Community Music as Sacred Technology
For me, community music and movement in ‘La Ronda’ (the circle) is:
a neurobiological, cultural technology that all cultures across the globe, across time have engaged.
A way that humans have always practiced for devotion and harmonized alignment with seasonal cycles of time.
an oral and embodied learning system
A relational way of knowing ourselves
An ancient ever-emergent methodology for moving and alchemizing high voltage experiences (traumatic and ecstatic)
A communal way of tending threshold
A community practice space where life meets art, meets embodied prayer.
A practice that teaches us relational attunement and co-regulation.
A place to find our unique voice inside of belonging.
A re-membrance that music belongs to everyone, and its how our communities have always survived unbearable conditions
This work has entered my life through two roots systems: 1) Local Women’s Circle Practice. and 2) Ancestrally,
For over 20 years, women’s circle practice has been staple in my life. We have cultivated a deeply embodied listening practice, relational ways of knowing, and shared intent of healing self, community, and lineage. Our circle engages song and rhythm as a primary modality of holding one another through the glorious mess of transformation, over and over again. It gathers our hearts and minds together in shared purpose and intent. It holds our weary hearts, and calms our frayed nerves. This way of moving together has given me a unique musical practice that is not performative or entertainment-based, but functionally embedded in communal care practices and body-based.
For nearly 13 years, I have been studying my maternal line’s community music traditions, the Southern Italian & Sicilian Tarantellas. These music practices also are rooted in community resilience, communal care practices, and devotional and healing intent. These practices have more circle codifications. They have specific drumming techniques that converge with song, dance, and circle-tending.
Both of these rooted practices have values in common. The music belongs to everyone. It’s not about sounding good, its about touching into deeper connection and belonging with one another. It’s a felt way of knowing. It’s about individual expression within spaces of belonging. It’s about self-attunement synchronizing with communal attunement. It reaches for a shared experience of collective effervescence when group coherence is attained. It’s simple, humble, not glorified.
It’s the work that has captured my heart. It is the work I am apprentice to in this life. I feel i have just begun.
