Music’s Role in Education and Human Development

Above: The shrine in Takayama, Japan where I performed Gaudiya Vaishnava songs

By Bhadra Rupa Dasa

This article is a reflection on my experiences in learning musical traditions in four cultures: Latin America, Japan, India, and Europe. By describing what I learned through these different approaches to music, I suggest that music is an effective educational tool to develop one’s whole personality.

I was born in Peru in a family of practicing Catholics. I was strictly educated in a primary and secondary school run by Canadian Catholic priests. At the age of five, by observing, listening, and imitating (oral tradition), I began to play Latin folk music on both the quena (Andean end- blown flute) and the siku (Andean pan flute).

During my ten years of studies, I was taught that the original character of the quena, which is five thousand years old (Baumann, 1996), is “an opening where the soul gives the best of oneself; if the player doesn’t have a cultivated spirit, the result will be poor” (Pariona, 2006, p. 28).

Because I was focusing every day, from my early childhood to teenage life, on being a better person by following the teachings of Jesus Christ, I always offered to him with devotion each sound I produced on the quena and siku, both during rehearsals (four hours daily) and at concerts (in prestigious auditoriums and theaters in Lima and on TV and radio shows). At age fourteen, I won first prize in the national music performance competition in Peru (professional level) organized by the Ministry of Education.

Doing research on these instruments, I found several more interesting connections between the gradual development of self-realization and Andean music performance. The original character of the quena has long been expressed, even up to the present, through the dance of the quena-quenas of Patacamaya, a place in La Paz, Bolivia. Engraved stones depicting a dance of the pre-Inca culture of Tiahuanaco, in Bolivia, feature millenary teachings (as explained by Gisbert, 1988): (1) The feather art of the Aymara people from Altiplano, which is shaped like a rainbow on top of the dancer’s head, represents the set of colors emanating from the activated chakras. (2) The dancers’ breastplates, the skins of pumas (the chacapuma of Tiahuanaco) represent the inner warrior who eliminates psychological vices and defects. (3) The quenas that solemnly blow the dancers represent the spine, whose secret centers of power can be activated by the quena’s sounds, the Andean scales.

I was eager for self-realization, and I specifically wondered what God the Father’s face and body look like.

When I was fifteen, a Japanese actress heard my solo concert and proposed that I further my career in Japan. I became a disciple of the Noh theater master Hideo Kanze, one of the most talented descendant-masters of the Kanze school, which was founded in the fourteenth century. As the director of my concerts, he taught me the inner strength to master the instruments (the quena and Japanese flutes). This took more than simply perfecting a technique to provide entertainment. He told me about the teachings of Zen Buddhism that were incorporated into the ritualization of Japanese music. These form a meditation on the unity of the mind, the instrument, and the body. Such meditation is an essential element in the mastery of every Japanese art. I was taught that it was through the practice of the arts (practical training) and not through rules or theory (like in the Catholic tradition) that morality, ethics, and human and spiritual values are learned.

Training the mind as well as the body results in important insights, habits, values, attitudes, and behavior, which lead to enlightenment (Davey, 2003). I focused on daily self-realization, and thus calmness and simplicity influenced my performance and the sound of my quena. The power of my concentration became stronger while performing. The mind remained in the present moment, aware of the temporary, illusory nature of material life.

Because of my integrating both traditions (theAndean and the Noh), and because I released solo albums (on Victor, JVC World Sounds) and played hundreds of concerts throughout Japan (sponsored by Sony Music) and on TV and radio shows, the Ministry of Culture in Japan considered me the world’s most talented performer on the quena and the siku. After I was in Japan for five years, my master, Hideo Kanze, presented two future options: continuing a successful artistic career in Japan and soon in Europe, or doing research on the Indian cultural origins of the Zen Buddhism philosophy used in Noh.

At the age of nineteen, I chose the second option. I studied Vedic philosophy and Vaishnava music. The latter is an influential culture in the Indian musical tradition. For seven years, I was trained to be a celibate monk in the brahmacarya ashrams of Peru’s and Denmark’s ISKCON temples. As a full-time book distributor in Peru and Bolivia, I made daily presentations and gave lectures on the Bhagavad-gita to more than 250,000 students at universities and institutes. During these studies, unexpectedly and magically, by the mercy of Srila Prabhupada, I learned about the father of Jesus Christ (and Buddha): Krishna, the supreme flutist!

