{"id":7087,"date":"2020-10-16T18:12:10","date_gmt":"2020-10-16T18:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/?p=7087"},"modified":"2020-10-16T18:15:46","modified_gmt":"2020-10-16T18:15:46","slug":"covid-conversations-9-esperanza-spalding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/16\/covid-conversations-9-esperanza-spalding\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID CONVERSATIONS #9: Esperanza Spalding"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Esperanza Spalding wished to be shown without a mask, as photographed here by LaMont Hamiton.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The last time I spoke with Esperanza Spalding<\/a>, in 2019, seems a world away, when live music could happen regularly and none of us uttered the word \u201cpandemic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet even then Spalding was focused on healing. She\u2019d been thinking about how trauma and healing are transmitted from body to mind and back, and how music figures into that process. The album she\u2019d released, 12 Little Spells<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/u><\/em>was inspired by an urge, she\u2019d said, to create a series of incantations\u2014each one meant \u201cto activate a spell for each body part.\u201d The accompanying booklet reads less like liner notes than an alternative-medicine guide.<\/p>\n

Early in her career, she had shared with me the roots of her introduction to music\u2019s transformative power. \u201cAs a child, I learned that music could be a nurturing, healing thing,” she told me. “I’ve never forgotten that.” Now Spalding, who is on Harvard University\u2019s faculty, seemed intent studying music therapy and its specific potential. She wanted to prove her point with hard science, and to become a different kind of practitioner. \u201cMy hypothesis is grand,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

This summer, from Oregon, where she has been since early in the Covid-19 period, we talked again\u2014about how she was weathering our shared trauma, and what she has learned through the practical application of her ideas about music and healing.<\/p>\n

Where are you now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m in a relatively rural town in Oregon. I came back to Oregon on April 1, and I\u2019ve been here ever since. I\u2019m out here in this beautiful space, far from most of the people that I know well. I\u2019m with a few people I know well. I\u2019ve been taking a time out.<\/p>\n

How has it been going?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019m so grateful for Terri Lyne Carrington. Every time I speak with Terri Lyne, it helps ground me in the reality of what people are facing, what we\u2019re all facing. I\u2019ve been a little detached. I\u2019ve been in somewhat of a bubble. I just got off the phone with her about 20 minutes ago, and I felt reactivated. Every time I speak with her, I think\u2014right<\/em>! That\u2019s how you do it. That\u2019s what it means to be musician and scholar and teacher and leader. I remember more clearly that I have a responsibility to my community. Even though I am sort of a peripheral agent, this is a music that has liberated me. I\u2019m thinking right now about how to step up.<\/p>\n

Did you first connect with Terri Lyne through Geri Allen, or other way around?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The other way around. I met Terri in passing a few times. Then she came to perform at Berklee when I was teaching there, around 2007. We played together with Adam Rogers. And we just kept going. I remember when she first talked about the inspiration to start a Jazz and Gender Studies at Berklee. We were driving somewhere, and she started talking about the mentorship dynamic, and how it\u2019s always going to be an unequal experience unless we find a way to expose more young men and women to the mentorship of women. And then, two years later, she was doing that. I was so fortunate to witness that.<\/p>\n

When last time you sang or played in public?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was probably at Harvard. Claire Chase has these throwdowns. They\u2019re invitations for both musicians who are being by Harvard and musicians who are paying Harvard to get together and share sounds. And to not feel so tied to the academic context. The last throwdown was probably March 7 or 8. I played with Vijay Iyer. I played saxophone and he played violin. It\u2019s a sort of like free-form dance when I play saxophone.<\/p>\n

You played alto, or tenor?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alto, of course. I wouldn\u2019t dare\u2026 Anyway, that was the last time. We both decided we would offer something that had no spitshine, no polish. Part of the motive for doing it in that space is to be like,\u00a0Fuck it, let\u2019s play!<\/em>There\u2019s so much of this,\u00a0I must be correct and do the thing that I am supposed to do<\/em>. The reason I do things like that is so I can look like a fool, and it\u2019s okay. It\u2019s okay to just play for each other.<\/p>\n

And then, in March, everything started getting canceled in March. I was supposed to do Vijay\u2019s Black Speculative Musicalities event at Harvard.<\/p>\n

The last time we spoke, you and I talked in depth about the science and the practice of healing through music. Have you been able to apply any of that to our current situation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, that is a very vibrant conversation. In the last two months I\u2019ve been in a learning experience around that. Before Covid landed, before we really knew what it was, I had decided that it was time for me to make music healing front-and-center. I assembled a council.<\/p>\n

