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Music without instruments

When I was young, my Dad had a record featuring songs and comedy sketches by the comedian Peter Sellers (formerly of “The Goon Show”). I loved to listen to it so much that even today, I can recite nearly the entire album from memory. One sketch in particular sprung to mind when I sat down to write this article. Sellers plays a German folk music aficionado, who is rather stiffly introducing his field recordings. “Ziss recordink is of Scottish mouth music.” He pauses. “Played on ze mouth.” Actually, what followed wasn’t mouth music at all, but a drunk Scotsman singing on a street before getting run over by a bus, but it was the first time I had ever heard the term. I didn’t hear real mouth music—or puirt-a-beul in Gaelic—until many years later.

Isn’t That Just Singing?

Surely music “played on the mouth” is just what most people refer to as singing? Well, yes and no. Genuine puirt-a-beul (pronounced porsht-ah-buhl) has a number of distinctive features which mark it out from standard singing. Mouth music is a primarily rhythmic form of song, where the words are chosen for their rhythmic qualities and the patterns of sound they make. Consequently most of the lyrics are more or less nonsense, but sometimes they take the form of puns or tongue twisters. Some songs contain syllables called “vocables,” which are chosen to sound like a particular instrument, or as a kind of sound effect to fit in with the meaning of the song. One of the reasons that I love mouth music is that it is a truly representative form of folk song; even the poorest of people can afford to use their own voices, so the songs record the everyday lives of ordinary people. The music itself is really striking to listen to, with a driving, toe-tapping rhythm. Expert mouth music singers will tell you that the hardest thing to learn is when to breathe, because the rhythm can’t be broken. Listening to Talitha MacKenzie singing “Sheatadh Cailleach” on the album Sòlas, and reading along with the Gaelic lyrics, I always marvel at how she can possibly fit all of the words in, such is the speed and complexity of the song.

Dances Without Instruments

Mouth music served three distinct functions, the first of which was to provide music for dancing. The majority of people would have been unable to afford musical instruments, but there was also a ban on the pipes after the 1745 Jacobite uprising, which ended in the notoriously bloody battle at Culloden, and victory for the English king, George II. Anything associated with the Highland clans or Gaelic tradition was ruthlessly suppressed, but by using their own voices, the people could still enjoy dances and traditional tunes, while leaving no incriminating evidence. The words are chosen to represent the dance steps of traditional dances, and the rhythm is so strongly ingrained in the structure of the words that it can be used to accompany dancing even if it is spoken rather than sung. This type is thought to be the most technically difficult form of mouth music to sing because of the fast tempo and complex rhythms.

Singing While You Work

The second function of mouth music was to alleviate the tedium of manual work. These songs—known as “waulking songs” or orain luaidh—were sung as tweed cloth was “fulled” or “waulked.” When tweed is newly woven, it is rather loose and not at all wind-proof. Since Harris tweed is supposed to be able to stop a Highland gale, the cloth needs to be worked to plump up the fibres and shrink the weave. Traditionally this was done by soaking the cloth in stale urine, and then sitting around a table, pushing, pulling and pounding the cloth around (always passing it clockwise), until the fibres shrank. The whole process could take hours, and as you might imagine was a tiring, boring and—above all—smelly process, and singing while you worked helped to pass the time. The waulking songs usually took the form of “call and response,” with one person singing the verses, while everyone joined in on the choruses. In Scotland, waulking was done exclusively by women, so the songs tend to be light-hearted, teasing each other about their sweethearts, and including a fair measure of ribald gossip. In Nova Scotia, Canada, waulking was done by men and women together. I’ve never heard any Nova Scotian waulking songs, but I’d be fascinated to know whether the tone of the songs was changed for mixed company. Many countries have similar forms of work songs, like sailors’ sea shanties, or West African work music. In fact, waulking songs have a very similar feel to traditional West African music and an odd affinity with them, which probably accounts for the popularity of bands like Mouth Music and Afro Celt Sound System, who blend the two styles.

Editor’s note: The album Mouth Music (the debut release by the band of the same name) features Talitha MacKenzie as vocalist, and it actually does contain mouth music (puirt-a-beul), as described in this article. However, later albums by Mouth Music adopted a different style and a series of other vocalists.

Remembering Tunes

Finally, mouth music was used to help musicians to remember and pass on traditional tunes, or to practice the music when they did not have an instrument available. Most traditional musicians would not have read music, so they would learn songs by playing with others, and by singing the tunes. A further style of mouth music (more often employed in Ireland) going by the charming name of “diddlage,” uses vocables sounding like the fiddle to represent the tunes. For many fiddlers, the sounds of the mouth music are inseparable from the tune actually played on the fiddle. There is even a form of mouth music—called canntaireachd or cauntering—in which the singer imitates the sound of the bagpipes to learn the tunes. Given the limited volume of the human voice, this can be a much more pleasant way to hear the bagpipes than the real thing! Again, these traditions are not restricted to the Celtic people; in India, players of the tabla (a small, expressive drum) learn and pass on tabla rhythms via a spoken notation called bol, in which onomatopoeic words stand for particular strokes.