According to my research, musicologists state that the North and South Indian music traditions have roots in the Sama Veda, a vast collection of verses (sama). This is the musical version of the Rg Veda, set to melody and sung by singer-priests (Raghavan, 1962). The Chandogya Upanisad (attached to the Sama) presents the mystical and esoteric significance of saman singing. Through Vedic literature, musical sound and its profound theological significance lead to nada brahman, or sacred sound as the linguistic word and the nonlinguistic sound, or music (Beck, 1993).

Regarding the nonlinguistic aspect of nada brahman, Shashank Subramanyam, one of the world’s most outstanding Carnatic flute masters and my Carnatic flute teacher, said, “When the voice or the performance of any instrument is perfectly trained with all the notes of the Indian classical music—sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si in the Western version)—we will discover that these notes are variations of one note, which is nada brahman, or om.”

Nada brahman, in its highest, personal manifestation, is known as the form of Janardana (Vishnu)—nada-rupah smrto brahma nada rupo janardana (Sharma, 1970). This notion of nada brahman was passed on in later Vaishnava works, such as the Vaishnava padavali compiled and edited by Sahitya Ratna Shri Hare Krishna Mukhopadhya.

In these works, I discovered an important contribution from the Vaishnava music culture to Western musical education: a system of rhythms (talas) and romantic melodic formats (ragas), with scientific forms between the notes and rhythms, which when sung along with mantras (such as the holy names of Krishna) have deep transcendental effects on the human emotional intelligence. The effects of these sounds and their precise repetition at exact intervals awaken a person’s higher levels of consciousness by acting on the internal personality and transforming its sensibility, way of thinking, and the state of the soul—even one’s moral character (Beck, 1993). Scholarly, enlightened, devotional artists and poets wrote Vaishnava songs, and thus the songs possess great literary value, which made them widely popular.

After my Vaishnava devotional life experiences, I was drawn by curiosity to study the European transverse flute at the music conservatory in Copenhagen, Denmark, where only one flute student per year is accepted after a rigorous entrance examination. Three years of classical European music and jazz at this conservatory radically changed me. I discovered fidelity to writing and reading scores, or normative knowledge. The musical repertoire has been inspired by Western impersonalism, without a scientific approach. The experiences that I had there carried into the current work I do while performing the Western repertoire as principal flutist in a Swiss symphony orchestra in Geneva.

Desiring to integrate the contributions of the four music traditions (Latin American, Japanese, Indian, and European cultures), I invented and patented a flute. The quena’s headjoint is connected to the European transverse flute’s body. Based on this invention, I obtained a Bachelor’s degree of soloist and two Master’s degrees (one in education and the other in the Sciences of Education) at Lund University in Sweden, where I studied for eight years. This was the first time in history (recognized by Lund University) that a musician earned a university degree based on a musical invention by the inventor, while the inventor was still alive.

By the mercy of Srila Prabhupada, flute associations in Sweden, America, the UK, and Australia have recognized me as one of the world’s most talented flutists, for performing with this invented instrument in their gala concerts and in prestigious auditoriums and theaters worldwide. Multinational music companies such as Sony Music and Columbia Records from Japan released six of my solo albums (with some of my own compositions) featuring my flute invention as the soloist’s instrument. For these accomplishments, the President of the Parliament of the Republic of Peru and the Mayor of the Municipality of Lima recognized and awarded my achievements.

After all these experiences, I asked myself, What is a tradition? To answer this question, I approached the University of Geneva in Switzerland and did a Ph.D. in the Sciences of Education (with a specialization in didactics) over the next five years. In the last seven years I have been a member of the research team in the Didactics of Arts and Movement (DAM) at the Faculty of Sciences of Education. My Ph.D. dissertation was recognized by this university as the first doctoral research in the history of education investigating the music didactics of an ancient, ancestral culture. While writing it, I realized that in the oral traditions from the three ancestral cultures I studied (Andean, Japanese and Vaishnava cultures), there are two different forms of transmission practices, because of two approaches: the ethno-musicological approach and the popular or folk music approach. The ethno-musicologist seeks to transmit a traditional way of performing (sonority) in a certain culture through scientific discourse. The popular or folk music approach is a practice that combines elements of the traditional music with an aesthetic taste coming from elements of Western European music. This is characterized by a national and political identity, with the “show” as a dimension.