I started reaching out to people who could be my allies and guides for this journey. What does it mean to collaborate with clinicians in the medical field? One of the council members became chief medical officer at this field hospital during the crisis. So we said: Oh, what we\u2019re going to do is implement this\u2014take the best of this research, weave it into new compositions that are built to affect these specific aspects of the body\u2014breath, stress reduction, connectivity. We\u2019re going to offer it to patients, and to start contributing this new design.<\/p>\n

To Covid patients?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes. Because this member of the council was a neuroscientist whose focus is rehabilitation. He works with wounded veterans. He works at intersection of music and healing. We designed this healing regimen, with music therapy sessions five days a week. We looked at it as a perfect opportunity. I invited people in my songwriting course. I said,\u00a0We\u2019re gonna do this<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Wow.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, it sounds so wow. But what I learned was these are really sacred tools, ancient tools, and you can\u2019t just come out winging it, saying\u00a0here\u2019s some stuff I concocted to help your body heal<\/em>. In the excitement of wanting to create these medical interventions with music we were moving too fast to take into account the implications of affecting another person\u2019s body, of penetrating their body with sound. It\u2019s like giving them medicine, and they don\u2019t know what it does. Because we were moving so fast, the patients didn\u2019t really have a say in the process, which isn\u2019t okay. I ended up dissolving the council. I said, I need to step back and make sure this work is being done from a community-based level in conversation with the people who this music is intended for. And it needed to be grounded in my relationship to liberation music, my relationship with the power that is healing music, and to make sure there are people around me who can keep me accountable. I\u2019m not a doctor; I\u2019m not supposed to be. But there are things to be aware of if I\u2019m stepping in and saying that I\u2019m offering some form of medicine, I\u2019m offering something that we are sure will affect your body.<\/p>\n

12 Little Spells was a. But now that we\u2019re in the realm of elements that have been shown to have increase the rate that you expel carbon dioxide, that\u2019s some serious shit. It has to be done with guidance and with the safety of people who have been in the lineage of this practice of\u2014 was going to say implementing, but that sounds too aggressive\u2014of employing music as medicine. The path hasn\u2019t changed, but the way I\u2019m approaching it has been adjusted because of this experience. That practice\u2014and I\u2019m calling it a practice\u2014reaches into various lineages, whether in medical field or certain cultural and community-based and ceremonial practices. Musicians we know and love are doing this, whether they call it healing technologies or not.<\/p>\n

So, I\u2019m still pursuing this goal. And I\u2019ve been humbled. I have a lot of edifying work to do around my own intentions and my position in relation to this practice.<\/p>\n

Were you taking data and information and specific musical techniques to work on specific symptoms? Was it that precise?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes. The first round. That needed to dissolve. It wasn\u2019t ethical. There was a lack of oversight. In this context, it\u2019s not right. It\u2019s cool to offer music, and to say that we know that music has a calming effect. For instance, it\u2019s proven that there is a dramatically increased sense of ease when listeners hear a song they know was written for them. That comes from data, research. We worked with that. We worked with patient narratives. We incorporated elements of their history in a song written for them. Patients would know that\u00a0this song was written for me<\/em>. Thanks to study, we know that has a positive effect a sense of well-being.<\/p>\n

Starting with something that basic, that you and I would think is obvious but that the study grounds in science, we also worked with more specific factors. There are a few studies show that switching from 4\/4 time to 3\/4 within a certain bpm range increases the volume of air that the lungs are taking in when inhaling. And researchers are culling through the studies seeking information about specific aspects\u2014breathing, lung capacity, stress reduction, connectivity. The challenge for Covid patients, for all of us right now, is not being able to reach out and touch people, not being connecting.<\/p>\n

There are very specific elements that can be woven into compositions, intentionally. But this time, we\u2019re not offering this to people in vulnerable situation in a hospital. This is just the beginning of something. We\u2019re learning what this method is, how it works. Thank god I am working with some people who are excellent clinicians and are deeply familiar with ethics of working in a music therapy context. So much of medical interventions take the approach of assessing what\u2019s wrong and administering\u2014you take it because I said you need it<\/em>. But this is music. It is an intimate relationship between the listener and the musician. What I feel was missing was that dialogue, the idea that we\u2019re in this thing together, we\u2019re coming to a realization. I\u2019m not administering something. I\u2019m not dishing it out to you because you\u2019re in a distressed state or because you need something and here it is. This is not new stuff, and it\u2019s not just scientists who have been doing research for generations on how we heal each other with music.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s entire cultures, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Especially this one, the one that you and I feel so connected to.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The last time I spoke with Esperanza Spalding, in 2019, seems a world away, when live music could happen regularly and none of us uttered the word \u201cpandemic.\u201d Yet even then Spalding was focused on healing. She\u2019d been thinking about how trauma and healing are transmitted from body to mind and back, and how … <\/p>\n

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