Take Your Music with You

One of the most striking things about mouth music, when you come to look into it in detail, is the way that it reveals the migration, inter-mingling, and social history of people over time. Many people of Celtic origin in Scotland, Ireland, and Brittany, France already shared a similar tradition of music. In the 17th century, French peasants (including those from Brittany) were “cleared” from their land by rich landowners, and had to emigrate to Eastern Canada. Around a century later, Scottish highlanders were also involved in clearances, and many also ended up in Canada, in the region now called Nova Scotia. The French settlers (Acadians) got moved from place to place by political problems, and settled successively in Cape Breton, the Appalachian mountains, and eventually Louisiana, where they became known as Cajun. So there is a local version of mouth music found in Nova Scotia, and a rich gumbo of vocal tradition in Cajun Louisiana, where French and Celtic mouth music met the traditions of African and Caribbean slaves.

So, no—it isn’t just singing.

Guest author Jackie Chappell is a biologist at the University of Birmingham (UK).

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on August 4, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on March 16, 2005.

Image credit: www.marariley.net/celtic/scotland.htm [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Vietnam War lasted over 19 years, from November 1955 to April 1975. About half a million U.S. troops were stationed in Vietnam during the war, with millions more participating elsewhere in the world. More than 58,000 troops were killed in action. Because the war was both unpopular and controversial, many of those who returned home alive were treated quite poorly at the time, and National Vietnam War Veterans Day is intended as a small step toward correcting that injustice.

Image credit: Joint Base San Antonio [Public domain]

Sorcery, mythology, or both?

Bookstores are dangerous places for me. I invariably leave with less money—and more books than I’ll ever have time to read. But I have to support my habit: I’m basically an idea junkie. I like to learn things, absorb new ideas, and challenge my mind to form connections between concepts that don’t seem to go together. So I choose books not because I assume they’re true, but because I expect them to be interesting or thought-provoking. When I’ve finished reading a book, though, I usually have a pretty strong sense of whether or not I believe it. After reading a dozen books by Carlos Castaneda—along with quite a few criticisms of his work—I could only come to the conclusion that some or all the stories he told may or may not be somewhat or completely true. This very uncertainty is one of the things that makes his books so interesting. I have since revised my conclusion—about which more later. But first, some background.

For years, as I browsed through second-hand books, I frequently came across Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. I’d invariably pick it up, glance at it, and put it back on the shelf. Then I read Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics, which had a brief quote from don Juan at the beginning, and that piqued my curiosity. Shortly thereafter, I ran across the book at a thrift shop and decided I could give it a whirl for 50 cents. Within a few pages I was hooked, and after finishing it I read all 11 of its successors. For better or worse, I was too late to be a groupie—in April, 1998, before I had finished reading all of the books, Castaneda died. Only then did I begin to realize the extent of the controversy surrounding his life and work, and the state of confusion he left behind among both fans and critics.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

For those unfamiliar with Castaneda and his books, here’s the short version of the story. Castaneda was studying anthropology at UCLA in the early 1960s, and during the course of his field research in Mexico, he claims to have met a Yaqui Indian named Juan Matus. Don Juan was reputed to be an expert on medicinal plants, and Castaneda hoped to use him as an informant to learn more about the use of peyote among certain groups of native Mexicans. The Teachings of Don Juan purports to be an anthropological study of the way don Juan used a variety of hallucinogenic plants as part of a system of sorcery. The research, however, was participatory rather than objective, and don Juan’s intent was apparently to treat Castaneda as an apprentice, indoctrinating him into the ways of the particular brand of sorcery he practiced.

The hallucinogenic plants turn out to be a red herring. In Castaneda’s next book, A Separate Reality, they have a more limited role, and from there on, they’re barely mentioned. The books focus on other aspects of Castaneda’s training as a sorcerer, along with several other apprentices of don Juan and his fellow sorcerer Genaro Flores. Eventually don Juan reveals that he only taught Castaneda about the plants to get his attention; most of the teachings are internal, psychological. Castaneda learns how to turn off his inner dialogue, control his dreams, perceive other people as luminous energy, and behave in a manner don Juan calls “impeccability.” A lot of time is devoted to an exercise called recapitulation, in which Castaneda recalls and relives all the events of his life. At the end of Castaneda’s fourth book, by which time he had been working with don Juan for over a decade, don Juan and don Genaro “leave the world,” which readers are supposed to understand not as death but as a deliberate crossing into another plane of existence.

