 The
Secret Power of Music by
David Tame
I
welcome this opportunity to communicate with prospective readers
online. This book was one of the earliest of what has become a
genre: the fascinating links between music, consciousness, spirituality
and society. Whereas music has only for the last century been
widely conceived as being an "intangible art form" of
little objective power, this contrasts with the sheer wonder of
how the ancient sages from Egypt to China, from India to Greece,
knew that music is SOUND and that sound is a transformative force
on several levels. Music in the past was almost synonymous with
magic: its ability to alter consciousness and even to transform
society was then unquestioned. Music/sound was definitely believed
to be ultimately capable even of changing or reshaping matter
itself. This was because audible sound, including music, was considered
to be an outpouring of a higher or Cosmic Sound - the Word or
OM of the ancients, which is the source of all energy/matter.
What if they were right?
In this book
I hoped to follow in the footsteps of the late composer, Cyril
Scott, who wrote along similar lines, but as far back as 1933.
Today we can say much more about how music is a shaping, transformative
force upon, for example, society or civilization. And that fact
has implications. Many societal trends, good or bad, BEGIN WITH
THE MUSIC. So music is not "just art", and musicians
hold a divine responsibility. They sound the keynotes, as it were,
to which millions of other individuals respond. Many other recent
New Age-style books on music portray an "all is well"
"everything goes" mentality which I consider unbalanced,
therefore misleading. Hence a portion of this book also deals
with potentially negative or harmful musical styles (which have
even been proven to be so in the laboratory). This was never calculated
to go down well with those who adhere to these musical styles(!),
but the fact that 3 pages (1% of the book) deals with voodoo hardly
seems adequate evidence for occassional below-the-belt "racist"
taunts. That I certainly am not: after all the book is global
in scope.
I trust the
overall content will be found to be uplifting and thought-provoking
(it certainly was both for me, which is why I wrote it). And it
appears to be so: many reviewers and readers, including Van Morrisson
(thanks Van for championing the book), have found it so.
By all means,
follow my research into what music meant to the ancient Chinese
- their superlative philosophy on the subject led to a large and
key chapter - then draw your own conclusions as to what music
should be and should mean today. Confucius would say of present
music and present prevailing concepts toward what music is, what
it is capable of doing: "Definitely room for improvement!"
Confucius I am not, but my book modestly tries to help a little
with that process. -- The Author
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