These differences led me to conclude that a tradition is a historical construct. It is not pure nor is it a museum object, because all cultures are, to some degree, pervaded by cultural elements from other cultures (Girault, 1998). Tradition is alive and in constant transformation. Then what do we learn from the two approaches? We learn that the oral tradition of these ancestral cultures (Andean, Japanese and Vaishnava) manifests something alive precisely because of certain characteristics of its transmission practices.

I compared these characteristics with the practices I did as a student at Sweden’s music conservatory:

1. The ongoing practice and performance of scales (ragas), rhythms (talas), and the singing of mantras (names of Krishna) as melodic and rhythmical scientific- aesthetic forms in Vaishnava culture, together with scientific discourse and systematic training by the teacher, enhance the performer’s musical expression by elevating the consciousness. In the music conservatories I frequented, the scales, rhythmical patterns, and lyrical messages lacked scientific spiritual principles therefore did not uplift the consciousness. Training for self- realization does not exist.

2. The use of dance, wherein the instrumentalist’s steps are synchronized with the rhythm of the melody, is a simultaneous double function by the agent, who is the dancer and the instrumentalist. In the music conservatories, instrumentalists and singers do not dance.

   3. “Learn to speak before reading”: first make music and only then understand how it is made. In the conservatories I frequented, the teacher begins with the systematic work of playing: position of the instrument, breathing, fingering, vibrato, etc. This is called the elementarization of knowledge.

      In summary, while reflecting on the practices of transmission in oral traditions, I argued that the activities of a person, including one’s musical activity, should be oriented to attain the perfection of life and the perfect goal of education: to revive our eternal relationship with God (as stated in Srila Prabhupada’s edition of Srimad Bhagavatam 7.6.2). The music of these ancestral cultures, especially the Vaishnava culture, could be a model for society today, wherein the formation of an individual’s character takes priority while doing activities. In this case, the sound of music specifically could be a wonderful tool to educate a person about human values and spiritual principles, especially when it is used to chant the holy names of God.

      According to the Vedic cosmic calendar, this kali yuga, or IronAge, when the physical and mental condition of people declines, nullifies many of the available spiritual practices (sadhanas), such as the rigid hatha-yoga, which are difficult to perform. Therefore the chanting of the holy names of God (individually and congregationally, through japa and kirtan), specifically the Hare Krishna maha-mantra is the only and easiest way to attain the perfection of life. The sound of the maha-mantra checks the force of the current of thoughts moving toward sense objects, and it focuses the mind’s movement toward Krishna, and the attainment of eternal happiness and knowledge.

      Life is an art to live, and a work of art is like a window to the spiritual world through which we can express our personality, our sensibility, and our ability..

      Bibliography

      Baumann, Max Peter. (1996) Cosmología y Música Andina. Madrid: Iberoamericana.

      Beck, Guy. (1993) Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.

      Davey, H.E. (2003) The Japanese Way of the Artist. Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press.

      Gisbert, Teresa. (1988) Introduccion al estudio de las máscaras. Arte popular en Bolivia. La Paz: Instituto Boliviano de Cultura e InstitutoAndino deArtes populares.

      Girault, Louis. (1998) Kallawaya guérisseurs itinérants des Andes, recherches sur les pratiques médicinales etmagiques. Paris: Editions de l’Orstom

      Pariona, David. (2006) Method of quena concerning the theoretic part. Lima:Academy of Folk Music “Jose MaríaArguedas”.

      Raghavan, V. (1962) Sama Veda and music. Journal of the Music Academy of Madras 33:127-133.

      Sharma, Prem Lata. Brihadeshi of Matanga. Indian Music Journal 6 (1970) 54–58; 7 (1971) 56–66.

      Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Tattvavit Prabhu for editing this article.

      Bhadra Rupa Dasa was initiated by Jayapataka Swami in Chosica, Peru, in 1993. He won an ISKCON-Europe Excellence Award in 2015, for “the scientific presentation of Krishna Consciousness,” awarded by the Euro RGB. He is a member of the research team on the Didactics of Arts and Movement (DAM), Faculty of Sciences of Education at the University of Geneva, Switzerland where he got a Ph.D. in the Sciences of Education. He received an Honorary Doctorate from Peru’s National University of Education (“Enrique Guzman y Valle”). He is the principal Professor of Flute on the Music Faculty of the International School of Geneva, Switzerland. He is a Sony Music Recording Soloist Artist flutist/composer, Japan and the principal flutist in the Chataigneraie Symphony Orchestra in Switzerland

      Jagganath Rathyatra in the rain, Knoxville, Tennessee

      Padayatra With A Series Of Ratha Yatras