dominated by Charles Ives, for instance.

Furthermore, the notion that ethnic identity can be essentialized –defined as this or that, in some seemingly authentic manner - and its ownership restricted to a single group, was foreign. A universalism, perhaps naive from our point of view (but blissfully so), prevailed. Jews did not resent the fact that Max Bruch’s Kol Nidre, played on the eve of Yom Kippur in many Reform synagogues, was written by a German-Christian. George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess was not regarded as somehow invalid - as an example of humiliating exploitation. Florence Price’s overt adoption of the example of Dvorák’s New World Symphony was not seen as a betrayal of her identity as an African-American. Neither was Ellington’s music for the screen and concert stage seen as a concession to a dominant “white” culture.

Yes… those are musicians braving to go into the ruins and then build upward… rather than ruining the ruins even more, then leaving the ruins behind and wandering about looking for fresh prey.

There are many additional musicians who are building from the ruins. Each person no doubt has their short list of those who span not only our time, but time out of mind. Personally, I want more. I ALWAYS want more. MORE musicians. MORE music that puts its bewitching beat to humane use… more music played so deep into my bones so when I walk whether in bare feet or spike heels, notes fall out and make a beautiful sound…

Surely many musicians are not just ambassadors, but actual world leaders. On one hand, maybe there really is such a thing as taming the wild beasts of war arousal, at least for a while, long enough to insert true life-sparing thought and restraint instead of pounce and thrill: go for the kill… On the other hand, the Nazis wept at concerts of Schubert and Wagner played by concentration camp prisoners who in their earlier ghetto lives, were accomplished musicians. And afterward, the Nazis went right back to murdering the future, nonetheless.

On the other hand– how many hands have I used up, three? ok, often the number three is the charm– As a child, I knew an old Magyar man who used to walk deep into the forest to play his clarinet to the animals and trees. He said he would go into the woods angry, but always come back calm. Maybe there really is something to soothing the beast… one beast at a time. Tisha B’Av, taking back the true self once again… Ah, Musician! come slay me one more time!

CODA
Picasso: Three Musicians (How prescient)