Surprisingly, the story does not end there. Castaneda returns to Mexico two years later and meets up with the other apprentices of don Juan and don Genaro, some of whom we haven’t heard of yet. By the sixth book, The Eagle’s Gift, Castaneda and another apprentice, a woman nicknamed “La Gorda,” discover something shocking: during the years of their apprenticeship, don Juan had frequently made them shift into a heightened state of awareness, wherein he had taught them a variety of things that they could not remember in their normal state of awareness. There follows a long reexamination of their entire relationship with don Juan. They find that most of what they thought they knew was wrong or at least irrelevant; all the most crucial teachings had been hidden, delivered as they were in this altered state.

Castaneda’s penultimate book, Magical Passes, covers a series of movement exercises vaguely like ch’i kung, which are supposedly a key component of the knowledge don Juan revealed—even though they’re barely hinted at in any of the other books. Where Castaneda’s other books were simply reporting his own experiences, this one alone is actually written as an instruction manual.

Stalking Castaneda

From the publication of Castaneda’s first book in 1968 until today, he has been subject to harsh and relentless criticism. Entire books have been written on this subject, but I’ll give you just a sampling. First, many critics question whether such a person as don Juan ever existed. Only Castaneda and his close associates seem to have met him; there is no photograph or documentary evidence to prove he existed, or even a corpse—he conveniently “vanished.” Anthropologists point out that a number of the details Castaneda gave are inconsistent with what is known about the Yaqui Indians, native Mexican sorcery, and even the geography, flora, and fauna of the places Castaneda claims to have visited. Likewise, critics have cited other sources of suspiciously similar stories, suggesting that Castaneda “borrowed” some of his material. In addition, critics say, his stories read a bit too much like novels—real life doesn’t arrange itself that neatly for literary convenience, so at minimum he must have employed some artistic license in his descriptions. Then, of course, some worry that his discussions of hallucinogenic plants encourage the use of drugs.

Castaneda himself refused to respond to any of his critics. He was for the most part a recluse, declining to be interviewed or even photographed. His unwillingness to defend himself or offer proof of his claims was seen as an implicit admission of guilt; on the other hand, Castaneda’s own books repeatedly say that according to don Juan, a life of obscurity is absolutely essential to a sorcerer. Apologists thus counter that Castaneda was simply practicing what he preached.

He did, however, conduct seminars and workshops for a select few students. One of these students, Amy Wallace, was Castaneda’s lover (or one of them) for a number of years. Her 2003 memoir Sorcerer’s Apprentice gives an unprecedented (though clearly biased) inside look at the real Castaneda. A fascinating read, it details the life of a man who appears by turns to be a highly evolved guru and a megalomaniacal cult leader. Wallace’s bottom-line opinion: don Juan almost certainly did not exist, but Castaneda, though deeply disturbed, was a genius who believed deeply in the path he followed. This seemed to be the general consensus of those interviewed for the 2004 documentary film Carlos Castaneda—Enigma of a Sorcerer, made by another former Castaneda student, Ralph Torjan. Another book with a different (and also rather uncomplimentary) view of Castaneda was A Magical Journey With Carlos Castaneda, written by Margaret Runyan Castaneda, who claimed to have been married to Carlos for 13 years (though there is some uncertainty as to whether she really was).

In any case, these books and the film together erased any lingering faith I may have had in the veracity of Castaneda’s writings. Unlike his students, I can’t take his ideas seriously knowing what I do about him.

Is The Truth Out There?

What makes Castaneda’s books so compelling to many is their vivid descriptions of the world as perceived through the eyes of a sorcerer (or “man of knowledge”—in Castaneda’s usage, the term “sorcerer” does not carry any undertones of evil practices). Some of the experiences he reports are frightening, shocking, or simply off-putting, and they wouldn’t make the average person say, “Hey, this sounds like fun, I think I’ll become a sorcerer.” What they suggest, though, is that the underlying reality of the world is not at all as most people perceive it, that ordinary human awareness is, as it were, a bad habit.

Castaneda’s writings have attracted such a following for much the same reason as The Matrix or The X-Files: people want to believe that there’s more to the universe than meets the eye, that a more fantastic world lies beyond our perception. Whether Castaneda’s version of alternative reality is the right one, or even approximately correct, is the question. But whatever your opinion of Castaneda—a prophet, a fraud, or a misguided fool—his books are fascinating and thought-provoking. Even in fiction, there are kernels of truth.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on June 19, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on October 21, 2004.

Black Forest cake—or, as it’s known in the Black Forest, Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, is a nearly perfect dessert, combining as it does four of my favorite edible substances: chocolate, cherries, whipped cream, and alcohol (kirschwasser, or cherry liqueur). I also have fond memories of visiting the Black Forest when I was living in Europe, so that association is a bonus. I don’t have time to bake a Black Forest cake today, but maybe I’ll luck out and find one at a local bakery.

Image credit: Mikelo [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons