Society of No Masters

Root Tones: Society of No Masters

In the Ancient World, in the older generations of our own communities, and in today’s existing traditional cultures, the notion of having a master, and giving respect to one’s master, was, and is, a basic prerequisite to being respectable in any discipline or craft.

The notion of the master and disciple exists for many important reasons in traditional culture. Any craft or discipline has a reason for being, and if the society is sustainable, these crafts or disciplines exist as some sort of service to one’s community and to nature. When you are a servant to your community or to nature, this service is not something to take lightly because it has to do with the survival of the community and our harmony with the existence. The existence of masters and disciples ensure a quality transfer of the knowledge from generation to generation in order to properly render the service. This in turn ensures harmony with nature and therefore the survival of the community.

There is an existential reality which gives a very important context to the notion of a master and a disciple. It is this; a human being comes into existence when it is born, at the mercy of its surroundings. We are like sponges soaking in our exposures, and conversely we need to be shown things in order to do them correctly.

Today, we have been inundated with so many choices and options, it is like we are drowning in an endless sea of diverse ideologies, opinions, tastes and flavors to choose from that are present in our surroundings.

This kind of serendipitous existence has led human beings into a state of disorientation and distrust, reducing us to the condition of the vagabond, with no definite lineage or home, no root, just like a wanderer, scavenging our point of views and approaches to life from the world, predisposing ourselves to maintain the illusion that we are our own masters.

In music, this trend is reflected on several levels, and the current state of music is a very complex example of this massive saturation of information and loss of the notion of musical lineages. Instead of being a student of a human being, the world and it’s diversity of musical styles (proliferated through sound recordings and sheet music) then becomes the primary contributor to the exposures of the musician.

We find this very common in fields other than music, such as in the case of any person claiming some kind of expertise. Nowadays, it is not necessary to be a student of a human being, instead the person claiming expertise can simply read books, or watch You tube and claim to be a professional whatever-it-is.

In previous issues of Root Tones, I spoke about music from Meritah, and how there are functional applications for music other than an exhibition of aesthetic qualities and entertainment, such as, music for divination, Ancestral callings, and to facilitate “being taken”. Even in the realm of what could be considered “popular” music in a traditional context, it usually has a purpose such as the recounting of history, good deeds, or simply wisdom being proliferated in song. Even the musicians who play this type of music are usually part of griot lineages which are passed down.

Over time, as a result of our modern hedonistic civilisation, there has been a shift from this very purpose driven music, towards more and more applications for entertainment, or what we can consider, “music for music’s sake”. As cultures move away from spirituality and their traditional purity, they move closer towards the modern hedonistic and materialistic model, and therefore lose these “sacred” applications of music. After many centuries of this, we can see where we stand today. Most people today have never heard of musical divination, Ancestral callings, “being taken”, or the notion of anything like a “Griot”. As a result of cultural changes, not only has the shift away from sacred music started, but now that sacred music has been completely lost.

It is important to remember that any traditional musician who is part of a lineage fights hard to ensure that the integrity of the “service” they would render through music is preserved from generation to generation. This is done through preserving the master–disciple relationship. 

Once there was a shift from professionalism in music, towards “music for music’s sake”, then it was more and more acceptable for people to simply observe performers, copy their styles, and figure out how to come up with their own performance based on their observations. We can observe that despite this trend, most musicians worth their salt, a few generations ago, would fight against other musicians for ripping off their style without an approved transference of the style. Over the last few decades, there has been a shift in this attitude due to the massive saturation of diverse musical styles. Now amongst the younger generations in music, it is seen as “creatively backwards” and unrealistic to impose the notion of respect for stylistic origins.

Now with modern technology, we have seen the birth of recorded music, first with the use of devices such as rotating cylinders and scrolls to be used with organs, music boxes, and player pianos. This was then followed by the phonograph cylinder, the LP, and then magnetic tape used in applications such as the reel-to-reel tape, the 8-Track, and finally cassette tapes. This was then followed by the Compact Disc, and now by the mp3 or any other style of audio file which can be shared on a variety of mediums including a USB key.

Everyone remembers the scandal mp3’s caused when people realised that they can simply copy the contents of a compact disc and email the music to their friends without having to pay for the album again. This destroyed many artists because the industry of record sales was no longer controllable. This digital freedom signified a massive boom in the proliferation of music worldwide.

With this massive boom came a new generation of musicians who have benefited from this widespread and free fluctuation of music recordings. Also inventions such as You tube have added to the seemingly endless pool of musical recordings.

Previously in human history, the musical scavenger would need to be present at musical performances in order to learn through observation, but now their sources for observation and musical influence are virtually endless. And like a thing with no end, it is as if there are no definite components, and the notion of a lineage, or the need for a lineage dissolves into obscurity.

This trend can clearly be seen outside of music, in the fields of religion, spirituality, politics, philosophy, and culture. This is directly reflected in the fact that we now live in an age of a seemingly endless pool of ideologies, and a massive infrastructure through which to share this information by use of the Internet and the printed page. 

Now it’s very easy to be a “cultural” or “spiritual” expert, by scavenging the Internet, You tube, and books. It is also very easy to turn one’s back on one’s master’s work and still stand as an “acceptable” representative of their respective discipline in today’s society due to this massive expression of mediocrity that we are drowning in. In ancient times, a person would be punished for such a disrespect. They would cease to perpetrate their presumed vocation because of their treason, being held accountable for that treason, and the resultant shame.

Today we live in an unavoidable sea of influences and dynamic expressions. This can be very enriching if the human has some kind of compass transmitted to them from a Master. The least a human being can do is to express a minimum level of honesty by paying homage to one’s master or observed influences, regardless of whether the lineage is handed to them or if they have scavenged the knowledge. In this way they may hedge the detrimental effects of a culture that does not know gratitude.

Will we be pushed to a point of dishonesty, suffering from an inundation of stimuli? Will the convenience of stimulus acquisition, make information sourcing effortless, devoid of appreciation, and therefore valueless? Will this state of being render a person incapable of paying respect to their influences?

Honouring one’s line of mastery is held in great esteem by the disciple because it honours who is behind him or her, and shows that they have a history.

It could be a master to teach the disciple to appreciate the diversity of the world, indeed, but remember, there was a master there to teach that!